Photo: Ayinla Omowura on top of Olumo Rock

Mixing educative information and lacing it with comical expressions are the two factors that canonized the music of Omowura in the hearts of the Yoruba people. His songs are seen as rooted in cultural pedagogy, and he was considered a social instructor. When he sang, there were bodies of proverbs, wise sayings, axioms and wisdom that one can extract from his songs. It was because of the probability of getting any of these that people are drawn to his music. 

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In Yoruba’s ontological designs, there are three phases of the human journey on the planet: the living, the dead (the ancestors), and the unborn. The first is occupied by people who are still on earth. The cultural belief is that the unseen forces usually control this people’s activities. Their unseen status notwithstanding, the Yoruba people believe that those in the second phase, the dead (the ancestors), have the spiritual qualifications to influence what happens to the living. Therefore, it means that there is a need for a medium of communication between the living and the dead so that the latter can be invoked, especially when humans want them to influence their lives in a particular direction. Among them, the Yoruba believe, there are the elders whose closeness to the second phase makes them reserve the honor of invoking the dead and also there are the groups that are occupied by those who have the spiritual capacity, and elderly women (awon eleiye) are understood to share the same power of invocation. Therefore, this means that they need to be propitiated in any human involvement to prevent their destructive actions from one’s embarkation. Ayinla Omowura understands their social and spiritual essence and therefore dedicated time to praise them in many musical performances. 

If one is familiar with this cultural behavior, the lines “Igba abere l’a fi joko ni’le orin, Awon iya ti ni’kan o nii gun wa nibe…” (there are two hundred needles to sit on in the music industry, our mothers have said none shall pierce us) would not be strange to the individual. These lines, it is important to clarify, are ways of paying homage to the people in the spiritual community whose understanding could make their program successful or otherwise. Beyond this appeasement, the lines are expressions of something more. Ideologies in every civilization are usually weaved in religious or social behavior, which people follow and accept because it has become an integral component of their existence. Respect for the elderly is generally emphasized among the Yoruba people. It is believed that the younger ones’ success is assured precisely because they stand on the shoulders of elderly ones who have paved the ways for their greatness. It is therefore important that the elders are celebrated and revered at every opportunity given. Therefore, the ideology of respect is weaved in socio-religious behavior, at which point its generational observation has to blur its social and spiritual lines. Therefore, this respect is performed as a ritual virtually anytime people engage in one thing or the other. From this standpoint, one can understand Ayinla’s repeated invocation of the elders during his performances. Apart from paying homage to the elders who are considered the scaffold of the society, Ayinla, self-named as “President of Music,” was equally encouraging the audience about the primacy of respect in their cultural identity. 

These are not an attempt to rid Ayinla of his socially delinquent actions and reprehensible moral involvement. The reinforcement of that piety does not determine how much one can inspire social actions or bring about notable changes in one’s society. The life of Ayinla Omowura did not experience a dearth of socially awkward activities. He was reported to be a chronic user of marijuana, especially when it was yet to receive social acceptance, and this became labeled a vice. The man sufficiently experienced youthful exuberance and was almost carried away by the peer pressure to engage in many socially unacceptable habits. 

Definitely, Ayinla established an unbreakable bond between himself and what the conservative segment of his society regarded as indecent moral behavior so much that even after he became successful and popular with his music, he never parted ways with the lifestyle. It was his loyalty to marijuana that brought about some internal contradictions with his band members on different occasions, but it seemed he was more committed to the indulgence even than his members on whose back he rose to prominence. Despite his fidelity to his lifestyle, Omowura refused to allow it to undermine his art. He was spiritedly committed and habits became the spiritual base. He became energized by the history of his father’s engagement. Like his father, music became the ultimate instrument with which to communicate their brilliance with the world. However, he did more than his father. He established the beginning of a musical brand that became an international export. 

Ayinla’s life was full of suspense, too, as if a blockbuster movie writer authored it. This probably made TK’s work much easier. The exhilarating part of Ayinla’s life is revealed in the keen competition with other people of similar engagement. During his famous ascendancy, he was competing with Fatai Olowonyo in whose musical prowess was exemplary competence. As already implied, the postcolonial Nigerian environment increased competition among people, especially those whose sources of income were similar. To become the choice of the masses as a musician, one must show an ability to withstand pressures and strives. As a musician, one’s ability to hold competition down is another important attribute that attracted people to one’s activity. The contempt that the detractors nurse against one cannot be allowed to weigh one down; otherwise, one would become the instrument of their greatness while one becomes characteristically useless to one’s ambition. This was the relationship between Ayinla Omowura and his arch-rival, Fatai Olowonyo. However, it is impossible to say that Omowura was a weakling, considering the magnitude of his success while in music. 

He was fierce and determined, concentrated on his goals and he used his social environment to create the theatre of musical brilliance. He was precocious, and one cannot deny that his songs are exemplary. Without a doubt, he bossed all his opponents while alive, and there was no contention about his superior career. Perhaps because he was generally different in the ways he commanded music and blended postcolonial issues with them, the relevance of his works in the contemporary time always brings about some questions concerning his foresight. 

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Ayinla Omowura’s life was controversially electric. No doubt, he was one of those revolutionaries who used their personal life as the template for anti-imperialist agenda. He protested European cultural colonization by actively supporting anything that had the color of his indigenous culture. He was Afrocentric, not only in appearance but also in ideology. He believed in African indigenous epistemic perception and explored it considerably. He was fearless, and his fearlessness made him build a formidable social image for himself so much that people dreaded him, especially those who considered him a potential threat. The potency assured him of Yoruba’s spiritual support system, and because of this, he challenged many of the people he considered enemies. Some people even saw him as a seer. He behaved as if he saw the glimpse of what to happen in the future. According to a local lore, at a point in time, he looked into his band member’s eye, Fatai Bayewumi, and he pointedly told him that he would facilitate his death. In his words, “Bayewumi…Iwo re Judasi; emi re Jeshu; iwo re ma pa mi.” (“Bayewumi, you are Judas; I am Jesus, you will be the cause of my death”). In what would be fulfilled later, Bayewumi eventually was responsible for executing the musical avatar in gruesome ways. 

Ayinla Omowura demonstrated his versatility during the 1970s when he continuously produced the songs that gave him the popularity he had even after his demise. He joined the EMI Nigeria in 1970 and produced a piece of very captivating music that same year. His popularity instantly increased with his song titled “Aja To F’oju D’ejo”, and the success recorded in this encouraged him to immediately release three successive singles, all of which combined to give him necessary accolades. 

Omowura was not only getting fame; he was increasing in his financial capacity during these years. Market women, drivers, artisans and others found themselves represented well in his songs, which became the reason for their acceptance of him wholeheartedly. There was no indigenous musical expert in Yoruba that rivaled him in social acceptability during his time. The man in question was very productive. He was such an imposing musical figure and maestro that all of his albums were generally accepted. Within his ten years of signing a record deal with the EMI label, his records sold in thousands. For a musician of his background, this is a career stunt that was not easy to pull. 

In one of his famous tracks, “Pansaga Ranti Ojo Ola,” Ayinla blended postcolonial issues with African morality, two of which collided at the front of civilization. Pansaga, the Yoruba word for an adulterer or fornicator, was used as a metaphor to teach both the political class and society members. At the surface, one cannot but associate the music to his reproach of sexual immoralities prevalent in the society. He admonished the people selling their bodies to attract economic success for their lack of understanding of their actions’ impending consequences. If one interprets this song in this way, one would not be wrong. However, Ayinla Omowura meant more than this, knowing him as a repertoire of Yoruba knowledge economy who used proverbs and metaphors to teach social lessons. The pansaga, as can be theorized, are the people domiciled in the corridor of power, in the 1970s, for example, who were lacking in the idea of how to manage the booming economy. Just like the woman’s compelling body structure that he alluded to and criticized, the economy was in good condition, but instead of them managing it well for a prosperous future, they were lavishing money endlessly, unconcerned about the probable outcome it would bring. For those who understand the deep-rooted talent of Omowura in using language, they would not doubt the relationship between his songs and the desire to correct social ills. He was seen as a social liberator.

TK has put all my words into a movie. Watch out!

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is a historian and professor of African Studies who currently occupies the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

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