Aug 11/05
Laid-back highlife royalty
When I was in Boston a few weeks ago K surprised me with a great gift: Celestine Ukwu. Now, if you’re a big music guy like myself I don’t think there’s anything sexier than a cute girl with good taste in West African highlife. Thanks, Kate.
During the 1960s Rex Lawson and a host of other Igbos popularized highlife music before it fell out of favour during the civil war of 1967-70. By the mid-1970s, however, the Nigerian highlife scene had started up again with bands like the Oriental Brothers, Prince Nico and perhaps most importantly, Celestine Ukwu.
Ukwu’s style is slightly different from that of his contemporaries; he was apparently a soft-spoken, relaxed kind of guy and this is reflected in the music he plays. You’ll hear slower rhythms and even things like steel slide guitar poking up from beneath the palmwine acoustic. Even the name of his band is pretty chilled-out: Professor Celestine Ukwu and the Philosophers National. Why don’t bands give themselves names like that anymore?
You can pick-up today’s track at Stern’s on Celestine Ukwu Best Collection Volume 1.
Tags: acoustic, highlife, nigeria, palmwine
Hmmm do you really want an answer to THAT question? OK here is my guess, it`s just marketing … it is harder to remember such a name than “Madonna”, “Sting”, “Police” etc, etc ok you could argue that recently we had popular names for bands like “backstreet boys”, “new kids on the block” but that is still very simple (not to mention the music) in comparision to “Professor Celestine Ukwu and the Philosophers National”.
Ok I hope that I did not offend anyone … if yes … well that is just my simple opinion so keep on smiling.
Maybe we have changed as a kind of degeneration, our minds can not hold such names (in general we all know that WE are exeptions …) so clever people came up with the idea “no do not use a name like THAT, nobody can remember that correctly so you will not sell as much records, get a cool name that a kiddy can remember and you are a made man …”
*grin*
Anyway a real nice sound … *sigh* so nice that I will press the play-button once again, so I have more attention for the music (posting does distracts me sometimes [see I am also one of the small-brained-people]).
Greetings to all of you.
Frank
Matt this is riches indeed! Three wonderful posts in 3 days – can we hope your schedule will let you keep it up?
LOve & devotion
simon
I hope so, Simon. I still have so much I want to post..
So very glad you are posting once more, Matt. Yours is a most enriching journal. Reading about Celestine Ukwu, heretofore unknown on my player, put me in mind of the great responses to a contest, ‘Who is your favorite musician – and why?’ originally run in Nigeria’s Spear magazine and quoted in John Miller Chernoff’s ‘African Rhythm and African Sensibility.’ One contestant described Dr. Victor Olaiya as being “…a good composer, a man of policy, a good hypnotist and a good subject for hypnotism himself.” Surely as much may be ascribed to Prof. Ukwu and indeed, yourself, Mr. Matt. Thanks again.
Download seems slow this evening, so while I’m waiting my 2 cents on names. I think some may be marketing, some may just be style. A few decades ago it was all x and the ys – like Gladys Knight & the Pips, or Mahlathini & the Mohotella Queens. Now the trend is to shorter names (and shorter news soundbites, shorter newspaper stories, shorter attention spans). Who today would try to get a record deal with the name Chief Doctor Sikiru Ayinde Barrister (A.I.M.A.)? (I just had to pull in that example – from a Nigerian fuji cassette I picked up someplace). I admit that sometimes it’s a name or a piece of artwork that originally attracts me to an album, but the meat is in the music. And you, sir, have a fine nose for meat.
Scott
aka dj earball
this is amazing. i’ve only just discovered this site, and i’m completely blown away. this has changed my life.
this song is so wonderfully laid back. it makes me sway and smile.
Great website!! I’ll have to spend a little more time exploring the archives, but from what I’ve seen, you’re doing a great job. Strictly speaking, Rex Lawson was not “Igbo,” but was of mixed Kalabari & Igbo parentage. Most of his songs were in Kalabari. Lawson was from the city of New Kalabar in in an Ijaw-speaking area in Rivers State, south of “Igboland” proper. New Kalabar was established by refugees from Calabar (Efik-speaking) in present-day Cross River State about 150 years ago I’ve never been able to get a straight answer on whether “Kalabari” is a dialect of Efik or Ijaw (the two languages are totally unrelated.)
John,
Thanks for the informative comment. I’ll see if I can do some proper research on Rex Lawson and post some next week. Unless you care for a guest post?
Cheers,
Matt
[...] Old-time Benn loxo listeners know the deal about highlife, so I won’t bore you with too many details. The genre is still enormously popular both in and outside of Africa. It’s easy to see why; its laid-back rhythms, simple melodies and happy feel give it a universal good-vibe quality. [...]
Also stumbled on this album several years ago. Too bad he is never mentioned in the archives of Nigerian/African music. Great sounds and was less highlife and more smooth listening.