Oseyiza Oogbodo Blog

It is not surprising that there are many music artists who have adopted Fela’s style of music. Known as afrobeat, the genre was created by Fela himself from a fusion of Nigerian and Ghanaian highlife, jazz and soul. Since it was afrobeat that made Fela into a worldwide music icon, it became a music genre that inspired other musicians too to start performing it. The main man who has taken afrobeat to a really great height after Fela is his Femi Anikulapo-Kuti. Femi has tried his best but he has failed to live up to his father’s music accomplishments. After Femi comes another Son of Fela, Seun. He too has tried but is still found wanting of Fela’s lofty standards. But even as Femi and Seun can be praised for even trying to be original, Dede mabiakwu doesn’t even bother to aspire to originality. He sings Fela’s songs word for word, dresses exactly like Fela and dances like him without any variation. Definitely, the aforementioned three have been Fela’s most visible protégés till ...

How is life in Malaysia? Well, to start with, Malaysia is a developing country and its moving at a very very fast pace and in some few years to come, it would be principal in nature. Malaysia is a very beautiful country and i am enjoying every bit of it. it can be weird at times but it’s all part of the adventure. Life here is easy and i can say that with God by my side,  more things to come. Malaysia is a country where the well being of the citizens comes first.. A 3 square meal is guaranteed in this country. as far as I am concerned, food is the cheapest thing here. It’s so relieving and easy. When you wake up, you don’t need to think about what to eat or where, with 10ringits Malaysia, you are very okay for the day.  There are so many different aspects but I choose to stop here. Food is an important aspect of life and if it can be so affordable, think about the rest.  Lol. How long have you been there? I have been here for quite some time now and it has been fun...

The Nigeria leg of the Hamlet Globe to Globe Tour continues to gather momentum by the day. The tour, which is scheduled to hold in every country in the world over two years, and which opened at Shakespeare’s Globe, London on April 23 rd , 2014, has Nigeria billed as the 79 th country it will berth at on  the 4 th and 5 th of next month with performances scheduled for MUSON Centre, Onikan and St. Saviour’s School, Ikoyi, both in Lagos. According to Adeoye Omotayo of R&B PR, one of the many organizations supporting the staging of the Nigeria leg of the tour, Nigerians should expect a very thrilling staging of Hamlet because the lead character is Ladi Emeruwa, a Nigerian who is the first black man to play Hamlet and who is so excited to be playing it in his home country that he will definitely give more than his best on stage. “Nigerians should come out and see Hamlet performed in a manner they’ll never forget,” he said. “Hamlet in itself is a classic evergreen tale, and I’...

If there’s one man that can be termed ambitious, and that tag would fit him perfectly, then that man is Mursty Adinoyi, producer-presenter of celebrated TV entertainment programme, Hitlist N Cruzin . Adinoyi is not however selfishly ambitious. He’s ambitious to celebrate Nigerians, which is what he does on Hitlist N Cruzin . And he says his overriding ambition is to celebrate Nigerians even more than he’s doing presently. “On Hitlist N Cruzin , we celebrate Nigerians,” he told Oseyiza Oogbodo Blog. “We celebrate them by asking a question, selecting a winner among those who answer the question, and taking the winner on a shopping cruise on which he or she buys whatever he, she likes at our expense.” Speaking further, he said that initially, it was only people in Lagos that they used to take on shopping cruise, but eventually with the national appeal of Hitlist N Cruzin since it started airing on the AIT network, they’ve started cruising people outside Lagos too as many people an...

Legendary reggae musician, Victor Essiet, lead singer of The Mandators, who was in America for a very long time, but is now back in the country, tells OSEYIZA OOGBODO BLOG how he’s faring with his return. How many years, or how long, did it take you to organise the Africa Meets Reggae Festival? It took me two years. First, I had to pay for the franchise, because the down payment is a million dollars. Then I started planning it, and all-in-all, it took a couple of years. So how do you feel that it has held? You know like everything that you’re trying to do, it’s like planting a seed. You want to see it bring forth fruits, you know what I mean. And there’s nothing you do that doesn’t involve money, you know, so if you’re trying to do something like what I did, you’re having people at heart, you want to try to do something to give back to the people, you want to see it succeed, and when it shows some green light, it’s a great feeling. Would you say your return to Nigeria from ...

A year ago, when celebrated record producer Don Jazzy unveiled Korede Bello, Reekado Banks and Di’Ja as the latest sign-ons to his label, Mavin Records, by dropping their singles, African Princess, Turn It Up and Yaro respectively, their unveiling made noise only because they were unveiled by Jazzy whose personality is so enormous it straddles not only Nigeria but Africa as a whole. However, because they were relatively unknown then, their singles, even though they were produced by the great Jazzy, didn’t make much impact. They got the necessary air play, but they didn’t really break borders and dominate the air waves. Just a year later, the story has changed for these three youngsters who were immediately tagged Baby Mavins when they were unveiled because musically, they were indeed babies compared to the other Mavin artists, Tiwa Savage, D’Prince, Dr SID. The way things are right now though, the babies have grown so fast that they now pose a veritable challenge to their senior...