Bonsue Fuji creator, Adewale Ayuba is one of the respected Fuji musicians in the country. With more than 30 on the job, Ayuba says he wants to keep pushing on. He speaks with SEGUN ADEBAYO in this interview.
We have not heard much about your music in recent times’ as you seem to have been silent. What has been happening to your music career?
Did you actually say I have been silent?
Yes, people tend to believe so because they have not seen anything new from you for some time. When was the last time you released an album?
If you talk about releasing an album, that problem is not peculiar to Ayuba alone. If you look at the music industry generally, from the like of Chief Ebenezer Obey, King Sunny Ade, and a couple of the old generation musicians, you will discover that most of them have not been releasing albums. We spend a lot of money working on an album, but when you finally release the album, you don’t make your money back. Why would you want to continue with the same business that is not bringing returns to your pocket? This is coupled with the fact that nobody is ready to sponsor you.
You can’t spend millions of naira producing an album, and at the end of the day, you will run into debt. The major problem is the issue of piracy. This menace has forced many of us to think twice before releasing an album. The market maybe there, but will the album get to the desired designation? The answer is no. Sadly, the government has not been alive to its responsibilities in this regard; they are simply not interested in kicking out piracy or protecting out job from being pirated.
If piracy appears to have stopped you from releasing an album as you would have loved to do, does that mean you would not be releasing an album again, because I can’t remember the last time you dropped an album…?
I released an album last about one and a half years ago, which I entitled, Wonder Man. But if you ask if I made any money from the sale of the album, I will say no. If you go on the street now and you see the album, it is certainly a pirated copy. I can’t continue to follow this trend. Aside that, even if you caught the people pirating your songs, you can’t charge them to court because it will lead nowhere. The law against piracy is weak.
I give glory to God because it is one thing for you to be talented; it is another thing for you to maximise your talent and manage it very well. The grace of God has been guiding me and I am forever thankful to God for this. Having said that, I think I have also been a very careful person. I have never seen myself as the best; I only pay attention to my craft and put God first in everything I do. For me, that’s the key to success.
You may have a different style of Fuji, but you can’t rule out the fact that you are still a Fuji musician. But lately, a lot of issues have been coming up in the Fuji music industry, especially the battle of supremacy among the practitioners and there is also this controversy over who created Fuji music. What is your perception of the leadership of Fuji music as things stand today?
I don’t know why journalists are always asking questions about something they have not seen before. Have you ever seen a scenario whereby Pasuma or Sahid Osupa were exchanging blows over supremacy? Or have you heard about any of these people fighting dirty in public? When I am asked this question, I always tell people that I want to see these people fighting in full public glare before I conclude that there is truly a war in the industry. A few weeks back, Taye Currency had a house warming where everybody was present to felicitate with him. I was there. K1, Pasuma, Osupa and others were there. We all greeted one other and I didn’t notice there was any enmity or rancour among them. I will love to see one video where they threw caution to the wind and engaged in a free-for-all. As long as there is nothing like that, I don’t believe in what people say about these people. People only assume but it is not always true.
What can you say about the Bonsue brand of Fuji that you have pioneered for years?
Fuji music had been on ground before I started singing Fuji but when I was about to start music professionally, I realised that I needed to carve my own style of Fuji, which I called Bonsue Fuji. Though, it is still Fuji, at that time, it was different from what many people had seen or heard before. What I wanted to achieve basically was that I wanted a situation whereby when you are referring to Adewale Ayuba, you will make reference to Bonsue Fuji.
About six years back-you said in an interview that you wanted to win the Grammy, what has happened to that dream? Do you still think you can win the award?
Yes, I have not given up on the dream, and I will never give up. I have won the Grammy of Africa, which is the KORA award, and my vision is to cap it all with a Grammy and it will still happen. I have come a long a way in music and I still have a long way to go. But at this stage, I am concentrating more on changing the face of Fuji music by digitalising it; taking Fuji music to the disco hall. If you listen to my last album, you will understand the message I am trying to pass across. The track one was just five minutes because by that, it is very easy to disseminate across borders. With this development, you will-Fuji artiste doing collaboration with one another, not Fuji artiste featuring another artiste who sings a different genre of music.
In this era of hip hop artistes featuring Fuji stars like we have seen between Olamide and Pasuma, and a couple of others, will you also be toeing that path?
I would rather feature a hip hop artiste from America than feature Nigerian musicians who sing hip hop.
Why?
It is like you are telling me to do a collaboration with a reggae artiste from Nigeria when I know that the best of reggae music is from Jamaica, just as you the best of hip hop and R and B from America. So, why should I feature someone that is copying another person’s genre and claiming that he can do it better? For me, the purpose of having collaboration in the first place is to give your career the much-needed boost internationally.
Are you saying Nigerian musicians who do hip hop, are not original?
Yes, they are deceiving themselves because the music that they do is far sweeter and better than what they call hip hop. So why must they call it hip hop? hip hop is foreign. Must they call it hip hop? How many of them have been nominated for Grammy? They won’t get it because they are copying a brand that they can’t do better than the owners. Femi Anikulapo and King Sunny Ade have been nominated for Grammy because they don’t try to copy another person’ brand of song; they have been very original.
At 50, you still look good and young. How do you keep female advances in check?
I appreciate both sexes for their genuine love and support for my music and person. It shows they really love what I am doing and the only way they can express that is to pass compliments across to me, which I truly appreciate. For me, it does not go beyond that. Some people say I look 30 even at 50, but I just thank God for the grace to look this young.
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