Funk the Nigerian Way!
His musical career began in the 70’s but Body and Soul was recorded in 1980.
William Onyeabor by all accounts currently runs his own flour mill and has been crowned High chief of Enugu…Now you can’t say fairer than that.
If this pricks your ears you might want to check this track out too When the Going is Smooth and Good, surely Africa’s take on Kraftwerk with some kinds word of wisdom chucked in.
“When the going is good, you will have many friends,
They will call you many names, they will say they love you, they will say need you
They will say you are great, and so on and so forth.
But when the going is tough, it is then they disappear,
And they never come back, when they come back they have come back to helping knocking you
Down down down down down down down.
That is bad, very very bad.”
But we shouldn’t scoff and the lyrics, musically this man was well ahead of his time – Caribou/Daphni’s Ye Ye sampled him, and don’t tell me that Hot Chip never heard of William Onyeabor.
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