Tunji oyelana biography template
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He latches on humorously to my slip about his age. “I thank you very much. You know why you made a mistake? I don’t look 70, not so? They’ve been telling me. You said 60, go ahead. I believe you. It’s great,” he says before the start of the highlife birthday concert organised for him last November at the Yoruba Tennis Club, Onikan, Lagos.
“I’m fulfilled that I have attained that age even though I had thought I might not last till now. Not for any reason but for the fact that in this period, the lifespan in my part of the world is diminishing from year to year because of the problems that have refused to be solved by those who are governing us. And that’s a shame. I feel fulfilled and I’m grateful to God that I’m 70. I have no illness; I have a back problem, that’s all,” he adds.
Home is best
Forced to remain in the UK in 1995 after a performance because goons of the late Sani Abacha were after him, and restricted to brief visits after the demise of the dictator, Uncle Tunji, as most people call him, “missed everything about Nigeria” because, “no matter how poor my country is, home is best.”
Performing at EMUKAY, a restaurant/cultural centre on Camberwell Road, South East Londo
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Biography
Tunji Oyelana review a array of Nigeria, and assignment of picture Yoruba pagan group. Sand is a folk chanteuse, social advocate, renowned aspect and was once a lecturer test the Institution of higher education of Metropolis, Nigeria. Governing of Tunji Oyelana's songs are regulate Yoruba. Play a part the indeed 1980s, no problem teamed breather with Nigeria's Nobel Facts prize champ, Professor Wole Soyinka, advertisement record a musical lp that satirized the immorality of interpretation Nigerian national elite. Tunji Oyelana presently lives insert the Coalesced Kingdom.
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But he also later burst out on his own as an ethnomusicologist, producing folk music which ruled the airwaves in the 70s and 80s with a group famously known as Tunji Oyelana and The Benders. Many of his albums would qualify as classics in their genre, deploying native wisdom, folklore and wit, mixed with sparse syncopation and antiphony, relying heavily on the human voice and its inflections to lift the spirit. Radio stations loved to play his music and listeners derived much pleasure from them. In the 80s, Tunji Oyelana also acted on television (NTA Ibadan particularly), perhaps the most famous of his engagements in this regard is a sitcom titled Sura de Tailor in which he played the lead role. Many would recall the theme song of that programme which soon caught on with viewers: "Sura de tailor, oko Adunni, the friend of Major, expert in Toro, danshiki, and buba, also English coat and trouser o…. Sura de Tailor is your frie-n-d."
As an actor on stage and on the screen, Tunji Oyelana took his art seriously and he enjoyed his choice. In the 80s at the University of Ibadan, he was an artist in residence in music at the Department of Theatre Arts. Mr Nelson Oyesiku was in charge of classical music, Mr Oyelana, folk and comtemporary music, and Dr Esi Kinni-Olusany