Controversial Tekno song gets video

10 May 2018 - 17:01

Early this week, Nigerian pop act Tekno was accused of illegally using parts of an older song on his new single ‘Jogodo’.

Tekno sampled a Danfo Drivers song on 'Jogodo'. Photo: TMG

The older song, Danfo Drivers’ ‘Kpolongo’, was released in the early 2000s; Tekno’s song was released this year. Fans familiar with the former song, which was a hit across Nigeria, immediately noticed the similarity between both songs, but many assumed the younger artist had received permission.

That impression changed when a video showing the duo of Mountain Black and Mad Melon, members of Danfo Drivers, speaking angrily about Tekno surfaced online.

During the interview captured by the video, one of the duo said in pidgin: “Tekno dey make us vex. E just come dey carry person music go dey sing." (Tekno is making us angry. He just took our song and used it on his.) "If you wan do something you go call the people dem when get the song tell dem say see wetin we go do o." (If you want to do something like that, call the owners of the song.) "We will now plan and do it. Tekno dey owe us money, if I catch am e no go like me.”

Should the duo be proven right, this would be the latest case of copyright infringement with regards to sampling older songs in an industry that frequently takes the legal aspect of such agreements for granted.

Speaking to Music In Africa last year, Michael Odiong, business manager of Nigeria’s oldest functioning record label, Premier Music, gave an account of an infringement concerning an old Osita Osadebe song by the late MC Loph in 2012.

“The rights belonged to us,” he said about Osadebe’s record. “We pursued it and I finally met MC Loph. I said, 'How could you? Did you search? Did you ask?' He said he left everything for the record label and when the label said it couldn’t get it, he went ahead.”

A similar response appears to have been provided online by Ubi Franklin, head of Made Men Music Group, the label responsible for releasing Tekno’s music. “We contacted them and it was one story or the other,” a screenshot shows. “This actually makes me laugh.”

Perhaps as a response to potential escalation of the conflict due to the release of the song's music video, which was released hours ago, Tekno posted a photo of the Danfo Drivers and himself on his Instagram account.