Lemi Ghariokwu is a Nigerian artist and designer who is most renowned for providing many of the original cover images for the recordings of Nigerian musician Fela Kuti.
His work involves a variety of styles, often using vibrant colours and individuated typefaces of his own design.
More than 2,000 album covers have been designed by Lemi, including covers for Bob Marley, E. T. Mensah, Osita Osadebe, Gilles Peterson and Antibalas.
Many of Ghariokwu's cover images echo and sometimes comment on the work and politics of the recordings that they accompany, serving a consciously integrated metatextual function.
Ghariokwu's approach to his work with Kuti involved listening to and digesting the music and then expressing his reaction in his paintings, design and comments which provide a high level of detail on the many album covers he delivered.
Lemi's relationship with Fela Kuti was very cordial. He gave Lemi total freedom with his work and thoughts to the level that he just did as he pleased, albeit responsibly, with how and what he wanted to express. Lemi had the rare previlege of putting his photograph and comments on some of the covers and was treated like a son, friend, adviser and comrade by the Afrobeat legend.
Dr. F. Kenya is probably one of the greatest living highlife guitarists in Ghana. His two Powerhouse LPs, which he performed on and composed, epitomize the seriousness of the guitar band format, up to par with such luminaires as Nana Ampadu or K. Frimpong.
Multi-instrumentalist Joni Haastrup is widely regarded as one of the major figures in post-highlife Nigerian music. Alongside his group MonoMono, Haastrup was quintessential in the innovation and development of Afro-funk in 1970s Lagos. Okayafrica sat down with the legendary musician to talk about his recordings, playing with Ginger Baker, and his close relationship with Fela Kuti.
The Interview
You grew up in a royal household in Nigeria, can you tell us a little about your family’s background and your upbringing?
When I was born, my grandfather was King Owa Ajimoko III of Ijesha land in the then Western region of Nigeria. Since I was the youngest at that time, and because of the king’s special love of my father’s family, I was always on the king’s lap in palace whenever we went there. My family is a large group and each of the king’s sons (including my dad) had their individual family houses in town or the suburbs. The king lived in the palace and our dads were given their own individual lands and houses in the town or villages away from the palace. We visited the palace to visit our grandfather on weekends or during ceremonies.
How did your interest in music begin? Any particular acts, bands or people that you remember steering you towards music?
One day in 1954 after school closed, my older brother Segun came back home and decided to introduce the penny whistle to me and he started teaching me what turned out to be my first music instrument. He was the school bandleader at that time, I naturally became his assistant being the only one he taught the penny-whistle to, as well as the only person who accompanied him during morning and end of day assemblies, parades and shows. I learned everything I know musically from, and was inspired and motivated by, my brother.
How did your relationship with Ginger Baker begin? Can you talk about your role in Ginger’s Airforce and SALT tours?
One night in 1969 when I sang with Clusters International in Lagos, Nigeria, we had just returned from a national tour of the country and I went to Kakadu night club. I was then invited to sit in with the Hykers pop group on a couple of songs — The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Sly Stone’s “Sing A Simple Song”. As I came off stage-left, a tall looking white guy came off his seat to congratulate and invite me to come sit at his table where he was sitting with some members of the Nigerian media. He then told introduced himself to me as Ginger Baker of Cream and Blind Faith with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and about this new band he just started in London called Ginger Baker’s Air Force II. He told me about the three ladies who sang back ground vocals in the band. He told me that the way he heard me sang those two songs I did with the band showed him that I could join his band in London and sing background vocals with Aliki Ashman, Diane Stewart and Jeanett Jacobs.
I never went on the Salt tour with Ginger Baker. When I left London and went back to Lagos, my next career goal was set… to start my own band in Lagos and play all original songs composed and arranged by me. That was the beginning of MONOMONO, a five-piece all original combo playing all my songs in the clubs and shows. I labeled my music genre Afro-funk. The first Afro-funk song was “Give The Beggar A Chance” which I produced in 1971, recorded and released by EMI in Lagos in 1972.
How did recording for the Give The Beggar A Chance LP start? You used Paul McCartney’s studio? Can you elaborate on the process?
When I started singing with Ginger Baker’s Air Force II in 1970, Denny Laine left the band to go play with Paul McCartney‘s Wings. I arrived back in Nigeria and started MONOMONO and then we heard that Paul MacCartney and Wings were coming to Lagos to record their debut album. I was informed by the A&R manager of EMI who also hinted that Paul was bringing a 16-track board from EMI London to use for his production.
Since EMI Nigeria only had a 2 track Akai tape deck which I and Fela used for our recordings, I started lobbying EMI for the retention of the 16-track after Wings’ production was finished and they returned to England. I convinced Fela to lobby with me, and with both Fela and myself who were then EMI’s top artists, they had little choice but to please us and keep the 16-track equipment in Lagos.
MONOMONO then became the first band to record on the first 16-track board in EMI Nigeria. Although I had been recorded in several 24-track studios in England, it was the first time I produced a record on a multi-track board. My first independent production Give The Beggar a Chance was on a 16 track gear – the same gear used by Paul MacCartney’s Wings. I squeezed every drop of juice from the board in that production and the result made that album sound as good as it did.
Was it different recording in Nigeria and London (like you did with Wake Up Your Mind)? Did you find one of those cities better for your recording process?
The first time I arrived in England and went into Trident Studios with Ginger Baker and the 10 piece Airforce II, there was definitely a nostalgic difference. This is because the studios that we used in Nigeria were all single-track studios. I really enjoy recording my tracks in Lagos because the environment is the best for Afro-funk music. Every thing is perfect, so your feelings about the music don’t get diluted. Hence, I produced all MONOMONO tracks in Lagos and for The Dawn Of Awareness, we did overdubs and mixing in London. Wake Up Your Mind was from left-over tracks from the London mixes of 1978. All I did in the US was master those tracks at Capitol studio in Hollywood.
People cite a wide range of influences, from Hugh Masekela to The Doors, when talking about your music, What are some artists you truly hold as essential to the formation of your own sound?
Creating my own sound was not patterned after anybody else but my own sounds that I heard and felt in my soul. When I hear a song in my head, my spirit picks up the melody and rhythm and I just start singing all the instrumental parts and so I get the music together first and then write the lyrics. With MONOMONO I was able to rehearse the songs with the band immediately and so everything is always fresh when the band begins to learn the songs. I spell out each instrumental part to each musician and because we were all on the same wavelength, Kenneth learns the bass first and so when I start working with the guitar player and drummers it was easier to communicate the melodic and rhythmic ideas to them.
Finally, I had to ask about you and Fela Kuti. You were both acquaintances, but some reviews name you both as rivals. What was your interaction with Fela like? Were you a fan of his music, and vice-versa, was he a fan of yours?
When Fela came back to Lagos from London where he had been studying music, I was singing rock ‘n roll covers in the early 60s. He worked as a radio producer for NBC in Lagos and performed with his band Koola Lobitos at night in the clubs and on Saturday nights.
I moved to Lagos in 1965 and immediately started going to Sunday afternoon pop shows promoted by young pop music promoters who bought British pop songs and encouraged us to copy them so that we could form pop groups in Lagos just like the English boys did in London and America.
All this time, Fela Ransome Kuti played jazz trumpet with his band Koola Lobitos. And then something happened, show promoters who had been buying rock ‘n roll discs started bringing in soul records from USA and by late 1965/66, we all started singing James Brown (“I Feel Good”, Wilson Picket (“Midnight Hour”), Otis Redding, etc. The soul music era made it possible for us young people to start enjoying recognition from the youth of Nigeria. Simultaneously, the same thing was happening in Ghana and all across West Africa.
Fela and I became friends when I went up to him one night to ask if I could sing one of his songs with his band. At first he wasn’t willing to have me sit in with his band because as he said then, I was a cover soul singer and his music was jazz based. He didn’t think I was up to it (singing his songs with his band) He told me “none of you soul and rock ‘n’ roll singers can sing my songs with my band because the music is too advanced for you all”. I told him “try me”. The next weekend he decided to try me. He announced my name to his audience and invited me to come upstage and sing one of his songs, I went upstage and performed one of his songs with his band Koola Lobitos. When I came off stage, Fela confessed to me that he never thought I could do what I did with his band and that whenever I came to his club I should expect to be called on stage to sing.
From that day Fela and I became good friends and closer than he had ever been with any local musician. I substituted for him in his band in 1969 when he had to come to the US to sign a contract for his band’s US tour. Afro beat music was born during that tour in 1970.
Soundway Records and Tummy Touch are proud to present "Dawn of Awareness" the second album by Joni Haastrup's band MonoMono. Re-issued on CD, LP and digital, the LP comes with a bonus 12" featuring two extra tracks. Amid the OPEC oil embargo, Watergate and IRA bombs, the sound of MonoMono's follow-up record, 1974's Dawn of Awareness, took on the bluesrock grooves of Santana and Hugh Masekela but with their own unique Yoruban flavor. A deeply spiritual record, Dawn of Awareness was Haastrup's reaction to what was going on in the world around him. One hears echoes of the Allman Brothers' Revival on MonoMono's Awareness is What You Need and after listening to Plain Fighting you could easily imagine the band sharing the stage with the Doobie Brothers at an East Side San Jose street festival.
Nigerian multi-instrumentalist Joni Haastrup may not be the household name Fela Kuti is, but he is as indelible a part of Afro-beat and Nigerian music as the Black President is. Haastrup was the vocalist on O.J. Ekemode and his Modern Aces’ 1966 album, Super Afro Soul, which was one of the early, formative Afro-beat records—an album a then-unknown Kuti played trumpet on (before he picked up his famous saxophone). He also toured with Cream’s Ginger Baker in 1971, replacing some guy named Steve Winwood, and then went on to form his own band MonoMono before moving on to his own solo work.
Soundway Records has now smartly reissued the first two MonoMono records—1971’s Give the Beggar a Chance and 1974’s The Dawn of Awareness—and Haastrup’s 1978 solo album, Wake Up Your Mind. They come on the heels of their reissue of Remi Kabaka’s great Afro-jazz soundtrack Black Goddess, where Haastrup played keys, and these albums further prove that his nickname—they called him the “Number One Soul Brother”—suits him quite well.
These three albums are all brief—each clocks in under 40 minutes—but they show a heavier soul mix in Haastrup’s vision of Afro-funk and rock music. If James Brown was a huge influence on Afro-beat in general, then Haastrup is his closest musical student. These are tighter compositions than Kuti’s, but they still manage a similar dichotomy: they are dynamic and shifting and yet build tension and inertia on insistent repetition.
Give the Beggar a Chance is a sweet and soulful debut that highlights Haastrup’s voice—his honeyed vocals are a far cry from Kuti’s gruff, spare singing and keyboard work. Playing with guitarist Jimmy Adams, bass player Baba Ken Okulolo, and percussionists Candido Obajimi and Friday Jumbo, Haastrup’s work with MonoMono doesn’t always feel much like the sound of a band. His vocals are mixed way high, as are his keyboards, and his larger-than-life charm nearly overwhelms the songs. Still, if you sift through the layers, the band is a tight outfit. They shift carefully, but effectively, tone and tempo throughout the record. “The World Might Fall Over” moves from Haastrup’s keyboard vamps to a bright and sped-up group jam, before settling into a smoldering soul number. “Find Out”, one of many strident calls to action on these albums, has a similar push and pull. The shifts are subtle, but in such relatively short compositions, they catch you off guard and keep you interested.
But if that album was a confident first step for Haastrup as leader of his own band, The Dawn of Awareness is a more cohesive and resonant sound for the band as a whole. The keys mesh with Adams’s careful guitar work and leaves space for the bluesy thump of Okulolo’s bass work. It’s a moodier set—recorded in the wake of the OPEC oil embargo and scandals like Watergate—and Haastrup dials down the Brown-ian showmanship in favor of a genuine and deep anger. “Ipade Aldun”, the longest song on any of these records, is a brilliant turn, insistent in its pounding beat and powerful group singing and, driven by a great solo from Adams, it is the band at its most cut-loose and impressive. It sets up the funkier space of “Make Them Realise” and the feverish shuffle of “Awareness is Wot You Need”. This album takes Haastrup’s raw charisma and his band’s promise from the first record, balances them out and makes them both shine. It is, of these three, the finest example of Afro-funk and Afro-beat Haastrup offered, and acts as a smoother counterpoint to Kuti’s larger musical furies.
Haastrup’s solo record, 1978’s Wake Up Your Mind, is as soulful and funky as its MonoMono predecessors, and in some cases comes off as larger than them. The horn section on “Free My People” delivers expansive, bright hooks, punctuating the drawn-out sweetness of his vocals with immediate punches of sound. As the title implies, Haastrup was still fighting for awareness, trying to bring consciousness to the people to affect change, but there’s a distinctly more hopeful sound to this record. “Champions and Superstars” seems like a guileless, and even goofy, ode to football players (or soccer, if you prefer), but it’s also a very real declaration of national pride. If there’s worry all around these songs—and there is, more than the MonoMono records—Wake Up Your Mind resides in the hope of coming change and not the despair of national repression. Haastrup recorded this record in London, with what seems like more resources, and the resulting album sometimes falls prey to late ‘70s recording sheen. The airy keys and thin drums on the title track, or instance, sand down its fangs a bit. Overall, though, it’s another solid set.
Taken together, these albums represent a musician in Joni Haastrup who distinguished himself from the other greats in Afro-beat while still remaining true to the sound. With MonoMono and by himself, he succeeded on his beautiful voice and innovative keyboard work—think Ray Manzarek, only more playful and, you know, good—and used them to shake the people up. In that way, these albums work as a pretty convincing whole, moving from worry to unrest to burgeoning hope, one thumping song at a time.
The second release by Nigeria's MonoMono was originally released on LP in 1974. Thankfully, the folks at Tummy Touch Records revived the music of MonoMono, which features the work of Joni Haastrup and his friend, Baba Ken Okulolo. The original six songs are presented on this rerelease. The blues, rock, psychedelia, and funk elements are quite pronounced throughout. The instrumental segments are especially intriguing, as they set the stage for a perfect soundtrack to lounge around, dance, or trip-out. The down-tempo elements of 'Make Them Realise,' cnojures up comparisons to the North American group, Action Figure Party. The soul of Yoruban funk emanates from the tracks without causing boredom or sleepy episodes. The Dawn Of Awareness is a little more blues and rock-driven than the previous release. Still, MonoMono knows how to move those feet with rewarding results.
The second album in a series of three reissues from Nigerian bandleader Joni Haastrup, Dawn of Awareness was the sophomore effort by his band MonoMono, following their very impressive debut, Give the Beggar a Chance. It's tempting to read more into the two albums' titles than one probably should: while the first album focused on relatively concrete social issues (best song title: "The World Might Fall Over"), the mood on Dawn of Awareness is a bit more introspective. Sonically, this is real Age of Aquarius stuff: the grooves are at times downright spacy (note in particular the acid-drenched "Awareness Is Wot You Need" and the only slightly less discursive "Plain Fighting"), and even by Afro-pop standards they sometimes focus a bit too much on the extended elaboration of a single two-chord idea (note in particular the jazzily pretty but eventually rather tedious "Get Yourself Together"). But those ideas and their elaborations are consistently attractive, and there are moments of genius here; "Tire Loma da Nigbehin" is very lovely, and "Ipade Aladun" surprises with its spoken word intro (a defense of the band's energetic stage presence: they may jump around on-stage as if drunk, Haastrup explains, but it's only because they love the music and want to share its energy) followed by a startlingly slow, almost deliberate groove counterposed by vigorous and heartfelt vocals. This album is more uneven than its predecessor, but very much worth hearing.
The Dawn of Awareness sees the MonoMono Band expand on their previously set role as social commentators. Joni Haastrup looks beyond Lagos at the volatile state of the world, as did his American contemporaries at a similar time at Woodstock - war in Vietnam, the OPEC oil crises, Watergate and the IRA bombings.
The psychedelic cover bears a strong resemblance to the artwork of Marti Klarwein - who illustrated Carlos Santana’s Abraxas and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew - and sets an appropriate tone for the blues-rock grooves of the album. Santana once again shows to have been an influential guitarist in Nigeria. The Latin percussion of Abraxas also surfaces here, imitated well by Candido Obajimi and Friday Jumbo. Their shakes, scrapes and subtle drum hits provide the perfect backdrop for Jimmy Adams to plug in his guitar and let rip, often taking over the second half of the songs with an impenetrable amount of feedback. This makes for a more established formula than on MonoMono’s previous Give The Beggar A Chance: Haastrup’s heartfelt vocals, sometimes in English, sometimes in Yoruba, sometimes a personalised mish-mash of the two, Adams on guitar, Obajimi and Jumbo workmanlike in their simple percussion style.
When you consider the political situation in Nigeria, The Dawn of Awareness is more daring than other protest albums of the 70’s. “Awareness is what you need,” warns Haastrup, clearly not one turn a blind eye in fear of the consequences of the government. “If you see a man cry and don’t ask why, you can’t look yourself inside.”
01. Plain Fighting (Your Life Is What You Make Of It) 02. Ipade Aladun 03. Get Yourself Together 04. Awareness Is Wot You Need 05. Make Them Realise (Everybody's Gotta Be Free) 06. Tire Loma Da Nighbehin
Boston's new afrobeat group. Bringing together a wide range of influences and sounds, aimed to bring you joy to your ears and movement to your feet.
The Brighton Beat was formed in 2010 out of a love for afrobeat, old and new. Although it's a new project, the musicians in The Brighton Beat have been playing music together for years. Realizing their common love for jazz and afrobeat, they decided to set forth on an adventurous path, writing their own interpretation of afrobeat-funk in today's modern world. The band takes influence from many styles; everything from Fela Kuti and Antibalas to John Coltrane, and Medeski, Martin, and Wood help spark the creativity of the group. In late 2010, they recorded their first self-titled EP, which has received rave reviews in the jazz-world. Their unique approach translates into an invigorating live performance, combining tight arrangements, fresh grooves, and a very jazz-influenced sound. The Brighton Beat is sure to be a fun, interactive, and memorable show.
01. Every Body Get Down 02. Let's Marry 03. Shadow Of The Boogie 04. Together Again Never To Part 05. People Talk 06. Solo, Mon, A Ndoan 07. Lagos City
Born in Cameroon in 1971, he plays the guitar, the keyboards and accordion since the age of 6. After growing up in Yaoundé where he learned jazz with his guitar teacher, Fire Tongue leaves for Nigeria where he discovers Fela Kuti, a vaster field of expression that seduces him.
He meets Rex Lossen, Etienne T-Boy, Geraldo Pino and plays the first part of Fela Kuti in 1995. Fire Tongue forms T-Boy with Etienne (Golden Album in Africa) and moves to Paris where he plays in prestigious venues such as New Morning, Divan du Monde, Flèche d’Or …
In 2002 Discograph releases their maxi vinyl “Bring Peace”. At the recording sessions the encounter with the sound engineer was very important and ended up with the sound engineer actively participating in the recording of this work, a very genuine but modern afro beat, that goes from blues to dub, from afro beat to electro the whole of it preserving an original purity in its musical conception.
Fire tongue depth and fluent music has given a new life to afro beat, Fire Tongue is a new sensation that brings together tradition and modernity.
01. Aié/Commot for Road 02. Wayo Dey Bring War 03. Poéhitiky Madness 04. We Get to Do It Together 05. When Afro Meets Blues 06. Send Some Hope 07. Wayo de Bring War [Dub] 08. Aié/Commot for Road [Instrumental Version] 09. Poéhitiky Madness
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