On Throwback Thursday, let’s dive into highlife music. Long before afro hip hop and other present genres of music took over, we used to be addicted to highlife musicians. Though they have passed on, their highlife music and delivery are evergreen. Let us take a look at some of them:
1. Chief Sir Stephen Osadebe
Chief Sir Stephen Osadebe often referred to as just Osadebe, was a Nigerian highlife musician from Atani. His career spanned over four decades, and he is one of the best known Igbo highlife musicians and king of highlife music. His best-known hit was the 1984 single “Osondi Owendi”, which established him as a leader in the highlife genre and was one of Nigeria’s most popular records ever.
2. Prince Nico Mbarga
Nico Mbarga better known as Prince Nico Mbarga, was a highlife musician, born to a Nigerian mother and a Cameroonian father in Abakaliki, Nigeria. He is renowned for his hit song “Sweet Mother”, recorded with his band Rocafil Jazz, which has been described as the best-selling song in history by an African recording artist.
3. Oliver De Coque
Oliver Sunday Akanite better known by the stage name Oliver De Coque, was a Nigerian guitarist and one of Africa’s most prolific recording artists. De Coque was born in Ezinifite, Anambra State, Nigeria, in 1947, to an Igbo family. He started playing music at the age of 11 and was taught to play the guitar by a Congolese guitarist living in Nigeria. De Coque was an apprentice of juju musicians Sunny Agaga and Jacob Oluwale and became locally well known by the time he was a teenager.
4.Victor Olaiya
Olaiya was born on 31 December 1930, in Calabar, Cross River State, the 20th child of a family of 24. His parents, Alfred Omolona Olaiya and Bathsheba Owolabi Motajo, came from Ijesha-Ishu in Ekiti State. Olaiya came from a very rich family. His father’s house, Ilọijọs Bar, stood at 2 Bamgbose Street, Lagos Island until it was demolished in September 2016.
5. Bobby Benson
Bernard Olabinjo Benson was born on 11 April 1921 in Ikorodu, Lagos State, into an aristocratic family. His older brother T. O. S. Benson (1917–2008) would become a successful politician. While at secondary school he also learned tailoring, but after leaving school he became a boxer for a brief period, and then a sailor in the Merchant Navy. In 1944, he left his ship in London, where he made his entertainment debut with the Negro Ballet, touring several European capitals. He met his wife, Cassandra (half-Scottish and half-Caribbean in origin), while in Britain, and on return to Nigeria in 1947 they established the Bobby Benson and Cassandra Theatrical Party.