By Isaac Daniel
Nigeria’s globally acclaimed music living legend, will today celebrate his colourful 82 birthday in Lagos to the glory of God.
The highlife and jazz performing maestro will hold the pomp event with an auspicious music concert at Bogobiri House, the home of African performing arts and live music performance in Nigeria, located in Ikoyi, Lagos. According to the organizers the show
will serve music lovers the best of vintage highlife and Jazz and soul music from legendary, Prince Eji Oyewole.
The concert is solely aimed at celebrating the 82-year-old legendary artiste who has paid his dues as one of Africa’s and Nigerian oldest actively performing musician of this era.
Prince Eji Oyewole, is a crown prince of Ibadanland. The well travelled accomplished musician studied music in Germany, at Musik Hoch Shule Amazon University West Berlin, Germany. He is versatile wind instrumentalist, who is in love with the flutist, saxophonist and others. Oyewole is the founder and leader of Afroba band. He performs monthly with his versatile and vivacious band at the Bogobiri House, every last Friday of the month.
This august concert will also feature Nigerian music icons, who are billed to perform, pay tributes and celebrate Oyewole to mark the special day with him. These performing artistes includes ace Nigerian singer and Jazz funk pianist, Gboyega Adelaja. Adelaja has been active since the 1970s within and outside Nigeria. He has performed with internationally acclaimed artistes like Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela among others.
Other guest artistes performing alongside the celebrant at the event include soul, funk and highlife singer, Daina Bada and Afrobeats cruiser and band, and Afrobeat icon and leader of The Age of Aquarius, Duro Ikujenyo. Ikujenyo,was a former keyboardist to Fela Kuti.
Speaking of his birthday concert, Oyewole was full of Thanksgiving to God for keeping him alive till old age. “Every day, I live and breathe is by His mercies and that is why I do what I love to do best – perform with my sax to an audience and fans at Bogobiri House.”
Oyewole music career spans over 60 years, having trained and performed in Nigeria, London, UK, Germany and France. He has distinguished himself as unique, disciplined and exceptional musician, performing with Highlife, Reggae, Jazz and Afrobeats pioneers such as Adeolu Akinsanya, Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and Miles Davis.
His albums include: Be Your Brother’s Keeper, Long Live Nigeria, Eniafelamo, Me & You and Shalewa, Charity begins at home, and others. He was also a member of the Faaji Agba, an international group managed by Kunle Tejuosho’s Jazz Hole Records. The octogenarian alongside the late Fatai Rolling Dollars and seven other musicians toured the US before Dallas passed on.
Eji Oyewole,
Born to a royal lineage in Ibadan, according to BBE Music. Prince Eji Oyewole has had a career as a flautist, saxophonist and sometime bandleader spanning well over half a century. He trained both in Nigeria and then at Trinity the prestigious music school in London, and his life as an itinerant musician also saw him living for extensive periods in Geneva, Hamburg and in Lyon.
While for many years Fela Kuti (with whom Eji played) and King Sunny Adé commanded international attention to the exclusion of most other Nigerian musicians, as if there was only room for one Nigerian superstar at a time on the world stage, on the domestic scene things were very different. Eji was part of the huge craze for ‘highlife’, a generic term that in fact subsumed many different styles, united in their fusion of traditional west African forms with jazz influences and electric instruments, and in the bands’ working practices as entertainers at the nation’s numerous hotel and nightclubs.
Surely one of the few musicians who has played with Fela, Miles Davis and Bob Marley, Eji Oyewole still plays regularly in Lagos, recently had an album of new material out with his current band The Afrobars, and has been a member of Faaji Agba, a super-group that has toured internationally and been dubbed ‘the Nigerian Buena-Vista Social Club’.
In his final remark he shared his gratitude to God with Legend News. “Thank you oh Lord for adding another year to my years at 82..
E see baba
Thank you almighty father for the gift of music”
