Durable fuji artiste, Abas Akande Obesere, was in his elements in Ikorodu, Lagos State, on Wednesday night when he performed at the ongoing One Lagos Fiesta.
With two female dancers taunting the expansive stage with tempting dance steps, Obesere’s band held the audience in captivity for about an hour.
Those who have been following the OLF feast in the five divisions it is holding will attest to it that there must have been something peculiar in the act of any musician to have enjoyed that kind of partiality in terms of time. The fact is that in terms of the explosive experience that the audience at that kind of show demands, Obesere was on point from dawn to dusk.
It was an opportunity for him to sing a trailer-load of the ‘saje’ songs he had waxed into tens of albums over the years. Some 30 years ago, the fuji artiste had sauntered onto stardom with usually erotic slang expressions he tagged asakasa.
His brand of saje was so daring that an older player like Kollington Ayinla could not maintain the pace at which the musician also called Omo apala and Baba Tosibe moved. And if a stylishly wild-cracking Kollington could not, how on earth could a more reserved Sikiru Ayinde Barrister ‘condescend’ so loosely as to say he must match Obesere? This was in spite of Barrister’s threat in ‘Bo ba je pe saje lo laye/ E je ka jo maa ko o’, where he declared that since jargon songs were the order of the day, he too was prepared to assert himself in that direction.
While older members of the audience savoured the sleaze chants as Obesere endlessly released them in Ikorodu, younger ones, especially the hip hop generation, were surprised that there is a musician who has done so much in the erotic chant industry.
