Juju legend, Sir Shina Peters and his Fuji counterpart, King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, better known as K1 De Ultimate, have disagreed over the feasibility of modern pop musicians running a band as part of their work.
The music titans were part of the ‘Ariya Repete’ Roundtable Discourse that included two-time Grammy Award Winner Lekan Babalola, Jaywon, King Sunny Ade’s manager, Clement Ige, Wole Sorunke and Hakeem Adenekan.
Jide Taiwo, Executive Editor of TheNETng, who moderated the discussion wanted to know if Shina Peters regretted infusing disco into juju music since younger artistes are now being blamed for not using Yoruba language in their music.
SSP defended his choice, saying his innovation was done to expand the horizon of juju music farther than his predecessors had. He then continued by advising younger artistes not to always rely on producers to create a quick beat for them, instead to learn how to own and run a band.
“You can imagine running a 28 piece band…can you imagine what that costs? And we that have bands like that have to do rehearsals every day. Meanwhile when we are invited to events such as wedding receptions, we’re expected to just plug and play like these hip-hop artistes. Let’s not even go into the type of money we’re offered compared to these young boys…”
K1 however expressed a dissenting view; “You can’t expect everybody to operate that same way. For instance, at the position I am now, I don’t have to travel with band boys like we used to do. There are drummers and instrumentalists all over the world. I only need to rehearse with them for a few days and we can do a show together. Running a band is expensive.”
The Ariya Repete Roundtable Discourse, an initiative of Nigerian Breweries beer brand, Goldberg, is a conference dedicated to sustaining the rich heritage of Yoruba music genres, Fuji and Apala as well as discovering new talents.
Auditions have started March 13 in Ado-Ekiti, Sango-Ota and across eight cities in Nigeria.
