Biodun & Batik Afro Jazz Band at Freedom Park - Audio Tracks

On Stage at Freedom Park in Lagos
with Biodun & Batik Afro Jazz Band

I was invited to Freedom Park on Lagos Island on Friday night to perform as the guest of trumpeter Biodun with his Batik Afro Jazz Band. Freedom Park is a relatively new venue on the site of the former colonial prison, an open air stage inside a walled prison courtyard that has been converted into a green space – an urban performance place in a sculpture garden surrounded by food stalls. I had heard of Freedom Park as the site of occasional Seun Kuti gigs, but it is relatively far from where I stay and I had not previously ventured down there. It is a very nice spot to spend an evening and I recommend it to music fans in Lagos. Biodun met me at the gate and introduced me to the park director, who turns out to be Fela Kuti’s son-in-law.

Biodun is a fine Hugh Masakela-influenced trumpeter – I wrote about him when we first met in May of this year. His pedigree includes stints with Fela and Lagbaja. At Freedom Park, he fronted his Batik Afro Jazz Band of keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, and occasional girl singer. I had met bass player Mike before at Biodun’s home studio, but the rest of the rhythm section was new to me, fairly young but highly competent players. When Biodun phoned me to make the gig, I asked for a set list. He said not to worry, no set list, they probably would not play any standards, just some pop tunes and highlife in I-IV-V progression, and I could just jam along.

Two Tenors -
With Saxophonist Seun Olota

I realized the morning after the gig that Biodun and Batik play an incredible diversity of music – from jazz tunes by John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter to reggae, Fela's afrobeat, Igbo and Yoruba highlife, Afro-pop, originals, 60’s rock, and even some requisite smooth jazz hits and pop covers by the likes of Whitney Houston. I played tenor on the jazz tunes, most of the highlife, and had my first experience performing a Fela tune live – Water No Get Enemy, which I learned from Showboy last year and actually remembered. During the second set, another tenor player, Seun Olota, joined the group, making it an octet. He and Biodun looked to be old friends and Seun fronted the band on two Fela tunes, singing and dancing Water and Lady to the crowd’s delight.

I have posted a few audio tracks from my Zoom: here are links to Water No Get Enemy, Footprints, an Igbo highlife of unknown title, and Equinox (320 kbps MP3 sound files). That’s the good. The bad is that the sound system was not great, with the bass dominating, the snare drum too loud, and the piano down in the mix. The lead instruments were somewhat buried all night – especially the tenor sax, of course, which particularly gets drowned out by loud bass guitar since their frequencies overlap. But the music itself is nice.

There was no ugly.

Sitting In at Bogobiri, Ikoyi – Audio Tracks

After a year, I finally found a decent place to play in Lagos – Bogobiri House in Ikoyi*, one of the most interesting and friendly spots in this too-harsh environment. Bogobiri is a small boutique hotel tucked in a residential neighborhood that features an in-house art gallery and at least three live music venues on premise, decorated throughout with one-off Africanisms. Bogobiri celebrates Nigeria in a way that many of today’s consumption-driven wannabe hipsters wish to ignore. I found the place refreshing. Check out the web site at http://www.bogobiri.com (admittedly, more hotel- than music-oriented).

Last Sunday night, I was invited to sit in at Bogobiri’s outdoor rooftop stage with Jagger and his rock band. There was a local jazz event going on simultaneously downstairs. I came with my tenor at 4 to rehearse but a private party had booked the space and that didn't happen. I sat around for a couple of hours and simply took my chances when the gig started at 7. I haven’t gigged much at all this year but have taken Monk’s advice to Steve Lacy to heart, “Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, + when it comes, he’s out of shape + can’t make it.”

I had neither met nor played with Jagger before; there was no rehearsal, no sheet music, no set list, no notes at all. His music was rock, pop, highlife, reggae, and blues. I didn't know what the tunes were until I heard them. No pre-determined solos, no patterns to fit, no memorized parts; I had to find the key, listen to the tempo, the rhythm, the form, the cadence, the drummer’s signals, watch the eye contact. Spontaneous creation, I had to listen with my ears. The music only existed in that moment and can’t be repeated. After the gig, I thought about an interview I had read with the late saxophonist Bob Berg, where he expressed that no matter how good a musician he was, he constantly lived in fear of being discovered as a fraud since he was essentially “faking it” every time he improvised. But Sunday night, the feedback was good. 

This was the first time in ages that I actually liked some of the recordings. I've posted two tunes from Sunday that you can download and listen to – Kuchi Kuchi, a highlife tune, and Bob Marley’s Turn Your Lights Down Low. Although the equipment wasn't great and there were typical problems with mikes and cables, Jagger’s set up was clear and well balanced, and I also solved some technical problems with my Zoom recorder. In retrospect, it is like the music was playing itself for a change. 

* Shades of Fela’s Ikoyi Blindness from 1976 – Ikoyi is an expensive up-scale neighborhood in this nation of 90% poverty – Ikoyi Blindness refers to those social climbers whose behavior is oblivious to the situation all around them.

Tribute to the Late Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Nigerian Saxophonist Dare Peter

Saxophonist Shola Emmanuel came down from Abuja to visit and we jammed for a quick hour before heading off to the New Africa Shrine to hear Femi Kuti. Shola and I hadn't seen each other in four years but it didn't seem to matter, either musically or in friendship. I was taking the opportunity to catch up on hap'nin's of some of our other musician mates in Abuja when I learned some shocking news: in Shola's words, Dare is no more.

Bandleader and saxophonist Dare Peter passed away last month after struggling with a long illness. I don't know Dare's exact age but he couldn't have yet reached 40. He came across as kind of a hard-nosed Rasta type with his dreadlocks and Rastaman hat, but that hard exterior was far from the full reality as Dare proved himself to be a musician of heart and integrity in the time I knew him.

Dare Peter and Ron Ashkin in Abuja, 2008

Back in 2008, I walked in to the legendary Elephant Bar in Abuja and heard Dare playing Sonny Rollins' Doxy on alto, supported by a great local rhythm section. He immediately invited me up on stage to join him (here is an audio track of us doing Doxy). That cemented a musical relationship for the rest of the year when I became his second saxophonist, playing tenor, and we played his regular Elephant Bar gig as well as going out to other venues like Silver Spoon and the Arts & Crafts Village. It was at Silver Spoon with Dare's band that I backed up Dede Mabiaku, not knowing at the time that Dede was Fela Kuti's protégé and famous throughout Nigeria. Someone in the audience dashed me a bottle of Champagne that night.

Dare was inclusive and accepting as a bandleader, giving me plenty of chance to stretch out and improvise as the ideas flowed; not competing with me, cutting me off, getting in the way, or making me feel like I was stepping on his toes. There were plenty of times where he gave me the feeling that I was being featured by the band and not just playing a supporting role. He had a repertoire that spanned from jazz to highlife to pop and often a set would progress through all three styles; I'd usually play the jazz opening set and the highlife closer but usually chose to sit out on a lot of the chick singer vocals. Playing with Dare really opened up my desire to perform.

As a musician, Dare had an easy facility on alto sax with a screaming altissimo. His signature tune was Grover Washington's Mr. Magic. Here is a video Dare playing Mr. Magic in 2008:

I've posted this before, but this time it is for posterity (more videos can be found here as well). I understand that Dare married soon after I left Nigeria and leaves behind his wife and young son. Dare Peter, Nigeria's Mr. Magic, rest in peace.