Dr Orlando Owoh

Who was Dr Orlando Owoh?

A household name in Nigeria, Dr. Orlando Owoh has enjoyed a durable popularity that has cut across generational lines in his home country and beyond. Leading groups such as the Omimah Band, the Young Kenneries, and the African Kenneries International, Owoh remained popular even as Nigerian tastes shifted to the newer juju and fuji styles. Owoh's rootsy take on highlife music led him into political realms in the turbulent Nigeria of the 1980s, and he was imprisoned for a time on drug charges. Dubbed the "King of Toye," as he dubbed his particular musical mix, Owoh entered his fifth decade of performing with his powers and popularity undiminished.A member of the Yoruba ethnic group, Owoh was born Oladipupo Owomoyela in Nigeria's Oyo state. Some publications have assigned Owoh's birthdate to the early 1940s, but Nigeria's P.M. News (in an article reproduced by the Africa News online service) reported that Owoh celebrated his 70th birthday on February 14, 2002, and a 2005 report in the Nigerian Sun tabloid gave his age as 73. Owoh's father was a carpenter who was known around the town of Osogbo as a good part-time musician, but he greeted his son's growing interest in music with little enthusiasm.Blazed Through Carpentry ApprenticeshipThe family moved frequently from place to place, but Owoh sought out musicians and formed bands in each place they landed. Owoh's father insisted that Owoh learn a trade as a condition of being allowed to work on his music, and Owoh obediently apprenticed himself to a carpenter. "I learned fast," Owoh told Tosin Ajirire of Nigeria's Daily Sun. "A trade that would take my contemporaries four or eight years to learn, I mastered in only six months. So, having satisfied my father, he couldn't help but bless my choice of career."Owoh's first break came when he was hired as a musician by Nigeria's Kola Ogunmola Theatre Group, one of the country's first theatrical troupes. Owoh played drums and sang with the group when England's Queen Elizabeth visited Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1956, and he continued to perform plays mounted at the University of Ibadan. Performing with several bands, including one called Akindele (or Dele Jolly) and His Chocolate Dandies, and in another called the Fakunle Major Band, Owoh realized that music in West Africa was developing in a new direction, and sought out lessons on the electric guitar from musician Fatai Rolling Dollar.The hot style of the day in Nigeria and Ghana was called highlife. It developed from a traditional Yoruba genre called palm wine music, overlaid with danceable guitar rhythms, and, in the hands of many musicians, it also contained a strong element of Trinidadian calypso. In Owoh's music, however, the sophisticated Caribbean-style horn arrangements of highlife were deemphasized in favor of Owoh's guttural voice, guitar, percussion, and down-to-earth lyrics. Owoh formed his first group, Orlando Owoh and His Omimah Band, around 1960 and quickly recorded his first single, "Oluwa, lo ran Mi" ("God has sent me") on the Nigerian branch of the Decca label.Heard Record Played in StoreIt's a thrill for any musician to hear his or her record being played on the streets for the first time, but Owoh's experience was more thrilling than most. "I almost died the first time I heard my record," he told Ajirire. "I was passing along Idi Oro in Mushin and suddenly I heard my record being played in a shop across the road. ... Without looking at both sides, I dashed across the road and ran towards the shop. I heard a car screech to a halt; it almost crushed me to death." The enraged driver pursued Owoh into the shop, but calmed down when Owoh pointed out that he was the musician heard on the recording.Owoh notched several hits in Nigeria in the 1960s, but his career was slowed between 1967 and 1970 by the country's civil war. Owoh fought for the Nigerian government against the country's Biafran rebels. After the war he recorded a major hit called "Oriki Ilu Oke," and his fame...