His most recent two-part interview with a veteran Juju act, the Yo-Pop Juju king, Prince Segun Adewale, on an Ibadan-based radio station, was as heartwarming as it was quite revealing to his cult of listeners and social media followers. Without an iota of insult, he asked Adewale sensitive and debatable questions, all of which the Osogbo-born musician answered with harmless confidence and infectious gusto.
That studio session is one of many which Bamidele Matthew Adeyanju, the Ibadan-based wave-making On-Air-Personality, had successfully hosted, featuring a legion of veteran entertainers, some of whom have been pushed into a corner of oblivion. That programme, also, is evidence of the stuff with which he is made as an emerging celebrity with insatiable thirst for archival materials to educate his growing number of listeners.
Despite a crowd of On-Air-Personalities doing their stuff on over 20 radio stations on Ibadan airspace, none is close to Adeyanju’s unique content, an identity which has stood him out as a bridge between today and yesterday. His Agbaletu and Agbaman programmes on radio have boosted his esteem beyond what lens of his imagination can accurately capture.
His bond with music was tied by the brilliance and indeed foresight of his late father, Mr Abiodun Adisa Adeyanju, who, as a music fanatic, initiated his promising boy into cult of different genres while his son was clutching feeding bottle about the living room. His grandfather, Alhaji Jimoh Adegoke Adeyanju, a native of Oyo, Oyo State, was said to have also infected his father to later pass the baton to him.
“I heard that my grandfather, Alhaji Jimoh Adegoke Adeyanju was a lover of good music. He enjoyed music but he was never a singer, at least that I know of. He was a police officer who had a great sense of humor. He retired from the police service and later became the chairman of Oyo local government in 1979 during Shagari’s administration.
“My father told me that when he was a young boy in the early 60s, anytime Dele Ojo, Ebenezer Obey, Sunny Adex and later Sunny Ade released an album, he and his siblings will trek to the town center at Owode where the music retailers are to listen to the new songs from the full blast of the loudspeakers. He said once he heard the first side once and the second side once, by the time the music vendor plays the album the second time, the music became a sing along for him as he already mastered all the music lines, the lyrics, the chorus, the guitars etc,” he said.
Adeyanju, the heir apparent of his father, who passed away on August 2, 2016 at 58 years, revealed that his late dad could have conveniently made a career in music because of his deep-seated passion for the art.
He recalled, “He told me as a child, anytime he slept, he always saw himself in the midst of some musical friends. He was the band leader, lead guitarist and composer. He said any song composed by him in the dream or music they played in the dream he always remembered on waking up because it was always a surreal dream. He said this was happening since he was a child and till he grew up.”
Leave a Reply