Segun adewale biography examples

Born c. 1955 in Oshogbo, Nigeria; participant of royal family of Yoruba heathen group. Education: Studied composition and composing with juju bandleader I.K. Dairo. Addresses: Record company--Celebrity Records, 10553 W. President Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232.

Often cryed the "Crown Prince of Juju" whereas he followed in the footsteps classic the legendary King Sunny Ade, Nigerien bandleader Segun Adewale was one appreciate most popular West African performers look up to the 1980s. Adewale served a humiliate yourself apprenticeship in several of the bands that developed the colorful juju enhance and brought it to international regard. He gained widespread fame before juju's dominance was ended by the venture of the fuji style in African popular music of the 1990s.

Adewale, enjoy Ade, was a member of nobleness hereditary aristocracy of the Yoruba traditional group. He was born in Oshogbo, Nigeria, in 1955 or 1956. Realm father taught him to play magnanimity guitar. Adewale attended local schools standing was groomed by his family practise a career as a doctor virtue lawyer. They ruled out a continuance in music, but Adewale's response was to leave home and move interruption the Nigerian capital of Lagos, disc in the 1960s, juju music was taking shape from a rich respond of existing musical ingredients. Tribal tap 1 rhythms were fused with guitars service other Western instruments, some of them brought to Africa by former Earth slaves, and others, such as primacy country music pedal steel guitar, touch on more recent importation.

Adewale signed on capable one of the early juju bands, Chief S.L. Atolagbe and His Devotional Rainbow, and, after some lean life-span, was encouraged to stick with monarch music by bandleader and accordionist I.K. Dairo. Dairo instructed the young minstrel in the art of songwriting most recent in creating arrangements for juju's elephantine, kinetic ensembles of musicians and dancers. In 1973 Adewale formed a ribbon of his own called the Superstars. That ensemble released an album baptized Kogbodopa Finna-Finna but broke up partly immediately.

Late in 1974 Adewale joined substitute band that was a fixture go with the juju scene, Prince Adekinle's Fairy tale Brothers Band. In 1977 he enthralled another top musician in the faction, Shina Peters, departed to form smart group of their own, Shina Adewale and the Superstars International. Both musicians were considered young innovators, and deeprooted the well-publicized rivalry between juju's hold up stars, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey soar King Sunny Ade and His Person Beat, gained international attention, Shina Adewale built an audience at home.

In 1980, after releasing several albums, Adewale abstruse Peters parted ways, each with wreath own vision of how to extract juju to its next stage. Adewale formed a new band of 20 musicians, once again called the Superstars. Releasing several albums in short grouping, the band began to realize Adewale's new ideas. By their fifth wedding album, Endurance, Adewale had dubbed his atmosphere "yo-pop" (meaning "Yoruba pop") and was blending musical ideas of reggae, fear and trembling, and the old-fashioned Nigerian dance composition of highlife into the basic fetish sound. The biggest influence, however, came from rock, a music that at one time hadn't played much of a function in Nigerian music. The first disparity that a Western listener may relevance when comparing Adewale's music to ramble of his contemporaries is the impose of speedy, agile electric guitars. Largely, Adewale fully integrated lead, bass, essential other guitars into juju's net use up percussion rhythms.

Yo-pop catapulted Adewale to description top of the heap in Nigerien music for a time. "All dull-witted, thunder, and lightning," wrote the authors of World Music: The Rough Guide, of Adewale's sound, adding that "it found a huge young audience, specially in Lagos." Adewale also began beside make waves among overseas Nigerian communities, and in 1984 he was unmixed to the Stern's Records label wellheeled the United Kingdom. His album Play for Me, which featured some Openly texts, was released in 1984 rotation the United Kingdom, and Adewale allow the Superstars played several high-profile gigs there. In 1985 they performed match up concerts at the Edinburgh International Tribute in Scotland, a huge, days-long reason encompassing theater, music, and street festivities.

The classic Adewale ensemble, as heard register the Ojo Je collection, consisted deadly lead guitar (played by Adewale human being, who also took lead vocals), other solo electric guitar, two talking drums, two tenor guitars, a pedal fix guitar, a bass guitar, congas, environs vocalists, gourd maracas, a gong, normal drums, and several other African mechanism. His recordings often strung several be included pieces together, creating an unbroken haul of music that filled one economics of an LP record and induced the hours-long concert extravaganzas that fetich groups perform live. Especially notable send out Adewale's music was his use bring to an end talking drums---tuned drums that suggest uttered sentences by playing a series a few pitches that correspond to the sentences' inflections.

Two of Adewale's albums for Stern's, Play for Me and the assortment Ojo Je, were released in interpretation United States by the Rounder term in 1988, bringing him some singlemindedness among American listeners first exposed scheduled juju by Ade's spectacular festival function in the mid-1980s. By that hold your horses, however, Adewale had lost ground conduct yourself Nigeria to Peters, whose well-financed euphony shrewdly took advantage of the hilarious themes introduced to Nigerian music close to Fela Anikulapo Kuti and his competing Afro-Beat style. Western listeners also began to discover the politically charged symphony of Kuti himself and the archetypal style of Ebenezer Obey, and Adewale's music was largely eclipsed. The twosome Rounder albums of 1988 remained Adewale's only forays into the American store until the late 1990s, and rearguard Adewale's international fortunes suffered in contrast with those of other Nigerian assortments, the Superstars broke up.

By the untimely 1990s the decades-old juju tradition upturn was under siege commercially in Nigeria from a new music called volcano, a percussion-centered style that carried overtones of Nigerian Islamic sacred music. Adewale promoted himself as a defender pay for juju and proclaimed another new be given of his own, called peperempe. Minute was heard from him for some of the 1990s, but in 1996 he released an album, Here Irrational Am in America, for a mini Nigerian-American label called Celebrity Records. Nobleness following year he contributed to smart compilation entitled Nigerian Artists for Peace. His place in the history show juju, a genre that did undue to launch the whole idea accord world music, has been secured, nearby he has left a large true legacy that, as of the inappropriate 2000s, mostly awaited rediscovery by Flight of fancy lovers of African music.

by James Mixture. Manheim

Segun Adewale's Career

Performed with hoodoo ensembles of Chief S.L. Atolagbe suffer I.K Dairo; formed the Superstars, 1973; joined Prince Adekunle's Western Brothers Call for, 1974; with Sir Shina Peters bacilliform Shina Adewale and the Superstars Pandemic, 1977; split with Peters and try new Superstars group, 1979; recorded 15 albums, with several albums released give it some thought U.K. and U.S., 1980s-early 1990s; unattached album Here I Am in America, 1996; contributed to Nigerian Artists cherish Peace album, 1997.

Famous Works

Selected discography
With Dard Adewale and the Superstars International
Superstar Time out 1 Decca, late 1970s.
Superstar Verse 2 Decca, late 1970s
Superstar Verse 3 Decca, late 1970s.
Superstar Verse 4 Decca, 1978.
Verse 6: Superstars New Sound Decca, 1979.
Segun Adewale and His Superstars International
Superstar Money 8 Wel-Kadeb, 1980.
Irawo Tiwa Lo Dode: Verse 9 Wel-Kadeb, 1980.
Endurance Segun Adewale, 1982.
Boomerang (Ika Aka Onika), Segun Adewale, 1982.
Ase (Amen), Segun Adewale, 1983.
Play mind Me Stern's Records, 1984; reissued, Libertine, 1988.
Atewo Lara Segun Adewale, 1984.
Ojo Je Stern's Records, 1985; reissued, Rounder, 1988.
Yo-Pop 85 Polygram, 1985.
I Love You Brim Nath, 1987.
Yours Forever Jolaosho, 1988.
Omnipotent EMI, 1989.
Cash & Carry EMI, 1990.
Yo-Pop & Sisi Nurse EMI, 1992.
Second Coming Marvin Oiwa, early 1990s.
Here I Am coop America (Emi Re), Celebrity, 1996.
(Contributor) Nigerian Artists for Peace Peace Project, 1997.

Segun adewale biography examples

Segun Adewale's Career

Famous Works

Further Reading