King Sunny Adé
Encyclopedia
King Sunny Adé is a popular performer of Yoruba
Nigeria
n Jùjú music
and a pioneer of modern world music
. He has been classed as one of the most influential musicians of all time.
n royal family
in Ondo
. His father was a church organist, while his mother was a trader. Adé left grammar school in Ondo under the pretense of going to the University of Lagos. There in Lagos his mercurial musical career started.
Sunny Adé's Musical Sound has evolved from the early days. His career began with Moses Olaiya
's Federal Rhythm Dandies, a highlife
band. He left to form The Green Spots in 1967. Over the years, for various reasons ranging from changes in his music to business concerns, Sunny Adé's band changed its name several times, first to African Beats and then to Golden Mercury.
, American guitarist, composer and one of his devout followers, once said,
When Adé headlined concerts in the United States, The New York Times
s Robert Palmer described one of Adé's several concerts in New York in the 1980s one of the most significant pop music events of the decade and Adé as "one of the world's great band leaders".
His second album under the cusp of international stardom was Synchro System
which attracted many converts of world music and earned him a Grammy nomination in the folk/ethic music category.
.
His music is in the age old tradition of singing poetic lyrics("Ewi" in Yoruba) and praise of dignitaries as well components of "juju" (traditional African belief) called the "Ogede"-"casting a spell". Hence, Adé's music constitutes a record of the oral tradition
of his people for posterity.
Sunny Adé was the first to introduce the pedal steel guitar
to Nigerian pop music. He was the first to introduce the use of synthesizers, clavinet, vibraphone, tenor guitar
into the juju music repertoire such as dub and wah-wah
guitar licks.
, Island Records
began looking for another third world artist to put on its contract, while Fela Kuti
had just been signed by Arista Records
. Producer Martin Meissonnier
introduced King Sunny Adé to Chris Blackwell
, leading to the release of Juju Music
in 1982. Many music aficionados are quick to point out that Sunny Adé's brand music of Juju could not be ignored by anyone at the time,. Today, this seminal recording is often acclaimed as one of the most important records from Africa. Adé gained a wide following with this album and was soon billed as "the African Bob Marley".
Sunny Adé has said in the past that his refusal to allow Island to meddle with his compositions and over-Europeanise and Americanise his music were the reasons why Island then decided to look elsewhere.
(WAKAFRIKA) and Stevie Wonder
(played harmonica in Aura).
Sunny Adé's brief recordings with Island records opened the floodgates for other world music artist
like Senegalese Youssou N'Dour
, Mali
's Salif Keita
and a host of others.
released a live concert
he did in Seattle and was given an astonishing embrace by fans across the globe who were eager for another international album release.
He soon employed an American manager, Andrew Frankel, negotiated another three album record deal with the Mesa record label (a Division of Paradise Group) in America. One of these albums was 1998's Odu
, a collection of traditional Yoruba songs
, with which he was nominated for the second Grammy Award
and thus making him the first African to be nominated twice for a Grammy. Apart from being an international musician Sunny Adé is also prominent in his native Nigeria, running multiple companies in several industries, creating a non-profit organization called the King Sunny Adé Foundation, and working with the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria.
In recent times, hip-hop music appears to be holding sway with the electronic media in Nigeria with massive airplays. Nonetheless, Sunny Adé's musical output has continued to inspire a vast generation of other Nigerian musicians, who believe in the big band musical set up which Sunny Adé and late Fela Kuti
are noted for. The musician, Lagbaja is one of the very many musicians Sunny Adé's music has inspired. In 2008, his contributions to world music was recognised; as he was given an award for his outstanding contribution to world music at the Reggae and world music awards held at the Appollo Theater in Harlem, New York.
, starring Richard Gere
, and the 1986 comedy One More Saturday Night, and he acted in Robert Altman
's 1987 comedy O.C. and Stiggs
.
and Canada
, Sunny Adé, now known as The Chairman in his home country-Nigeria
was appointed a visiting professor of Music at the Obafemi Awolowo University
Ile-Ife. In July the same year King Sunny Adé was inducted into the Afropop Hall of Fame, at the Brooklyn
African Festival U.S.A. He dedicated the award to the recently deceased Michael Jackson
.
Yoruba people
The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...
Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
n Jùjú music
Jùjú music
Jùjú is a style of Nigerian popular music, derived from traditional Yoruba percussion. The name comes from a Yoruba word "juju" or "jiju" meaning "throwing" or "something being thrown." Juju music did not derive its name from juju, which "is a form of magic and the use of magic objects or...
and a pioneer of modern world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
. He has been classed as one of the most influential musicians of all time.
Background
Adé was born to a NigeriaNigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
n royal family
Royal family
A royal family is the extended family of a king or queen regnant. The term imperial family appropriately describes the extended family of an emperor or empress, while the terms "ducal family", "grand ducal family" or "princely family" are more appropriate to describe the relatives of a reigning...
in Ondo
Ondo
Ondo is the name of:* Ondo , a style of Japanese folk music* Ondo, Hiroshima, a town in Japan* Ondo City in Nigeria* Ondo State in Nigeria* Ondo Phone in Europe...
. His father was a church organist, while his mother was a trader. Adé left grammar school in Ondo under the pretense of going to the University of Lagos. There in Lagos his mercurial musical career started.
Sunny Adé's Musical Sound has evolved from the early days. His career began with Moses Olaiya
Moses Olaiya
Moses Olaiya , better known by his stage name "Baba Sala", is a comedian, dramatist and Yoruba language film and television actor from Nigeria....
's Federal Rhythm Dandies, a highlife
Highlife
Highlife is a musical genre that originated in Ghana in the 1900s and spread to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and other West African countries by 1920...
band. He left to form The Green Spots in 1967. Over the years, for various reasons ranging from changes in his music to business concerns, Sunny Adé's band changed its name several times, first to African Beats and then to Golden Mercury.
Stage performances
In the 1970s and 1980s Sunny embarked on a tour of America and Europe where Adé played to mixed (both Black and White) audiences. His stage act was characterised by dexterous dancing steps and mastery of the guitar. Trey AnastasioTrey Anastasio
Trey Anastasio is an American guitarist, composer, and vocalist most noted for his work with the rock band Phish...
, American guitarist, composer and one of his devout followers, once said,
"If you come to see Sunny Adé live, you must be prepared to groove all night."
When Adé headlined concerts in the United States, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
s Robert Palmer described one of Adé's several concerts in New York in the 1980s one of the most significant pop music events of the decade and Adé as "one of the world's great band leaders".
His second album under the cusp of international stardom was Synchro System
Syncro System
Syncro System is a 1983 album by Nigerian jùjú band King Sunny Adé And His African Beats. The album peaked at #91 on Billboard's "Pop Albums" chart. It was the second of King Sunny Adé's three releases for Island Records, following on the heels of 1982's Juju Music, but was not as critically...
which attracted many converts of world music and earned him a Grammy nomination in the folk/ethic music category.
A fusion of sounds
Sunny Adé's music is characterised by, among other instruments, the Talking drum - an instrument indigenous to his Yoruba roots, the guitar and his peculiar application to juju music, that would easily put him in the same class as guitar musicians like SantanaSantana (band)
Santana is a rock band based around guitarist Carlos Santana and founded in the late 1960s. It first came to public attention after their performing the song "Soul Sacrifice" at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, when their Latin rock provided a contrast to other acts on the bill...
.
His music is in the age old tradition of singing poetic lyrics("Ewi" in Yoruba) and praise of dignitaries as well components of "juju" (traditional African belief) called the "Ogede"-"casting a spell". Hence, Adé's music constitutes a record of the oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
of his people for posterity.
Sunny Adé was the first to introduce the pedal steel guitar
Pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal bar to "fret" or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of steel guitar, it also uses pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence the name "pedal"...
to Nigerian pop music. He was the first to introduce the use of synthesizers, clavinet, vibraphone, tenor guitar
Tenor guitar
1932 Martin 0-18 T Sunburst Tenor Guitar|thumb|rightThe tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was developed so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on the guitar...
into the juju music repertoire such as dub and wah-wah
Wah-wah pedal
A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, mimicking the human voice...
guitar licks.
Island Records
After the death of Bob MarleyBob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
, Island Records
Island Records
Island Records is a record label that was founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. It was based in the United Kingdom for many years and is now owned by Universal Music Group...
began looking for another third world artist to put on its contract, while Fela Kuti
Fela Kuti
Fela Anikulapo Kuti , or simply Fela , was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick.-Biography:...
had just been signed by Arista Records
Arista Records
Arista was an American record label. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment and operated under the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records...
. Producer Martin Meissonnier
Martin Meissonnier
Martin Meissonnier is a French journalist, producer, director and composer. Formerly a journalist for Libération, he has made a specialty of discovering new types of music...
introduced King Sunny Adé to Chris Blackwell
Chris Blackwell
Christopher Percy Gordon "Chris" Blackwell is a British record producer and businessman, who was the founder of Island Records, acknowledged as the most successful and groundbreaking independent record company in history. Blackwell has been a music industry mogul for over fifty years...
, leading to the release of Juju Music
Juju Music
Juju Music is the 1982 major label debut of Nigerian jùjú band King Sunny Adé and His African Beats. It represented the first worldwide release for Adé, who was already established in his native Nigeria as its "biggest musical draw and juju music's reigning monarch". The album was a critical and...
in 1982. Many music aficionados are quick to point out that Sunny Adé's brand music of Juju could not be ignored by anyone at the time,. Today, this seminal recording is often acclaimed as one of the most important records from Africa. Adé gained a wide following with this album and was soon billed as "the African Bob Marley".
Sunny Adé has said in the past that his refusal to allow Island to meddle with his compositions and over-Europeanise and Americanise his music were the reasons why Island then decided to look elsewhere.
Collaborations
Sunny has collaborated with major artists such as Manu DibangoManu Dibango
-External links:*...
(WAKAFRIKA) and Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
(played harmonica in Aura).
Sunny Adé's brief recordings with Island records opened the floodgates for other world music artist
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
like Senegalese Youssou N'Dour
Youssou N'Dour
Youssou N'Dour is a Senegalese singer, percussionist and occasional actor. In 2004, Rolling Stone described him as, in Senegal and much of Africa, "perhaps the most famous singer alive." He helped develop a style of popular music in Senegal, known in the Serer language as mbalax, a type of music...
, Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
's Salif Keita
Salif Keita
Salif Keïta is an internationally recognized afro-pop singer-songwriter from Mali. He is unique not only because of his reputation as the Golden Voice of Africa, but because he has albinism and is a direct descendant of the founder of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita...
and a host of others.
1987 comeback
In 1987, Sunny Adé returned to international spotlight when RykodiscRykodisc
Rykodisc Records is an American record label. It is owned by Warner Music Group, operates as a unit of WMG's Independent Label Group and is distributed through Alternative Distribution Alliance.-Company history:...
released a live concert
Concert
A concert is a live performance before an audience. The performance may be by a single musician, sometimes then called a recital, or by a musical ensemble, such as an orchestra, a choir, or a musical band...
he did in Seattle and was given an astonishing embrace by fans across the globe who were eager for another international album release.
He soon employed an American manager, Andrew Frankel, negotiated another three album record deal with the Mesa record label (a Division of Paradise Group) in America. One of these albums was 1998's Odu
Odu (album)
Odu is a studio album by Nigerian Jùjú musician King Sunny Adé. It was released in 1998 on Mesa/Atlantic. Recorded at Dockside Studios, Maurice, Louisiana, it was produced by Andrew Frankel and features traditional Yoruba music....
, a collection of traditional Yoruba songs
Yoruba music
The music of the Yoruba people of Nigeria is best known for an extremely advanced drumming tradition, especially using the dundun hourglass tension drums. Yoruba folk music became perhaps the most prominent kind of West African music in Afro-Latin and Caribbean musical styles...
, with which he was nominated for the second Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
and thus making him the first African to be nominated twice for a Grammy. Apart from being an international musician Sunny Adé is also prominent in his native Nigeria, running multiple companies in several industries, creating a non-profit organization called the King Sunny Adé Foundation, and working with the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria.
In recent times, hip-hop music appears to be holding sway with the electronic media in Nigeria with massive airplays. Nonetheless, Sunny Adé's musical output has continued to inspire a vast generation of other Nigerian musicians, who believe in the big band musical set up which Sunny Adé and late Fela Kuti
Fela Kuti
Fela Anikulapo Kuti , or simply Fela , was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick.-Biography:...
are noted for. The musician, Lagbaja is one of the very many musicians Sunny Adé's music has inspired. In 2008, his contributions to world music was recognised; as he was given an award for his outstanding contribution to world music at the Reggae and world music awards held at the Appollo Theater in Harlem, New York.
Hollywood career
In the 1980s Adé embarked on a career in Hollywood. His music was featured in the 1983 film BreathlessBreathless (1983 film)
Breathless is a 1983 American drama film starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky. It is a remake of the 1960 French film À bout de souffle and was released in France under the title A Bout de Souffle Made in USA. The original film is about an American girl and a French criminal in Paris...
, starring Richard Gere
Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...
, and the 1986 comedy One More Saturday Night, and he acted in Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
's 1987 comedy O.C. and Stiggs
O.C. and Stiggs
O.C. and Stiggs is a 1987 film directed by Robert Altman, based on two characters that were originally featured in a series of stories published in National Lampoon magazine. The film stars Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry as the title characters...
.
2009 Comeback
At the beginning of another round of tour of the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Sunny Adé, now known as The Chairman in his home country-Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
was appointed a visiting professor of Music at the Obafemi Awolowo University
Obafemi Awolowo University
Obafemi Awolowo University is a government-owned and -operated Nigerian university. The university is in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria...
Ile-Ife. In July the same year King Sunny Adé was inducted into the Afropop Hall of Fame, at the Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
African Festival U.S.A. He dedicated the award to the recently deceased Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
.
Filmography
| Film | Role | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Breathless Breathless (1983 film) Breathless is a 1983 American drama film starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky. It is a remake of the 1960 French film À bout de souffle and was released in France under the title A Bout de Souffle Made in USA. The original film is about an American girl and a French criminal in Paris... |
King Sunny Adé (Music) | 1983 |
| One More Saturday Night | King Sunny Adé (Music) | 1986 |
| O.C. and Stiggs O.C. and Stiggs O.C. and Stiggs is a 1987 film directed by Robert Altman, based on two characters that were originally featured in a series of stories published in National Lampoon magazine. The film stars Daniel H. Jenkins and Neill Barry as the title characters... |
King Sunny Adé (Music & appearance) | 1987 |