Issue 46 | Sept 2018 | Complimentary Issue
Issue 46 | Sept 2018
What is Afropolitan Vibes? Afropolitan Vibes is a monthly live music concert which exists as a platform for alternative music: a place where music lovers congregate to watch contemporary singersongwriters and musicians perform mostly original works that are firmly rooted in African musical origins of Afro-beat, Afro-funk, Afrohip-hop, Afro-pop and Highlife music. A host of talented artists gather to rehearse and then perform with Bantucrew on stage. The show was held monthly at Freedom Park’s main stage for four years from March 2013 - March 2017. The first of our now quarterly shows was held at Muri Okunola Park in Victoria Island on Friday 16th June. Show starts promptly from 8.00pm - 10.30/11.00pm.
BANTU BANTU’s Music is the soundtrack of Lagos. The bustling megapolis which the band calls home serves as muse and backdrop for the sonic adventures on their latest release “Agberos International”, an album that celebrates and explores the complexities and contradictions of navigating daily life in the city of dreams and chaos. The 13-piece award winning BANTU Music collective, and founders of the critically acclaimed concert series Afropolitan Vibes, effortlessly weaves a playful and danceable collection of songs and sounds that alternate between the political and satirical without missing a beat thus cementing their status as one of the most exciting live music experiences in Africa. Contact: info@bantucrew.com | www.bantucrew.com www.facebook.com/bantucrew | www.youtube.com/bantucrew
Afropolitan Vibes is co-produced by Ade Bantu and Abby Ogunsanya.
Spread the word
Palm Wine Tradition
Join our Facebook page at facebook.com/Afropolitanvibes, Subscribe to our digital magazine at issuu.com/afropolitanvibes and invite your friends next time.
Palm wine is now available at all our shows. As our palm wine is always freshly tapped in Sagamu in the early hours of the morning of each show, this luscious white liquid is guaranteed to be sweet and only mildly intoxicating as it is yet unfermented.
The next AFROPOLITAN VIBES show will be held on FRIDAY 21st DECEMBER 2018
Our palm wine is served the traditional way: the wine is available to buy per gourd (to share with friends/ family) or in individual calabashes. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are also available for purchase at the bar area where we encourage you all to come join us after the show for a drink and a chat.
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Issue 46 | Sept 2018
RAS KIMONO 9th May 1958 – 10th June 2018
Issue 46 | Sept 2018
I present to you “On Music” By Thomas Moore When through life unblest we rove, Losing all that made life dear, Should some notes we used to love, In days of boyhood, meet our ear, Oh! how welcome breathes the strain! Wakening thoughts that long have slept,
Music, oh, how faint, how weak, Language fades before thy spell! Why should Feeling ever speak, When thou canst breathe her soul so well? Friendship's balmy words may feign, Love's are even more false than they; Oh! 'tis only music's strain Can sweetly soothe, and not betray.
Kindling former smiles again
Editor's Note It is the 50th edition of Afropolitan Vibes and this is probably the best day to say in strong words and fluid sentences what music means to me. At such a time as this however, words fail me woefully because as I have tried to explain, music is not one of those things that I can explain. So I turn to my other love, Poetry, to help.
In faded eyes that long have wept.
Cheers to the next 50 editions! Like the gale, that sighs along Beds of oriental flowers, Is the grateful breath of song,
Lydia
That once was heard in happier hours. Fill'd with balm the gale sighs on, Though the flowers have sunk in death; So, when pleasure's dream is gone, Its memory lives in Music's breath.
MAGAZINE CREDITS
CONTACT US
Editor: Lydia Idakula-Sobogun Guest artist profiles: Dami Ajayi, Blessing 'Bee' Azubike Graphic Design: Ayomidotun Freeborn Show photos: Dohdohndawa Photography Guest artists’ pictures: Courtesy of artists
You can email us with your thoughts at info@afropolitanvibes.com. We respond to questions on all of our social media platforms.
We have a limited number of back issues of Afropolitan Vibes magazine. If you would like a copy, please contact us via email or on +234-803-493-7094. 5
Issue 46 | Sept 2018
JUNE EDITION
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Issue 46 | Sept 2018
By Dami Ajayi
OMAWUMI:
WONDER WOMAN The boom of her vocal cords came to us, a few years ago, by way of the West Africa Idols. Precisely in 2007. Omawumi delightfully sang her way through a season of Reality Television and emerged as one of the finalists and fans’ favourite. She brought to stage an infectious vivacity and earthiness and we all knew she was poised for stardom. 8
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Omawumi is one of biggest voices in the Contemporary Nigerian music salon.
oming to fame at a time when few female musicians were known to top charts or sellout shows, Omawumi became noticeable at a time when the zeitgeist almost completely ignored the presence of female voices. Losing the winner’s purse and record deal at the West Africa Idols to Timi Dakolo, an amazing contender who has gone on to prove his fine fettle, Omawumi was relentless in her efforts to leap into the music scene, on her own terms, and shine. Within a short while, she had found her way into the influential studio booth of Cobhams Asuquo and waxed an introduction to her discography. Her first album, Wonder Woman, described by ace music critic, Wilfred Okochie, as an interesting mishmash of pop, reggae, R & B and traditional highlife, will be our initial guide into her exploration of the possibilities of the eponymous superhero comic character. Receiving widespread critical acclaim and popular reception on the wings of ear-candy singles like Into The Music and Serious Love Nwatintin, Omawumi’s ebullient character as reflected in her music videos and live sessions comes into the mix. Renowned for a merciless handling of erring music journalists and her insistence on performing with the full complement of her band, Omawumi who trained as a lawyer at Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, is an outlier pulling her weight in Nigeria’s male-dominated music industry. Omawumi followed Wonder Woman up with The Lasso of Truth within three years. A dutiful sophomore existing within the comfort of earlier traditions, The Lasso of Truth was not only expanding the Wonder Woman metaphor, it was also nourishing it with a more confident sound that experimented with old groovy tunes like Herbert Udemba’s Bottom Belle and remade it, with the help of Flavour N’Bania, into a magnificent hit.
to the great music of her predecessors. Omawumi’s vocal register journeys from Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald to Nina Simone to Aretha Franklin to Mariam Makeba to Angélique Kidjo whom she features on this album.
Omawumi was simply making an artistic statement that responded truthfully to the anxieties of what it meant to be modern especially when you are firmly rooted with an existing tradition. She was revising a collective legacy of Nigerian music handed to her and she updated it within the limits of experimental possibilities. Little wonder she found astounding success.
With three studio albums in her kitty, her musical journey has been an exciting tour, perhaps the thing that makes biopics meaningful, with interesting detours to motherhood and wifehood, and the best part is we have not even gotten to the denouement!
She called her third album, Timeless. Timelessness is perhaps the most astonishing quality of the Wonder Woman superhero. Omawumi’s Timeless is a tribute
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Issue 46 | Sept 2018
Bright Chimezie Duke of Highlife By Dami Ajayi
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Nigerians took it, shaped it and ran with so that by the late 50s, there was already a slew of highlife bands like the Cool Cats led by Victor Olaiya who performed at the Independence Ball when Chimezie Ironmuo was an infant in the then Eastern heartlands.
n the tenth day of the first month of 1960, the year of Nigeria’s independence, a little boy was born into a modest family in Ekeoba, a village few miles away from Abia State capital, Umuahia. This agile boy, called Chimezie Ironmuo, unbeknownst to parents and relatives was to become one of leading luminaries of highlife music and perhaps its biggest star to come from this region.
Chimezie Ironmuo, perhaps called Bright Chimezie for his fair skin or intelligence, pretty much had a bucolic childhood with a taste of western education in village schools where he read the classic novels of Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and Elechi Amadi. Like many musicians, he also featured in his church choir and his precocious restlessness after secondary school made him form the Modernised Odumodu Cultural Dance Group largely popular in the east.
Chimezie Ironmuo’s birth coincided with a period of great jubilation and enthusiasm, easily the best time in the world to be African, with the fire of colonial independence spreading earnestly across West Africa. African intellect and thought was blossoming with the dominant dictum of Pan-Africanism championed by Kwame Nkrumah and the likes. Music was also enjoying creative combustion with the swaying popularity of an indigenously African dance music called highlife.
By 1979, he quietly disbanded his group and he moved to Lagos, perhaps in search of the Golden Fleece, but first he found himself another sobriquet, Okoro, to which he added the suffix Junior. In Lagos, he performed at several night clubs including the Phoenician Night Club, Tee Mac Connection at Mama Koko Hotel and Gondola Night Club on Commercial Avenue, Yaba which still stands today.
Effectively, highlife, originating from coastal cities in Ghana and Sierra Leone, resulted from the practice of playing African rhythms with western wind and string instruments. Popular first amongst old sailors, it was modernized by Emmanuel Teytey Mensah, a Ghanian pharmacist, who took his big band style of highlife on tour around West Africa cities, including Nigeria in the early 50s.
In the early 80s, he joined the Nigerian Customs Authority, playing as an assistant bandleader and lead vocalist in their Custom and Excise Dance Band.
Like all things Ghanaian—think Azonto as well—
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Four years later, he received an epiphany about his lifelong goal to play traditional African music and took his demo to Rogers All Star Recording Company in Onitsha to persuade them into signing him a record deal. Based on the success of his first album, Respect Africa, he resigned his job and started his band, Zigima Movement, which has now grown into a 16 man ensemble. He has released several hit songs including the hugely successful African Style. His music reflects traits that people have become accustomed to be his brand of highlife. The Zigima sound, to Bright Chimezie, goes beyond being music; it is a philosophy as well as a way of life that underscores the importance of being authentically African and true to one’s culture. His style of music melds the practice of folklore storytelling into an electric, fast-paced highlife music preserving a wry humour that elucidates his subtle messages. His Zigima philosophy has had him relocating to his country home frequently. After he got married and started a family he relocated back to Umuahia. He believes that as a cultural ambassador, his children must speak his own father’s tongue and be accustomed to his peoples’ ways. With an intimidating catalog of evergreen albums, the proud father of five remains an accomplished vocalist, songwriter, instrumentalist fondly referred to by his diehard fans as the Duke of Highlife.
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Issue 46 | Sept 2018
JOHNNY DRILLE
By Blessing 'Bee' Azubike
Who is Johnny Drille?
young age. He then went on to teach himself music production - using cassette recorders - around 2006 and in 2013 became a contestant on the 6th Edition of MTN’s Project Fame.
Asides having over 20 thousand followers on twitter, one could easily mistake folk/alternative Singer, Songwriter, Producer, and Sound Engineer JohnnyDrille for some random guy who just happens to be crazy about the big screen, proof being his simple tweets like “God bless the day I discovered Ofada Rice and sauce”, along with his Troy rants and hundreds of other tweets about films… but then again, with posts from fans like “Your voice makes sorrow fly away. You are such a blessing to this generation” and “I love you Johnnydrille, you have won my heart completely” to the more straightto-the-point “Johnnydrille if you are not busy this Saturday, let's get married”, you just may have stumbled on a mini-god of some sort.
He later began to put out songs which went unnoticed until luck smiled on him in January 2015 when he put out his cover of Di’ja’s ‘Awww’ and caught Mavin Records’ CEO, Don Jazzy’s attention. Don Jazzy not only followed JonnyDrille, but openly commended him. Some months later, while still enjoying the attention that cover was giving him, ‘Drille put out his personal composition ‘Love Don’t Lie’, a Christian country/ folksy song, and shortly after, ‘Wait For Me’, the hugely-successful track which topped most of the Nigerian alternative charts and got him a Headies nomination for Best Alternative Song in the following year. The University of Benin graduate kept working and putting out songs and in February 2017 was officially announced as a Mavin Records artiste.
So What’s The Big ‘Drille’?! Considering him a mini-god may be an exaggeration, but if those tweets have anything to do with his music, then JohnnyDrille must be some kind of a genius! Truth be told, simple as his sound is, the infusion of Nigerian ‘Pidgin-English’ to extremely harmonious western-sounding tunes is melodic genius and a very welcome change from the usual Nigerian ‘pop’ sound which have dominated the airwaves… and quite frankly, if you’re named ‘The future of the Nigerian music industry’ by famous producer Cobhams Asuquo, then you must be something special!
JohnnyDrille hopes to redefine love songs through his music and as a member of the Mavin crew, he may be rolling with the big leagues now, but you can tell that he is a true music head who is more interested in making ‘actual’ music than chasing fame and celebrity; he recently said “Mixing is fun! One time I replaced a phrase the lead singer didn't sing right with my own vocals and added my breathing to his vocals to make them more believable... They'd never know I did those, they'd only know the track sounds great” Clearly, this one is going to remain faithful to lovers of good music for a very long time.
You can tell that JohnnyDrille’s music is heavily influenced by rich foreign music, and the folk singer confirms this by naming Mumford & Sons, Owl City, Phillip Phillips, Passenger, Jon Bellion, and Laura Mvula as some of his influences. Born John Ighodaro, to a clergy father and mother, 28 year-old ‘Drille, who learned to sing from his siblings, started out singing at his father’s Church at a very
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Issue 46 | Sept 2018
Mixing is fun! One time I replaced a phrase the lead singer didn't sing right with my own vocals and added my breathing to his vocals to make them more believable... They'd never know I did those, they'd only know the track sounds great.
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Issue 46 | Sept 2018
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