Owoh’s first big break came when he was hired as a musician by Nigeria’s Kola Ogunmola Theatre Group, one of the country’s first theatrical troupes. So, having satisfied my father, he couldn’t help but bless my choice of career.”

“A trade that would take my contemporaries four or eight years to learn, I mastered in only six months. “I learned fast,” Owoh told Tosin Ajirire of Nigeria’s Daily Sun. Owoh’s father insisted that Owoh learn a trade as a condition of being allowed to work on his music, and Owoh obediently apprenticed himself to a carpenter. The family moved frequently from place to place, but Owoh sought out musicians and formed bands in each place they landed. Owoh’s father was a carpenter who was known around the town of Osogbo as a good part-time musician, but he greeted his son’s growing interest in music with little enthusiasm. News (in an article reproduced by the Africa News online service) reported that Owoh celebrated his 70th birthday on February 14, 2002, and a 2005 report in the Nigerian Sun tabloid gave his age as 73. Some publications have assigned Owoh’s birthdate to the early 1940s, but Nigeria’s P.M.

He travelled far in the music world before his passing, and is remembered to this day even outside of his devoted Nigerian fans.Ī member of the Yoruba ethnic group, Owoh was born as Oladipupo Owomoyela in Nigeria’s Oyo state. His story, like that of many musicians, is a progressive journey in which we can see his choice in musical trends shaping in response to the events in his life.

Owoh combined this aesthetic with a traditionalist spin on things to make his own brand of excellent sound. It developed from a traditional Yoruba genre called “palm wine music”, overlaid with danceable guitar rhythms, and, in the hands of many musicians, it also contained a strong element of Trinidadian calypso.

Leading groups such as the Omimah Band, the Young Kenneries, and the African Kenneries International, Owoh remained popular even as Nigerian tastes shifted to the newer Juju and Fuji styles! Before this transition, the hot style in Nigeria and Ghana was called Highlife. Orlando Owoh enjoyed a durable popularity that has cut across generational lines in his home country and beyond.

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