BISADE OLOGUNDE: I AM STILL TRYING TO HOLD ON TO WHAT MOVES PEOPLE ABOUT MUSIC EDITOR 'S NOTE: Lagbaja is not only the theme for the music album of Bisade Ologunde 's team. It is a theme but more than a theme. It is a concept. A concept of a masked musician. An anonymous man, an unknown instrumentalist striking the keyboard notes or blasting away on the bass guitar. Bisade would not confirm this, but Lagbaja, that is the concept of an unknown man rings a strident bell with both a musical and political resonance. Can we expect not to recall that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti in the 70s released an album titled Unknown Soldier ? Which itself echoed the summed up verdict of a judicial commission that investigated a raid of uniformed soldiers on his erstwhile residential compound in Lagos - the Kalakuta Republic. As Bisade confesses to us, influences fly from mind to mind purely at the stream of the subconscious: Nobody can hold on to it! QUESTION brief introductio : Can yo n u t giv o you e us a r person? ANSWER: Well, I call Bisade a musician. I'm also a producer. We have a band, we've been together now for about five or six years; sorry, this is the fifth year; in another one month, it will be five years we've been together. The band is called Colours. We play basically African music. It's like all my work is based around that band for now. Studio production for now are limited to experimental projects. That's the summary of what I'm all about. QUESTION: Is there any relationship between Bisade Ologunde and the invisible man, the masquerade you called 'Lagbaja'? ANSWER: Bisade is the producer for Lagbaja. I also conceived the idea. But there has been so much unnecessary focus on the person behind Lagbaja. The more important thing is the message of Lagbaja and the total concept. Anybody could be Lagbaja. It's just the significance of using a mask. And the main importance of that mask is that the mask is like a symbol of the facelessness of the so-called common man in Africa. So, we have different people perform the role of Lagbaja, being masked performers. But Bisade is Bisade. I'm Bisade Ologunde not Lagbaja. If I wish too, I could wear the mask and perform Lagbaja also. But somehow, I think it's probably due to some press misconception that led people to thinking of Lagbaja as Bisade or whatever. We've had several people play the role of Lagbaja as a matter of fact. QUESTION: Looking at the music trend in Nigeria, would you say there is anything called Nigerian jazz? ANSWER: Em... Classification of music is basically for communication. If you wish to call something Nigerian jazz, that would be your classification. Generally, I understand jazz to be a universal style. It's equally a universal tag. Music is a language that is universal. So, when we talk about jazz, it's got to be the same jazz all over the world. "Nigerian jazz" could only mean an English phrase to talk about the Nigerian scene. ' QUESTION: Richard Smith was talking about this classification and how they relate to the Nigerian environment. Like reggae, that we have only one or two reggae musicians in Nigeria playing the kind of reggae that you find in the West Indies and all that - Can we have a general... apart from jazz, maybe reggae and calypso... Do you think it is 14 possible to have any of these forms...? ANSWER: This is possible. But we have some problems, I will say, of knowledge, know-how. When you talk about jazz, basically, even in America where jazz is probably at its peak form, there are all kinds of controversies on what is jazz and what is not jazz. So, when you talk about jazz, basically people, purists think in terms of the original art form that was the popular music of the world at some point in time and that has styles like swing, bebop, blues. They tend to consider that more like jazz than what generally people call jazz here which is classified as fusion in their own terms. So when you talk about Nigerian jazz, it's like you are now beginning to add another dimension to the confusion of classification. Lots of what we might call Nigerian jazz might end up just being another type of fusion which is basically like taking instruments of standard jazz forms and having the instruments of African or Nigerian forms and adding those things. If you put percussion in jazz it's no news. It's been done even since the days of Coltrane - mm? all kinds of amalgamation, mixtures of jazz and other forms. So, the sub-division can go on endlessly. I prefer to just keep to the international standard of what they believe is jazz and how they classify the other forms, the ones they call music of avant-garde or the ones they call fusion. Or indeed jazz of the more recent hip-hop adventures. QUESTION: So, it's not possible to recognise any local trend that can really be...? ANSWER: We can talk about the efforts of Nigerians and their ideas of jazz but they are not many, they are not sufficient to have a movement. When we talk about new ideas and movements, you must have an active scene. You must have musicians coming together in workshops, exchanging ideas; when these guys, the M-Base guys take up the saxophone, they just come together, Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, they come together, they play, they discuss, they rub minds together. And then ideas come out over a period of time. It's an active, dynamic thing. That's what I'm saying, that it's not a very active movement. One or two people. Really, they are just making individual efforts. QUESTION: Is it possible to make the same comment about reggae? ANSWER: Now, reggae in a way, yes. But I'll say what really made reggae popular in Nigeria was the media and Bob Marley and all the Virgin Record guys - I-Roy and co. It took a long time before authentic Jamaica-like reggae came out. The youths that were listening then grew up until they were able to play. It was easier for them to tend to reggae because, one, the technical facilities they needed weren't that complicated. Most of reggae is based around the two, three chord progression. Much like you find in highlife, basic primary chords most of the time. A few adventurous pieces have more than three, four chords. But it's easier to learn some basic chords and play reggae. Also, there is a particular rhythm which you play when you play those forms. As opposed to jazz where a piece could have probably some nine, ten chords 15 with some different arrangements per section. But aside from blues that also uses basic primary chords and extensions of them like seventh, ninth, in reggae there are basically the primary chords, the one, four, five major and a few minors. So I think that is what aided the growth of reggae. Also the general culture, again through the media, aided the growth of reggae. And I think it is through practice that a style develops. Eventually it got to the point where people were able to play in a style that could almost be called a Nigerian style of reggae. Also Nigerian could be a wide classification. If you play an instrumental piece of reggae, it would sound very much like an instrumental piece of reggae from Jamaica. But then, when you start singing, the accent will give you away and then you see a difference. But they got to the point of aping so much, talking the patois, "I 'n I" and "Gimme likkle sugar" and stuff like that. QUESTION: Can we go back a bit? Give us a brief overview of your musical background? ANSWER: Musically, I've been playing in bands from school. First of all, it was Government College, Ibadan. Later, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. I was lucky to have friends that were active in music too. So, together we kind of taught ourselves through reading books and discussing and arguing, sometimes ignorantly, until over time...our interests grew and our skills too on some instruments. There were many influences, Nigerian and foreign. I will say the very first artiste that I got into was Carlos Santana. And rock. But you see, there were some instrumental rock pieces like Samba Patti. And as a matter of fact, it was from that style, that instrumental rock thing, that I got to recognise that there were other pieces called jazz. So, it was from Carlos Santana I got into Bob James and Earl Klugh. And it was my surprise about a year later I found out that there were even more exciting forms - swing, big band, bebop. QUESTION: You were reading most of the time? ANSWER: It was more of listening then. More like you just get to a place by chance and you hear that someone has a record and he's playing it and something sounds interesting. QUESTION: What about the Nigerian scene? ANSWER: The Nigerian scene? It was mainly Fela. QUESTION: What did you study? ANSWER: I did first degree in Education Biology. Therv I did an M.B.A. QUESTION: About which time were you focussed on Fela? ANSWER: Fela has been from secondary school. Well, not only Fela. There was Fela and Baba L'Egba - that's Yussuf Olatunji - and Haruna Ishola. It was much later, during my Masters years that I got into fuji, I was more excited about apala and sakara, especially Baba L'Egba. QUESTION: What is it about Yussuf? ANSWER: There is this smooth...oh not blues in the sense of American blues as such, but the feel; blues in the sense of the feel. In fact when he attempted to sing the fast songs in the fashion of that time, they were usually in this funny drawl that, if you aren'tcareful, listening to the music, you'll probably sleep off. But there are very exciting ways in which he would say things. Despite the fact that I am Yoruba, it took me a long time to even understand some Yoruba things he was saying because of the way in which they were said. Not following the usual phonetic patterns of Yoruba, "do'-re-mi-re-do"; the basic things; turning things around. And also the poetry of his compositions. The way he would start in the middle, stop in the middle and repeat parts of it, then the guys in the band would probably just join like they had forgotten they were supposed to join and end the piece. But I found out it was actually a style - not that they forgot or anything, it was just the style. Apala came into my consciousness more because somehow it was popular around with some DJs. So you got to hear them on the radio. But again it was the composition of Haruna Ishola. I remember clearly "Ina ran, /Ok'omo ti o t 'owo b 'eeru "; "On my way to London ko s 'ewu rara". Quite exciting pieces at that time. I think it was the sheer pleasure of listening to all those. During my Masters years, I had a friend who had discovered fuji before me. So, he just brought a couple of records and I got to hear them. Then it was Barrister... QUESTION: What hit you about fujil Was there also a feel? ANSWER: I really can't place my finger. It was a gradual thing. I would say that as a matter of fact, I initially looked down on fuji. It didn't strike me as anything exciting. It sounded like they were even stealing pieces from apala and sakara. But gradually, I got to find that they had their original style. It took a long time to even differentiate between Barrister and Kollington. They even looked alike to me at that time, sounded alike and so on. So, it was after a while you find they had totally different styles. Then came Wasiu with his Talazo Disco.... QUESTION: Barrister and Kollington are probably in the old school now with the Wasius coming out. What are the differences? It seems their works have not been able to go beyond Nigerian shores. Is there something about it that is unable to aspire to world standard? ANSWER: I think it's difficult to find a 16 reason for its not going international. Of course they play abroad and stuff like that. But when it comes down to individual creativity, the personality of the man behind the music, Sunny Ade taking juju beyond these mighty boundaries has to do more with Sunny Ade as a person. Because music nowadays is seen from the perspective of the individual, of the solo act, and how he puts the package together; what he looks like, sounds like and everything. In spite of the language barrier, Sunny was able to do something. I think in fuji, there hasn' t been a person with that personality yet; you know, who is dynamic enough to have the socalled star quality. It's not a thing you can hold on to, but he has them. Now, having said that I think, it's also still developing. I think it had a very big break about seven years ago. Then it actually almost took over all parties from juju. And I think it was basically because of the fact that it was easier to buy equipment to play fuji. So even today, you have thousands of fuji musicians around. At that time, it would cost you about N125.00 to buy the total fuji equipment. But because it was mainly sekere (maracas) and sakara. In fact, not even gangan (talking drum) that was so expensive. A single flatfaced sakara then was about N 15.00; two sakaras, about four omele, then sekere, agogo (gong) and you are fine. And, of course, guys went there. As opposed to juju that you needed to buy a bass guitar and about four guitars and a synthesizer and a drum set - and these are foreign things. So it was quite expensive. Fuji even went so far as offering to play for free, hoping that they would be sprayed at the party. QUESTION: You had a project. Can you talk about it - with one of the fuji artistes? ANSWER: I found out then that fuji was a growing style, I was quite excited. It was an active...like an active Yoruba popular music. Or let's say metropolitan, urban - In Lagos, they had what you call In spite oftfk language Barrier, Swing was a6(f to