By Tony Adibe
Onyeka Onwenu was not quite known for double talks. She would prefer to take the bull by the horns. The late top artiste was once engaged by TONY ADIBE in an unrestricted interview. You need to read her, so go ahead. Excerpts:
What can you tell us about the law of piracy in Nigeria? Have the challenge of pirates affected your works?
We already have got a good law, but what we should be talking about is the implementation of the law. It’s one thing to have a law on the book and another thing to implement it. That’s where the problem is. The police should help us out. Everybody should help us. Some recording companies do pirate their own artistes because they don’t want to declare at the end of the day how many copies they sold. But then, we come back to the same thing; if we had a strong union we can check it!
Have you had any of your records pirated, if yes, which of them, and what measure would you adopt to save your records from being pirated?
O my God! “ONE LOVE” was heavily, heavily pirated. The last one “ONYEKA” is being pirated. I am just asking anybody out there; if you have a copy that is bad, return this copy to me and I will replace the bad copy with a good one. I will just collect the bad copy as an evidence, a proof of what is being done to my record. So if you get any bad copy of my record, take it to the LAGOS WEEKEND office and we would try and replace it.
In June 1991, you contested the chairmanship of the Lagos State Chapter of PMAN. You won with 63 votes against your opponent, Skid Ikemefona, who had 50 votes. What would you say was responsible for your victory?
I was seven months pregnant then. I had no intention of winning. And as I was listening to the preliminary talks; listening to people who wanted to run and what they wanted to do for Lagos State PMAN, it dawned on me that I was probably in a better position to deliver. It dawned on me that since the national headquarters was too involved in their problems, things have to be done to look after the musicians. So I decided to run. I never went to anybody’s house. Unlike other people, I never paid kobo to anybody. I stood up and spoke my mind. Because I saw faces of young, hopeful, expectant musicians. I know those other people had nothing to offer them. And I offered myself. It was very difficult; with my pregnancy, with my home, my career and what have you. But I think – and I say this with every sense of responsibility – that under my chairmanship, we had the best administration that Lagos State PMAN had ever seen. That is on record. We spent our Christmas playing at hospitals, collecting gifts, and distributing all of them amongst the needy. But still the campaign against us became intense, especially over the success of our Christmas show. I was threatened. And we had to call in the police. In fact, before we held our meetings then, we usually write to the DPO in Ikeja here. The problem was so much but in spite of all that happened, I remained firm till the end. Those that benefited from the work we did would be able to tell you. And in the end when my time came, I left with a great deal of satisfaction. When you are truthful to people, they tend to have respect for you. If you check my band, Kabasa and count the number of artistes that Kabasa has produced; it’s absolutely mind-buggling. Shall I count them? Mike Okri, Chris Hani, Cecilia, Charles Enebeli, Fortune, Oscar Elude, Godwin and many others. This will show you that Kabasa had an open system that caters for young artistes.
PMAN at the national level has never had a woman president. What do you think is responsible for this? Are the women folk not interested in the seat or are they being marginalised by men?
It’s funny because the idea to start PMAN came from a woman. Women are not respected. We are not given our due. In fact, there’s a conspiracy even among the journalists. I don’t see the women entertainment writers. It’s the same with the society we are living in. It’s not peculiar to PMAN. If people could respect one another as people and not look down at the opposite sex because the person is a woman: She shouldn’t speak out; she shouldn’t have any right to protect her rights; you can talk to her any how, you can insult her, disrespect her and expect her to stomach it; then you have it wrong, you can’t move forward.
How do you draw your inspiration? Is it by listening to music, or reading works of other musicians or what?
From God primarily. Yes. Because everything comes from him, especially good music. Again, my surroundings, my environment. What I see happening to not just myself but the people around me, their experiences. I draw on all these. But the primary inspiration comes from God. Simple. God gives me the music I know.
How does God give your music? Could you be specific?
I just hear it in my head; it just drops in. I just get a tune and I find myself humming a tune. I get the tune first before the words. The tune just comes in and I have lost some of the tunes. But when I need them, they will probably come back.
What is the difficulty in managing a Nigerian artiste? Is it that the manager’s idea is not acceptable to the artiste, or he/she refused to be manageable? Where does the problem lie?
Knowing what management is all about, we have a lot of inexperienced people who are not really interested in the profession but they are there to make good profit. And any artiste can seat down and tell you tales of woe of their experience with managers. They want to negotiate for you, and they will tell you that you are being paid N5,000 when actually you are being paid N10,000. How can someone just take half of the money like that? Is he now the one paying you or are you the one paying him? They are not straight forward and that is where the problem lies. They like cheating on artistes, and this is something that can dampen the artiste’s enthusiasm about a particular project; about going out there and giving his/her best. This was part of the first of several encounters this journalist had with Onyeka Onwenu at her then Oregun office, Lagos before she relocated to G.R.A. Ikeja.
- It was first published under the headline, “Many in music industry are charlatans – Onyeka” in the now defunct LAGOS WEEKEND Friday, March 17, 1995.
