Aderinto: In Praise of the Queens in Fuji Kingdom (1) — by Oladeinde Olawoyin

Iyabo Alake Osanle, easily the most phenomenal female Fuji musician of the 21st century, burst onto the male-dominated Fuji scene on the cusp of the millennium with rare gusto: a microphone in hand, an all-male Fuji band, an avalanche of lewd lyrics and street slang, a croaky ‘masculine’ voice, and unconventional demeanours that challenged people’s pre-conceived notion of feminine creativity.

And just so the wolves within the Fuji kingdom knew that she wasn’t coming out to play, she added a battle-signalling sobriquet for maximum effect: One-woman battalion.

It’s plausible that Osanle herself wasn’t conscious of the prevailing dynamics and the import of her combative entrance into the shark-infested waters of a male-dominated kingdom like Fuji’s, where everyone was either a king (ala Kwam 1) or king-in-waiting (ala Alao Malaika, Saheed Osupa, and Abass Obesere) and there was no room for a queen. But her entrance reflected the turbulent atmosphere within which she decided to operate and, more importantly, her vulnerability as a woman with “weaker vessels”—challenges for which she seemed well prepared to tackle head-on.

Now, it’s tempting to imagine Osanle’s choice of an all-male Fuji band as a woman’s attempt to give patriarchy the middle finger, effectively cementing her dominance as the “leader” of the men in the band. Afterall, among other battle-ready warnings she had for the menfolk in the kingdom, she christened herself “Iya Won” – “Their Mother”. But a careful study of Osanle’s emergence and popularity (some would say notoriety) in the early days would reveal a deeper concern: she was an “outcast”, an Osanle (literally someone who runs away from home) who appeared overly loud, deodorised thuggery, justified juvenile delinquency, and encouraged defiance against societal mores.

Osanle— by society’s default conception – was the epitome of everything a young girl should never aspire to be, even though such traits could be excused, if subtly, in men. Hence, she could only have found succour among his all-male band at the time.

It would appear that Osanle’s defiant theatrics in the early days weren’t just performative braggadocio staged as a defensive mechanism against men who may want to bully her or confuse her ‘vulnerability’ as a woman for inferiority; it was also a protest against a society that was bound to condemn her as “a misfit” by default. Why? In the latter years, when she released her most successful album, Aluyo, having registered her presence as Yeye Oge of Fuji, Osanle seemed to have gone through moments of epiphany: she walked back some of her early-year campaigns, presented a more nuanced perspective about her motivations, preached conventional ideals, and warned against delinquency.

But the many contradictions and poor articulation inherent in the philosophical foundation of her advocacy notwithstanding, the core message in Osanle’s oeuvres remains with us even after she died in 2009: women face too many challenges as creatives, on the homefront, with pregnancy, breastfeeding, sexual harassment, etc and it’s far worse in a chaotic space like Fuji.

17 years after Osanle’s death, in Women of Fuji, the second in the Fuji Documentary Series, many of the issues she raised in her oeuvres get a nuanced treatment in the deft hands of a scholar. Under Professor Saheed Aderinto’s directorial dexterity, the documentary puts into illuminating perspectives the convoluted roles of women fuji artistes, their survival journeys, the delicate triumphs, and the pressures on all fronts.

II

For many millennials, Osanle was the last and perhaps most prominent queen in Fuji’s chaotic kingdom. But if Osanle challenged male patriarchy with her entrance in the 2000s, Professor Aderinto’s film shows us that she was only drawing inspiration from past musical heroines of the genre, mostly unsung.

So the ‘Women of Fuji’ documentary begins with an illuminating journey into the past, with Alake Alasela, who started off playing Waka, Awurebe, and later Fuji. The klieglights moved towards Karimotu Aduke – Sikiru Ayinde Barrister’s first wife and mother of his first son, Rasaq—who competed in Were expeditions and won prizes. Later came Asisatu Amope, who blended Sekere with modern sounds and guitar and disrupted the space with her Ikebe Fuji Reggae (1981), earning media accolades even in the then-influential Lagos Weekend.

By far the most audacious of the women of that era, to my mind, was Mutiatu Amope, who, circa 1983, self-produced and released her own album under her own label, Iganmode Records. She would take audacity to a dizzying height when she ranked herself as the third in the Fuji hierarchy, placing herself just behind the pioneering duo of Ayinde Barrister and Ayinla Kollington, as their ‘Idowu’. Given the sensitivity of hierarchy in Fuji at a time Iyanda Sawaba Ewenla rocked downtown Ebute Metta and Wasiu Ayinde Barrister (later Marshal) was the rave with his ‘Tala Series’, Amope’s was quite a bold one.

Like Amope, Fatimo Asade also came out to challenge Rashidi Ayinde Merenge as the first ‘Serubawon’, literally taking the fight to the arena of the top Fuji acts of that era. Many years later in the 1990s, Solape Florangba, aka Lady Matosibe also challenged Abasss Akande Obesere. For her, the goal was to free women from male chauvinism, deconstructing Obesere’s popular slang, “Tosibe”, as one that diminishes a woman’s agency.

Joy Abeke, who brought Bolojo sound of Egbado into Fuji, and Ejide Muinatu, who prides herself as the “longest reigning” female Fuji musician, also came to the limelight afterwards.

In the 2000s, Pasuma—whose prolificity in sobriquet manufacturing is legendary—named himself African Puff Daddy. He would soon be imitated by Wale Tekoma, who called himself “African Sisqo” and Remi Aluko, who earned the title of “African Fuji 2Pac”. They all followed the footpaths of Obesere and Easy Kabaka, who had both been locked in a mortal combat over who owned the sobriquet “African Michael Jackson”. If these artistes, the younger ones especially, attempted to tap into the global fame of the artistes whose stage-names they (mis)appropriated, Fausat Makeba did the same in the years prior, by adopting Mariam Makeba’s name.

Fuji, by etymology, flows from Were, an Islamic performance staged during the fasting month of Ramadan. That genesis explains why most Fuji artistes are Muslims, but Foluke Awoleye emerged in 1992 as the “first Christian gospel Fuji musician”, with a bible in one hand and a microphone in the other, fired by a determination to preach the gospel of Christ.

All of these women, from Alasela through Fausat Makeba, seem united not just by the genesis of their artistry (they are multitalented women who excelled more with Waka, Awurebe and similar indigenous sounds, before pivoting into Fuji) but the conscious realisation that they were navigating a difficult terrain and had to come up with combative tactics to weather the storm and find a space for themselves in a fiercely competitive arena.

For them, coming to the Fuji arena is like a fighter moving around a ludus occupied by hungry gladiators baying for blood. Like Kemity, the viral sensation in Ibrahim Itele’s popular movie Koleoso, didn’t quite intone, the adventure is akin to “War war war…”