One must protect his integrity with
female admirers - Lord of Ajasa
Lord of Ajasa
By Tade Makinde
How do you enjoy music as a career?
It’s great and lovely, it’s a career I love, although there are difficult sides to it, but I thank God for everything He has done.
How did it start?
After I left secondary school in the late 90s. Actually, I’ve been singing since I was in school. I had my own crew then, but we didn’t take it serious until later when people started to commend us. I did two demos in English, but they were flops until I switched to rapping in Yoruba.
When did you switch?
That was in 2000 with my first single “Oori gbo”. After many trials, in 2004, I came out with another, “O ti ya” which shot me into limelight and won me many awards.
What are your names?
Osaniyi Olusegun Gbadura.
How difficult is it for you to compose in Yoruba?
It's not difficult at all. It may be difficult for others, but not me because I’m a Yoruba man and singing with my language should not be difficult. When I used to sing in English, all I got were claps from my fans, but since I switched to singing in Yoruba, my fans not only clap, laugh, the recognition has come and I'm making more money, especially that I’m not copying anybody.
How do you get inspiration for your songs?
From God and anything that happens around me.
Do you buy songs?
I’ve been writing songs since my teenage years, why should I buy when I have many songs already written? Although, I don’t know that musicians buy songs from others, if that is true, I have many songs to sell, they should contact me.
Are you married?
Not yet, but I have a lady that I will marry as soon as possible, though she is still in school.
How close do you get with your female fans?
It has not been easy but one cannot date everybody. They just fall in love with you suddenly. One needs to respect his name and integrity. I appreciate them, but I don't go out with my female fans. They are all my lovers, but my love for them is platonic.
Public response to your music.
It’s been wonderful. People appreciate me not because I’m a Yoruba rapper, but because my lyrics are meaningful and in-depth. In fact, they are prophetic.
How Aromire borrowed N27,000 from
his parents for his first film
AromireHow did you go about your first film that was said to have shocked even the respected veterans of the industry at the time?
What obtained then was optical movie, but I discovered that there were film laboratories in Ibadan, Lagos and Jos that I could explore to achieve my aim.
There was nothing like movie then, so I decided to experiment, because even though the laboratories had no optical soundtrack, they had magnetic soundtrack and I knew I could get a projector that could pick up magnetic soundtrack so I experimented with the reversal film and, that turned out to be the first Yoruba film wholly produced in Nigeria.
Everything was done in Nigeria. It was edited here. The title was Idajo Aiye.
This should have come earlier, but how did you raise capital for the project?
I took a loan of N22, 000 from my father and my mother gave me N5,000.You won’t believe it, we made N72, 000 gate fees at the premiere. The likes of late Ogunde, Baba Sala and others couldn’t believe that someone could wholly produce a film in Nigeria without going abroad for processing, printing or editing.
Would it be right to say you didn’t take it abroad because you had no funds to do so?
No! It was a case of breaking grounds. I just thought because nobody was doing this thing did not mean it was impossible here. I said to myself, these things are available and I could make use of them. More so, there was a laboratory here, there was a Natola film somewhere in Surulere, Lagos. I premiered Nkan Nkan at the National Theatre in 1986 and we made over N200, 000.00, and how much did we produce it with? Let’s say N100, 000.00.
If it pays that much, why did you disappear from the scene at a time?
My quest to improve on what obtains in the film industry informed my decision to travel out of the country when I did. It was not as though I just disappeared from the scene. I travelled to West Germany, as it was known then. I was at Cologne where I enrolled at a Goethe College there originally to study their language, but while there, I discovered they ran a crash programme in film and television production specifically for foreign students and lectures were delivered in English.
I opted for that and I think my interest in television actually started from there. The course lasted three months. Afterwards, I was posted to Dutch Willlick Television Village in the outskirts of Dortmund. While at the place, I thought, if this people could run a television station based on their own dialect of Dutch language, I could do something similar when I get back to Nigeria.
Courtesy Naijarules.com
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