Living the Highlife: Chief Inyang Henshaw and "Esonta"

From Nigeria comes today's random tune, called Esonta. The song is by Chief Inyang Henshaw, a Nigerian musician who was active in the West African highlife scene in the 50s and 60s and who sang in the Efik language. I could not find much more information on Inyang Henshaw, but ran across Esonta on the 2003 album The Rough Guide to Highlife.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Or Not: Adekunle Gold and "Ready"

Today's random tune is called Ready, and it is by Adekunle Gold. Adekunle Kosoko is a Nigerian highlife singer who was born into royalty in Lagos State, Nigeria. He became interested in music at a young age, and grew up listening to the music of King Sunny Adé and Ebenezer Obey. He gained some attention after he posted a photoshopped picture of himself hugging Tiwa Savage, but his big musical break came after he recorded a version of One Direction's Story of My Life, which gained critical acclaim and was nominated for awards. His first full album likewise received critical acclaim and rose to #7 on the Billboard World Music charts. He has released two albums, and you can find Ready on his 2016 debut album Gold.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adekunle_Gold

He Lived the Highlife: Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe and "Ka-Anyi Jikota"

Today's random tune is by Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe, a Nigerian highlife musician also known just as Osadebe. Of the Igbo people, Osadebe's career spanned 40 years. He came from a family of musicians and dancers, and he started his career in Lagos singing at nightclubs with bands and orchestras. He eventually put out his first solo album in 1958, and eventually over his career he composed over 500 songs. While he started out doing Igbo highlife, his music came to also include elements of calypso, samba, bolero, rumba, jazz and waltz. As he matured, his music also began to reflect social commentary less confrontational but along the same lines as his countryman Fela Kuti. When highlife music began to fall out of favor in the 1980s, yielding to Jùjú music and Afrobeat, he gradually began turning his priorities to fatherhood over music and released his last album in 2000. Osadebe died in 2007. This song, Ka-Anyi Jikota, can be found on his last album, 2000's Kedu America, and on The Rough Guide to Highlife (2003).

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Stephen_Osita_Osadebe

His Golden Voice: Pat Thomas and Kwashibu Area Band with "Oye Asem"

Today's random tune is by Ghanaian highlife singer Pat Thomas. He is the nephew of legendary Ghanaian guitarist King Onyina, who recorded with Nat King Cole. Pat Thomas began his musical career in the 1960s collaborating with musician Ebo Taylor and his band the Blue Monks, but eventually formed his own band, Sweet Beans, and recorded his first album in 1974. He then formed the band Marijata, but in 1979 he relocated to Berlin after the Ghanaian coup and eventually ended up in Canada. Known as "The Golden Voice of Africa," he is now performing with his Kwashibu Area Band. This song, Oye Asem, can be found on the 2015 album Pat Thomas and the Kwashibu Area Band which was released to mark his 50th year in music - it was his first album in over a decade. He was joined on the album for some songs by legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Thomas_(highlife_musician), https://www.allmusic.com/artist/pat-thomas-mn0001009626/biography

He Is: Fela Ransome Kuti and the Highlife Rakers with "Fela's Special"

Today's random song is an early tune by an African and music legend, Fela Ransom Kuti, accompanied by The Highlife Rakers. A Nigerian musician and composer who played many instruments, Fela Kuti was a pioneer of Afrobeat. In 1958, Kuti was sent to London to study medicine, but decided to study music instead and formed his first band, the Koola Lobitos, who fused jazz and highlife music. After five years in London, he moved back to Nigera and reformed the Koola Lobitos but after a while, he decided to move to Ghana to try a different direction. It was in Ghana that he first started playing what would be called Afrobeat, a unique fusion of jazz, funk, highlife, psychedelia and traditional chants and rhythms of West Africa. In 1969, he spent 10 months in Los Angeles where he became acquainted with the Black Power movement, and this experience would influence his future music, as well as drive his human rights and political activities. He became not only a revered musician, but a political figure as well. He frequently decried Nigerian political corruption and mistreatment of Nigerian citizens and consequently was arrested over 200 times. Personally, he also believed in polygamy as part of a greater African culture, and participation in this practice may have led to his contraction of HIV/AIDS which was his official cause of death in 1997, although his exact cause of death remains controversial. His funeral featured a five-sided glass coffin for full public viewing. His music has since undergone a revival, helped by the Broadway musical Fela! which was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, and an annual Felabration festival in Lagos. You can find this song, Fela's Special, on the 2015 various artists retrospective Highlife on the Move: Selected Nigerian & Ghanaian Recordings from London & Lagos 1954-66, issued by Soundway Records.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Living the Highlife: Celestine Ukwu and "Igede"

Today's random tune is in honor of Mike's mother Shirley Hess, who turns 85 years old today. The song is called Igede, and is performed by Celestine Ukwu and his band. A Nigerian highlife musician, he began his career in the 1960s with the Paradise Rhythm Orchestra, then launched his own band called the Music Royals. The Biafran War caused the band to go on hiatus for three years, but in 1970 they resurrected themselves as the Philosophers National, and became known for several songs in the early and mid-1970s. His music is generally described as softer and more laid back than most highlife music, and he tended to feature piano, vibraphone and pedal steel guitar. The songs that his band played were generally around the topics of social evils and the need for peace. Celestine Ukwu tragically died in an automobile accident in 1977. Igede can be found on the 2003 compilation album Rough Guide to Highlife. The song is based in Igbo folklore, and was a smash hit in 1971.

Killing Me Softly: Ebo Taylor and "Love and Death"

Do you remember your first broken heart? It probably occurred sometime in school, I'm guessing. For me it was around 6th or 7th grade. There was a girl I really liked, and I dreamed about her a lot. I was an awkward, ungainly kid with unruly hair and large glasses, and I most likely didn't have a chance in a world with this girl or as I thought at the time, any girls. But that didn't stop me from dreaming and fantasizing about her. Dreaming and fantasizing are okay, because in those dreams and fantasies you create yourself in the image that you want - handsome, strong, someone who would be immensely attractive to the girl you want. And of course, she wants you. If your dreams stayed just that, dreams, then you'd be okay.

Unfortunately, dreams clash with reality because at some point, you realize that you can't stay in the dreams. You have to make contact with the object of your affection, and doing so means you find out whether there is anything possible. When there isn't, and for me that seemed to always be the case, your dreams crash about you. When my dreams came crashing down that first time, a tightness developed in my chest while the rest of my body felt a malaise. I felt like crying and probably did once or twice. A depression sank over me, and it was like I could only speak in monosyllables, walk with my head down and avoid the stares that I was certain others gave me, and resist the urge to crawl into some hole somewhere and die. In fact, I felt like I would die - the death of my dreams meant the death of me. Of course, that's not what happened, and after that grief period I was back to dreaming and fantasizing about some other girl, to repeat the cycle over again.

It is exactly that heartbreak and grief that Ebo Taylor references in his song Love and Death. At the bottom of this post you'll get a bonus...a little video documentary of Taylor explaining how he came up with some of his songs, and he states that love and death go together, that love often feels like a death especially when it goes wrong. A Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader and producer, Taylor is one of the legendary figures of Ghana's highlife musical genre. Briefly, highlife is a style developed in 20th century Ghana featuring a jazzy horn section and multiple lead guitars. Taylor first broke into the Ghana's music scene in the late 1950s with the bands The Stargazers and Broadway Dance Band. In the early 1960s he lived for a while in London where he met Fela Kuti and other African musicians and collaborated with them. These influences eventually led him to experiment with fusing Ghanaian highlife with other forms of Afro-beat as well as jazz and funk, leading to his own recognizable style that culminated in the 70s. In the early 21st century, rapper and hip hop artists rediscovered Taylor's music and revived interest in his works. In 2010, Strut Records released the album Love and Death and followed that up in 2011 with Life Stories: The Best of Ebo Taylor 1973-1980. In 2012, Strut released Taylor's intensely personal Appia Kwa Bridge, an album where he combines traditional Fante songs and rhythms with children's rhymes and his own personal experiences to push the frontiers of Ghanaian music and highlife even further. This version of his song Love and Death can be found on Life Stories: The Best of Ebo Taylor 1973-1980.