It was that laughter! It caught my feet right at the entrance gate to the single storey house in Ikeja. It must have filled the entire street in fact because like other callers to the house, it just enwrapped you and drew your steps towards the beige-colour building.

And that laughter… it graced my every step up the staircase as I inched closer to the presence of a woman, who had recently become a phenomenon, following the release of her album, Seun Rere.

Now before the one who in truth commanded a royal reverence from this errant reporter, the fat, almost rambunctious laughter became something else. It took on an enigmatic character even as I beheld the — okay, I thought then — the pint-size woman, who unleashed it on the entire ambience of the compound.

This was sometime in the late 80s or early 90s... memory is caked with ageing now, and it is tough to recall the scenery… but that laughter would not go away… some two decades plus after!!!

It had taken Alfred Romeo, my drama schoolmate in our University of Ibadan days many weeks and several rescheduled appointments, to convince me to sit in at a rehearsal session of the Gold Train Orchestra, which held regularly in that single-storey building, tucked somewhere deep in Ikeja.

Not one given to visiting artistes in their offices — well, there had been cases of abuses in those days — I had, as usual, insisted I wasn’t too keen on visiting the Artiste at her base.

“I would rather meet her at the studio”, I insisted.

But my friend, Romeo, would have none of that. ‘C’mmon, you will like my madam’, he kept repeating as he picked me up somewhere near Fela’s Shrine in his Beetles and drove my grunting frame to the house.

‘E gbo, e fe wa si bi?’ she shot straight at me. ‘Ha, ki la se fun yin? My knees buckled. Could that be small (used to be a mass of bones and lean flesh) me that this phenomenal lady bestowed with so much reverence? (if you understand Yoruba, you will decipher the connotative meaning of ‘e’ as different from ‘o’.

I stood rooted, unsure of how to respond. Well, I — and I am sure, most of my colleagues then on the Arts reporting beat — hadn’t been used to being treated to so much reverence. It was the days we were frequently thrown out of club houses or punched in the face for daring to report the fight or misdemeanour in the club the previous night; or writing a review considered unsavoury to the artiste and her handlers. An Artiste manager, in fact, rode his car into a reporter somewhere in Surulere after a night of clubbing… he claimed it was an accident!

While still thinking of the next move, she leapt from her seat, and dragged me to the seat. Right beside her! Haa, wahala!!! Shy me!!

‘Thanks for coming,’ she beamed. And that laughter followed. This time it shook my bones. It was affective. Had to break into a smile too!!!

We spent the next two hours or so, listening to the band rehearsing, with Madam dishing out instructions that sounded more like a mother advising her children on how to accomplish a certain task.

Soon, the band took a break; and who was dishing out meal?

Madam!!!

And when someone, I think the guitarist, joked that he got lesser portion of chicken than another member, Madam teased him: ‘Pele, but he is the drummer and needs all the strength, abi?’

That laughter reigned again!

Now, such scenario may indeed be common among band leaders and their sidemen; what awed my fancy, was the airlessness with which Madam flowed into comradeship with her band members — indeed, her employees (as I learnt later that all the members were employed as in a firm, with salaries and other emoluments fixed and collectable at the end of the month).

She told me of an impending nationwide bus tour by the Orchestra. She would be in the bus with the boys and girls! Not sequestered in some glistening four wheelers ahead of the ‘lowly’ pack?

She painted a picture that recalled in my heart, the images of the Soul Train Orchestra, which then ruled the tube.

For her, the tour was an evangelisation: ‘we want to spread our music to all our good people and fans all over the country”.

lass="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"> She spoke of her love for the country, reminding of an earlier exchange she had had with then Sonny Okosun, later Evangelist Sonny Okosuns, about how they could use their music to help restore hope in a people beaten down by the crushing effect of the Austerity measures on the heels of the IMF loan-induced economic depression.

She said she wasn’t satisfied with just recording her works and selling them in thousands or do the round of the many clubs – as was the hip culture of entertainment scene then. ‘We need to meet our people in their own locale; many of them are too poor to buy album or come to clubs’.

Then to personal: “Won’t your family miss you?”

Again, that laughter…

‘Eeeh, won ma ti gba kamu o…. since I started acting on location they have been used to my absences. But they understand me and I make sure I always return to my home. They are my best pillar’.

The band had resumed; and I thought it was time to escape, but her majestic pull arrested me on the sofa.

I must have slipped into revelry because it was that laughter again that woke me… ‘Oya, e je ka lo’. I obeyed, and outside the gate, she crawled into the back of the beetle and literally dragged me in, while Cletus Nwachukwu, who was then her media officer, sat next to the driver, Romeo.

We headed in the direction of Orile Agege…

As we chewed endlessly on the bitter yam of our national troubles of the time, which Xty dissected with the lucidness of an astute public intellectual, the oil in our conversation was… that laughter.

O di gbere o, that laughter! — BY JAHMAN ANIKULAPO

Christy Essien Igbokwe (1960 – 2011):

Her sojourn, her life in the land of music

(Culled from Daily Independent)

Thursday, June 30, was yet another day of mourning for the entertainment world when the death of one of Africa’s most effervescent singer cum actress, Christy Essien Igbokwe, was confirmed by her husband of almost three decades, Chief Edwin Igbokwe.

In this tribute, Deputy Editor, Charles Okogene, takes us on excursion into the life and times of the singer whose inspirational lyrics earned her the stage name – Lady of Songs.

•Igbokwe

Just like her children dreamt of her death but could not summon the courage to tell her before she finally took her last breathe on June 28, her parents were equally told by fortune tellers, before her birth on November 11, 1960, that she is destined to be a great woman.

“When I was in the village, my mother, my father, my grandmother and the villagers used to tell me that before I was born, it was prophesied that I will be a great woman,” Christy Essien Igbokwe (MFR), told this reporter at a press parley to mark her 50th birthday.

And so when at the age of 16 the prediction of the soothsayer started to manifest with the release of her maiden album – Freedom, which became an instant hit days after release – it did not come as a surprise to her grandmother and father who were still alive to witness the manifestation of the soothsayer’s prediction.

Born in Okat, Onna Local Government Area of the present day Akwa Ibom State as Christiana Uduak, she started dancing with dramatic groups in school at the tender age of seven. However, it was in Aba, the commercial and manufacturing hub of Eastern Nigerian, that she not only hone her musical talent but set out on her acting and musical sojourn that earned her sobriquets like Apena and Lady of Songs among others.

A polyglot who had her secondary and higher school certificate (HSC) education in Lagos and Aba, Christy or Apena as her fans call her character in the now rested The Masquerade – a sitcom on NTA Aba that held television viewers glued to their sets in the 70s – loved to call her, two men, Marcel Emecheta and Pal Akalonu played important roles in discovering and nurturing her raw musical talent to professional stardom.

“Each time I am alone, I sing and people will be listening to me. At break time in school, I will go behind the classroom singing. So, one day, I just started singing and moving towards the main road and people were looking at me and saying that I was possessed. I didn’t care, I just kept singing and going and there was this man who was coming out of NTA Aba premises, his name was Marcel Emecheta, a member of staff of NTA Aba then. As he crossed the road and saw me singing and people looking at me and making comments, he stood and tried to see if really something was wrong with me. As he was staring at me I stopped and asked him, ‘what is it?’ He said ‘please carry on.’ And I said ‘carry on what?’ He said ‘singing.’ And I said ‘I am not singing for you.’ And he went on to say ‘I love your voice’. It was on a Wednesday and Live Sound, a programme on NTA Aba was always on Wednesdays. And as he was talking to me, Nda Pal Akalonu was rehearsing artistes that were to perform on the programme later that evening. He then said ‘if you think I want to chase, I don’t want. I just love your voice and if you will, that is NTA Aba, go there and ask for Pal Akalonu.’ And I said ‘for what?’ And he said ‘just go and see him and let him hear your voice.’ And I said ‘for what now?’ And he said ‘please I beg you, just do it for me’. I then decided to go in and as I was going into the premises, he stood there watching me and immediately he saw that I have entered the compound, he went his own way. And guess who was just coming out of the studio when I stepped into the premises, one of the people he told me to look for. And my spirit told me ‘that is the person’. I walked up to her and said ‘one man said I should see you or NdaPal’ and she said ‘for what?’ And I said ‘he said I can sing’. And she asked me ‘and what do you think? Can you sing? She then took me to Nda Pal who then said I should sing any song and as I was singing, he closed his eyes and I thought he was sleeping so I stopped and he asked why did I stop and I asked him ‘why are you sleeping’. He told me, ‘I am not sleeping’ and I said ‘then open your eyes’. He now said ‘how old are you and why are you so bold’. I replied that by God’s grace, ‘I will be 16 that year.’ He then asked me to finish my song and when I finished he asked if I could come on the programme that day and I said ‘no. You have to go and tell my mother’. And that was how it all started,” she said of how she was discovered and set on stardom highway by the duo of Emecheta and Akalaonu in an interview published in November 13 2010 edition of Saturday Independent.

Without doubt, Christy, even in death, remains the most accomplished, the most decorated, and the most widely travelled female musician Nigeria ever produced. Her marriage to Edwin, a marriage that was facilitated by the late founder of Punch Newspapers, Chief Olu Aboderin, and her movement to Skylak Records, also owned by Aboderin, provided her the platform with which she took her gig round the globe with her Goldtrain Orchestra; spreading it to as far as Seoul, the capital of South Korea where she participated in the 6th Seoul Songs Festival, 1983, and won a Silver Prize.

In 1980, the Nigerian Entertainment Writers conferred her with the title of Lady of Songs, which is part of the over 42 awards she either won or conferred with during her active musicianship that span over 30 years with 10 albums, all of them monumental hits, to her credit.

Perhaps, the most distinguished of all the awards and titles is the Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR), which the Federal Government of Nigeria conferred on her in 1999 in appreciation of her immense contributions to the entertainment world and a letter dated August 26, 1980, from Walter Mondale, former American Vice President in appreciation of the three albums she presented as a gift to the Vice President and his wife at a dinner hosted in their honour by former Nigerian Vice President, Alex Ekwueme, at the Federal Place Hotel.

With so many chieftaincy titles that included but not limited to Adaha Onna (pillar of Onna LGA) to her credit, not many knew that she also had a honourary doctorate degree (Honoris Causa) from the University of Berkley Chicago, United States of America and University & Theological Seminary, Jerusalem, Israel, all of which were conferred on her last year.

With the support of her husband, she recorded the feat as the brain behind the formation of the only recognised national body for Nigerian musicians called Performing Musicians Employers Association of Nigeria (PMAN). The Association, formed in 1982 was meant to cater for the welfare and protection of Nigerian musicians and their rights, nationally and internationally. And when in 1995, the body ran into leadership crisis that threatened its existence, the Lady of Songs was invited to rescue it from the jaws of extinction. This culminated in her serving as PMAN president for two terms and she remained, till date the only female to head the association. And like her predecessors, her tenure as PMAN president witnessed its fair share of controversy occasioned by the participation of the association’s members in the infamous Daniel Kanu’s Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA) one million man march held in Abuja to urge the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, to transmute from military head of state to civilian president.

The people of her home state, Akwa Ibom, and indeed, the entire oil producing states, will not forget her role in the abrogation of offshore/onshore oil dichotomy. Story has it that the abrogation got its tacit approval at the Ibom Hall, Uyo, on September 22, 1992, at her command performance to mark the creation of Akwa Ibom State when the then Military Governor of the state, Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga persuaded her to appeal to President Ibrahim Babangida, who created the state, to abrogate the law of onshore/offshore dichotomy.

And so, when Christy took to the stage for the command performance that had Babangida, the late MKO Abiola and his wife, Simbiat, in attendance, she knelt down and told Babangida that unless he promised her and the people of Akwa Ibom right there that he would do something about the abrogation of the dichotomy law before leaving office, she will not get up. And typical of Babangida, after some minutes of silence in anticipation of his response, he assured the audience that he would look into the request before he left office. This much was acknowledged by Obong Akpan Isemin, the governor of Akwa Ibom State, in a broadcast announcing the receipt of the instrument abrogating the dichotomy.

Some people have equally argued that no other song would have gone for the state’s anthem than Akwa Ibom Mi, a song about Akwa Ibom that was written, composed and released by Christy, one of the songs she performed at the fifth anniversary dinner of the state at which she made the demand on Babangida.

A large hearted musician, Christy, just like the late Michael Jackson, gave both her time and resources to charity both in Nigeria and other West African countries like Ghana and Liberia. Through her Essential Childcare Foundation she touched the lives of the less privileged and indigent children across the country.

Aside music which brought her fame and fortune, she had her interest in other business endeavours that included Chuduak Limited, Soultrain Entertainment Limited, Chuduak Graphic Machinery Limited, Eagle Graphic Equipment Limited and Chuduak Properties among others. She also invested in EMIS one of the first privately owned telecommunication companies in Nigeria.

Though her last recoded album, Mysteries of Life was released in 1994, she had planned a re-launch of her career with a release of another album and a duet with her hip-hop musician son, Kaka, before death stroll in like a thief in the night and stole the Lady of Songs from her family, friends and millions of her fans the world over.