My Professorship And Stage Performance

•Uwaifo the musician

Uwaifo

Uwaifo
Uwaifo

Victor Uwaifo, a renowned musician with several evergreen hits like  Joromi, Araba Dey, Guitar Boy; tells JETHRO IBILEKE how he combines his music with academics

You as a man of many parts. We will like to know how these parts became a whole…

The story of my life will take a whole library. It is like trying to summarise a dictionary in a few words, which is not possible. I am not only a musician, I’ am also an accademic, that is why I am called a professor, a professor of Fine and Applied arts, a visiting professor to American Herritage University.

I studied Fine and Applied Arts in University of Benin, specialising in Sculpture. Before then, I studied Graphic Arts at Yaba College of Technology. In all of these, I made distinctions, I made first class honours.

In early 2,000, I took up an appointment as Commissioner for Arts, Culture and Tourism in Edo state. As soon as my tenure ended in that administration, I went back to the classrooms to teach in the University of Benin. That’s where I’ve been since, till this day.

In my secondary school days, I was an athlete as a high jumper, and I set records in my time. In my first school, the Western Boys School in Benin, the record is still unbroken till today. From there, I proceeded to St. Gregory College, Lagos. I also represented the school, and I took it to a different level because of a particular style I introduced to high jump. It was there before me, but I took it to a higher level. It is called western roll. I would just jump up 90 degree perpendicularly, and when I get to the bar, I roll over the bar, land on my one foot and two hands and one leg stretched backward. It was a phenomenon.

Tell us about your childhood days, how was your growing up like? 

I grew up in Benin and as a child, I delved into so many activities; sports, story-telling, shooting catapults, making cages and even making toys like airplanes, cars and something like a small truck that you can sit on and somebody pulls you. We also engaged in inter school competitions and high jump on the streets.

There were public taps where we got water then and it could be crowded at times, so it became the survival of the fittest. When the tap ran dry, we would trek to Ikpoba River to get water. Our home to Ikpoba River was about five kilometers, but we would not feel it because we would go there to enjoy ourselves, because after washing our clothes, we would swim untill our clothes got dry on the beach.

I was always a protagonist, I always led while others followed. That leadership quality was always there. Not only that, my contemporaries looked up to me to show them the way because I also came from a family of the upper-middle class. My father used to have one of the first cars in Benin City then. It was called Stood Baker, an American Ford.

Can you tell us about your music, how, where and when it all began? 

I ran into some guitarists down town and I liked the sound I heard, and I said I must play the instruments I heard. But I have brothers who were into music before me. They were also very educated, so they delved into other disciplines.

I made the first guitar for myself before I was 12 years old. The skills I aqcuired from making cages and other artworks helped me in making the guitar from plywood. I used bicycle spokes for the frets and trap ropes for strings. Few months after I made it, I ran into some of these palm wine bar guitarists. I had to offer them a jug of palm wine before they allowed me to play their guitar.

I acquired my own guitar at about 12 years of age. It was a Spanish box guitar. I took a few lessons. They thought me this or that, and I took it up from there. My brothers also thought me the rudiment or music, particularly the late chief magistrate. He was a church organist, so he could read music. He bought me a few books on the rudiment of music. From there, I started reading and teaching myself and taking courses by correspondence.

Then we found what we called the Uwaifo quartet in which I was a guitarist. My sister was there, my late brother was there and my brother who is serving in the Supreme ourt, Justice Uwaifo was also one of us. Mr. Emmanuel Fadaka used to come from Ibadan to come and record us because that was the only radio station in the whole of Western Region by then. So our voices were heard on radio at Ibadan. But I made my first album around 1960. I was already in Lagos then.

When I was in secondary school, I played with some bands like that of Victor Ola Iya, and finally, I anchored with E. C. Arinze for about five years. It was there I really acquired the knowledge of orchestration and the knowledge of music management. We were stationed in Kakado, a very popular night club in Lagos by then. There was so much discipline in the band. We were well dressed.

While still in the band, I started recording my own songs, and I called the group The Pick Ups, because we picked them up from different places and we went to the studio to record. Then when I disengaged from E. C. Arinze, the same year, I formed a band with the late Stephen Osadebe and Freddy Coker. We called ourselves the Central Moderneers and we had a band in Central Hotel, not far from Kakado. We lasted only for a year before I went solo and by then I was working for NTS, now NTA. That was in 1963. It was in 1965 that I made a hit. By 1966, I resigned and went professional, and by 1967, there was a follow up of another great hit, and others followed.

How would you compare music of today with music of your own time in terms of quality? 

It appears you are speaking my mind. I have always said that ours was the golden era of music in Nigeria and in Africa. Then everybody had to be an instrumantalist, you must know how to play one or two instruments. I am not only a guitarist, I play almost all instruments. So if you have that knowledge, you know what to do when arranging your music. Even now, I score my music in sheets, sheet music.

But these days, everybody is in a hurry. Probably it’s the age they were born into. Today, everything is inside the computer from where they will just off-load the sound and then tailor whatever they want to do and mix. So anybody can make music. But if you make music with computer, that doesn’t make you a musician. It’s like cheating in an exam hall. They set question for you, you don’t know it but you have the answer somewhere and copy it. So if you pass, it doesn’t make you a good student because you don’t actually know it. The computer is just like an expo. The thing is there for you to tap from.

Though there are few ones among them who are talented, they need to do more than that. In my school of music, I train my students who are serious and want to learn and become self reliant, in different instruments. Yes, you can use computer to advance your course, it is supposed to be for demonstration. You just use it to arrange how you want your music to sound so that they can play it live. Now the young ones will just play their CDs on stage and sing along. But is that music? Is that performance?

What is your opinion on the common use of drugs for inspiration by musicians of today? 

Well, I promised myself and my God that I would do my best to remain disciplined. So, discipline is the key word. It is a free world, anybody is free to do whatever he or she feels like doing, but I believe that if you want to make a good living, then you must first of all discipline yourself, to set a good example for others to follow, otherwise, you will not also live a responsible life.

Those artistes who seek inspiration from drugs, it is possible that the kind of groups they join themselves to motivated them to do that. But again, everyone has to have his own set goals or what he believes is good for him. It’s like if you go to a restaurant to eat, you go there with the aim of eating the kind of food that you like. But if they now begin to give you different options that you might probably not like, it is either you don’t want to eat or you look for another place to satisfy your appetite.

Some artistes go into drugs perhaps to give them Dutch courage on stage 

But if they have self control and discipline, they can say no to all these things. I have not smoked before. I don’t like it and I don’t want to. So I believe that music is just enough intoxicant. With music, you can achieve whatever you want to in normal life. But one needs self control and the fear of God.

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Is it really true that your encounter with a mermaid at the Lagos beach is reason that no one has been able to match your skill at the guitar? 

No, mammy water will not give you the skill, it will only probably inspire you to do more. That encounter with the mermaid at the Lagos barbeach gave birth to the song Guitar Boy, “If you see mammy water oh, never, never you run away,” that is the shortest lyric ever in the music industry, and it has remained evergreen till today.

Still on the encounter with the mermaid, considering your age at the time, how did you feel that night? 

Well, I was looking for inspiration, so I used to go to the beach to cool off at the bar beach after close of work at NTA. At that time, television work was a night business, not in the day as we have it today. By the time we finished, to go back to the Mainland through the Carter Bridge, the only bridge available then, was not easy. So I used to go to the Barbeach which was just a stone’s throw away from the NTA. That was how the idea came into me to go for inspiration a the beach.

But that particular night, I stayed late into the night, I was alone, and I noticed that the waves were advancing beyond the normal point to my direction. I was forced to move my camp bed backward. I did that about two times, not knowing that an unexpected esoteric visitor was going to visit me. From a distance, I saw a glittering object advancing towards me. I looked, but I didn’t quite comprehend what I saw until it came very close to me. That was when I tried to run away, and then the voice came: “Guitar boy” and I screamed, “Eh!” That gave birth to the pull of string on my guitar. Nobody has ever pulled guitar string like that before that time. So I decided I must interpret that screaming on the guitar strings. So when you hear those rattles of my guitar, it is my response to the call. It was like a call and an answer, and it is still fresh in my mind, I still feel the nostalgia of that encounter.

Can you tell us what the mermaid told you? 

That was: “If you see mammy water, never, never you run away, Victor Uwaifo.” and it disappeared.

As an academic, how do you feel when you teach in the classroom, and how do your students respond? 

My students always look up to me and they are happy with the way I teach them. Most of them are happy with me and they want to know how I got to this level. So I encourage them a lot and make them fell as if we are age mates. I lecture beyond the normal style. I also take them out on practical to see many things that they might not even see in the text books.

As a visiting professor at an American university, we do correspondence and I also lecture them online. It is so amazing and beautiful, seeing a whole class on the computer through the webcam, you see them, and they also see you.

My Professorship And Stage Performance

 How do you combine your music with academic work?

Combining music with academics is easier than you can imagine. A music star can recite and sing the lyrics of his composition word for word and play the musical instrument note by note. A record single is equal to a publication in academic journal compared together. I doubt if any lecturer can recite word for word his work in any academic journal.

One musical album is like a book publication of serious research by an academic. A good music superstar can play and sing down the memory lane of his musical repertoires word for word and note by note with such mastery of a genius. But I doubt if any lecturer, doctor or professor in any field can recite the contents of his book that he published from the beginning to the end.

Therefore, in my own opinion, I hereby posit that a good musician is a gifted person with extra sense and has greater advantage when in the academics over others in the academia. I belong to both, so I am speaking from experience. When theory fails, experience takes over.

Every work of a musician is a litmus test for any performing artiste to help sustain his popularity over decades and likewise any researcher who is able to propound a theory and actualise it is also an inventor. Theory and practice make sense.

Let us look at your life and politics. Are you a politician? 

Everybody is a politician. There is politics in every thing. But you cannot blow hot and cold at the same time. You cannot be in the classroom and be a card-carrying member of a political party. You cannot justify that.

When I was a commissioner, yes, I belonged to a particular political party, I had my cars and my loyalty also. But going back to the classroom, I am neutral, just like a civil servant.

But do you hope to return to politics and perhaps seek elective position in the nearest future? 

Is there any elective position that is more than my present status? I am a king maker.

Will you say you have attained fulfillment in your life? 

You can see it. It is radiating all over me. I said it before that I am a fulfilled man.  You might have money but not fulfilled. You can also be a popular musician but not fulfilled.

I have gone round the periphery of life, from music to academic, to art, to sculpture, to painting, to creating a museum that is different from all other museums. I am also an architect and an engineer. I made that car that you see outside there and drove it to Abuja about 20 years ago. So there is that fulfillment.

When I look, I see beyound, more than what any other man will see. When I hear, I hear more than what an ordinary man hears. The man that has a taste for music is the one with extra sense and the man that is an artist has a vision. It is spiritual and esoteric. These are privileged knowlege that no one has.

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