BusinessDay 21 Jan 2018

38 BD SUNDAY
C002D5556
NewsmakersOfYesteryears
Sunday 21 January 2018
Roy Chicago: A frontline highlife kingpin in the 60s
SIAKA MOMOH
Career
Roy Chicago (real
name John Akintola
Ademuwagun),
one of the
top highlife musicians
in the sixties, started
playing (professional music)
in the 1950s at Central Hotel
on Adamasingba Street
in Ibadan before moving to
Lagos. But his foray into music
began in his elementary
school days in Sapele in the
1940s. Siaka Momoh, as anchor
person for ‘Showtime’
in Vanguard, met him in
April 1985, four years before
he passed on. He shared the
memories of his early beginnings
with him.
The meeting was at Chicago
Club at Modeke Street, off
Ojuelegba Road, Surulere, on
Lagos mainland. At 50 then,
agile Roy, who along with
Victor Olaiya, high-fliers in
the highlife music turf of
the sixties, had become a
committed beer seller – doing
all the associated chores
of bartending – attending to
customers, retrieving empties,
receiving and taking
stocks, etc.
Learning curve
On how he came into music
he said: “I became associated
with music during my
elementary school days in
Sapele. We had a school band
and I was the band leader.
This gave me the opportunity
to learn how to play some instruments
and I became very
good with the trumpet. When
I left school in 1946, I became
a teacher. I taught in Sapele
and present day Ondo State.
I established school bands in
schools where I was teacher.
When I left teaching, I started
professional music.”
Roy said he joined Hubert
Ogunde’s band immediately
he left teaching. This was in
1959.He later left Ogunde for
Bobby Benson’s Jam Session
Orchestra. He left Bobby, went
to Ibadan to form the Green
Springers for Green Spring
Hotel and came back to Bobby
after this assignment. He later
left Bobby to form his own
band. So, Roy had a tortuous
learning curve.
Roy’s music
According to historical records,
after Nigeria gained independence
in 1960, Roy Chicago
became increasingly successful
with hits such as “Iyawo Pankeke”,
“Are owo ni esa Yoyo
roy chicago
gbe” and “Keregbe emu”. Victor
Olaiya’s International All Stars
and Roy Chicago’s Abalabi
Rhythm Dandies were two of
the leading highlife bands in
Nigeria, both led by graduates
of the Bobby Benson Orchestra.
Roy Chicago is popularly
acclaimed to have introduced
the talking drum into highlife.
Roy Chicago combined the
trumpet and saxophone with
vocals. Playing with Bobby Benson
in the 1950s, he performed
ball room dance and highlife,
fox trot, tango, waltz, quick step,
jive and Latin American music.
His sidemen included tenor sax
player Etim Udo and trumpeter
Marco Bazz.
Roy Chicago’s highlife style
had its accent anchored on
rhythm. He explained Nigerian
folksongs with vocals by
Tunde Osofisan, one of the finest
singers on the highlife scene.
Although his style could not be
called a jazz derivative, there
are blue notes in his saxophone
parts and “cool” jazz intonations
and phrases, which are closer to
traditional Yoruba music than
to highlife.
Fall of highlife
The Nigerian Civil War of
1967–1970 made highlife to lose
its popularity. Why? The Igbos
from the breakaway regions of
eastern Nigeria had, hitherto,
ran many of the top highlife
bands. With their exit, Yoruba-derived
Jùjú music took
over. Ebenezer Obey and
King Sunny Ade, Juju music
kingpins remain evergreen
in the nation’s music space.
Jùjú Music is a prominent
music genre of the Yorubas
and has been described as
guitar band melody; a laudatory
and dedicatory music
established by the Yorubas
from various “palm wine
musical tones’ in Lagos in
the 1930s and 1940s. The
word “Jùjú” (not to be confused
with Western Africa
mystical power attributed to
charm or fetish) was derived
from people yelling ‘ju so ke’
(throw it up) when the music
was played in the streets accompanied
by tossing up and
shaking a tambourine.
Starting in the early 1930s
and 1940s when Jùjú music
was prevalent only within
Yorubaland to the early 1970s
when the music had become
a popular genre across the
country to the 1980s which
both saw a short-term decline
and later, a resurgence of Jùjú
music with the release of Shina
Peter’s remarkable “Ace”
album, the Jùjú music we
listen to and enjoy today has
gone through a lot of changes
in terms of instrumentation,
melodies, sound and fan base.
At a low point in Chicago’s
career in the 1970s, Bobby
Benson helped again by providing
musical equipment.
Roy Chicago, an indigene
of Ikare-Akoko in Ondo State,
Nigeria, had two children Bolajoko
and Kayode Akintola.
In contrast to Victor Olaiya,
whose music was based on
Ghanaian melodies and progressions,
Roy Chicago based
his music on Nigerian indigenous
themes and folklores.
Legacy
Former members of his
band included trumpeter/vocalist
Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson,
who was of mixed Igbo
and Kalabari background.
Lawson apprenticed with
Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya,
and Roy Chicago before striking
out on his own with a
unique blend of Igbo lyrics
sung over Kalabari rhythms.
Jimi Solanke, the playwright,
poet and folk singer, was another
singer with his band.
The band’s recording of his
composition “Onile-Gogoro”
became one of the most memorable
highlife hits of the
1960s. Alaba Pedro, a guitarist
from Roy Chicago’s band,
went on to play with Orlando
Julius Aremu Olusanya
Ekemode, O.J. to his friends.
Alaba Pedro joined Roy Chicago
in 1961 and stayed with
the band until the time of the
civil war, when it disbanded
in 1969. He recalled that “It
was a highly disciplined band
... The band was versatile and
could play almost all types of
music, but ... highlife [was] its
specialty, which relied more
on Nigerian melodies with
rhythms rooted in indigenous
elements. Peter King,
one of Nigeria’s greatest tenor
sax players, started with
Roy Chicago’s band in Lagos
before going to England to
study music
Siaka Momoh, a media
consultant, can be reached
via siakamomoh@yahoo.
com, 234-8061396410