In the late seventies, as Nigeria slowly recovered from civil war and famine, a six-foot-five, two-hundred-plus-pound figure named William Onyeabor installed advanced analog synthesizers in an elaborate studio in the former Biafran capital of Enugu, established his own record-pressing plant, and started single-handedly producing electronic dance music. The country’s music scene was booming, but no one had heard anything like what Onyeabor was creating. “Something You’ll Never Forget,” one of his earliest tracks, is a gently funky, ten-minute-long flowering bud of fluttering guitars, shuffling percussion, soulful horns, and playful keyboard glissandos. “Good Name” is an equally epic song, released six years later, which takes listeners on a thrill ride of complicated electronic beats, slap-happy synthesizer passages, and surprising video-game-like effects.
Onyeabor’s eighth and final album was released in 1985. He became a devout Christian and refused to say another word about his music. There had been signs that this change might be coming. His choruses alluded to Proverbs (“A good name is better than silver and gold”), and the “something you’ll never forget” in that early track is that “one day you’ll be lying dead.” After he departed the studio, his records started commanding prices as high as a thousand dollars as his unusual and hypnotic songs percolated through Western dance-music communities. Last fall, Luaka Bop, David Byrne’s global-oriented independent record label, released the first authorized collection of his music on CD, “Who Is William Onyeabor?”
The myths that surround Onyeabor have helped drive interest in his music. There are rumors that he studied film in Moscow, and had a law degree. It’s impossible to confirm details about his past because he rarely gives interviews, and, when he does, he refuses to discuss it. In a recent Skype conversation from Enugu, Onyeabor, who is sixty-eight, said, “I did study so many things, but they have nothing to do with my natural talent, because you don’t study talent. Talent comes from God.” Onyeabor’s music is unique in part because it is the vision of one individual, who controlled all aspects of the recording process and had access to enormous resources. “It was very atypical gear, and he used it in an atypical way,” the keyboardist Money Mark, who is a musical director of a touring tribute to Onyeabor, said. “What he was doing with the equipment was very modern.”
The Onyeabor tribute show comes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music May 2-3. Ahmed Gallab is its other leader, and his tight funk-oriented group, Sinkane, is its heart. “Onyeabor travelled a lot in his day and he became a sort of universal person, and you can see this in the music,” Gallab said. The drummer Pat Mahoney, who has worked with LCD Soundsystem, will also be there. One of the singers, Luke Jenner, of the dance-rock group the Rapture, has a high falsetto that matches the exuberance of Onyeabor’s music. “His voice just shoots out of the pocket,” Gallab said. “It’s very powerful.” The Lijadu Sisters, twins from Nigeria who were popular some forty years ago and who have reunited for this tour, are part of the show, along with the singer Devonté Hynes, the jazz saxophonist Joshua Redman, and David Byrne. Money Mark, citing a line from Onyeabor’s song “Body and Soul,” said, of Byrne, “He’s going to bring the spirit of the idea that you can dance your troubles away.” Onyeabor, who is working on a forthcoming record, this time to praise God, approves. “I’m happy that a new generation is discovering my music,” he admitted. ♦
