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Nigeria: Four Years After, Music Company Eulogises Late Victor Olaiya

todayFebruary 14, 2024 2

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The music legend dictated the pace of highlife music with his calm and ballad-like orchestration.

On Tuesday, the Evergreen Musical Company eulogised late veteran trumpeter and highlife musician, Victor Olaiya, four years after his death.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the music legend died on 12 February 2020, at 89, after a brief illness.

The Evergreen Musical Company is the biggest custodian of Nigeria’s traditional music, ranging from highlife to Juju music, Apala, Fuji and many other genres.

Bimbo Esho, Managing Director of Evergreen Musical Company, in a statement, recalled the late Olaiya as having a unique dress sense.

“Dr Victor Olaiya was the Evil Genius with a unique dress sense with his golden trumpet and white handkerchief, symbolising his success.

“His ability to pen down philosophical melodies, love songs, and songs touching on socio-economic issues and vanities of life stood him out.

“He was one musician able to adapt traditional music of different tribes in his highlife repertoire,” she said.

According to Ms Esho, the late Olaiya, with fans among all socio-economic classes and age groups, dominates the highlife music terrain, affecting generations with his melodic and soothing evergreen songs.

She said that during his active years, he dictated the pace of highlife music with his calm and ballad-like orchestration.

“It didn’t take him long as he took centre stage during the visit of Queen Elizabeth 11 to Nigeria in 1956. In 1960, his band was the official band that played during Nigeria’s Independence. Also 1963, when Nigeria became a republic, he shared the same stage with Louis Armstrong.

“I have some of my all-time favourites among his songs, like ‘Ilu Le’, first released in the ’60s, which talks about the adverse austerity biting hard on the Nigerian masses and the different coping strategies taken to overcome it.

“In ‘Aiye Soro’, he admonished those with everything going for them to soft-pedal because nobody knows when the pendulum can swing back. The song ‘Gbasolode’, sung in Urhobo, is a love song where the lover man Victor tells his lover to stay with him through thick and thin,” she said.

More accolades

Ms Esho also highlighted ‘Adogan’, where he lamented the perceived sweet pain of pint-sized men who are into relationships with fat women, satirising their perceived suffering.