Eji Oyewole. Born to a royal lineage in Ibadan, Prince Eji Oyewole has had a career
as a flautist, saxophonist and sometime bandleader spanning well over half a
century. He trained both in Nigeria and then at Trinity the prestigious music
school in London, and his life as an itinerant musician also saw him living for
extensive periods in Geneva, Hamburg and in Lyon.
While for many years Fela Kuti (with whom Eji played) and King Sunny Adé
commanded international attention to the exclusion of most other Nigerian
musicians, as if there was only room for one Nigerian superstar at a time on the
world stage, on the domestic scene things were very different. Eji was part of the
huge craze for ‘highlife’, a generic term that in fact subsumed many different
styles, united in their fusion of traditional west African forms with jazz influences
and electric instruments, and in the bands’ working practices as entertainers at
the nation’s numerous hotel/nightclubs.

As this cracking album, recorded for EMI Nigeria at the tail end of the ‘70s and
now remastered, reveals, Eji’s version of highlife was even more distinctive than
most, eschewing the usual emphasis on guitars for a brasher horn-laden sound,
seemingly influenced as much by American funk as it was jazz, and of course
with the heavy percussive undertow central to most African music.
This gave Eji a chance to shine, and there are some scorching solos as well as
tight ensemble playing across the four lengthy (to ears accustomed to the
threeminute pop song) songs. Eji also played piano on the session. The material
has an element of social commentary (Oil Boom and Unity In Africa) and should
help feed the seemingly insatiable appetites of the many who have been turned
onto African music by the enterprising efforts of devoted collectors, labels and
fellow fans.

Surely one of the few musicians who has played with Fela, Miles Davis and Bob
Marley, Eji Oyewole still plays regularly in Lagos, recently had an album of new
material out with his current band The Afrobars, and has been a member of Faaji
Agba, a super-group that has toured internationally and been dubbed ‘the
Nigerian Buena-Vista Social Club’.

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