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Dance and Celebrate
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Vail Daily, Dance and Celebrate >>
Watching King Sunny Ade perform is like seeing a mini-African festival unfold on stage.
Ade travels with 20 musicians, including three dancers, all clad in bold, colored African garb, and all moving to choreographed, athletic steps. He's Nigeria's most famous singer, composer and guitarist of juju music.
Ade helped to revolutionize juju music. He added six guitars, dropped the accordion and introduced keyboards, the electronic jazz drum and the use of the pedal steel, known as the Hawaiian guitar. He also added more percussion and talking drums, and Ade incorporated good old-fashioned showmanship into his group's performance.
At its heart, juju music is dance music, an infectious blend of Yoruba drumming, inter locking guitar and more recently, Western pop. Ade said he listens to everything, as long as its good, from jazz to rhythm and blues to reggae and even rap.
"Juju music is happy, happy music. It's let's go party and have fun music. It's about coming to celebrate with us. It has nothing to do with shrine or culture or whatever. It's about dancing and celebration." said Ade from his tour bus en route to the next gig.
For the first time ever, highlife performer Prince Obi Osadebe joins Ade on the American tour. He will open for Ade, which is significant because never before have such high level of Yoruba and Igbo musicians performed together.
"Obi plays highlife music, music that crossed over from West Africa to Nigeria. They don't play any traditional instruments. They are pure highlife with horns, keyboard, guitar, bass and drums," said Ade.
This tour also brings another African specialty, the practice of "spraying" the musicians with money. In Nigeria, the tradition of spraying is a form of arts patronage. Audience members fold bills and stick them to the singer's garb or sweaty forehead, and at the same time, the patrons themselves receive recognition in the form of praise singing.
In Nigeria, the people who spray the money are usually the wealthy and high-society types, like the Eagle County residents and second homeowners who support the Vilar Center for the Arts in Beaver Creek. It would be much more interesting if Vilar patrons danced with cash in their hands for the performers they underwrote, instead of just having their name printed on the back of the program.
"Praise singing is more or less like an appreciation for anybody that does well in society, that's way back in Africa, that's what we do," said Ade. 'They will come to the stage and put the money on my forehead. They can hug me and come dance with me."
Ade said it was not his idea to bring the spraying tradition to America, but it was his manager's and the men, Nigerian-born doctors, who brought him here.
"I told them I would try it, but if my fans didn't like it, then I will not do it next time. But the reaction has been marvelous. It's more just for fun, part of the show." said Ade.
Don't forget to throw on your comfortable boogying shoes for King Sunny Ade's show at 8150 Wednesday. He plays for a very long time, and Phish's Trey Anastasio once said, "If you go to see King Sunny, you know you're going to dance all night long."
-Cassie Pence 04/12/05
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