Nigerian Music Nigeria – Music Scene In The 60s: Night Time, Right time

Source; Guardian, 8 October.2010

FANCY night clubs, shinny dance floors, champaigne, fine clothes, sophistication and the yearning for a good time. Such was the level of affluence and jollification associated with highlife music fifty years ago in 1960 when it took the centre stage, dominating all the other forms of music in Nigeria.

Fifty years ago, the streets were fully lit –all night long, with electricity generation and distribution by Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN). No power outages. No disruptions of any kind. Night-life flourished with night clubs, hundreds of them, resonating with activity as music blarred out for dancing by happy, fun-loving, pub-crawling Nigerians. Indeed, night time was the right time!

Victor Olaiya was at the Cool Cats, Apapa Road, preparatory to moving to Stadium Hotel, Surulere; Fatai Rolling Dollar was performing at Boundary Hotel, Idioro, Lagos; Stephen Amechi and a host of other bands were resident at Kanu’s Empire Hotel, Idioro; Charles Iwegbue was operating directly opposite Liddo Bar; Roy Chicago was holding forte at Abalabi Hotel, Olorunsogo, Mushin; King Kennytone was at Ladebu’s Western Hotel, Mushin; Chief Bill Friday settled into the residency of Ambassador Hotel, Yaba where ‘Tea Time Dance’ was holding sway on Sunday afternoons. This was after Bobby Benson had left the club for his own place – Hotel Bobby (Caban Bamboo) along Ikorodu Road, Lagos.

E.C Arinze who in fact launched Empire Hotel as far back as 1952 was now at Kakadu, entertaining a mixed audience, while Stephen Osita Osadebe was building his career at Central Hotel, Yaba with trumpeter Eric Onugha as leader of the Central Dance Band. The list is long.

Similar activities were going on in other parts of the country, especially in Aba, Abia State with the Travellers Lodge Atomic 8; Ibadan where Eddy Okonta performed at Paradise Hotel; Onitsha with Rex Jim Lawson making a great impact at Dolphin Hotel before coming down to Lagos in 1965. The whole scene was moving with Satch Ayo of the Sahara All Stars blazing the trial in Jos.

This development did not deter the patronage of other genres like juju music and our various indigenous social music type, rather, they had massive acceptance from their various target audience.

I.K. Dairo, who had just parted ways with Ojoge Daniel was making great impact. Dele Ojo was popularising the guitar – dominated, combo highlife type. Tunde Nightingale, Ayinde Bakare, Julius Araba and others were already there. Ebenezer Obey was preparing the ground for the launch of his Inter Reformers Band. Sunny Ade was to arrive much later in 1968.
Nigerian indigenous social music was quite formidable – with such enterprising pace-setters as Haruna Isola (apala); Mamman Shatta (Kalangu); Batile Alake (Waka); Ezigbo Obiligbo, Hajia Lolo, Yusuf Olatunji (Sakara). The Nigerian indigenous social music scene was vibrant.

But today, fifty years after, all these idioms have disappeared giving way to hip hop, a foreign musical culture, which has reduced musicians to mere entertainers, struggling to fuse this immediate music with genuine African identity to achieve authenticity.

It should be the other way round. Fifty years after independence, Nigerian music should stick out like a sore thumb in terms of embracing our various indigenous idioms as a first option, after which the fusion with western idioms could be forged. Only then can we be culturally independent and free indeed.

Nigerian Music Nigeria Sunny Ade