Pick of the Week - K1 De Ultimate (Nigeria)
A song by K1 De Ultimate (aka King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal), from Nigeria.
I'd like to say I have a grand plan when it comes to selecting the weekly picks, but nope. Whatever grabs me the most - that's the one.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of Nigerian music. Mostly King Sunny Ade and Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey. It's music I don't know that well, even though King Sunny's Aura album was one of the first African albums I encountered, about forty years ago.
One thing led to another and I ran across "Awa Tunde Batinde," a 2012 song by K1 De Ultimate. Rather than pretend I know what I'm talking about, I'll lift the description from the "official K1 De Ultimate Youtube Channel." Where there's a lot more of his music...
Praised as the king of Africa’s percussion-heavy Fuji music, King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal known by the moniker, K1 De Ultimate has seen it all in his 50 year plus career, enjoying critical and commercial success home and abroad in a career span that has taken him from young upstart in 1970 to an African cultural authority.
His debut album, Iba, was released in 1980 and four years later the acclaimed follow-up, Talazo, dropped catapulting K1 to national superstardom. He has since released over 40 studio & live albums & taken the music beyond the shores of Nigeria while deepening his link to the very lifeblood of Fuji due to his charisma & legendary stage presence. K1’s music has been interpolated and sampled by a plethora of African music heavyweights including rapper, Olamide.
KWAM1 is a second-generation Fuji star with nearly fifty years under his belt, reworking the vision of this genre created from Islamic Ramadan traditions, Yoruba drumming and Meslismatic vocal deliveries. His role has been to modernise both with relevant technology and musical innovation. With just about one prominent living first-generation Fuji star General Killington Ayinla alive, KWAM1 is the defacto patron of the genre, which boasts of the patronage of the Southwestern Nigerian proletariat. Fuji has been Nigeria’s youth tool of expression for at least 40 years, similar to the way Hip-Hop has been for America.