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Highlife crooner and Afrobeat singer Orlando Julius Aremu Olusanya Ekemode died, according to his wife Latoya Aduke, in his sleep on 15 April 2022.
A titan of Nigerian highlife had passed on at 79.
With a career spanning almost six decades Orlando Julius stamped his foot on the sands of history, promoting his talents and laundering his country’s image across the globe.
Orlando Julius played the saxophone with dexterity, and ultimately became a pioneering force behind Afrobeat music: a genre which was later adopted and promoted by the famous Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Highlife music originated from Ghana in the early 1800s as multiple African musical fusions mixed with Western jazz melodies. It is mostly characterised by jazzy horns and multiple guitars.
However, Afrobeat is a hybrid of highlife music that developed in the 1960s and 1970s. It combines elements of West African styles such as fuji and highlife with American jazz, soul and funk.
Orlando’s prowess lay in his ability to combine his native Yoruba drums with the guitar and saxophone to produce a mixture of African rhythms and soul. This combination was to become the popular Afrobeat genre which he took to Europe and the US.
His early years
Orlando was born in Ikole Ekiti, a town in the South West of Nigeria in 1943. He was educated at St. Peter’s Anglican school in the same town. He also played for the school band in addition to receiving musical lessons from his mother. Following the death of his father in 1957, Orlando dropped out of school and moved to Ibadan to pursue his career in music.
He worked in a bakery while also playing drums and flutes with juju and konkoma (or konkomba) bands. Juju music is a style of Yoruba popular traditional percussion. The name originated from the Yoruba word ‘juju’ meaning throwing something or something being thrown. Konkoma (or konkomba) derives from the Gur people in the northern part of Ghana.
Read more - https://theconversation.com/super-afro-soul-the-music-of-orlando-julius-titan-of-nigerian-music-182238