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.
Bimbo, a University of Ibadan graduate, has organised workshops and seminars to educate people about maintaining the highlife flag.
Recently, she held a competition in which bands performed live for appraisal to win prizes. This was in addition to the groundbreaking Ariya Eko Show.
She said the move became important to rescue the dying live performance culture.
”You will discover that the DJ culture has taken over live band 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, 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. The contest’s sole purpose is to elongate the legacy of Nigerian music and attract global music executives.
For the sake of highlife, she also 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. 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 she saw Nigeria as a place where you had to keep records.
While Bimbo was at the University, she took a course in anthropology. She began to wonder what impact and what role she could play as an anthropologist and what she could do that would show a real anthropologist. She just saw my dad’s business as something that could be enriched, Bimbo said.
Then, he had the Evergreen Band, which he formed in the ’90s. They used to go around most of the elitist clubs they played around. We saw that many elders craved the band’s music, which was different kinds of indigenous music, which strengthened her interest. As an anthropologist, I have always considered what to do to be relevant to my country.
For my final year project, she decided to write on Highlife Music as a medium for social reform. Bimbo was opportune to meet Victor Olaiya, Victor Uwaifo, Alaba Pedro, Jimmy Solanke, Delo Ojo, etc.
Bimbo met and interviewed a lot of them. She later discovered that these individuals played timeless, evergreen music that has endured over 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 went back to the drawing board, and I realized 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 12. He went back to his archives and began to bring them out. He now said, “Okay, 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 to achieve 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 preserving 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, i.e., Musical instruments, Record tapes, over 100,000 vinyl, Books, etc.
The foundation is to look like an experience centre, a melting point for people to experience music. It is 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 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, 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 extinct.
The new generation doesn’t have names for their songs, which 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 Nigerian reggae artists had not blended Reggae with our cultural context, it wouldn’t have made 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 playing for fun, many 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 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 a 60-year on-stage celebration for him in 2012.
After their event, Premier Music collaborated with the young and old. 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 highlifers flee from their different places of operation. Also, the introduction of spraying culture in juju music.
But Bimbo knew that high life consciousness was fast returning. People’s reactions to what we are doing to resuscitate high life have been encouraging.
