Friday, April 8, 2011

Sonny Okosuns - Which Way Nigeria? (1984)

Sonny Okosun(s) was an extremely popular musician in Nigeria during the '70s and early '80s. Combining highlife, funk and reggae, Okosuns sang about social issues from a progressive viewpoint. He led a torrid band called Ozziddi that could lay solid grooves. A good discography of Okosuns can be found here.

This album was released in the U.S. two years after Sunny Ade's Juju Music hit these shores. It has three strong songs, especially the rocking "My Ancestors." A relatively tepid title track presages Okosuns conversion into a gospel singer in his later years, although this time the gospel is "let's save Nigeria, so Nigeria won't die." Okosuns cast his critical eye on government corruption and injustice, but in a much less confrontational way than his compatriot, Fela Kuti. He died in 2008, but left behind a trove of great songs.

8 comments:

Z j A k said...

Welcome to Jam Magica's blogroll ! Long live to your blog.
Pierre 'Z j A k'

Rhythm Connection said...

Thanks!

Calumbinho said...

Hey, man, greetings from Kazakshtan! My hospitable country of residence does not let me access the "comments" section of your blog (or any on blogspot), so unfortunately I cannot tell you in the blog itself how great some of your last posts have been. Fortunately, I can tell you here: thanks a lot!

Anonymous said...

Just to be fair: the block happenned during the local Presidential elections, and now that they are over, KZ residents can again access the "comments" sections in blogspot, as this comment here proves. Can't do it with my Google account, though... -CALUMBINHO

Sanaag said...

It seems sth. is wrong with the link. It downloads as an "unkown file type" that you can't open. Could you please look into it? Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hi there, thanks for all this wealth of nice, mind opening records.
As Sanaag mentions, there's sthg wrong with the file here.
Grateful if you could fix this.MTIA

Rhythm Connection said...

@Sanaag & MTIA: Hi, I just downloaded the file and it unpacked and played normally. Nearly 400 people have downloaded this album, and I have only heard from you two. So, I suspect you are using an operating system that has a ? in a file name, In any case, to help you out, I re-upped the file, updated the link, and hope that works for you. Cheers, Robert.

Fred said...

Putting a question mark at the end of the folder title seems to cause the problem. I use 'Extract Now', 'ALZip' and 'Pea Zip' to extract but couldn't open this with any. ALZip allowed me to see the contents of the package but not to rename the folder.

I passed the file to my girlfriend and she opened it without issue using WinRar. (We're both using Windows). Seems the question marks cause the issues for some of us.

Enough on that, I'm new here and must say that this is a wonderful resource you have here. Thanks for all the work! Best wishes.