I WANT TO BE THE NEXT GOVERNOR–BEAUTIFUL NUBIA

Beautiful Nubia

Only few words can describe a man who is content with nature. Having recently concluded the annual EmuFest, Beautiful Nubia speaks with ADEWOYIN ADENIYI on diverse issues.

CONGRATS on the just concluded EMUFEST concert. How has it been since you started?

Well, Emufest 2015 is the 6th edition of folk and root music festival and over the years we’ve seen it grow from what we thought was a light dream into a very concrete reality. This year, we had an event in Ijebu-Ijesha in Osun State, we had in Ibadan and also several events in Lagos. At every event, there were lots and lots of people that you would almost say we had over flowing attendance at every event because it was amazing.

The town hall we used in Ijebu-Ijesha had a main level and two top levels and everywhere was filled up. A professor was the chairman of the organising committee just wrote to me yesterday and said that show is the talk of the town right now and that is a thing of joy for us. It is supposed to be artiste-driven and fan-sponsored, so we don’t have a corporate sponsor. We are not against it; we just haven’t found a corporate sponsor who can buy into that dream. We don’t want sponsors who will throw money at it and tell you do it this way or do it that way.

We want those who actually believe in what we are trying to do, who are able to see the vision and buy into it and become part of it because to us this is going to be a long term project, it is not a festival that I’m just going to run for a few years and it’s over. This is the sixth year and I always joke that it’s going to go on forever. Of course, nothing lasts forever but it’s going to go on for as long as possible and it will go on long after I have left this world because right now we are putting all our blood, all our spirit and all our energy into it. And when you do that, there is no way it won’t survive.

How have you been able to finance the show yourself since you said there are no corporate sponsors?

It’s been very difficult as you can see I’m not one of those artistes in Nigeria who make a lot of money but what I do every year is that from the shows we get, I try to save a certain percentage towards this festival because I see it as a gift to the people; as our own way of giving the people a chance to access because there are many people who will like to come to our show but can’t afford it and our shows are never free. So, the Emufest might be their only chance in a year to see Beautiful Nubia perform (free) and other great artistes.

A big element of our festival is the discovery of new talents, providing a platform for new people. This year, we had about twenty-five new and emerging artistes showcased. Last year, we had about forty-seven and it’s been like that every year and some of them will tell you it is their first time playing on a stage with a live band and it’s a life-changing experience for them. This year, during our talent night, we had people like Yinka Davies and many other accomplished artistes who were here to watch these young musicians and you don’t know what that does for a musician when you see a named artiste in the audience clapping for you and telling you ‘you are doing well’, it lifts them.

So, this is a very important part of the festival and it is something that we are doing to enrich the environment. I just look at it that whatever money I make, I will take a part of it and put it aside for this because it’s my own way of helping to enrich the environment and building new talent and music industry in Nigeria. But I am not the only one who provides money for the festival, I have friends (my fans are the people I call friends) who give us out of whatever money they have and I always tell them that it doesn’t matter how small it is, we will accept.

I was touched by a young lady in 2012 who is still in school. She came here with five thousand naira and said ‘I want to donate to the festival and when I finish school and I have a job I will give you millions because I love the dream and idea.’ So, it’s not just me, the fans are also involved. Also, we mustn’t forget that musicians are also donating because the musicians who play at this festival are not paid a premium rate; they take a huge cut in pay to be at this event so it’s all of us doing it together. It is a festival of the people, by the people and for the people and that’s why when you come to Emufest you will see the energy and the joy, people are just happy. There is no artificiality, there is no extreme materialism.

It must have been a very difficult decision to make back then for you to go into your kind of music when it was only the likes of Fuji, Juju and the rest that were making waves…

I always like to say that I was chosen by music because that’s how it is if you have two music talents and the question is if you choose to answer the call but I chose to answer the call and this is the path that my feet were placed on, if you hear a song like ‘Seven Lives’, what else can it be? When I made my first album in 1997, I tried to make it sound like reggae but it didn’t work. The moment we allowed it to be itself, it came out the way it came out eventually.

So when you try to force a song like Owuro Lojo, to make it hip hop, it will not go anywhere but when you allow it to breath and be what it is supposed to be then you get what I’m playing right now. So, I didn’t choose it, it came to me. I have written more than a thousand songs. I mean by the age of twenty-one I had written more than a thousand songs and that is over twenty years ago.

I know I can fix many of these songs into soul or jazz or reggae but the ones that often come to me are these ones I can’t define, so we call them folk and roots because they basically have roots in tradition, ancient wisdom and traditional rhythms. But I have added a part of me, which is why it is going to be very difficult for anybody to be me because there is a part of me that they cannot replicate.

Are there other people doing your kind of music?

Oh yes, I saw four bands at the just concluded Emufest and of course this guys would tell me that ‘I started listening to your music when I was eleven years old, you are my mentor, my biggest influence.’ There are many of them who write me from all over the world. In fact, some of the big names in the Nigerian music industry are influenced by me. They might not say it but you can hear it in their music.

What I am saying is that every artiste must be himself or herself, nobody can be you but they can only be like you. I heard a boy recently in a university where we had a show, and he played ‘Seven Lives’ and we were almost crying. He took that song and made it his own. He totally changed it, I was just sitting and was like I wrote this song but it’s no longer my song because now it belongs to the people and that’s what happens to good songs. A good song eventually belongs to the people.

Owurolojo for example, is a song that I wrote but today they sing it everywhere; they sing it in schools, in churches, places of traditional worship and many people who sing it don’t even know who wrote it. And sometimes I will meet them they will be like ‘oh, you are the man who wrote that song.’

Will you be collaborating with any hip hop act anytime soon?

Well, I have always said that we are not against collaborations. But collaboration means artistes working together, right? I already collaborated with about thirteen or fourteen artistes and these are my band members. I don’t make this music alone; of course ninety-nine percent of what goes into my music comes from my head. I mean, I write the songs, the hunt lines, I write the baselines, my keyboard some often, guitar lines and I compose my percussion a lot of times too. So, I tell the guys and they also come with their own ideas too. See that one percent that you may think is so small is in a way the most important for me because often when I got these songs, they bring in ideas like ‘oh, let’s just bend this area’ and it totally changes the song. As for me, that is the most important collaboration.

If there is a purpose of collaborating with popular artistes, something that will bring us together for a purpose, something organic, not artificial, then I will do it. I cannot do a collaboration because we want to make money. I don’t do music for money and I’m not saying it to put anybody down. I’m not saying it’s wrong to make music for money, I just don’t do it. Money is not the reason why I am making music, so the moment you bring money into it I lose interest. I don’t make albums because I want to make money, I make them because I am seeing what I want to say and those who like what I am saying will buy it and I will get money from it, of course.

 I cannot say because we want to stretch our audience base, the audience base is already stretching by itself; our music has grown large since about eighteen years now. We have fans all over the years; I am talking about fans in remote places like Kazakhstan, China, in Europe and they are not just Nigerians; so, if the eye is patient, it will see the nose.

How do you take time to relax out of your busy schedule?

This message goes to all Nigerians; I think many of us work too hard, we chase material wealth too much, and we don’t take time to think about it. What is the purpose of all this? What is the hustling all about? Maybe to have cars, build houses and so on. It’s all about putting food in your tummy. I have always felt that the most important thing is to have peace in your soul; to be able to wake up in the morning with peace of mind, because when you have peace of mind you feel safe and not stressed about anything. You may not have a dime in your pocket but you know that those who sow will reap because it’s a natural law of nature and so if you are sowing, at your lowest point, something will happen.

I don’t stress myself that much and, of course, I am always busy but I take time to rest and when I rest I like to do sport and my favourite sport is walking. I read a lot and you can’t hear it in my songs. That’s why I tell artistes who want to sing great songs to always read great books and listen with humility to the elders. When I say elders, I don’t mean old people; wise people are the elders – either young or old.

I often walk from where we are now to Maryland and when people see me I greet them. I am not the politician that stole their money, so I don’t hide from them.

Like some entertainers, will you also delve into politics someday?

I have thought about it a lot. I don’t even like the idea of politics. I like the idea of nation building because politics has this negative connotation now, but politics is not supposed to be a negative word and that’s not my thing. I like to think of myself that if I become a politician I will be a politician that will be seen as a statesman, as a nation builder.

My interest will be to find other people who are like me, who want to do something in their life time that they will be remembered for forever, who want to leave a legacy of progress through change. We started a social political movement designed to do what I have been talking about, reach the people who take care of children to tell everyone that we need to invest in our children, give them the courage they need so that in twenty years from now we can develop a new generation of leaders who can be strong. I think about politics all the time but I always think like: ‘where do you go?’ You will probably see me there in the next elections trying to do something, to be governor of some state or something. I am working on it because I don’t believe in just talking for the sake of talking.

There is a much respected place for somebody that is like a prophet who guides the people. A musician, writer or artist, whose words beam a light on our paths. There’s a place for that and I know that is a high place and I could just stay there but I don’t think that’s going to be enough for my kind of person. If I am talking and they are listening, then great, but if you are talking and you don’t see the changes then maybe you need to get involved yourself and maybe then you will realise that you are talking nonsense or maybe then they (politicians) will realise that it can be done this way.

So, I am looking at spending four years in politics and I have said it many times it won’t be more than four years because I cannot give my life to politics. If I could get a position even at the smallest level to lead some kind of change and document it and show our people what is possible. When you have honest leadership that is not focused on taking but on totally giving selflessly. Leadership is about not having so that your people can have. And at the end of the day you will be able to walk among some people freely, you may not have anything but the love in their hearts is more than all the houses in the world and that is the kind of true leadership I am saying. We have never had it in Nigeria and it pains me because our people deserve it. I think so many people there go through such a harrowing experience in their lives and it is our duty to ensure that we fix this place. So I am going to make an effort and if by fortune I get into that position, you will see a difference and you will see something that you’ve never seen before and nothing is going to seduce me to stay on. I would just like a chance to prove people wrong that certain things are not possible in this country.

How you can generate wealth because there is so much wealth in this country lying latent. I am not talking about digging for gold in the ground. I’m talking about the wealth in the people, the wealth in your environment, in the resources that you’ve got here that we are not even dealing with. A true leader has to be able to inspire his people to work together and inspire them to think about the future. So, if I am making a big sacrifice, what I am asking you to make is a small sacrifice. Not the leaders who will say you must pay your tax and they are not doing anything. They tax a person selling bread for what? They are just sucking the people. I have said it several times that if I get into an executive position in this country I will not take a dime because the idea is that you go there and serve, you must have had something you are living on before you got in there, so I am not going to stop my business. In fact, I can tell you that the moment I get into the political office, my CDs will start selling more and I will start making more money as a musician.

But you might need to cut your dreads for you go get a political seat…

That is a part that people have to understand; you have to learn to look beyond the looks. What politicians have been using on us all these years are the looks; a man comes to you, if you are a Muslim he dresses as a Muslim, he says the right things in your language, he pretends that he is your friend, so you don’t look beyond the surface.

We must start to look beyond the surface and don’t forget that in our traditional environment people with my looks were respected as holy men, as spiritual people. So, we must get back to that point where we can see beauty. Some girls will meet me and say ‘I love your music but just your looks,’ and I say ‘what’s wrong with the looks?’ You think it’s rough? You do not know because your eyes have been turned the other way, you need to turn your eyes back to see where beauty is.

I have been here for forty-eight years now and I think about all the years of empty promises, all the years of waste that we have seen in this country and it’s just because our people refuse to see beyond the surface, we keep buying lies, we keep buying hype.  We vote for the guy who has nice posters because the other one doesn’t have money to make all the billboards. I keep saying it even in my music that when our people are ready for change, they will start looking beyond the surface and see the true human being. I am not going to cut my hair because of anything and you have to see the substance in the man.