Sakara is a genre that is a hybrid of Yoruba traditional praise songs and Islamic music. Sakara was accentuated by Yusufu Olatunji, better known as “Baba Legba.”
Yusufu Olatunji was born in circa 1906 in Gbeginlawo, a village between Ayetoro and Abeokuta in present-day Ogun State to a father whose forebears were originally from Iseyin in present-day Oyo State.
Olatunji’s facial marks had their provenance in Iseyin. Though Olatunji’s parents were traditionalists, he was a cultural Christian and Muslim at different points of his life. In line with the practice of most Yoruba of his generation interested in acquiring western education but whose parents could not afford to send them to school, Olatunji lived and worked for the late Honourable Justice Sowemimo in Abeokuta so that he could go to school. Not only did he get some formal education while living with Justice Sowemimo, he also converted to Christianity and was baptized under the name Joseph at Cathedral Church of Saint Peter, Ake Abeokuta
Meanwhile, young Olatunji’s heart was not in education but in music. His latent musical talent came to the fore when he met an itinerant traditional cum Muslim minstrel named Shaki. Shaki took the young Olatunji under his wings and taught him the basics of goje (a violin-like instrument and Sakara’s chief musical instrument) and also made him his assistant.
Success has its algorithm: perseverance, industry, and serendipity in some unknowable combination. Shaki claimed he experienced an epiphany of sorts while on pilgrimage in Mecca and quit singing secular music on his return to Nigeria. Olatunji then picked up from where his mentor left off and eventually became the most successful Sakara artist. Olatunji converted to Islam following overtures from one of his patrons, Alhaji Ramoni Alao.
Olatunji’s early recordings were with Phillips in Ghana and marketed in Nigeria. His popularity among socialites in Lagos and Western Region increased when he signed for Zareco Records, owned by Saka Lasimbo, a cousin and former business partner of Emmanuel Badejo Okusanya. He recorded many singles and thirty-seven LPs with Zareco Records. Yusufu Olatunji was the superstar of Sakara. Sakara, like other Yoruba genres, was arranged in pairs along the lines of seniority and territoriality. Apala had Haruna Ishola and Kasumu Adio (until Ayinla Omoruwa emerged as a force), Owambe brand of Juju had Ayinde Bakare and Tunde Nightingale, drama had Hubert Ogunde and Duro Ladipo, and Sakara had Yusufu Olatunji and Salami “Lefty” Balogun/Sanusi Aka.
Olatunji’s music captures the defining spirit or mood of certain social circles in western Nigeria in the 1960s and 1970s. So profound was his influence that he initiated the idea of a forum for Yoruba musicians in the late 1970s, Egbe Amuludun (Association of Music Makers). Egbe Amuludun sought to fix fractious relationships, engender friendliness, and promote peace and understanding among Yoruba artists. Egbe Amuludun held a meeting in Ibadan on Thursday, December 14, 1978, to deliberate on what punitive action to take against Sikiru Ayinde Barrister for his refusal to attend the association’s meetings.
Barrister’s refusal to attend the association’s meetings was perceived—rightly or wrongly—as culturally disrespectful. While the majority of the attendees were for Barrister’s suspension and/or expulsion from the association, Yusufu Olatunji in his capacity as a patron, was for inviting Barrister to appear in person and explaining why he refused to attend their meetings. The deliberations of this particular meeting were still on when Yusufu Olatunji slumped. He was taken to UCH in Ibadan, but he insisted that he should be taken to his doctor at Lantoro, Abeokuta. Urban legend has it that Olatunji tried to get up from his hospital bed in Abeokuta in the middle of the night, but he was too weak to do that. The eyes that Yusufu Olatunji closed after he slumped in his chair in Ibadan were not opened until he died the following day in Abeokuta on Friday, December 15, 1978. His eldest child Tajudeen (born Joseph Segun Olatunji) now the traditional ruler of Gbeginlawo, said his father’s death sent him into an emotional tailspin because he believed his father would not have died when he died if he had not talked him into attending the Ibadan meeting. “I feel so bad about how he died that I tend to think that I contributed to my father’s death, ” Tajudeen once told a Nigerian newspaper.
Olatunji’s household, it should be noted, was polarized on the eve of the Ibadan meeting. While his most senior wife Sabitiyu Abake was not amenable to him attending the meeting, his oldest son thought he would be letting Egbe Amuludun down if he did not attend the meeting. Tajudeen believes his father was killed by a rival musician (perhaps one of the attendees of the Ibadan meeting) through some magic. “My father died because he was a victim of envy, which is the curse of every famous artiste,” he further told the same paper. Yes, it is within the realms of possibility that a rival artist killed Olatunji. It is also possible that he died of natural causes, considering the fact that he was a diabetic heavy gin drinker whose leg was on the cusp of amputation in 1973. Regardless of what killed him, Olatunji’s name is etched in Yoruba social history, and his body of work remains evergreen. Continue to rest in peace, Yusufu Ajao Ojuroungbe Olatunji.
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