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Gaspar Lawal

b. 23 Sept 1948, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria. A percussionist and music group leader, Lawal remaining Nigeria to stay in the united kingdom within the middle-60s. Basing himself in London, he became quickly established within the program scene, and on the next a decade recorded with a lot of regional and visiting music artists, covering a multitude of designs, including Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Stephen Stills, the Rolling Rocks, George Clinton’s Funkadelic and Barbra Streisand. In 1975, he became a member of London-based rock-band Clancy, departing in 1977 to come back to Nigeria. Shifting back again to London in 1978, Lawal produced his very own group, Afriki Audio (afterwards renamed the Drum Oro Music group), developing a extremely individual design which been successful in marrying traditional Western world African root base music and instrumentation with components of experimental rock and roll and jazz. A fervent believer in the worthiness of traditional African music, Lawal was also persuaded that it had a need to develop and may take advantage of the incorporation of specific western tips and affects. With Afriki Audio he released two outstanding albums by himself Cover label, Ajomase (which in Yoruba means ‘We all want to do it jointly’), which spawned two dancefloor strike singles in ‘Kita Kita’ and ‘Oromoro’, and Abiosunni (Yoruba for ‘Are you sleeping or what?!’). Both albums highlighted the cream of expatriate African music artists surviving in London, notably Olalekan Babolola (percussion), Tunji Omoshebi (trumpet), Abdul Salongo (electric guitar), Don Amaechi (electric guitar, percussion, kora, keyboards), Ray Allen (saxophones) and Osibisa’s Macintosh Tontoh (trumpet). Within the middle-80s, Lawal was a creator person in Britain’s Dark Music Association, a pressure group which proved helpful to achieve better publicity and better functioning conditions for dark music artists. In the past due 80s he once more embraced an array of program function, including spells alongside the Pogues, UB40 and Robert Palmer. In 1989 he toured with Zairean superstar Papa Wemba and made an appearance within a Royal Order Performance prior to the Queen and Leader Babangida. In 1990 periods started on his third record, the critically acclaimed Kodara, successfully a masterclass in traditional percussion.

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