Book review: Ayinla Omowura &#; life and times of an Apala legend
Author: Festus Adedayo
Publisher: Noirledge
Pages:
Reviewer: Dr. Gabriel. O. Apata
Ayinla Omowura, the renowned Apala musician died forty years ago this year and to mark the anniversary of his death, Dr. Festus Adedayo published a fitting biography of the man in Ayinla Omowura: Life and Times of an Apala Legend. Few people under the age of 40 would have heard or known about this late artiste just as few under 50 or even 60 would have heard or known of Reginald Rex Lawson. Musicians come and go and some remain enduring names through their music while others fade into relative obscurity. Dr. Adedayo’s biography of Omowura is not only an attempt to honour the memory of the man and keep his flame burning but also to celebrate his genius as one of Nigeria’s cultural icons.
I do not think such a book as this had been written about any notable musician in Nigeria, except Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. I may be wrong on this, however. The sources consulted boggle the mind and that he could unearth so many eyewitness accounts after the many decades that have passed since his death is indeed a credit to the autho
Ayinla Omowura & The untold story
By Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin (Dudu)
I NEVER realised it’s 40 years ago i was driving to Lantoro, in Abeokuta, Ogun State, to buy Ofada rice from Alhaja Oyalowo. I was still eating rice from that Buka, till Alhaja transited a few months ago. She was in her 90s.
There was no GSM then. Someone flagged me down and said OMOWURA just died. I spurned around and drove at top speed to General hospital, Ijaiye. The whole hospital up to the gate was full of hordes of people, youths, market women, socialites. All wailing and rushing to the ICU.
I pushed my way to the front and behold Egunmogaji was lying in a pool of blood on his head, stone dead on the gurney.
Memories of him, in the two years that we’ve been friends and business partners flooded to me. I wept.
At age 21, I constructed and operated the No 1 discotheque/club in the whole of Western Region now six states.
DUDU CLUB was the center of fun in Yorubaland. I’m talking of For three days in a week, people would travel from Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, Ijebu etc to come to DUDU CLUB (Whedah House) for mad fun. I was running the club, at the same time schooling at the Universit
| Book cover. |
Four decades after the death of musician, Ayinla Omowura, a deserved honour has been accorded the then maestro of apala music. A book titled Ayinla Omowura: Life and Times of an Apala Legend, wriien by Festus Adedayo has been unveiled, Wednesday, May 6, at the palace of Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III.
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A page book, according to the author, was written as his contribution to the literary space of Yoruba. The author has been publishing series of articles in newspapers, over the past two decades, about the late musician.
Omowura, a musician who changed the face of music in Yorubaland, with his strong followership, between the early s and post s of his death was killed during a barroom fight in Abeokuta, May 6, Omowura's death practically dealt a great blow to the apala. His senior colleague and a bigger star in the genre, Haruna Ishola also passed on in
While presenting the book to Oba Adeyemi, the author, according to sources, explained that the presentation was also scheduled to have taken place in Abeokuta. He planned to present the book to Alake of Egbaland, Oba Gbadebo Adedotun Aremu III, the monarch of Omowura's hometown, Abeokuta, but the
Who was Àyìnlá Ọmọwúrà?
The second half of the twentieth century in the Nigerian entertainment industry witnessed tremendous changes and a revelation of pleasurable musicians who sang for the entertainment of lovers, societal ills, the importance of education, governments, and any themes that pique the interest of that time ambience. However, it was amid this period, which could also be called the “Nigerian Music Age” that an Apala (a Nigerian musical genre described according to Festus Adedayo as songs circumscribed around the Islamic social stratum of the Yoruba society) musician emerged. The musicians who sang it engaged a mixture of traditional African music, accentuated with Islamic renditions, thus achieving a blend that was neither totally Islamic nor wholly traditional but nevertheless assumed to have achieved a successful "Islamisation of traditional music) crooner, in Abeokuta will rose to fame—one of its kind just a few years before his death.
Àyìnlá Waidi Yusuf was born in Itoko in to the family of gbogbolowo, a blacksmith in Abeokuta. However, the etymology of the tagline “Ọmọwúrà'' can be traced to his mother’s name—Wuramotu. In a conversat
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