The death of High life music Maestro Chief Emeka Morocco Maduka, the king of Ekpili music is no longer news. The successful musician passed away on the 29th of October 2020, this was confirmed by Mr. Chukwudi Avoaja, a member of the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria( PMAN), Anambra branch.

According to writer Tochi Onwubiko, the life and musical career of Chief Emeka Morocco is poorly documented and is not easily accessible even by surfing the internet, so we took it upon ourselves to dig for 8 things most people didn’t know about Chief Morocco.

Here they are:

According to an interview with the National Light Newspaper, amongst the many hit tracks released by Chief Emeka Morocco Maduka during his successful career, the song that brought him into limelight was ‘Mgboye and Dominic’.


This is the ‘second death’ of the music maestro, during a music tour in Northern Nigeria in 1998, there was a widespread rumor of his death from a motor accident, he learnt of the rumour while performing in Maiduguri and went ahead to finish the tour unperturbed. This rumor prompted his release of an album titled ‘Asili 98’ (Gossip) which was one of his bestselling albums.


Although regarded as the King of Ekpili music, Chief Morocco did not invent Ekpili Music but is said to have had the biggest influence on the modern day Ekpili music. He is recorded to be the first to introduce guitar, keyboard and usage of microphone in the genre, he was also the first export of Ekpili music as he disclosed in an interview with the Anambra State owned newspaper, National Light.


Chief Emeka Morocco Maduka got the name Morocco while in secondary school at Eastern Commercial Secondary School Aba, Abia State. While playing football, he often boasted of having the ability to dribble his playmates from Nigeria to Morocco and students stuck to calling him Morocco boy, he however, admitted that after he went into music he considered changing the name so he looked it up in the dictionary and found out that the meaning was similar to his story of success in music and decided to keep the name.




Chief Morocco’s father saw the music career his son embarked on as an irresponsible distraction and never fully supported it until his death.


Chief Morocco started music at the age of 12, released his first album Aya Nigeria (Nigerian War) in 1971 and has up to 120 albums to his name, wow! Before his death, he was the oldest living high life musician in the south east.


Before his death, Chief Morocco had at least one album in the making. According to an interview with Sun news online earlier this year, he stated that he will retire from music after his 80th birthday celebration.


A historic music concert to celebrate and mark ’60 Years of Chief Morocco Maduka on stage’ was scheduled to hold on 7th of March this year in Onitsha Anambra State, but had to be postponed due to the Corona virus outbreak and was then rescheduled to 24th of October and did not hold unfortunately before his demise.


https://www.ojamedia.com/2020/10/chief-emeka-morocco-maduka-8-things-you.html