The late Apala musician and Abeokuta native Ayinla Omowura, who was a big star in the 1970s and died as a result of a beer parlour brawl, is having another moment in the spotlight. A big biography was released in 2020, and a major film is due to come out this year.
In veteran filmmaker Tunde Kelani’s opinion, Abeokuta produced three major musical sons: “There is Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey who […] is a conservative […] but Ayinla Omowura was different because he was revolutionary […] he grew up from a very poor background and he had to fend for himself.”
Omowura, born in 1933 in Abeokuta, the son of a blacksmith, left his father’s smithy in pursuit of an early life in the streets life. His three loves – music, dance and peregrination – coalesced in his pursuit as a seli singer. Powered by a rattle and unique voice, Omowura combed the streets of Abeokuta in the company of friends busking. He worked several jobs – as a driver, butcher, bus park boy – but music always seemed to be on his mind.
Ultimately, his love for music morphed from being an amateur griot to an apprenticeship in olalomi, a variant of the musical genre apala, that led to being recruited by Adewole Alao Oniluola, who became his lead drummer in a sneaky twist of fate.
Apala may have begun with drums but with Omowura on vocals, he became the star of the show. Omowura, on account of his unique voice and quick pace of his apala, was particularly suited for stardom.
“Omowura fascinated me because he was different and [his apala] was very fast paced […] it was sort of hip hop at that time,” says Kelani, who recently completed a film about Omowura.
An Abeokuta boy
Omowura’s story is intimately linked to his home city, Abeokuta. An ancient city about 75km north of Lagos, it is named for its relationship to the Olumo Rock. Founded between the 1820s and 1830s by Sodeke, a charismatic warrior, who, according to historian Toyin Falola “led his people from the ravaging land of internecine rivalries”, it was an independent Yoruba city-state prior to the arrival of Europeans. The British eventually incorporated it into the colony of Nigeria in 1914.
Home to the Egbas sub-group of the Yoruba ethnic group and beyond its proximity to Nigeria’s economic capital Lagos, it boasts of illustrious people who have excelled across many walks of life including politics, science, arts and literature.
Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate, Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, and the late Moshood Abiola, business tycoon and winner of the annulled 12 June 1993 election, are all sons of Abeokuta.
Perhaps the most illustrious family from Abeokuta are the Ransome-Kutis. That lineage produced the world-famous Afrobeat musician and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, whose sons and grandson continue a legacy of music that began with Fela’s grandfather. Josiah Ransome-Kuti, a clergyman, travelled to London in the 1920s to record Christian hymns in Yoruba for Zonophone Records.
The Kutis are an elite among the Egbas in Abeokuta, a group historically comprised mostly of farmers, blacksmiths and traders. Music was an integral aspect of Egba cultural identity. It often gave meaning to key life events – like deaths, births and marriages.
There is little wonder then that Abeokuta produced a significant number of musicians across several generations. Beside Fela Kuti, musicians like the late Fela Sowande, a classical pianist, Tunji Oyelana, a folk singer and actor, and the Lijadu Sisters, who brought Yoruba music into global pop consciousness in the 1970s, were also proud Egba offspring. These musicians had ambitions outside Abeokuta, and there were musical practitioners whose obsessions were to sustain the ethos of traditional Yoruba music.
Apala popularity
Apala, a musical style named after a drum, was one of such traditional Yoruba music popular from the 1930s. It originated from Islamic liturgical music that woke up Muslim faithful to pray during the holy month of Ramadan.
As typified in most recorded apala songs, the drum takes the lead, while voices follow. Other musical instruments utilised in apala are the bell, rattle instrument (shekere) and thumb piano (agidigbo), producing a slow-tempo percussive rhythm laden with call-and-response poetry drawing from Yoruba cosmology, idioms and proverbs. Self-praise, peer praise and praise of patrons are prominent themes of the songs, and sometimes, the lyrical content is social commentary and tackles political issues.
Apala, like juju music, was at its peak in the post-civil war 1970s when the injection of petrodollars led the Nigerian economy to boom. Some of its biggest stars at the time were Haruna Ishola, Raimi Dogo, Fatai Olowonyo and Omowura.
An original gangster
Nigerian poet and music enthusiast Peter Akinlabi says: “He [Omowura] was probably the first gangster music artist.”
Feuds were a major aspect of his songs. He beefed with everyone in sight, including his superiors, like Haruna Ishola, whose superiority he later acknowledged to contemporaries like Fatai Olowonyo. Omowura had an enduring tiff with Olowonyo too, which was reflected across his discography. Even Omowura’s erring son received an earful on one of his records at the heights of his prime.
To call Ayinla Omowura a gangster is indeed consistent with his personality. He was a larger-than-life person. At the height of his fame, he was a flamboyant dresser, wearing grandiose agbada of the highest quality of Swiss lace. His neck was covered in a swathe of gold chains. His hands hoisted expensive bracelets and rings. Perhaps all this was why he earned the sobriquet Hadji Costly.
Omowura was the patron saint of the working class typified by road transport workers. He was also a reveller notorious for his penchant for beer parlours and was drawn to women who ran these kinds of establishments.
Although a light drinker – he could hardly finish a bottle of lager, but a generous buyer for friends, associates and strangers – he was renowned for his heavy use of marijuana, fiery temper and physical altercations.
It was one such fight that led to his murder in a barroom brawl on the afternoon of 6 May 1980 at a relatively youthful age of 47. He was struck on the head with a beer mug by his assailant and he died from the resulting brain haemorrhage.
A cultural moment reborn
41 years since his untimely passing, the legend of Ayinla Omowura continues to thrive even though apala has waned in popularity and has been all but replaced by the faster-paced fuji music.
His 22 LP records released by EMI Records (now Ivory Records Nigeria) remain in circulation. Terry Apala and Q-dot Alagbe, both new-school musicians, have also made music heavily influenced by Omowura’s style.
A 537-page biography titled Ayinla Omowura: Life and Times of an Apala Legend by Festus Adedayo, a lawyer and seasoned journalist, was released in 2020.
Film-maker Kelani’s movie entitled Ayinla – featuring Lateef Adedimeji starring as Ayinla Omowura and other notable actors including Bimbo Manuel, Ade Laoye and Kunle Afolayan – is billed to be released in cinemas this year.
Labour of love
The film project began about five years ago, says Kelani. Although born in Lagos, Kelani, also an Abeokuta indigene, spent his formative years in Abeokuta, where he once caught a glimpse of Omowura in his neighbourhood.
“I don’t know what it was about but I saw some women on their knees begging Ayinla. He was known to have a temper, and they could not placate him,” reminisces Kelani.
Veteran footballer and Abeokuta native Segun Odegbami wrote of the forthcoming film: “[It] captures the odyssey and adventures of a local musical hero and relives them in Abeokuta, this quiet town in the heart of Yorubaland, saturated with nature’s ‘accidents’ in its resultant ‘catastrophic’ topography of meandering brooks, rocky boulders, dangerous rapids, rolling hills and valleys, deep gorges.”
The film is not a day-to-day account of Omowura’s life. Rather, it is an ensemble film with a slew of other colourful characters, although Omowura is the hero at the plot’s core.
There was a local aphorism at the height of apala’s popularity in the 1970s that roughly translates as ‘there is no place for apala in London’. Enter the film’s conceit. A famous promoter challenges this idea by planning to take apala’s superstar, Omowura, to London for a profitable concert.
In Adedayo’s biography, there was indeed a scheduled tour for Omowura in London that he could not attend on account of his death.
Feeling a loss
Ayinla’s death left a void in apala music. “With the death of Omowura in 1980 and Haruna’s in 1983 […] a room seemed to have been opened for fuji to flourish,” opines author Adedayo.
Fuji – developed by Sikiru Ayinde, who was a president of Omowura’s fan club – further quickened the tempo of apala. Kollington Ayinla, another fuji grandee, started out as Omowura’s protégé.
Fuji music shares the contemporary relevance, longevity and trendy stylings of US hip hop. Hip hop has origins in West African griot traditions, and the apala musician was a modern griot. Omowura was an influential modern griot who updated apala in preparation for the quantum leaps of fuji.
A question does remain: why does Omowura continue to be relevant? Adedayo opines: “Ayinla has always had a cultic following, even till now, many of his followers see his songs as evergreen. Till today, seldom would you find a musician who has his kind of lacerating lyrics. That lacuna cannot and has yet to be filled by any other musician.”
Omowura’s music, which used to be for the working class, has now garnered the interest of the elites as well as academia. Ayinla Omowura, like Rex Lawson, Celestine Ukwu and Crosdale Juba, may have suffered tragic early deaths, but his music continues to resonate with a younger generation. He may have been a provincial hero in his lifetime, but in death, there might be a space for apala in London after all.