People say true art is timeless and KSA’s music is the perfect example. King Sunny Ade is a Nigerian singer, songwriter, band leader, multi-instrumentalist and music icon. Born September 22, 1946 as Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye, he is most known as the most famous exponent of the juju music genre, a conventional and traditional brand of music which is a mix between local traditional Yoruba vocal forms and percussion and Western rock and roll widely recognized in the Yoruba land. He is also known to be the first Nigerian musician to ever be nominated for a Grammy award. To add to his numerous international achievements, in 2016 he was inducted into the Hard Rock Café Hall of Fame. He is considered one of the most impactful musicians in Nigeria and Africa and has amassed fame and popularity all over the world.
Sunny Ade was born in Ondo Town in Ondo State to the Adegeye royal family. From a young age, he had been playing music in the form of the Ghanaian-originated dance genre, Highlife, fused with church and Yoruba traditional sounds and buying his first guitar with his own saved-up money at 16 years of age. He was restricted from playing music as he was royalty and it was believed in his family that musicians were not serious people. He left Ondo State at a young age for Osogbo, Osun State where he went to Saint Charles Grammar School. He proceeded to join a musical group, the “Idou Woye”, a dynamic band that usually played in a nightclub called Pax Hotel. He found it difficult playing in the nightclub with the Idou Woye due to the fact that he was still underage. By this time, Sunny Ade was already a very good self-trained percussionist. The Idou Woye band was called to play at the occasion of a new king installation at Abeokuta, Ogun State and Sunny Ade went with the rest of the band. It was from Abeokuta he left for Lagos in 1962 after communicating with an ex-bandmate that had already gone to Lagos to join another band. Sunny Ade told his Idou Woye band leader he was going to meet his brother in Lagos and left. It was in Lagos he joined the musical group, "The Federal Rhythm Dandies". The Federal Rhythm Dandies was a traveling musical comedy group led by the late veteran actor and comedian, Moses Olaiya Adejumo, most popularly known as "Baba Sala" who was Sunny Ade's mentor. According to Baba Sala, he was the one who taught Sunny Ade how to play guitars well. Sunny Ade became lead guitarist in the band by 1964 and later left to set up Sunny Ade and his Green Spots in 1966 where he played the guitar solos in their recordings and performances himself.
Sunny Ade's breakout song was "Challenge Cup" which sold over five hundred thousand units in the first two weeks after its release. The song was made to praise and commemorate the 1969 Challenge Cup win by the Nigerian football club, Stationery Stores F.C. He changed the name of the band from the Green Spots to the African Beats after a cigarette producing company with the same name, Green Spots, demanded to use them for advertisement of the brand. Some other albums he released with the African Beats include the Sound Vibration album in 1977 and the Royal Sound album in 1979. Sunny Ade's music and style was heavily influenced by pioneers and veterans I.K. Dairo and Tunde Nightingale. His music had a very enticing groove and was significantly based on praise, esteem and eulogizing of philanthropists, patrons and influential people and entities. It was pure music with his lyrics infused with the Yoruba cultural and traditional poems and proverbs. Sunny Ade initiated the use of musical instruments such as the pedal steel guitar, the tenor guitar, clarinets, synthesizers and so on in juju music instead of the traditional juju instruments. His music is also composed of some other local instruments like the talking drum, agogo (a bell idiophone) and so on.
In 1967, Sunny Ade signed with African Songs Limited, in a deal that would turn out to be a sour one for the music icon. African Songs Limited, a label that was chaired by Chief Bolarinwa Abioro, had manipulated a deal that would find Sunny Ade and his band members earning a mere 20 kobo on every six naira that his albums were sold for. The label had complete copyrights to his recordings, were entitled to the entirety of the rights to his performances and he was banned from granting any performance himself. Seeing that all of their pleas for improvements fell on Chief Abioro's deaf ears, Sunny Ade sought out to release his new record with another company but found that Chief Abioro was already in possession of the new record. After a long legal process that saw Sunny Ade being represented by Gani Fawehinmi, the court ruled in favor of Sunny Ade allowing him to continue performing live and earning income while being freed from the entanglement.
Sunny Ade later signed with Island Records in a deal where he was promoted as "The African Bob Marley" and received international acclaim releasing the Juju Music album in 1982 which peaked at #111 on the Billboard Album Charts, the Synchro System album in 1983 and the Aura album in 1984, an album where he collaborated with iconic musician, Stevie Wonder. Sunny Ade was described in The New York Times as "one of the world's great band leaders" after his global tour of Europe and North America following the release of his Juju Music album. He later became the first Nigerian to be nominated for a Grammy in 1984 in the Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording category for his Synchro System album. The record deal with Island Records later fell apart due to their differences in artistic direction. The music legend later signed another deal with Mesa/Bluemoon, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, that saw him release another three records; E Dide (Get Up), Odu and Seven Degrees North. He also got another Grammy Nomination in 1999 in the Best World Music Album category for his Odu album.
Between March and April of 2005, King Sunny Ade embarked on a set of tours around the United States and Canada. In 2008, King Sunny Ade was given recognition for his contribution to global music at the International Reggae and World Music Awards in New York. In 2009, he began another set of tours, got inducted into the Afropop Hall of Fame at the Brooklyn African Festival and back home he got appointed as a visiting professor of music at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. In 2017, King Sunny Ade and his legendary colleague, Ebenezer Obey took the stage in London for a return performance called "A Night 2 Remember with the Legends". A legend’s work is never done and King Sunny Ade will forever continue to inspire generations.