LESSONS FROM GRAMMY AWARDS

In the history of America’s music calendar, all the artistes look forward to one night with glee, fondness and great sense of anticipation in their hearts and only one event is credited for arousing these feelings; the prestigious GRAMMY Awards!
This made me ponder for a long time if there is a replication of such an event in Nigeria that the music industry especially the artistes particularly look forward to with so much enthusiasm like the GRAMMY. It is startling that after 52 years since its inception, the Grammy Awards has not lost its credibility in any way.
As much we would have loved to, most of us couldn’t make it to the event but footages reveal that the event remains the most glamorous and credible music awards in the entire world. The artistes were well dressed for the evening. They all honoured the ceremony because of its credibility and they wanted to be counted not just because they were persuaded upon to attend. The enthusiasm on the faces of the nominees showed that they craved so much to win. The expressions on their faces couldn’t hide how much they desired the statuette. Their minds where also conditioned to the fact that if they didn’t win, they wouldn’t fault the judgment of the Academy. They love and appreciate the awards that have been in existence before most of them were born. But the reverse is the case back home here in Nigeria.
A typical Nigerian artiste has one or two things to complain about our awards. African China was not pleased that his video was not nominated by a particular Music Video Awards last year. Dagrin recently took all the awards in Nigeria to the cleaners. P-Square had said that there are no credible awards in Nigeria; reasons being that the organizers were all after what they would gain from it monetarily. Different comments, accusations and counter accusations are flying from different corners from various artistes. They no longer hide their feelings. They are becoming more vocal by the day. Their list is inexhaustible.
We vividly remember few years back how the entire music industry in Africa looked forward to KORA. It symbolized our own GRAMMY then or so we thought. We loved and cherished the statuette. The awards attracted lots of people from all over the continent of Africa with South-Africa as the convergence point. Now one is forced to wonder why it is so difficult to have an award ceremony in Nigeria that would be the cynosure of most if not all eyes in the world. Why do majority of Nigerian artistes lose hope in the credibility of our awards? Why is it becoming increasingly difficult for corporate bodies to sponsor our awards? There are so many unanswered questions that that no one seems keen to provide answers to at least not just yet.
We feel it is high time we started organizing awards the whole industry would be looking forward to especially the artistes whose creativity the awards are meant to reward. What is the essence of giving someone a statuette he or she doesn’t appreciate or value? It is just like a mere waste of time considering what organizers have to go through.
Organizers of awards should make the artistes see reasons to want to attend the event. They should build the credibility of the awards to uphold its integrity. So that even after their demise or when they are no longer in charge, the awards will continue to hold and remain relevant. We need no seer to tell us that most of the people that started GRAMMY Awards are no more today. They should distance themselves from the judgments to reasonable extent thereby creating transparent and credible judgement criteria.
It is high time our awards have their own academy. The GRAMMY Awards has a Recording Academy which has been in existence since the commencement of the Awards. The recording industry's most prestigious award, the GRAMMY, is presented annually by The Recording Academy. A GRAMMY is awarded by The Recording Academy's voting membership to honor excellence in the recording arts and sciences. It is truly a peer honor, awarded to artistes and technical professionals for artistic or technical achievement, with little or no reference to sales or chart positions. The annual GRAMMY Awards presentation brings together thousands of creative and technical professionals in the recording industry from all over the world.
I remember Awards for Musical Excellence in Nigeria (AMEN) had an academy called Academy for Creative Arts in Nigeria (ACAN). I served as one of the judges in the last edition in 2007. I remembered the organizers gathered lots of music heads one sunny afternoon to vet the nominees since there was a crack in the academy. It’s unfortunate that the awards reputed as the most consistent music awards in Nigeria having held for nine years is gradually becoming a thing of the past.
Secondly, where winners are most likely to emerge through a voting process, let’s declare the votes of the populace by publishing the voter’s log. The masses aren’t even sure their votes count anymore.
Currently in Nigeria, three awards are being held consistently and annually. They are: Hip Hop World Awards (HHWA), Soundcity Music Video Awards (SMVA) and the Nigeria Music Video Awards (NMVA). HHWA no doubts raised the bar in the staging of awards in Nigeria. Their yellow carpet has always been amazing. They have all what it takes to be the biggest awards in Africa and make it truly ‘a prize to die for’. For now, it is the only consistent music awards but the only snag is that it recognizes basically the hip hop genre. That is why the organizers of AMEN Awards need to bring back the awards. We understand the organizers have been facing sponsorship challenges but the award covers the entire music industry and as such all players should rise to the occasion. It recognizes highlife, fuji, juju, afro-beat, gospel, Islamic, talk albums, hip-hop, reggae/dancehall and many other genres that exist in Nigeria. As a matter of fact, it is the awards with the greatest number of categories ever in Nigeria. Nigeria Music Awards (NMA) is another credible alternative to AMEN but it is currently enmeshed in controversy.
Aside publishing the voters log and forming an academy with respected hip-hop heads, HHWA should try as much possible to organize workshop/seminars every year to improve on a certain aspect of the industry. They should also leave room for constructive criticism and suggestions to further strengthen the award to be better positioned just like the GRAMMY that welcomes contributions from every part of the world. The time is now to lay a solid foundation which will determine how far the award will go even after the initiator quits the scene. Since they accommodated Rooftop MCs as one of the performing acts on the stage of the awards in 2008, its high time they accommodated a category for gospel musicians after all Rooftop MCs are hip-hop/gospel acts. Even fuji hip-hop, which wouldn’t be a bad idea for creativity’s sake, could be considered; after all the ideal of HHWA is to reward urbane music makers.
As for the two music video awards- NMVA and SMVA, the organizers should try to institutionalize the events some more. There should be no reason for rivalry. A guitar has so many strings but they all make beautiful melody when played together. They can organize workshops that will serve as exposé for those that intend to be music video directors or other strata of the industry. They should do more than just staging awards but look for ways to better the industry every year. NMVA has done well by actually making known the judges of the award since inception and last year they piloted an on-line/transparent voting system powered by Gobbleabba. But there is so much more to be done. We do not know who the judges of SMVA are because they have not made them known at any point in time.
The general concensus is that HHWA, NMVA and SMVA should have a credible academy, always publish their voting logs, make known the criteria for each category and try as much as possible to be transparent in their procedures. Organize workshops which do not necessarily have to be held during the time frame of the awards. Leave sentiments out when deciding winners. Give music buffs the opportunity to see the awards as theirs. Lets do these consistently for five years and see if many more people won’t change their opinion about awards in Nigeria. At that point, any of the artistes that lost in the category he/she believes he ought to have won wouldn’t critize since he believes in the process that produced the winner. Most of the artistes have developed a sudden tradition for boycotting award ceremonies because they feel they have been cheated at one point or the other. These should also be applicable to Dynamix, Nigeria Entertainment Awards (NEA) in America and Future Awards.
Most importantly, the corporate bodies can do a lot more than their current efforts as part of their corporate/social responsibilities. It’s becoming more difficult by the day to get them to sponsor our major events/awards. While lauding MTN for their consistent support for the HHWA, we wish to note too that more is desired. They can empower the organizers to do a lot more because of the big dreams of the initiators. As big as NMVA was last year, there was no single title sponsor. As much as SMVA tried to get Globacom’s attention last year having announced them as their title sponsor, they ended up not sponsoring the awards. We couldn’t blame them because they hadn’t agreed in the first place to sponsor the awards. The likes of; Delta, Hilton, Master Card, Waste Managemnet, People, Harman International and Westwood One, all sponsored this year’s GRAMMY Awards. Let the corporate bodies in Nigeria take a cue from this. Even Nokia that has made so much profit from Nigeria has done little or nothing in this regard. But the company is known to have sponsored the Grammy and other great events around the world

BARRISTER CLOCKS 62 YEARS

Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Balogun popularly known as Alhaji Agba or Barrister in some quarters is one of the living legends in the music industry. Without doubt, he laid the foundation for the propagation of fuji music in Nigeria.
He clocked 62 years old on February 9th, 2010. Barrister created a unique traditional music style known as Fuji music in 1958. He has performed for 50 years as a musician and through his efforts in music; he earned himself a national honour of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR).
Alhaji Agba, as he is fondly called, started singing in Mushin at the age of 10 in 1958. In 1964, he joined the band of Jibowu Rabiu. He was with the band for two years after which they parted ways. He went on to a record label known as Niger Songs at Abule-Oja near University of Lagos where he released his first album in 1966. The album was entitled 'Eje ka gbo ti Olohun'. It was released about the same time with King Sunny Ade's 'Alaanu l'Oluwa'.
Alhaji is believed to be the originator of Fuji music and he defined it as the combination of highlife music, afro, juju music, sakara music and others. He came up with it when he saw a poster at an airport advertising the Mount Fuji, which is the highest peak in Japan. He started playing ‘Were’ in 1958. It was in 1966 when juju, apala, sakara and highlife music was the other of the day that he decided he would fuse all the styles of music to create a new genre distinct from Were music which was then perceived solely as an Islamic rendition. He later rebuked people from calling him the creator of Fuji music on the grounds that it was created by God. “I sang to the amazement of people as I sang like Ebenezer Obey, Sunny Ade and Ayinla Omowura. All I was concerned with was how to make the music popular and put food on my table”, he said.
Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister did a tremendous job of popularizing his craft by taking it all over the world; he started touring the European continent, especially Britain, since the early 1970s. Also, he first brought his trade to the North America, particularly the United States of America in 1984. All these tours happened before any subsequent Fuji musician ever left the shores of Africa. Between 1970 and throughout the 1980s, other fuji musicians of note included Fatai Adio, Saura Alhaji, Student Fuji, Rahimi Ayinde (Bokote), Ramoni Akanni, Love Azeez, Waidi Akangbe, Sikiru Olawoyin, Agbada Owo (who prematurely experimented with the guitar), Iyanda Sawaba, Ejire Shadua, Wahabi Ilori, Wasiu Ayinde Barrister (who later became Wasiu Ayinde Marshall) and also the Ibadan quatro of Suleiman Adigun, Sakaniyau Ejire, Rasheed Ayinde, and Wasiu Ayinla emerged, all introducing their versions of Fuji music.
Alhaji Agba was born on February 9th, 1948 to a polygamous family at house No. 15 Oke Street, Itafaaji Lagos Island. He schooled at Mushin. He lost his father at the tender age of 10. While growing up, he had nobody to monitor or tell him to do the right things. He was just determined on his own that he had to become a successful person in life. Then the journey was very rough and tough. For instance, he was once employed as a commuter bus conductor popularly called Danfo which plied Ajegunle to Idi-Oro Mushin.
”All I wanted then was to keep body and soul together and clothe myself. Also I once worked as a goods carrier sleeping all night at Awolowo market in Mushin to keep the good name of the family of 6 wives and many kids my father had. I tried to educate myself from proceeds I got from the odd jobs. I attended Muslim Mission School from there I proceeded to Mainland Model School also at Mushin where I did my First School Leaving Certificate Examination also known as G2 in 1960”.
He started his secondary school education in 1961 and had to stop in the third year because of financial constraint as he had no support from anyone.
Alhaji had earlier hinted in one of the interviews he granted that he was born three times on the same day- February 9th. “When 1 was exactly 5 years old I told my mother I was going back. She begged and persuaded me but I died on 9th February. My mother got pregnant again and gave birth to me on 9th February and I died again on February 9th at the age of 3. Disturbed by this, my mother made spiritual findings about me and they told her I will come back as a boy but she should never stop me from doing anything that I wanted to do, and that I will grow up to learn and do things my way. They also told her I will become a celebrity and she should not tell anyone or even me until when I was grown up. She was also instructed that my birthdays should not be celebrated that whenever I want to celebrate it, I should be stopped by finding a means of distracting my attention. That is the reason why I have never celebrated my birthday. ”, he once revealed.
He celebrated his birthday for the first time when he was 60. He revealed that he always fell ill exactly a week to his birthdays every year. Every 9th of February, he’ll find himself in the hospital and would be alright after his birthday. When he turned 40, he only recorded an album and did a musical video.
Alhaji Agba allegedly slumped for the second time on stage on January 1st, 2009 at Ijebu Ode at the birthday ceremony of Abide Afobaje at Ayetoro in Ogun State. He was quickly rushed to his hotel room and revived ten minutes later. With his current state of health concerned fans and lovers of Barrister feel he should take a leave from active stage performances even though music still runs in his blood. In 2007, it was rumoured that he was down with cancer but he later debunked the claim on national television. He even went as far as cursing those behind the rumour that they would all be down with cancer.
At this point in his career, his fans feel it is time for the veteran musician to retire honourably from stage performances. Assuming we have a well structured industry, his royalties should have been enough to sustain him for the rest of his life.
Happy Birthday Barrister

MO’HITS RECORDS TO RELEASE TWO ALBUMS IN ONE MONTH

One of the leading record labels in Nigeria, Mo’Hits Records which boasts of artistes like D’Banj, Wande Coal, Sid, D’Prince, K-Switch and Ikechukwu will be releasing two albums in spate of a month.
The first album from the label in 2010 will be released on February 13th, 2010. It is the album of former Trybes Records act- Sid. His album is made up of 10 tracks and they are currently sealing off the marketing deal.
The next album to be released is that of D’Prince. The album which has been titled ‘D’Prince is Here’ will be released in the first week of March. Already the three singles- Omoba, Ooze and I Like What I See are still getting ample airplay on different radio stations. His album is made up of 10 tracks and featured collaborations from D’Banj, Don Jazzy, Wande Coal and K-Switch.
All the tracks on both albums were produced by Don Jazzy

AZADUS’S WIFE PREGNANT AGAIN

Music entertainer, Olalekan Fadeyi, a.k.a Azadus is in a happy mood. He revealed to US few days back that his wife- Seun Fadeyi is expecting. This is the most cheering news from the act since he lost his first son last year.
He lost his seven months old baby, Micheal, to the cold hands of death in the early hours of Friday April 3, 2009. According to Azadus, the baby was very ill before he gave up the ghost. He received his final treatment on Thursday April 2nd and they thought he was going to recover before he finally gave up.
Things have since bounced back to normal now. His wife is pregnant again even though he doesn’t want to reveal how many months old.
As part of his plans to return to mainstream music, he released his fourth album last year which was marketed by Hyprodum.
Azadus started his musical career with a group known as Defo Clan in 1995. His breakthrough came in the year 2000 after signing a record deal with Kennis Music. His first album, Just Azadus, had the hit track, You is the One, which became heart rendering. In 2003, he came out with his sophomore album titled ‘Distinguished with hot joints like Madam and Warning On. He went underground after releasing his third album, Reflex

GOD OWN RADICALS STEPS OUT IN GRANDSTYLE

Gospel group, God Own Radicals made up of Don-L, Donna T and Daddy D was formed in 2001. For the past nine years, they have been able to weather the storms in the music industry. Even when Daddy D pulled out from the group, Don L and Donna T were resolute in their decision to keep the dream of the group alive.
Ahead of the release of their new album, the first single released to precede the release of the album has been generating serious airplay on both radio and TV stations and at the same time getting good responses from their fans. They have performed in so many gospel concerts across the country which has consistently increased their fan base.
Some of the songs on their on-coming album are Praise Him, Celebrate, Omo Naija, Bami Dupe, The One For Me, among others. They work with producers like the award winning Biglo, Pagag McOyett, E Twinz, JayStunt, Kayode Omotade, 2009 Channel O Music Video Awards nominee- The Dream, Bisi Akins, amongst others. Their first promotional video: Praise Him was directed by fast rising video director- Ak One and is currently receiving generous airplay on different stations across the country. Their next video- Omo Naija will be shot in few weeks time
God’s Own Radicals employ a sound that is distinctly Nigerian with thumping drumlins and driving beats as well as the use of indigenous languages along with the English language in their songs. The songs cover a wide range of subjects with emphasis on the praise of the Most High God as well as the daily living. Don – L and Donna – T who are determined to keep spreading the word to the ends of the earth are now married.