Meet Stephen Osita Osadebe

By G. Pascal Zachary, In These Times. Posted July 26, 2002.

To watch U2 singer Bono traveling around Africa, relentlessly advocating for debt relief alongside the secretary of the U.S. Treasury, is to be reminded of the old connection between rock stars and African humanitarian causes. Bono may be imbued with an Irish compassion, but he is only the latest rocker to trumpet the cause of the African poor and afflicted. I was a grade-school boy when the Beatles took America by storm in the ’60s, and I will never forget my first images of Africa, which I associated with one Beatle in particular.

The pictures showed gaunt, starving babies from a place called Biafra, which George Harrison had taken a liking to. Biafra was created when a tribe called the Ibo, prominent around the Niger River Delta, seceded in 1967 from the West African nation of Nigeria. The Nigerian army, after initial setbacks, laid siege to the Ibo who, in their desperation, appealed to the rest of the world for help. (This had the perverse effect of prolonging the war -- it lasted more than two years -- and adding immensely to the causalities.) The plight of Biafrans captured Harrison’s conscience and gave birth to a new pattern in pop culture: the singer who cared about the Fate of the Earth and then held a benefit concert to prove it.

Harrison’s concert brought great attention to the cause of the Ibo, giving birth to another iron law of pop culture: The defining images of the South, or of Africa at least, are often constructed by the singers and poets of the North ... and then fed back to the South. The frantic race by rockers to find their own causes among the wretched of the earth almost obscures the fact that the poor of the developing world have their own singers and songs.

The Ibo, for instance, are famously cultivated. Their members include Chinua Achebe, author of Africa’s most literary novel in English, Things Fall Apart, a haunting depiction of the collision between Ibo traditions and European imperialism. Notable for lacking a monarchy, the Ibo instead invested ultimate power in the political structures within each village, giving rise to a form of politics that anticipated the “town hall” democracy of New England. Participation extended to Ibo women, who became a formidable force in public life.

The British, used to getting their way with colonial Africans, were repeatedly stung by loud, angry and even violent protests against their policies by Ibo women. “When the character of the riots themselves is reviewed,” one British observer wrote, “the overwhelming impression is of the vigor and solidarity of the women.” In recent years, militant Ibo activists, in the face of growing tensions within an unmanageable Nigeria, have called for greater autonomy and even revived the secessionist dream.

The Ibo, who number upward of 20 million today, have made their mark on music as well as literature. The Biafrans knew little of the Beatles, but they embraced a swinging bandleader named Stephen Osita Osadebe. Singing in the Ibo language, with a sprinkling of pidgin English, Osadebe began recording in 1958 and cemented his popularity by remaining in Iboland during the war. The ’70s saw a transformation of Nigerian music as horn-driven dance tunes -- better known as highlife -- gave way to a funky sound influenced by soul singer James Brown. Fela Kuti was the embodiment of Nigerian funk.

While Fela and the “juju” musician Sunny Ade, a member of the Yoruba people, dominated the music exported from Nigeria to America, within the country Osadebe thrived. He carried on a tradition of highlife associated with the great Nigerian trumpeter Rex Lawson. Osadebe retained a strong brass element in his bands, even when acoustic sounds went out of fashion. He remains partial to trumpet solos of the same sort that Duke Ellington used to give his band a wistful color.

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