SADARE: If we are all the same then there is no difference but where we differ, is our significance...we are very cultural. We have to pursue culture.

Ayoola Sadare, member of the organisers of The Lagos International Jazz Festival and director for media and strategy for the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN) said  that We are giving a gift to Lagos and Lagosians and we call it the 50, 50, 50 Jazz Lagos @50 special edition.


Speaking with Godfrey Times Travel at the Sakara Music Festival he said; We organize by God’s grace the Lagos international jazz festival. It’s a jazz tourism, arts and culture event. This is the fifth edition but it’s a vision that we have been pursuing for the last 12 years. 


When we went to Cape Town to attend the Cape Town international jazz festival and we saw the impact that festival had on the South African economy When I was there, I found out that half of the 35,000 plus that came to the event, half of them were out of South Africa.

It wasn’t a domestic tourism, it was actually an international tourism and the idea came that if we could bring people, if I and other people could come for three days into South Africa, just to attend an event, why could that not also happen in Lagos being Africa’s number one mega city? So for the last 12 years we’ve been pursuing that vision. So this year we are also having what we call the Lagos international jazz festival and you know Lagos is 50.

We are giving a gift to Lagos and Lagosians and we call it the 50, 50, 50 Jazz Lagos @50 special edition. Where we are having fifty musicians singing fifty Lagos songs in their repertoire for Lagos @50 because we believe that we have to commemorate this event.  Which is once, Lagos can’t be fifty twice. So the Lagos international Jazz festival my team and I have taken it upon ourselves to put together this package and it’s going to happen between April 28 – 30^th. Know that traditionally, in the western world, April jazz appreciation month.

 And it is recognized by UNESCO and the UN, it climaxes on the 30^th of April the international jazz day. Our program is 28, 29 to climax on the 30^th holding here at the Freedom Park. I also call our own program the people’s jazz festival, why? Because we are very affordable at N500, I think we are the most affordable of the jazz festivals that you could find. Why is that? We want the music to be accessible to people. Now when we talk of jazz, where we are now we are listening to jazz even though it’s Sakara music but as somebody said this is Yoruba blues and jazz is part of the blues. So when we talk of jazz, we like people to take their mind away from the jazz that they have in the US, it’s part of it but when you have live music and you have a lot of improvisation like what you saw on stage today then that is jazz –the strong use of instruments.

 And I believe that all those songs, they came from West Africa when all the slaves were taken to the plantation, they were carried away from here and when you carry people away, you carry their music. So the mixture of all that music was what resulted in jazz. For us it’s not just the traditional jazz that people know, it’s even a brand that has come out of it that we call naijazz, where we have our Fuji, our Apala, Sakara, our high life being fused together. You cannot outdo the Americans in their own jazz. There is a saying by Mike Murdock that; your significance is not in your similarity to another but in your point of difference –where you become significant is where you differ. 

Because if we are all the same then there is no difference but where we differ, is our significance. It is like almost saying that, that is your selling point. So those are the kind of things that we pursue, we are very cultural. We have to pursue culture. Culture is one of the biggest exports, the creative industry in the United States they give about…I also couple as the director for media and strategy for the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN) and creative space is the next gold, is the next oil. In America it contributes about up to a trillion dollars, in UK is about a hundred billion pounds per annum. So we have not tapped into that power yet here. We also see what we do as a cultural export, cultural development. The Lagos international jazz festival is here, at the Freedom Park. It’s jazz appreciation month, and even in this month we are going to several venues. This music will be taken to several venues –jazz holes, Renaissance hotel, industry night, the hard rock café and some other venues before we climax at the Freedom Park. As I said it is N500 available! In all other venues it is free but here at the freedom park, it is five hundred naira per day.

Describing the importance of the day Mr. Sadare aka Sadi BoBo said I have been here since about 3 0r 4pm and it’s not been a dull moment. This day is important because it is an eye-opener for everybody. Seeing the kind of people in the crowd, the lefty guys who sang now, it shows you the potentials our music has –indigenous music not only Yoruba’s…Ibo, Bendel, Benin, and Hausa. I believe that the problem we have is the problem of capturing, packaging, presenting our own indigenous music.

I will give an example, I sat down and was listening to Phyno, his album and I find that about 6-7 out of the 20 tracks where distinctively high-life. Few of them are the one he did with Flavour and the other is with Oriental Brother’s son Pino Pino… And you will notice that most of the hits Hip Pop musicians are doing now –they are going way back and should I say they are sampling.

There is a song between Flavor and Timaya ‘money’ is “high-life”… Olamide is doing rap, fuji, contemporary. He is no more even rapping he’s now singing! So they are even mistakenly or intentionally hitting on something. We’ve got to go back to the source. That is why today is significant and being that, as this is Sakara music from the Yoruba genre, we also have to look for the Ibo genre, Hausa, Benue, Ibibio, Efik , we have got to look for the 200 diverse ethnic groups –rich, a goldmine, if anybody can take their time…cultural export. So today is very significant. 

We brought some Jazz musicians here not to play but to come and observe and get some kind of inspiration. This platform, what we just need to do with it is, contemporarise it. Make it up to date, refine it. Other countries have done it –Salif Keita, Jousouf N’dour, Oumou Sangare et al. we have to do it here and they are winning Grammys, the only person that has come close to Grammy is Femi Kuti and God will help him he will win it but it has to be originally authentic, you cannot copy somebody’s song and win a Grammy. It has to be culturally yours. But again I will put it, well done to the Hip Pop guys because there was no industry and they brought out one so we now have to define the industry. And God will help us with that.