Music
Oriental Brothers International: the Igbo highlife band that ruled the 1970s
Formed in the early 1970s after the Nigerian civil war, Oriental Brothers International became one of the biggest…
Nigerian highlife
Music
Fatai Rolling Dollar: the palm-wine guitarist who found fame again in his eighties
Fatai Rolling Dollar played palm-wine and highlife guitar in Lagos from the 1950s. After decades out of the…
Music
Bobby Benson: the Lagos bandleader who helped build Nigerian highlife
Bobby Benson returned to Lagos after years at sea and formed one of Nigeria's first modern dance bands.…
Music
Celestine Ukwu: the philosopher of Igbo highlife
Celestine Ukwu was one of the most admired Igbo highlife musicians of the late 1960s and 1970s. With…
Arts + Culture
Dead at 32 on the road to a show: Cardinal Rex Lawson, “Sawale” and the highlife of the 1960s
Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson, born in Buguma in present-day Rivers State on 4 March 1938, was one of…
Arts + Culture
They called him the evil genius of highlife: Victor Olaiya, the trumpeter who gave Fela a job
Victor Abimbola Olaiya, the Nigerian trumpeter known as the evil genius of highlife, was born on 31 December…
Arts + Culture
He took his stage name from a board game he rarely lost: Oliver De Coque, the king of Igbo highlife
Oliver De Coque, born Oliver Sunday Akanite in Ezinifite, Anambra State, in 1947, became one of the most…
Arts + Culture
The Doctor of Hypertension: Osita Osadebe and “Osondi Owendi”, the record Nigerians still call their biggest seller
Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe released "Osondi Owendi" in 1984. It became one of the biggest-selling records in Nigerian…