The Fuji Diaries: Sikiru Ayinde Barrister’s 'Reality'

In the household of fuji, Barrister played the role of torch bearer. He took the music to international audiences in the late 1980s, touring Europe and America, having successfully developed his art from the crude were and apala sounds. He introduced new instruments to the genre, notably the piano. He created bridges of piano sounds and in the process invented the softer melody that is part of the genre today.

Fuji was originally a music of drums and gongs which explains the depth of its rhythm. Perhaps, this depth makes the average length, which stretches from fifteen to thirty minutes, go by quickly for fuji musicians and fans—they vigorously dance through these explosions of sounds.

Another major reason Sikiru Ayinde is regarded as the most influential of all fuji musicians is the message packed into his music. He was a conscious artist. While his only contemporary, Ayinla Kollington, made pablum as music, Barry Wonder (as he was also called) took on national and international issues.

Perhaps, this was what earned him the Member of the Order of the Federal Republic honour. The late civil war veteran could break into the English language, a style he adopted just to show had western education to his only rival, Kollington Ayinla. Western education was a rarity that his contemporaries and predecessors could not claim to possess. Atnd a the time, it was seen as an edge. Barrister is perhaps still the most enlightened of fuji musicians, past or present, in that regard.

On 'Reality', the title track of his 38th studio album, Barry, however, dwells on a domestic topic: a feud between him and his siblings, the reality of his life at the time.

His status as the most successful in his family had become overburdened with financial demands from family members who, as it appeared, did not appreciate his efforts. Instead, they sought to start a war with against. Barrister responds by singing his biography and setting down his misgivings in melody.

In Yoruba tradition, important discussions are always preceded with proverbs. So Ayinde starts with a proverb that translates to "what concerns one, concerns all.”

True, Barry’s story isn’t any different from that of an average Nigerian then than now. In many families, there comes a time when parents may subject their children to domestic abuse in order to sustain the family. It was and is still a huge economic question, but Barry, who was known to be mouth-piece for the masses on socio-political issues, didn’t mean his message that way. His song was personal, and strictly a family affair.

He grew up hawking pepper, working as a bus conductor, and eating his meal without meat or fish. And over the length of the twenty-two minute track he tells how he survived great hardship growing up.

In today's Nigeria, most artists in the limelight tell this story. But there is an extra dimension to Barrister's: The fuji maestro was sick, and accusing his siblings of diabolically attacking him. As the song reaches its end, Barrister calls on God, as he cites the Quran.

Barrister's fans enjoyed his music as always, welcoming both song and album with the same fanfare they accorded previous releases. Perhaps, they recognised that by telling of his own experience of family problems, Barrister gave one of the popular issues of Nigerian life its proper context.