By Dami Ajayi
I woke up to the devastating news that music legend, actor, and journalist Onyeka Onwenu had passed away. She slumped after a private performance in Lagos on Tuesday night, July 30, and was rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, aged 72. She was otherwise healthy, and like most legends prefer, she died doing what she loved to do: belting out songs.
I have had several encounters with Onyeka Onwenu. As a child waiting for the highlight of our existence, for television stations to begin broadcasting at 4pm in the 90s, her music was a staple, a palate cleanser before they began regular programming. This was when I committed the entire music, including the guitar riffs of her timeless tune, ‘Iyogogo’, to mind. In that earthy music video, she was beautiful and fluent in Igbo. And could she sing (?) hitting those high notes!
As an adolescent obsessed with Nigerian music, she is one of those female musicians my research yielded. Onyeka Onwenu came into her own in the 80s with contemporaries like Christie Essien Igbokwe, Nelly Uchendu, and the Lijadu Sisters. Like her contemporaries, she straddled genres: gospel, soul, and, my preferred, Igbo heartland highlife. Her music was preoccupied with the ramifications of love—the romantic kind, the filial type, of country, too.
She was a fixture of the spotlight, and she spoke eloquently about the politics of the day. She participated in the 1998 controversial campaign for Nigerian dictator Gen Sani Abacha alongside other high-profile musicians like Salawu Abeni and Sir Shina Peters. Admittedly, it was not her most gracious moment. A cohort of commentators unfairly has made this sore moment the basis of their genuflection. I wouldn’t say I liked her politics. She would blatantly soapbox on her platform to amplify her political views. But her music—hook it in my cubital fossa, all day.
To the final encounter, a physical one. Circa 2018, a chance encounter with her at the airport in Abuja, waiting in a queue to board the plane to Lagos. My friend was keen to take a picture with her; he handed me his phone, and I took a picture of them. He swiftly offered to switch sides so that I could take one too. At her side, she chastised me for not greeting her properly. It was happening fast, plus I was a little starstruck, a little tongue-tied. I apologised. She offered a reassuring maternal smile and allowed a welfie to be taken. Listening to her tune, ‘Dancing in the Sun’ this humid afternoon on a bus en route home, my heart goes out to her loved ones.
Onyeka Onwenu. Indeed, a fine woman walked this way.
Dami Ajayi is a Nigerian psychiatrist, poet and music critic. His latest volume of poems is the award-winning Affection & Other Accidents.
