Born.
Sunday Adeniyi, 1 September 1946, Oshogbo, Nigeria. When
Ade dropped out of school in 1963 in order to play with semi-professional
Lagos juju bands, his parents - from the royal family of Ondo
- were horrified. In Nigeria, as in much of Africa, music was
regarded by ‘respectable’ people as a very low-caste occupation.
It's hoped that Ade's subsequent national and international success
somewhat mollified such parental disapproval -for Ade's star rose
fast and high. By 1964, he was lead guitarist in Moses Olaiya's
highly regarded band the Rhythm Dandies, and by 1966, after a
short spell with another major bandleader, Tunde Nightingale,
he had formed his own outfit, the Green Spots, playing a speedy
but relaxed style of juju characterized by tight vocal harmonies
and deliciously melodic guitar work. The band's name was a cheeky
riposte to seminal juju stylist I.K. Dairo, whose Blue Spots had
ruled the juju roost since the early '50s. Ade's luck continued
with his first release, "Challenge Cup," a song about a local
football championship that became a national hit in 1967. The
same year, Ade released his first album, ALANU LOLUWA.
The late '60s and early '70s saw Ade and his renamed
African Beats go from success to success. By 1975, he felt sufficiently
powerful and financially secure to set up his own label, Sunny
Alade Records, now a major independent in Nigeria, which releases
all Ade's domestic releases. The mid-'70s also saw him open up
his own juju nightclub in Lagos, the Ariya, the African Beats’
home venue when not on tour. By the end of the decade he was one
of the ruling triumvirate of juju music -alongside Ebenezer Obey
and Dele Abiodun -releasing some six albums per year, and selling
around 200,000 copies of each release. This achievement was undermined
by a substantial proportion of these sales being of bootlegged
pressings.
By the early '80s, African music was finding a
growing audience in the UK, where a number of the more adventurous
labels were looking around for African artists to put under contract.
In 1982, Island Records signed Ade for Europe and North America
(promoting him as 'the African Bob Marley'). His first album under
the arrangement was JUJU MUSIC, an across-the-board critical success,
which charted in the USA. Ade's British breakthrough came with
a triumphant concert he and the African Beats gave at London's
Lyceum Ballroom in January 1983. Without exception the music press
hailed Ade as an emergent international star. He played regularly
to a hugely enthusiastic multi-ethnic audience, proving that -in
a live context at any rate -juju's use of Yoruba rather than English-language
lyrics was no barrier to overseas acceptance. (The audience size
and composition was in marked contrast to Ade's previous British
concerts. In 1975, he had made a three-month tour of the country,
playing almost exclusively to expatriate Nigerian audiences at
specially organized cultural evenings in municipal halls and community
centres).
The critical success of JUJU MUSIC was matched
by the 1983 follow-up, SYNCHRO SYSTEM, which also made encouraging
UK and further US chart entries. Both albums were produced by
the young Frenchman Martin Meissonnier, who must share much of
the credit for Ade's, and juju's, international breakthrough.
A third Island album, 1984's AURA, which included a guest appearance
by Stevie Wonder, was also well received, but Island -who were
clearly banking on major chart success in the short term rather
than career development -declined to renew Ade's contract, dropping
him from the label. 1984 was also marred by dissension among the
African Beats. Following successful tours of the USA and Japan,
they demanded substantial increases in salary. Ade, who was in
fact losing money on his international touring due to the large
number of musicians he was carrying and the limited audience capacity
of the venues he was playing, was unwilling to meet these demands,
and the African Beats were dissolved. Return
ing to Lagos, he formed a new band, Golden Mercury,
and now records and performs almost exclusively in Nigeria. While
the abatement of his international activities is regretted by
juju music fans in the West, Ade continues to record outstanding
albums, which are readily obtainable at specialist record stores.
Another international release was then cut for
Dutch label Provogue Records in 1989 (Rykodisc in the USA). In
1990 Ade's collaboration with Onyeka, WAIT FOR ME, provoked a
good deal of intrigue. The album included a song titled "Choices,"
and it later emerged that the collection had been funded by the
US AID Office of Population as part of a $30 million family planning
project. Several African-Americans slammed Onyeka and Ade as 'accomplices
to an attack on African cultural traditions and religious beliefs'.
This contrasted with Ade's more usual advice about the futherance
of the population (by this time he himself had 12 children). Reports
followed of his death in 1991 after an onstage collapse in Lagos,
but these were unfounded. He travelled instead to London for recuperaiton,
but Ade's once-mighty reputation was clearly in danger of losing
its lustre. He returned to form in 1995 with E DIDE and promoted
the album outside Nigeria. In his homeland he retains a huge following.
He runs, among other things, a record label, a film company, a
nightclub and a charity foundation.
© 1996 Microsoft Corporation and/or
its suppliers. All rights reserved.
|
