So it’s late 1970 Nigeria. And there’ this guy who’ managed to fuse electronic music, afro funk and afro beat in an incredibly distinctive manner. And he’ doing it alone. Suddenly it’s 2014, that guy has moved on, but the world has only just caught up. We’ve tracked him down but he refuses to talk about it. He released eight albums between 1977 and 1985 on his own label, leaving the industry for Christianity. There are rumours he studied film in Russia, and later owned a flour mill. All of it is unsubstantiated. This is the myth of William Onyeabor.
His music though is so unique and so forward thinking that it doesn’t need the myth, the kind of sounds that feel like they’ve just dropped fully formed from the sky. His music evolves from the mundane to the remarkable in the blink of an eye and usually in the same song. There is nothing you to can compare it to. It is totally unique, totally eccentric, yet it totally works. William Onyeabor created these incredible elongated jams that evolve into totally unique forms, highly synthesized with electronic percussion, yet the soul is intact. There is never a step wrong, but there is never a step normal either.
This is remarkably, impossibly funky music, electronic grooves with Onyeabor’ minimal periodic slightly disengaged vocals, the kind of impossible and unexpected lost artifact.
“Why go to war when you know their should be peace,†he offers on the epic why go to war, but to be honest all his tunes are epic, often with backing vocals, played out over funky grooves and electronic percussion – all of which is genre defying and ahead of its time. It’s that simple.
