TO speak meaningfully about Victor Abimbola Olaiya, onefirst has to describe the era that gave rise to the kind of music that he plays.Looking back now, it seems obvious that the music that came to be known as highlife had a more or less shared origin in the major urban centres of Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.It was a shared legacy that was enjoyed simultaneously by the educated and semi-educated classes across the entire sub-region, along with a number of other shared cross-cultural elements like pidgin English, evolving professional occupations like school teaching, nursing, etc as well as slangs words, modes of dressing and hair styles, among other things...During the 1940s and 50s. there was greater unity and affinity between major towns in Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone than between urban centres in present day Nigeria, such that people who were used to life in Lagos would generally find themselves very much at home in Accra, Kumasi or Freetown..There were few constraints facing those who wished to travel between the various West African countries at the time in question, and many members of the educated class travelled and lived without hindrance to whichever towns they chose to visit in Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. The preferredmode of transport then were lorries known as 'mammy wagons', which carried a mixture of passengers, goods and agricultural products along the tarred and untarred highways and roads of those days. West coast travel was also greatly facilitated by the existence of passenger ships and cargo ships (including ships of the famous Elder Dempster lines), which called regularly at major ports in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroun and the two Congos...The most popular West African musical groups of that long gone but immensely beautiful era were bands like ET Mensah and the Tempos (one of the earliest and best!); Bobby Benson's jam session orchestra; Charlie Uwegbue; EC Arinze; Victor Olaiya; the Ambassador's hotel band led by Chief Bill Friday (featuring Stan Plange on guitar and Joe Mensah on vocals); followed by the legendary Baby Face Paul and Zeal Onyia, as well as a variety of bands that came touring from Ghana, such as the Black Beats, the Stargazers, Broadway and Uhuru among others. I am not too sure now, but I believe that I also remember a visit by Ignace da Souza and the Black Santiagos band from Cotonou soon after Nigeria attained independence in 1960.Before going further, it is probably useful to add that the orchestras of that period were known as 'dance bands' because they were not narrowly specialized in a particular genre of music such as juju (the forerunner of juju music in Nigeria was known as agidigbo) or jazz or whatever, but were patterned like British ballroom orchestras of the same era such as Victor Sylvester and transatlantic bands like that of the great Xavier Cougat, through whom many West African musicians became exposed to Latin music.As such, they played a wide variety of musical genres ranging from fox-trot to waltz, calypso, jazz, rhumba, cha cha cha, samba etc, to which they eventually added highlife in its many variants.At the same time, the musical tastes of the period were deeply influenced by 78 rpm records known as JVs (which was probably the name of a very popular music label), which brought us hot latin american rhythms like rhumba, cha cha cha, samba etc.And so how did highlife originate'Well, since I was lucky enough to have been sitting in a front row seat at the birth of highlife, I believe I can successfully venture a fairly satisfactory response to this crucial question, the more so as I was privileged to have received part of the explanation directly from one of the principal architects of the nascent highlife genre in the person of the master Bobby Benson himself, who was an incomparable musician, dancer and showman, and who used to be kind enough to spare a little time to chat occasionally with those of us small urchins who had managed to 'stow away' from boarding school and sneak into his night-club at weekends to listen and dance to the wonderful music that he used to play...To throw even greater light on the origins of highlife music, one must also add that the culmination of the entire highlife era came about with the emergence of my late dearly beloved friend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who was a dazzling shooting star that blazed through the sky from the early sixties, carrying highlife to its highest expression by evolving his own unique style of music, which later came to be known as Afrobeat...Needless to add, it is quite absurd for any of those who have erroneously claimed to be the originators of afrobeat to compare their contribution to the evolution of contemporary Nigerian music to the amazing output of Fela's genius. Even one million candles can never hope to outshine the sun!Highlife, from which afrobeat later evolved, originally came into being as a result of a process of cross-fertilisation between the brass bands and marching bands that used to exist in most primary schools in those days, whose nascent introduction to western music was intermingled with the external musical influences to which we were exposed at the time, such as jazz, calypso, samba and rhumba, deeply flavoured by the profound influence of age-old African traditional percussive beats and musical scales.My own understanding and direct memory is that highlife mainly came into being as a result of the pranks of the brass bands that were made to play military style marching tunes to enable us school children march with smart steps and swinging arms to parade grounds where British officials in stiffly starched white uniforms and white tropical helmets were waiting to review us as we marched past where they stood on podiums on occasions like Empire Day.On the way back from the parade grounds to which we had been shepherded to stand at attention while the British national anthem was solemnly played (followed by a song known as 'Hail Britannia', which proclaimed that Britons would never be slaves!), all protocol usually disappeared, and the school brass bands would change their repertoires and move into lively rendition of what was then known as 'kokoma' music, enabling all of us to dance home joyfully along with all the bystanders and onlookers in the native-style melodic and rhythmic patterns that are still practised in present times by school marching bands and funeral bands known in present day Lagos as 'bocos'...To the best of my knowledge, it was the spontaneous fun music that used to be played as we returned from parade grounds in the nineteen fifties that eventually evolved into the more sophisticated patterns and tunes that we now know as highlife music.The fundamental mistake (or the unwitting accomplishment) of the colonialists was to have put trumpets and trombones and saxophones and side drums into the hands of young Africans who were already conversant with traditional African music and who became widely exposed to convergent influences of modern African derived music like jazz, calypso, samba, rhumba etc.Once the constraint of the official music that the school brass bands were required to play for the actual march past was lifted after the ceremonies were over, the exuberant youths swung into subversive use of the musical instruments that had fortuitously been placed in their hands. They would then resort to playing the popular tunes of the day encapsulated in rhumba and samba-derived drum patterns, setting the crowds dancing along the streets and byways...By seeking to train musicians who would play the tunes the the colonial authorities required for official march pasts, the British thus unwittingly provided a platform for highlife to emerge!From a historical and socio-cultural standpoint, Victor Olaiya is a typical product of the era in which highlife music became a widespread phenomenon in Nigeria and Ghana.It so happened that one of the favourite destinations of music lovers in the early sixties was a night club in Surulere named 'Papingo Davalaya', which is none other than the present day Stadium hotel, where Victor Olaiya was then a trail blazer who used to attract the cream of society to his performances, and where he continues to officiate till this very day!One must however add that any discussion about Victor Olaiya and his remarkable musical career would not be complete without mention of the influence of Louis Armstrong (Sachmo), the famous jazz trumpeter and vocalist who was the kind of powerful role model and world famous black cultural icon that Muhammed Ali would become in later years...Most Nigerians did not really have an ear for jazz music at the time (which is still very much the case today!), but Louis Armstrong made all of us feel proud and fulfilled because he was a world famous black man whose fame was only matched by that of the iconic boxer Joe Louis, who was known all over the word as 'the brown bomber', and whose exploits was cheered by millions of Africans and African descendants all over the world each time he had a title fight.In the era in which I grew up, Louis Armstrong and Joe Louis were twin emblems of black pride and African nascent political awareness, followed by Marcus Garvey, whose inspired sermons and militant calls for black emancipation drew a profound echo in so many hearts that the British were forced to draw up draconian laws that made the death sentence mandatory for anyone caught reading or propagating speeches by Marcus Garvey... Incredible, but true!Coming now to music, I can recall that Louis Armstrong's triumphant visit to Nigeria in 1959 or 1960 (1963 perhaps') provoked crowd scenes on a scale never witnessed before or after again in Lagos...Ironically (but most befittingly!) only Fela's funeral ever came close to provoking the same intensity of feeling among the crowds in Lagos as Louis Armstrong's visit did, with the one vital difference that the members of the elite bourgeois class turned out in full force and mingled with the crowds for Louis Armstrong, but failed to show up when the king of Afrobeat was being buried, perhaps because they were afraid of the crowd, and perhaps also because the era had long since passed when Nigerians of all social classes could identify with the same causes and mingle freely to celebrate or mourn together...Understanding the influence of Louis Armstrong on the nascent highlife genre is absolutely essential. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why the trumpet rapidly imposed itself as the instrument of choice in the way the dance and highlife bands were structured, and why the vast majority of band leaders in those days almost always invariably turned out to be trumpet players like E.T. Mensah, Victor Olaiya, E.C. Arinze, Chief Bill Friday, Agu Norris, Eddie Okonta, Eric Onuoha, King Bruce(of Black Beats fame) and my late beloved friend Zeal Onyia (who was as much a jazz musician as a highly appreciated exponent of highlife music)...Each of these outstanding trumpet players and band leaders used to vie with each other in hitting high notesla Louis Armstrong, and each used to carry their miming of Satchmo's mannerisms to the extent of displaying a white handkerchief in one hand while primarily playing the trumpet with the other hand!Two other things need to be mentioned in conclusion, if Victor Olaiya's style of music is to be properly understood.The first is that the Nigerian musicians of that era used to tour frequently across Nigeria and sometimes even settled for long periods in towns like Calabar, Aba, Onitsha, Jos, Kaduna, and Port Harcourt, irrespective of their ethnic origins, with the result that most ended up speaking and performing in several different Nigerian languages, in particular igbo, yoruba, efik and hausa. That is perhaps one of the reasons why the famous tune which Victor Olaiya almost always plays to end every performance ('Anyi ga na, ewo!') is in igbo!The other major factor that needs to be mentioned is the overwhelming influence of Ghanaian bands on the Nigerian music scene in the 1960's, so much so that quite a few of Victor Olaiya's earliest and most famous compositions are actually transpositions of hit Ghanaian tunes of that era...Most tellingly, Fela himself was exposed to very profound musical experiences in the course of his numerous visits to Accra, which almost became a second home to him in those days. It was even in Ghana that Fela first shot to fame as a highlife musician!In the case of Victor Olaiya, the extraordinary impact of his wonderfully fruitful interaction with E.T. Mensah (who must be credited with being one of the principal originators of highlife music) cannot be overestimated.Olaiya always drew inspiration and deep stimulus playing side by side with E.T. Mensah, who stood in relation to him as a kind of elder twin brother who always brought out the best in him. For that reason, some of the very best live performances by Victor Olaiya (who later came to be widely known as the evil genius' of highlife') took place on the occasions when he performed side by side with his brother and mentor E.T.Mensah.Not surprisingly, one of the most fabulous moments in the history of highlife music occurred when Dr. Victor Olaiya teemed up with his fellow dazzling trumpet player E.T. Mensah to back the iconic vocalist Joe Mensah for an unforgettable recording of the famous 'Bonsue' hit tune. That was surely heaven recreated on earth for the listening and dancing pleasure of music lovers!The great E.T. Mensah has since departed to the land of our ancestors, but we are indeed most fortunate to still have among us the incomparable highlife maestro Dr. Victor Abimbola Oily...No further proof is needed of Victor Olaiya's capacity to continue to thrill music lovers than the great show that was organised at the Lagos City Hall as recently as on Sunday September 16th 2012 by Femi Osho and the Evergreen Musical Company to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Victor Olaiya's presence on the stage.To add icing to the cake on this occasion, the ever youthful elderly highlife star Fatai Rolling Dollar and juju maestro Sunny Ade teamed up on this occasion to perform an unforgettable duet that proved the remarkable stage skills of both of these outstanding products of the highlife era... Their vintage display was worthy of the some of the best shows that have ever graced Las Vegas, Paris and New York stages!After such a wonderful evening, who can possibly doubt that the right way forward for Nigerian music lies in adherence to Africa's evergreen highlife roots, rather than in the current meaningless deviation into the musical barrenness of the so-called hip hop genre'* Dr. Ola Balogun, filmmaker and musician, wrote from Lagos.
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