By Seyifunmi Odunuga
Bimbo Esho is the industrious Band music-loving daughter of Highlife enthusiast and collector, Femi Esho.
Esho is a foremost highlife collector in Nigeria. Now in his seventies, his daughter, Bimbo Esho is demonstrating the same passion for the indigenous music that was fast slipping into oblivion.
A university of Ibadan graduate, Bimbo has taken it upon herself to organise workshops and seminars to sensitise people about how to keep the highlife flag flying.
Recently, she did a competition where bands must perform live for appraisal to get prizes. This is in addition to the groundbreaking Ariya Eko Show.
According to her, the move became important to rescue the dying live performance culture.
”You will discover that live band culture has been taken over by the DJ culture. People are no longer playing instruments because every beat one needs now is in the computer system. ”That is why what we have now mainly are singers and not musicians. But for the church that still churns out instrumentalists, we wouldn’t have people playing instruments again. The culture must not die, it must be kept alive somehow”
Through her father’s Evergreen Music Company where she is the Managing Director, Bimbo has been able to get the sympathy of the Lagos state government to support some of her projects in this resuscitating efforts.
Also, through a strategic partnership, Bimbo’s Evergreen Musical Company and the National Theatre birthed the inaugural edition of Thrillerbandz @Theatre, a musical contest spotlighting musicians of different local Nigerian genres, with the sole purpose of elongating the legacy of Nigerian music and attracting global music executives.
She also, for the sake of highlife, has a Bimbo Esho’s Battle To Rescue Highlife Music social media group she floated called Members of Music Icons (MMI) and membership of the group has kept climbing and it varies from the young to the old.
Bimbo’s driving force is the interest that actually started as a kid when she grew up watching a lot of epic movies, the likes of the Feyikogbon, Winds Against My Soul of Jimi Solanke and Taiwo Ajayi Lycet, Ifa Olokun Asoro dayo, etc They helped greatly in shaping the formative stage of her life. Bimbo saw Nigeria as a place where she had to keep her heritage, she saw the likes of Ogunde’s films too. We have a lot of his films on VHS tapes. We have Duro Ladipo, Feyikogbon, Village headmaster. It all made her know we were richly blessed culturally. They were really fantastic movies and saw Nigeria as a place where you had to keep records.
While Bimbo was at the University she studied Anthropology, as a course, and began to wonder, what impact and what role can she play as an anthropologist and what can she do that will show a real anthropologist. She just saw my dad’s business as something that can be enriched Bimbo said.
Then, he had Evergreen Band which he formed in the ’90s. They use to go around most of the elitist clubs they played around. We saw that a lot of the elders craved such music that the band played, different kinds of indigenous music. So that made her interest grow stronger. Always thought of what to do to be relevant to my country as an anthropologist.
She decided to write on Highlife Music as a medium for social Reform for my final year project. Bimbo was opportune to meet the likes of Victor Olaiya, Victor Uwaifo, Alaba Pedro, Jimmy Solanke, Delo Ojo, etc.
Bimbo met a lot of them and interviewed a lot of them. She later found out that these people played timeless Evergreen music that has stood the test of time. In her project, she emphasized their songs which preach morals and how it has helped society grow. It preaches Unity, Love, and Peace.
That shaped her and brought out her intense passion and interest in the music of our past.
Beyond that, I now went back to the drawing board that it is not only about her doing the project, what can they do to sustain this highlife music sector.
Bimbo’s dad is a collector, he has been collecting evergreen records and music since he was age 12. He went back to his archives and began to bring them out. He now said ok which of these artists can we even start with. That was when he started with Roy Chicago, who happens to be one of her favourite highlife music legends.
That also encouraged her further. She then decided to support her dad’s efforts and work with him in achieving what he calls his First Love( Highlife). He had already formed the Evergreen Band in 1996.
Bimbo Esho was in school during her project when he formally registered the company in 2005. Shortly after her final year project, they started the whole thing together. Since then, it has been tough. Over the years her dad has talked about the preservation of their musical heritage for the sake of posterity.
He has proposed many times to the federal government the need for a music foundation as our office space has become too small to take most of their music archives ie Musical instruments, Record tapes and over 100,000 vinyl, Books, etc
The foundation is to look like an experience centre a melting point for people to experience music. More like a research, education, and cultural centre that will have a museum to talk about music in the past, present and future.
It will be a place where people can come have fun, listen to music, and watch live band performances by living legends of Sakara music, Agidigbo, Waka, Highlife, Juju, Fuji, etc.
Bimbo also said that we should look at Apala. In the forum she created online which is the MMI forum, someone asked the question. Which songs are Original to Nigeria? Nobody could answer.
All the main core indigenous songs are fading away. Where are all the Apala, Sakara, Were, and Fuji musicians today? Much of this music is beginning to go into extinction.
The new generation doesn’t have names for their songs. That is why you hear all sorts of Afro Hip Hop, it is a bit confusing. We need to create more music genres that can be traced to certain roots.
She also said that if Nigeria reggae artists have made Reggae blend with our cultural context it wouldn’t have made any sense.
Another thing that has become worrisome is that most of these old artists, the veterans are dropping dead. In those days these artists were just playing for fun, many of the record labels have gone into extinction once the artists die that is the end. Those are the artists that we are working on. Let us try and see how we can revive their music and put it in a foundation.
Take Akeeb Kareem for instance. His music is so melodious. He is in the UK. He is now in full-time Ministry. He came to Lagos sometime back when Beautiful Nubia was doing something. He stole the show. He sang his popular song ” Amebo”. He created serious nostalgia as the whole crowd applauded him. Even Victor Olaiya as great as Baba was, some of the new generations didn’t know him until their company put together 60-year on-stage celebration for him in 2012.
After their event, Premier Music did a collaboration between the young and old and Victor Olaiya and 2face Idibia came up with a rehash of Victor Olaiya’s song Baby Jowo which was changed to Baby Mi Da.
Highlife started declining during the civil war which made many highlife flee from their different places of operation. Also the introduction of spraying culture in juju music.
But Bimbo knew the high life consciousness is fast returning. People’s reactions to what we are doing to resuscitate highlife have been encouraging.
