From Afrobeat to Naija-Pop: An ode to Orlando Julius at 78

By Onyeka Nwelue

BACK in 2014, I was on tour with Seun Kuti and the Egypt 80 in Europe and I learned a few things, hanging out with this irreproachable and right-thinking son of Afrobeat legend, Fela Kuti. 

I always tell people Seun Kuti is a bibliophile and a bookworm, who genuinely loves and frequently reads books. This reflects in his music and the way he sees the world and talks to people. He is quite playful and accommodating and absolutely brilliant. These are the characteristics of Afrobeat artistes. The other artistes that call themselves Afrobeats musicians or the Western press termed Afrobeat artistes that I have met and interacted with, are pea-brained and can’t have any kind of intellectual conversation. 

I have been deeply beady-eyed in what people believe Afro-beat is and it is unfortunate that every numpty, doing music in Nigeria, now refers to himself as Afrobeat musician. Afrobeat is jazz music. You can’t be an Afrobeat musician and yet, you are an illiterate in music. These ones who call themselves Afrobeat musicians can’t play any type of musical instrument. None. And when they record, they need the help of the engineer to autotune their vocals. They need the computer to record a full song. Only one person recording an entire song and yet, has the balls to call himself an Afrobeat musician!

It must be tiring for people like Orlando Julius, one of the pioneers of Afrobeat sounds, to keep hearing this bunkum. 

IN trying to understand the true spirit of what young Nigerian acts are doing, I have been spending quality time, listening to K-Pop. K-pop (short for Korean pop), is a genre of popular music originating from South Korea. I have compared and contrasted what the current generation of Nigerian musicians are doing. There is nothing wrong in calling it Naija-Pop or even N-Pop, if they choose, but it is imbecilic to call this noise they make Afrobeat. It is disrespect to genuine artistes like Fela Kuti, Tony Allen, Orlando Julius, Femi Kuti, The Funkees (even). Even William Onyeabor toned the definition of his music, no matter that he had an original sound that he produced. Perhaps, we can call Flavour (not minding that they have called him Highlife artiste), Edaoto and Seyi Solagbade and the rest that truly take their time to create music, by themselves, Afrobeat artistes. I am not leaving Seun Kuti out of the picture. That one has mastered the aesthetics of Afrobeat: something he has been doing as a teen. 

I will encourage these singers, who can’t play any instrument and have no true knowledge of music, to redefine what they are producing as Naija-Pop. It is no Afrobeat. This argument has been going on, but they insist that because they smoke weed while making music as Fela did, it must be Afrobeat. 

Hat-off to the master…

I CURATED a project to honour Orlando Julius. It was released on his birthday, September 22. Not many people know him. His song, “Selma to Soweto,” is the one I have asked a few people to add their vocals to. For those who don’t know, Orlando Julius was fusing highlife with international influences drawn from rock, pop, soul and jazz when he formed his band the Modern Aces in 1964.

As noted from an interview, Julius was 21 at the time but was already a veteran of numerous bands and had even played with Louis Armstrong on his visit to Nigeria in 1960. There is also a song, “James Brown Go on.” And a picture of James Brown and Orlando Julius. 

Julius and his Modern Aces took up a long-running residency at the Independence Hotel in Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city, and were soon the hottest band on the scene. A regular visitor to their Friday night sessions was the young Fela Ransome-Kuti, at the time a producer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation and recently returned from his studies in London. Fela, unlike the present generation, claiming to be Afrobeat musicians, was ready to learn.  Fela went to Orlando’s club every week to check out what they were doing. He sat in with them; he was still playing the trumpet in those days and hadn’t taken up the saxophone. Then when he was ready to form his own band, Orlando Julius gave him some of his musicians – Eddie Fayehun, Isiaka Adio and Ojo Ekeji – to get him started.

By 1965 Fela’s group featured Tony Allen on drums had adopted the name Koola Lobitos. However, it is noted that what Fela launched back then wasn’t Afrobeat; it was jazz-highlife. It is believed that Fela only started playing Afrobeat after he went to America at the end of the 60s.

ON the September 22, 2020, Orlando Julius turned 78 years old. He is still touring, as far as Mexico and Brazil. Not to talk about his sold-out shows in Europe. Experimentally, he started out playing highlife, but he was listening to American soul music like Sam & Dave and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, and he was the first to modernise Nigerian music with rock, jazz and soul and R&B, before calling it Afro-beat. 

I want young Nigerian musicians to adopt the term, Naija-Pop like Korean youngsters have done and not call their detritus Afrobeat, because it takes a lot of education and wisdom to make Afrobeat. 

Nwelue, writer, art activist writes from Jo’Burg