When I and my siblings were growing up in the sixties, music set the tone and the mood around which the daily routine of our lives and family events revolved. The commercialization of Yoruba traditional music started in our own time. People now actually made music full time. And they made enough money from it to feed their family, pay their rent, put clothes on their backs, and send their children to school. Commercial music had made its entry into Yorubaland over the previous decade before the early 1960’s, especially in the two biggest cities, Ibadan and Lagos. ‘Highlife’ music was the most profitable commercial music of that time. And who better to introduce us to the Lagos highlife scene of the early 1960’s than the famous bandleader who everyone called Roy Chicago. Born John Akintola, he was the musician who introduced the traditional Yoruba gangan talking drum into the set of a modern highlife band. He always sang in Yoruba. And his virtuoso drumming was in the great musical tradition of our people.

It was to meet members of Roy Chicago’s band at their base at Abalabi Hotel, Mushin that our mother’s driver and handiman, a man from Owo we called Oyoyo, took me and my brother Tope one evening in 1963 to further our musical education. We were excited. Abalabi Hotel was within walking distance from our house on Cash Street. We were on vacation. As we walked with Oyoyo along Agege Motor Road, we sang out the lines from a song Roy Chicago had just released. It was about the thief who had stolen his trumpet when it was left in a van after a performance at the Abalabi Hotel.

Ole to ji kakaki wa,
Nibo ni o ti fun

The thief who stole our trumpet,
Where will he play it?

On this late evening, Oyoyo shepherded us past the gateman at the Abalabi Hotel to the back of the performance hall to meet his friend Alaba Pedro. Pedro was the rhythm guitarist in Roy Chicago’s band. Pedro took us to the stage where the instruments and sound systems were being set up for the night’s performance. We stood back, too awed to touch anything. There was a gangan, a set of akuba drums, and two shekeres. We also saw many modern instruments – shiny appliances in brass and steel which included several guitars, a saxophone, a trumpet, and a set of modern jazz drums that stood gleaming to one side near the free-standing microphone pole.

Pedro introduced us to other musicians who played in Roy Chicago’s band. There was Peter King, the tenor saxophonist. We also met the male back-up singer, Tunde Osofisan. We were told that this young man sometimes stood in for Roy Chicago when the bandleader’s voice was hoarse and raw from blowing too much into his trumpet. Apart from being a singer, he told us he was an actor. The older musicians had been comrades with Oyoyo when they all played together at the Central Hotel, Adamasingba in Ibadan. As we listened, we heard other names mentioned. Among these were Etim Udo, Marco Bazz and Jim Lawson, non-Yorubas who at one time or the other, had also been members of Roy Chicago’s Abalabi Rhythm Dandies. We prostrated for each of these men as we greeted them. ‘E pele, sir,’ we said to each in turn. They were our heroes. And besides, they were our elders. Some of them were as old as our father, the Black Prince, who was then forty-three years old. Then Pedro presented us to the great man himself.

Roy Chicago beamed at us and acted as if we were important grown up fans of his. He was a handsome, charismatic man of above average height. He was smooth skinned, smooth faced, and smooth limbed. At that time, he was in his mid-thirties. He was at the height of his fame and in the prime of life. Everything about him was smooth, including the suave way he put the two of us at ease, young teenagers who should be at our ‘lesson,’ instead of sneaking into a hotel that had young ladies of questionable virtue loitering around its entrance and foyer. Oyoyo asked Roy Chicago to tell us about his music. And this is how we came to hear the story of the origin of highlife music from the mouth of one of its greatest practitioners, Roy Chicago himself.

‘To me,’ he began in that mellifluous voice that sounded to us no different from the way he sang, ‘the song that started modern music in Lagos was Fatai Rolling Dollar’s “Easy motion tourist.” Of course, we must admit that Fatai learnt from others who came before him. These were the unsung heroes who no one paid attention to. Those musicians in the 1930’s and 40’s were not popular. They made very little money. There were no paying clients or sponsors in those days. They did not have the adoring, paying fans we have today. Let me say again that I have come to realize that that record “Easy Motion Tourist” released about ten years ago, was the grandfather, babanla, of all our current popular music. It was the last important bus stop on a route that took two different directions. One road led to highlife, the other to juju music.

And indeed, Fatai Rolling Dollar’s ‘Easy Motion Tourist’ had all the elements of a modern rock song that could have been composed by our musical heroes at that time, who were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones from England. The subject matter of the song was contemporary. It concerned an incident in the life of one of the band members, who had been locked out of the rented house where he had a room when he returned late one night after an engagement with the band.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/12/01/roy-chicago-and-the-roots-of-highlife-by-oladele-olusanya/