SUNNY ADE! CELEBRATING A
MONUMENT AT 70
My friends all, it is with great pride that I present today, a special tribute to the legendary KING SUNNY ADE who is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. For decades, his music has regaled us in a thousand and one ways. Beyond the sometimes upbeat, sometimes mellow danceability of his rhythms, he has for more than five decades been one of our voices of reason, helping to give direction to a nation with the didactic element in his music. He has engraved in our hearts a love story that time will never erase.
His music is history in the ear, current affair in the air and edification in our olfactory aura. His music is also a conjurer of sweet and sad nostalgia. It is the music that reminds you of your birthday celebrations of ancient days, when you tilted your left shoulder forward to swag to the pulsating ambience of his upbeat "synchro systems" sounds; it is the crooning that reminds you of your now late mother who used to sing "Owowo Obele" to lull you to sleep; it is the song, as in "Ki ni n ba ro/Iya mi n'ile nko?/Ile l'abo isinmi oko", that reminds you of faraway home whenever you sojourn abroad. And what about his "thunder wire," the pulsating, sonorous strumming from his masterful guitar play to which you twisted and twirled while you hum along? Such is the immensity of his musical talent and staying power that he has been able to create a world in our consciousness, the Sunny Ade world.
Sunny has always been the scourge of the mischievous. He reserves the acerbic part of his music for such. Not only does he squeeze the ear of recalcitrant children with heart rendering and ear tingling words and proverbs, all with the throbing rhythm of his danceable beats, he sanitizes the soul with the ancient aphorisms that have made his native Yoruba such a seminal and rich language.
Think you're mischievous? Sunny Ade is your perfect nemesis. In his evergreen 1979 album, JA FUN MI/ALOMODE O MELA, he not only excoriated the exponents of mischief with his witticism and high language, he admonished them to submission with the poetic essence of his wisdom: VAINGLORY is Sunny Ade's pet aversion. and he used this album to attack such. Let me attempt to translate one of such: "The magical exploits of the deer/Is puny wonder to the hunter's dog/And the narcissist pageantry of the duiker/Only exposes him as a meer/Okra stealing animal!" Another is: "The vulture lays and hides its egg/What does he want to achieve?/The lizard too lays and secrets its egg/Why does it waste its time?/Neither the vulture nor the lizard/Is capable of meal-worthy eggs." Such alluring poetics!
And when he sings of love, Sunny Ade sings like a dream. "I'm Searching For My Love", "365 Is My Number", "Aya to P'awo" etc teach us the virtue of true love, of fidelity and faithfulness. Most wives courted in the early 70s to the late 90s would remember how their suitors had used Sunny's lyrics to pass on their messages of love, and, conversely though, some have also used parts of the lyrics to torment rivals who had dared to have a piece of their women. And women also used Sunny's music to pave some ways. In love and in war, there is something for everybody in the Sunny Ade repertoire.
For so long, Sunny has taught our nation to keep grasp of its groove but, like recalcitrant children, we didn't seem to have listened. In his "Igba to bo lowo Ila, Ila ko/When the okra lost its groove, it withered," Sunny reminds us that we must never treat with levity what makes us thrive. Did we Listen? For decades of our nationhood, we have wallowed in this self denial and the results are there today for us to see. When we were being carried away by the oil boom, he reminded us of the wonders of agriculture in "Ko sagbe mo l'oko/Farmers have abandoned the farms". The social import of his music is best seen as he admonishes his compatriots about the need to return to the agricultural culture of the land for the sake of food sufficiency in the face of universal recession. What Sunny Ade warned us about decades ago has now become a monumental national problem.
His music is also a celebration of the culture of his immediate race, the majesty of their pantheons and the Yoruba tendency to celebrate excellence. That is why you find him singing paeans to Ogun, the native creative deity of his ancient Ondo forbears. And most of us lucky enough to still be capable of speaking our indigenous Yoruba in the face of the eroding power of Englishsurely learnt a few or more proverbs from Sunny Ade.
His music can also be overtly religious. In "Destiny" which he fatalistically believed to be "unchangeable", he did not forget to salute and honour Oba Dafidi (King David), the primogenitory proto-musician. He sings: "Mo s'eba Oba Dafidi; Ohun l'olorin akoko..." "I salute King David, the pace-setter crooner who used psalms and poetry to sing the praise of the Almighty." The tendency to praise the rich and affluent is one controversial part of his opus but even when he praises for commercial or edification import, he does it with lyrical style and artistic panache. His propensity for intellectual variety is simply amazing.
Sunny's music is not only a one stop centre for life's variety, the store house of joy, of dance, of wisdom, of reflection and of relaxation, it is also a repository of history.Through his music, the monumentally sad event of 1976, when General Mohammed was assassinated is relived by those still in the womb at the time. And through it, those who did not witness the epochal Challenge Cup matches of the 60s and early 70s are able to relish the moments. Sunny Ade's music is a veritable library of current affairs, your knowledge ombudsman in times of ignorance.
I certainly cannot exhaust the infinite relevance of Sunny's art in one article and this discourse will definitely continue. All I can say for now is that long after the mortal garbs of this icon have been shed, his star will never fade; it will glow perpetually like an eternal flame. Kare o, Egi and happy birthday!
My friends all, it is with great pride that I present today, a special tribute to the legendary KING SUNNY ADE who is celebrating his 70th birthday this month. For decades, his music has regaled us in a thousand and one ways. Beyond the sometimes upbeat, sometimes mellow danceability of his rhythms, he has for more than five decades been one of our voices of reason, helping to give direction to a nation with the didactic element in his music. He has engraved in our hearts a love story that time will never erase.
His music is history in the ear, current affair in the air and edification in our olfactory aura. His music is also a conjurer of sweet and sad nostalgia. It is the music that reminds you of your birthday celebrations of ancient days, when you tilted your left shoulder forward to swag to the pulsating ambience of his upbeat "synchro systems" sounds; it is the crooning that reminds you of your now late mother who used to sing "Owowo Obele" to lull you to sleep; it is the song, as in "Ki ni n ba ro/Iya mi n'ile nko?/Ile l'abo isinmi oko", that reminds you of faraway home whenever you sojourn abroad. And what about his "thunder wire," the pulsating, sonorous strumming from his masterful guitar play to which you twisted and twirled while you hum along? Such is the immensity of his musical talent and staying power that he has been able to create a world in our consciousness, the Sunny Ade world.
Sunny has always been the scourge of the mischievous. He reserves the acerbic part of his music for such. Not only does he squeeze the ear of recalcitrant children with heart rendering and ear tingling words and proverbs, all with the throbing rhythm of his danceable beats, he sanitizes the soul with the ancient aphorisms that have made his native Yoruba such a seminal and rich language.
Think you're mischievous? Sunny Ade is your perfect nemesis. In his evergreen 1979 album, JA FUN MI/ALOMODE O MELA, he not only excoriated the exponents of mischief with his witticism and high language, he admonished them to submission with the poetic essence of his wisdom: VAINGLORY is Sunny Ade's pet aversion. and he used this album to attack such. Let me attempt to translate one of such: "The magical exploits of the deer/Is puny wonder to the hunter's dog/And the narcissist pageantry of the duiker/Only exposes him as a meer/Okra stealing animal!" Another is: "The vulture lays and hides its egg/What does he want to achieve?/The lizard too lays and secrets its egg/Why does it waste its time?/Neither the vulture nor the lizard/Is capable of meal-worthy eggs." Such alluring poetics!
And when he sings of love, Sunny Ade sings like a dream. "I'm Searching For My Love", "365 Is My Number", "Aya to P'awo" etc teach us the virtue of true love, of fidelity and faithfulness. Most wives courted in the early 70s to the late 90s would remember how their suitors had used Sunny's lyrics to pass on their messages of love, and, conversely though, some have also used parts of the lyrics to torment rivals who had dared to have a piece of their women. And women also used Sunny's music to pave some ways. In love and in war, there is something for everybody in the Sunny Ade repertoire.
For so long, Sunny has taught our nation to keep grasp of its groove but, like recalcitrant children, we didn't seem to have listened. In his "Igba to bo lowo Ila, Ila ko/When the okra lost its groove, it withered," Sunny reminds us that we must never treat with levity what makes us thrive. Did we Listen? For decades of our nationhood, we have wallowed in this self denial and the results are there today for us to see. When we were being carried away by the oil boom, he reminded us of the wonders of agriculture in "Ko sagbe mo l'oko/Farmers have abandoned the farms". The social import of his music is best seen as he admonishes his compatriots about the need to return to the agricultural culture of the land for the sake of food sufficiency in the face of universal recession. What Sunny Ade warned us about decades ago has now become a monumental national problem.
His music is also a celebration of the culture of his immediate race, the majesty of their pantheons and the Yoruba tendency to celebrate excellence. That is why you find him singing paeans to Ogun, the native creative deity of his ancient Ondo forbears. And most of us lucky enough to still be capable of speaking our indigenous Yoruba in the face of the eroding power of Englishsurely learnt a few or more proverbs from Sunny Ade.
His music can also be overtly religious. In "Destiny" which he fatalistically believed to be "unchangeable", he did not forget to salute and honour Oba Dafidi (King David), the primogenitory proto-musician. He sings: "Mo s'eba Oba Dafidi; Ohun l'olorin akoko..." "I salute King David, the pace-setter crooner who used psalms and poetry to sing the praise of the Almighty." The tendency to praise the rich and affluent is one controversial part of his opus but even when he praises for commercial or edification import, he does it with lyrical style and artistic panache. His propensity for intellectual variety is simply amazing.
Sunny's music is not only a one stop centre for life's variety, the store house of joy, of dance, of wisdom, of reflection and of relaxation, it is also a repository of history.Through his music, the monumentally sad event of 1976, when General Mohammed was assassinated is relived by those still in the womb at the time. And through it, those who did not witness the epochal Challenge Cup matches of the 60s and early 70s are able to relish the moments. Sunny Ade's music is a veritable library of current affairs, your knowledge ombudsman in times of ignorance.
I certainly cannot exhaust the infinite relevance of Sunny's art in one article and this discourse will definitely continue. All I can say for now is that long after the mortal garbs of this icon have been shed, his star will never fade; it will glow perpetually like an eternal flame. Kare o, Egi and happy birthday!
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