Music was all I could see, I had never thought that music would be my Life. I turned to music when I could not go to college because my parents could not afford to send me, the lastborn there. I wanted to play football and be a professional player, but I had been inspired by the influence of my brother, Kola, who had a band in Nigeria as an Afrobeat Musician but he moved to the States. One day a member of his band was in Lagos and I saw him playing the trumpet so nicely and i remembered my brother coached him, so I picked up the trumpet when he was done and tried to play. That was the start of my training and interest in being a musician. I began to establish myself as a musician.
It was a hot and sunny Tuesday afternoon in March 2005, when I was approached by a friend while I was practising on my saxophone in my little living room in Lagos. He said to me hey (good news) I know a friend who knows some people(Agent/middle men) who know a church in Johannesburg, South Africa, which needs a choir director/musician and they are willing to pay a monthly fee and free accommodation for the first six months.
Now I realised it was time to see new places. My ears leaped up and my hair stood straight facing heaven. I had seen great South African musicians, Hugh Masekela and late Miriam Makeba on TV, I love the South African sound. I immediately left the saxophone and urged my friend that we should go see his friend. We did but the friend took two days to give the details of the middle men which I felt was too long. Finally the middle men said that to get the job, we are going to have to pay for our own visa fee, registration fee, flight ticket and no name invitation letter fees.My friend immediately pulled himself out of this good news that he thought sounded too good to be true, but I kept on with the intention of winning in the game. I paid all I was asked to as I had savings and income from several gigs and studio sessions. I was made to join a team of nine pastors and musicians unknown to me. We were made to be in a church for a week praying, filling in forms and going to the embassy and back.
Fortunately, I was amongst the six people that got a Visa to travel, out of the nine people in the team, still we barely knew much about one another. I did not tell my family because I felt I was a big boy at age 24. I only broke the news on the phone after I got my visa and my passport. We all went back home to meet again 3 days before departing Lagos. I sold mine and my brother’s (Kola Ogunkoya Gbedu master) musical instruments. Kola, based in the States, advised me to go along with my saxophone but I refused ignorantly saying No! No! No!, there will be lots of saxophones there but he insisted so I grudgingly took along an old tenor saxophone that I hardly used.
The plane shoots into the clouds and here we are on the ground at the airport in Johannesburg. It was a Saturday morning around 5am, July 2005,the air felt different, it was winter, the airport was beautiful and seeing power in every angle tripped me as we were being transported from the airport. We landed in Rockey street in Yeoville. I saw people sleeping on the floor and people drunk and it freaked me out a bit, but we had a warm welcome at the house of the Pastor which was a street after Rockey Street. As we sat, he chatted to us about Johannesburg, the crime and the lifestyle of the people till the sun set. The assistant made us pap and stew. We were all excited until the evening of the same day that he broke the news that the church had a problem so they had moved to a new and small venue so they can’t pay me salary or accommodation fee. It was like a movie to me and I didn’t understand until we were told they had arranged a room for the six of us to stay and we would have to pay for the rent.
We had exhausted all we had and I was not prepared to let go of my last hundred dollars. Many people would walk to us standing on Rockey Street with our bags and the first question they asked is hey you, did you just arrive, are you looking for a place to stay? How much do you have? The latter gathered that if you have money ,they will collect all the money you came with, accommodate you for a week or less depending on how much money you have and throw you out to the street afterwards. So since we had no money, they sympathetically advised us to go sleep in the clubs or better still sleep on Rockey Street. I said no, never, over my dead body, tufiakwa” but still I wouldn’t let the hundred dollars out as I didn’t know what tomorrow would be like. It was getting dark and darker with no solution at almost 9pm and there was heavy club music pumping out from different angles on Rockey Street. We all knew no body in Johannesburg .
An angel walked by informing a guy and he said, hey are u Nigerians? Are you guys ok- I immediately explained our situation. He stood for a minute thinking what he could do for us, the problem being that we are six and he could not accommodate six people. So he called a church called CCC, and the pastor compassionately accepted us that same night and took us in, We met with eight other people who slept in the church. The pastor fed everyone in the church for free, mostly dinner and sometimes breakfast, but whenever there was nothing, we all understood. I lived there for four months and in that period many more came to join and some left and rented places as soon as they got a job. I had kept my hundred dollars safe and planned to use it for whatever permit I would need to stay in Johanneburg as people with expired permits would get arrested and deported.
I did not notice that a Zimbabwean guitarist (Eli Amor) had been calling me and running after me for over four streets away. He finally met me panting...i said oh I am sorry. I didn’t hear you calling. So he asked me if I am a saxophone player and I said yes. Then he said there is restaurant called Shivava Cafe in Newtown where they hold a jam session. I immediately said yeah lets go I am ready! I am free! I am available! Not even knowing where Newtown is. He said no its not today but its tomorrow Thursday. So I described the church i was at to him.
I couldn’t sleep that night. All I wanted was to be at the jam session and just jam. The day came that we got to Shivava cafe. We met other musicians there and from that day onward for more than a year, I did not miss the jam session on a Thursday. I was always the first to arrive. I would get pap and liver after the jam session and then walk back to Yeoville at twelve midnight. This happened for many nights until the management decided to select an in house band for the jam session which i was part of. I started getting R50 every Thursday. Later I got employed by a church as a saxophonist with a salary of R800 monthly. Somewhere along the line I saw a church where I could play saxophone every Tuesday service for R50. So I had a routine of cash collecting every week and month, so I lived like that for a year or two, meeting different people along the way.
One night after the jam session, a guy walked up to me and said you played very well, have you ever played at Moyo restaurant. I said no, he said I should go and try it out, that many musicians play there. I went there and on my right was a Nigerian RnB singer (Maye), he was really excited that I am a Nigerian so we chatted and he asked me the next day to come over to the Bassline rehearsal room where Kunle Ayo was rehearsing with his band preparing for the Joy of jazz Festival so that he could introduce me to him. As Maye was a back up singer for Kunle, he introduced me but Kunle said unfortunately he doesn’t use saxophone in his music. He only features late Moses Khumalo, so I sat outside the room with my old saxophone disappointed and Moses arrived and said to me hey you are the new saxophonist in town, I said yes and then he said okay I will buy you a saxophone reed. It never happened because Moses died about a year and a half later.
Remembering that I had been told about Moyo restaurant, I asked around for the address. I went there and told the managers that I am a saxophonist and that I have a big band and that we play everywhere in Joburg. Meanwhile I had no band, so I was given a date for an audition which was the same date for the jam session, so i told the bass player and drummer from the church. I even took the church’s saxophone along, got a piano player so we practised and did the audition. The lady, who was the entertainment manager, got taken by the tone of the saxophone and how it blends with the drum grooves, the Bass and piano. She gave me the opportunity to kick start my music career in Johannesburg, so I built up from there.
Today, i have one album out (JUST IN NEWTOWN) and am working on the second one. I have produced a gospel album featuring South African musicians and bringing back old South African hymns. I have shared the same stage with King Sunny Ade, Youssou Ndour, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Lira, Debra Fraser and Don Laka and have worked with countless others. I have my own band, Olufemi and the Natives and we have been invited to play in many events. I have also played in the Benin Republic, in Ghana and in China. My dream is to own my own place and to make it big in the music business. Some of the highlights of my performance are in the bio and profile.
