The Enugu Sound
I’ve been on a huge African disco binge for the past couple of months here and I want to give an insight into a scene that has been criminally ignored by the world at large. From the late 1970s to the mid-80s, a movement so raucous and loud came to prominence in Nigeria that it still baffles me how the world managed to shrug it off.
The city of Enugu had suffered since the end of the Biafran War, fought in 1967 through the end of the decade. Nigeria’s scorched-earth policy and superior firepower completely decimated the Eastern province. The only thing that kept spirits up was music, which is why many Nigerian and Biafran Army battalions had house bands to entertain the troops and, on occasion, civilians. Bands like Hykkers and the Hygrades, The Apostles and the Funkees, the Foundars [sic] 15 and War-head Constriction, these were all popular bands from Lagos and Enugu. During that time, most of the music was heavily influenced by James Brown’s sound and mixture of soul and heavy funk, with a healthy dose of Rock ’n’ Roll. People Rock Outfit, Colomach, the Ceejebs, the Funkees, all took these sounds to heart and explored their own local Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa cultures through the lens of funk and rock. Through the mid-70s, EMI, Decca, Tabansi, and PolyGram (previously Phonogram and Polydor) released scores of hard-hitting records through their local imprints in Nigeria, revolutionizing the music scene.
In 1978, the reigning king of the Nigerian music scene was still Fela and his Afrika 70, accompanied by myriad juju and highlife singers that filled in the musical gaps in the popular psyche. The radical wave of rock and roll had passed with the birth of Afrobeat. However, while Fela was recording his seminal anti-government piece Zombie, another artist was recording a debut album that would give rise to a comeback to the stars of Ofege and their contemporaries. His name was William Onyeabor.
William Onyeabor was a businessman, reportedly having studied Film in Soviet Russia and had returned to his hometown of Enugu in former Biafra to start his own film studio and record label, Wilfilms, and retired to his recording studio to record nine albums in as many years. Meanwhile, the rock stars of yore heard his music and were as inspired by him as they were by the spaced-out sound he created. MOOG synths, drum machines, oscillators all came together in a wave of African polyrhythm and groove. It’s music you can shake your white indie ass to. Onyeabor wasn’t the only artist exploring electronics in Enugu. In 1979, a little-known artist called N’Draman Blintch, from the Ivory Coast, made his way to Enugu to produce Cikamelé with Onyeabor, also trying finding the edge of the possible in the late 1970s. The music sounds as if the artists were still figuring out what the machines could do. Onyeabor’s “Fantastic Man” has this point in the chorus where women sing over this synthesized
While Onyeabor was composing his exploratory forays into African Electronic music, others like Jake Sollo and Renny Pearl Nwosa formed the pan-african group The Stormmers. The Stormmers’ Lover’s Song was released in 1981 to much fanfare, incorporating sounds from dance floors all over the world, from NYC to Paris to Lagos to their hometown of Enugu. Jake Sollo’s synth work is excellent on this record, and I might go so far as to call it better than Kraftwerk, considering this band rose out of the ashes of the Hykkers and the Funkees, two gigantic rock groups. On paper, as well as in practice, the transition between funky rock and boogie disco seems easy and quite flawless. The ultimately danceable tracks are beyond funky and the charming pidgin lyrics make for a unique blend of chic and world vibes. Other bands, like the Funkees, launched the careers of solo musicians Harry Mosco and Melvin Ukachi, who recorded LPs in Enugu, Lagos, and London.
One of the things I like the most about the genre is the sheer danceability of the music, and the charisma of the broken, heavily accented English: One has not lived until he has heard a woman talk about gonorrhea and other STDs over a funky beat (Christiana Essen’s “Patience”). The beats and the freaks that spit hot synthesized fire over them were prolific. I can count several off the top of my head — Livy Ekemezie’s Friday Night, Harry Mosco’s Country Boy, I.G.’s Bomp, all of them milestones in the local boogie scene.
Eventually the wave subsided. Enugu is less shiny. Onyeabor’s studio and pressing plant is now a school. The Stormmers and myriad other boogie disco bands remain a mystery to most Nigerians. Only the barest hint of a legacy remains.
Recommended Listening:
Ofege — Try and Love (1973)
Ofo the Black Company — Allah Wakbarr b/w Beautiful Daddy (1972)
The Hygrades — Rough Rider b/w Keep On Moving (1971)
The Apostles — The Apostles(1977)
Aktion — Groove the Funk (1975)
William Onyeabor — Good Name (1983)
N’Draman Blintch — Cikamele’ (1979)
Harry Mosco — Country Boy (Mr. Funkees)(1979)
The Stormmers — Lover’s Song (1981)
Jake Sollo — Jake Sollo (1979)
Sony Enang — Don’t Stop That Music (1983)
Christiana Essen — Patience (1983)
Livy Ekemezie — Friday Night (1983)
I.G. — Bomp (1980)
Melvin Ukachi — Evolution (Bring Back the Ofege Beat) (1981)
Goddy Oku — Take Me Home (????)
