KING SUNNY ADE THE LEGEND!:
Amazon Releases Electronic (e-Book) Version
By 'Tunji Ajayi
In the feature: “Our Copy & Paste Generation Of Youths and Dearth of Future Soyinkas” (see Ohio University Press, USA, July 16, 2020), the fulcrum of my discussion was on poor reading habits of most of our modern day youths who loathe reading but revel only in the syndrome of copy & paste of ideas found on Google and social media space; the practice that also deprecates and depreciates our hitherto cherished cultural values and traditions. We now communicate far more with impersonal tools than with ourselves; while we are fast losing touch with the reality of our cherished values and cultural practices. We google and consult the social media almost every minute for everything, including our menu and dressing codes, while our enviable traditional dresses and costumes hung at shop windows near the tip of our noses are blatantly ignored. Our rich cultural heritage and indigenous languages are being desecrated and gradually effaced.
In that piece, I latched on the witty words of John Quincy Adams, the 6th US president who once averred poignantly: “To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind.” According to him, “It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence.” One of the best methods of acquiring knowledge is through wide reading. Yes. Wide reading enlarges the sphere of existence. And knowledge gives more power and wisdom to geniuses. An educated person who loathes wide reading is worse than a stark illiterate! Hence, it is better to be an illiterate unable to read and write than being literate and loathe reading. In journalism, practitioners are taught to know something about everything, and everything about something. A German-Swiss philosopher, Professor Karl Jaspers once confessed to being “indebted to journalists because they made knowledge and thought public.” But the modern-day journalists couldn’t have achieved this feat without being avid readers. Most great men of our time are avid readers of books. Perhaps when our modern day youths ponder and embrace reading rather than being engrossed in subterranean efforts of copying & pasting, our society will fare better and return on the threshold of having more Wole Soyinkas as our national pride.
Haters of reading good books are groping in the dark alley of ignorance. King Sunny Ade has so far eminently ruled the music and entertainment world for almost 55 years to the delight of the lowly and mighty across the world. For those who rely solely on the gods of good luck, let them be told point blank that chances favour only the discreet and prepared minds. And exhibition of discretion also involves doing the needful. Not many people know that this strange artiste is an avid reader. KSA keeps himself abreast of latest ideas and technology, especially as they affect his music profession. I exemplify. In a twin epic album entitled 10th Anniversary Special (1974), the fluid lips quipped: “Èwo ni ká kó’rin’sé jo repete kí á má sì tùn mo líló re? (Of what essence is amassing musical instruments without knowing how to employ them). And in a rare show of confidence and excellent skills, the music maestro applies each of his arrays of musical equipment in succession, thus commandeering his talking drummer to cause the percussive instrument to hum like enraged bees. While his bass guitar pounds the heart and the earth like the ceaseless blows of an assaulted heavyweight pugilist being pummeled to the ring corner, Sunny Ade The Master Guitarist himself caused his lead guitar to bark like a hungry rabid dog and snarl like an enraged tiger!
In “The King whose Kingdom is the Dancing Stage” (The Nation September 27, 2019), I had written without mincing words: “Rated one of the 100 greatest Guitarists in the world, The Master Guitarist dominates the Guitar world completely, even to the awe and amazement of its manufacturers; making the ubiquitous string instrument to do his bidding to provide any desired tune of his choice; from the rumbling sound of the tidal waves to the endless prattling of a loquacious parrot. And from the hee-hawing of a donkey to the endless barking of a rabid dog. Sunny is adept at creating with his lead Guitar the stridulating voice of a cricket or the snarling tone of an enraged tiger.” Not giving to talking in abstract, I exemplified: “Should you be in doubt of this assertion, check the archives and re-listen to his masterpiece album AS1-L: Vol. 7 – “A F’àì Bá won Jà” (1973), or the epic and epoch-making release AS 15-L “Sunny Ti De” (1973), or AS26-L: “Synchro System”, or his recondite, cognomen-laden LPAS 8020 Vol. 6 – “Ògún II” (1972). KSA, the effervescent King of World Beats evidently rules the world of music!” Yes.
KSA is on top of his profession, thus making even many of his eminent colleagues and most great artistes in the music world all over the globe stand in awe of him, while scampering to understudy his esoteric skills on instrument manipulation and effectiveness. This is because the connoisseur reads wide and thinks far ahead of others on latest technologies and application to improve his music every day.
He once told this writer a bizarre story. KSA once had an international show. Few hours before the special show, one of his key instrumentalists was yet to show up. But this enigmatic artiste is reputed for maintaining calmness, looking unflustered even in the face of worst circumstances! Permit me a little digression here: The complex arrangement of his posh instruments works like an interface. He could manipulate and sound appropriate plagal cadence with his lead Guitar in an esoteric manner so as to alert his Keyboardist on the DX-7/Synthesizer to cue in effortlessly with computerized precision without causing any hiatus. KSA is perhaps the only strange artiste of this generation who could apply almost simultaneously not less than 7 different string instruments, aside from the Xylophone, Pedal Steel Hawaiian guitar, an array of percussive instruments, each following its groove, and yet the ensemble are “unserious” with their ever-profuse and compulsive dancing while still engaging in a medley of humorous jesting and kinesics application. And in spite of all this the music hardly ever runs into discordance!
Coming back to my story; KSA knew the effect of this lacuna. His lead Guitar often works interchangeably and harmoniously, gadding between the trio of the Keyboard, Hawaiian guitar and Xylophone of those days now embedded in the DX-7. What would KSA do without this key equipment barely few hours before a very special show?! To an indiscreet man, crises provoke lamentation and disconsolation. But to an indomitable and ingenious man, crises precipitate positive change. Like an erudite motivator Femi Emmanuel once wrote: “Don’t panic in crises. If you panic and fret, you lose focus and act wrongly.” And he added a puncher: “Wisdom is the ingredient for crisis management.” Sunny, in the US went from one huge store to another. In his inquisitive nature, he had read so many books and manuals but knew, perhaps by hunches, that there ought to have been a technology that would compel an unmanned Keyboard far away to respond via a remote sensor to his lead Guitar with accurate and precise programming and manipulation. But here is the indomitable KSA asking for such invention and repeatedly getting negative answers from these British and American store managers. Time ticking fast . . . Our stubborn and indomitable songster insisted that in spite of fast development and level of innovation in this age, there should be such technology! Almost every store manager derided his querulousness and insistence.
KSA moves on. He would not take “No” for an answer! . . . Oh, here is another huge musical equipment store! Sunny enters under the scorching sun. And here again, the store manager says nothing of such technology exists. Sunny refuses to heed. But here, he requests that the manager brings out all of his first class newest technology. Dragging his feet reluctantly, he accedes, bringing about four or five different equipment out. KSA, a querulous, voracious, and avid reader of books and manuals on modern technologies now requests for a first-class Guitar. The Master Guitarist tunes the Guitar to harmonize with the posh Keyboard which he simulates with precision to the awe and amazement of the American store manager. Hmm! To a wizard the performance of uncommon feats is like a game. Sunny twangs his Guitar to elicit the required response! The Keyboard placed at a remote corner howls like an enraged Lion from a distance . . . ! The resilient Sunny gets what he wants! The store manager, in a medley of consternation and amazement, opens and leaves his mouth ajar; having had an uncommon encounter with a prodigy and a muse of music and equipment technology buff!
Keep life-saving information and fortune inside a book, many of our modern-day youths would never venture to open, let alone read it! They grin only at photographs and vapid motion images. There is fortune in wide reading! Many great men are avid readers of biographies and memoirs who had benefitted immensely from the stories on the lives and times of our forebears, and how they lived useful and purposeful lives. To redeem our youths’ ignoble conducts and have a better society, where our modern-day youths would embrace virtues and learn to “grow up” with patience and forbearance, rather than “jumping up” in haste into blemished “prosperity”, let us write biographies on our parents for the benefit of the world and learn from our ancestral past. After all, wisdom is learnt at the feet of the elders.
Amazon has now released the e-Book, the electronic version of “KING SUNNY ADE THE LEGEND! – Cultural Values & Philosophies Behind a Genre of African Music.” Both the bound copy and e-Book are now available via the link provided. Oh? . . . Did you ask me what to expect in the full-colour e-Book? . . . A knife doesn’t carve its own handle. But I know that only the best is good for a prodigy that has brought unblemished honour to Nigeria and the entire black race. The heartwarming attestations from reputable international editors and reviewers speak volume (Please read earlier features). Thus, permit me to holler in satisfaction like lawyers often do when a matter needs no further circumstantial evidence to corroborate their claims: “Res Ipsa Loquitur!” –Yes! The matter speaks for itself.
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Please obtain any of the versions via:>https://amzn.to/3FD5fi3
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*’Tunji Ajayi, a creative writer, author, biographer and audiovisual documentary producer writes from LC-Studio Communications, Nigeria (+2348033203115, +2348162124412)
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