Dyed in the wool songwriter, singer and percussionist classed one of the pioneers of world modern music, Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye, and famous with the moniker, King Sunny Ade (KSA), is waltzing into the league of septuagenarians in days. As he turns 70 on September 22, the self-taught, self-inspired and self-mentored multiple instrumentalist, who’s also a three- time Grammy award nominee, is bringing the world to Nigeria. This is evident in a special number his old time friend, Stevie Wonder, had waxed for him and for which he would be sharing the stage with Senegal’s legendary singer, Youssou N’dour and a host of other music stars at the grand finale of the month-long festivities. KSA reminisces life at 70 in this interview with LANRE ODUKOYA.
*At 70, is there any fear you’d nursed these past many years?
At this age, the only fear that frequently hits me is that I don’t know when God would say ‘stop giving fans what they want’. Otherwise I have no other fears because God does His things His own way. If He wants me to sing many more years to come, I will still be singing and giving you what you’ve always loved. If I don’t sing, what happens to all my fans who derive so much in what I do with my talent?
*The duet you had with Onyeka Onwenu on the song, ‘Wait for Me’, (a 3 minutes and 55 seconds campaign son) stirred so controversies years ago and it doesn’t seem to have fizzled out out-right. Did you have crush, date the lady or any other female singer of your time?
On the song I did with Onyeka Onwenu entitled ‘Wait for Me’ (which opened with a subtle whispers of romance, “I love you, I want to marry you (KSA)…I love you too but I’d promised to wait till after our marriage and I know you would wait because you love me (Onyeka Onwenu)” at that time, it was a gimmick.
It was actually something different that we wanted to launch. We really wanted to launch a campaign to make children abstain from sexual intercourse till they come of age. It was to discourage the incessant unwanted pregnancies and it was organised by Hopkins University of America.
Their idea was to find a man and a lady to deliver the message through a song. How would they get the message across? That was what brought them to the choice of Onyeka Onwenu and King Sunny Ade. The press helped us make the gimmick work.
It worked because people were at loss as to whether we were dating or getting married. Even before then we had played together on so many stages. But that was quite a different experience because of the suspense it created.
I didn’t have a crush on her or any other female singer of that time. She was a good girl. Recently, we performed together again two and a half months or so. Before then you’d probably remember that the day I played with Wizkid, she also came onstage to sing her style of music. So, we’re just colleagues and we do shows together.
*What’s your take on the dimensions music take in Nigeria today, especially with the likes of Wizkid leading the pack?
First of all, Wizkid is one of the musicians in this country that are on the same page and in-line for collaboration with me. I have 9ice and Dare Art Alade as some of the guys I would be singing with, they’ve made their requests and I’m working on it.
My door is opened for everybody to come as long as you know what you want to do with me. Yesteryears music has come to stay and the new generation singers are coming up well. In my own generation, parents were very reluctant to allow their children to do music.
Today families would call on me and say, “Sunny, this boy wants to study music, can you help me put him through?” This never happened in our own time but we concentrated on the passion we believed in. Music was never seen as a serious business, but I’m proud of what the industry is becoming in terms value placed services.
I’m an indigenous music player while most singers of today play their music on computers. That’s a huge difference. So much goes into my shows because they are crude use of the instruments and I’m not doing this because I cannot use the computers to achieve music. But I have to be very careful what I use the computer for.
Nowadays, they’re playing music for as long as the press promotes them and put them on the shows. I cannot say this is the best way to do Nigerian music, anything that goes well with Nigerians, if you sell it and Nigeria buys it, that is alright.
Any music that you cannot do with your natural skill, that you cannot dictate with your hands and other parts of your body necessary, but with a computer, may not meet deliver sufficient melodies the crude percussions and the rest would achieve. But the use of digital music has come to stay, the world embraces it and I do too.
*You were supposed to travel with your band to accomplish a US tour last year but you were denied visa, how were you able to remove the obstacles that inhibited your plans last year as you had just completed a tour of America?
In the last two years, I didn’t go with my band on the tour because we were told by the American embassy that they had some technical problems- my band was not only the one affected. It affected others all over the world.
They also had it on their website that due to circumstances beyond their control, they couldn’t give visas to bands. But this year, we were given the visas without questions at all. We were lucky to have that. There were two reasons we went to the United States.
First of all to redeem our image, because before the tour there was a rumour in the papers that KSA is dead. And I quickly refuted it and claimed I’m alive. So, we have to quickly go and correct that widely held but erroneous impression.
And I’m very happy that every show we did this time, we got congratulatory handshakes. Some of Nigerian artistes also came to see and attested they were very good shows. The difference between the show I did in the US recently and the ones I did years ago is the eventual meeting with the man Nigerians in Diaspora had longed for. Now they saw me- the ovation was loud because they could finally meet me in person.
*Last year, you won a 30-year-old legal battle against African Songs and its subsidiary, and you were awarded over N500million plus the recovery of your master tapes. Have you redeemed your rights and if not, what exactly is happening?
The case was won by me by God’s grace and they were told to give me N505million and they’re yet to redeem that, but the next thing I saw was an appeal. That’s why I cannot say more than that now. I wish they just give me my master tapes which are worth more than the money court asked them to pay me. Master tapes are for life, so, if I get it and join it to N505million because I also need money, that’s something to smile for. But the matter is with my lawyer who had been proper briefed.
*You’ve been playing music since the 1960s and you’re still very relevant, most singers now rarely get that longevity. What do you think is responsible?
There are good musicians in this country today that are not as lucky as I’ve been. This is because the media is also part of the showbiz community because if you don’t report this beat no music will go anywhere.
When the press is behind a singer, even if the work isn’t splendid, he gets fair reviews that encourage people to go after the song or music video. If you’re lucky as a singer, you could become a star just like that.
But I tell those who come to me is that my generation has made certain mistakes, please don’t repeat them. Please check what we have done wrong- remove and replace the wrong decisions we made with the better ones, join it to yours, you would have a blast. Our forebears too made some mistakes, we learnt from them, remove what they did wrong and added what we were convinced were better and the industry is better for it now.
Before you can say a song has good quality- it depends on how it’s being recorded, where it is recorded and what you use to play it. Music is always there and those who play music do it genuinely. It’s sometimes left for the producer to find that sound that would make the music sooth the ears of the listeners.
The equipment are also a matter to worry about. For instance, in Nigeria to you can count how many good studios we have. Unlike those day when we had so many good studios everywhere- Philips, Decca, EMI and so many in the East and North too, but today everybody has a small studio in their basements. Then suddenly we realise that many of our stars are going to South Africa to mix in order for the sound of the music to have the quality they desire.
*Who is your favourite singer in the new generation?
I love all of them for a simple reason – they’re all unique with their styles of play. I cannot compare them to each other- you can only use one name to address them and that’s ‘hip hop’. Wizkid’s sound is different from Korede Bello, Korede Bello is different from Kiss Daniel. Even in Juju music, our styles aren’t the same. My style is not the same with Dele Abiodun and his is not the same with Dr. Ebenezer Obey. But Juju music unifies us.
*Will you be taking a new wife sooner or later?
A new wife? Are you praying for me or cursing me? If you see some of my grandchildren, you’d marvel and that’s the reason I sometimes forbid them from going out with me. A lot of times people had said, “good afternoon madam, how are you madam?” to some of them and I would interject, “she’s not madam o, she’s my grandchild.”
And they’d argue it cannot be true. I believe I clocked 70 on September one because if I die today, they’d say he dies at 70. But the media guys would say ‘he dies a few days before his 70th birthday.
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