King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal I Talazo Fuji Music Party!

Back in Nigeria in 1995 everybody knew King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal I. Just
about every house party and club floor, every shop front and car window,
pulsed to such megahits as ‘Talazo’ and ‘Consolidation’; to the percussion-rich
polyrhythms and Yoruba chants typical of Fuji music, a genre this one-time
roadie (for Fuji music icon Ayinde Barrister) had customised by adding more
percussion – congas, the sakara frame drum – and an attitude straight off the
street.
Wasiu Ayinde had nearly twenty years’ worth of national fame under his floor
length robes (and occasional zebra-striped jumpsuits) when he played his first
ever WOMAD Festival that same year. Booked in for a session at Real World
Recording Week shortly afterwards, the artist and his 16-piece band were
inadvertently delayed and pulled in to Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire eight
hours late. The recording went ahead regardless. Against the clock. On-thefly. With a small live audience in party mode and microphones placed about
the floor, Wasiu Ayinde and his crew rode the adrenalin, summoning a set that
moved from trance-like call-and-response and vibrant Afropop ballads to those
aforementioned megahits, all of it soaked in groove and feeling. A kingly feat,
that seems even more majestic now.