Chief I.K. Dairo – King of Kings
Mr. Dairo was the first African musician to become a true international star. He was an expert in juju music, a vibrant fusion of Christian church hymns, Latin American rhythms, songs, praise poetry, and traditional Yoruba social dance drumming, performed on talking drums, guitar, and percussion. Over the course of a fifty-year career, Dairo released hundreds of records, toured Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and opened doors for a new generation of musicians that included King Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Sina Peters, and many more.
Mr. Dairo, who was born in Offa, Kwara State, joined his first juju band in 1942. He continued to play music on the side for the next ten years while working as a migrant laborer and cloth trader. After moving back to Ijebu-Ijesha, the hometown of his family, in 1956, he started his first band, the Morning Star Orchestra. The group changed its name to the Blue Spots in 1959, and Mr. Dairo lived to see it through.
The ascent of Mr. Dairo coincided with Nigeria’s independence in 1960, and for many Nigerians, his music continues to represent that time in their lives. Among his admirers were heads of state, businessmen, ambassadors, and monarchs.
He began incorporating Latin-inspired rhythms and the ten-button accordion into juju music in the late 1950s. Dairo studied the oral traditions of the different Yoruba subgroups concurrently. The secret to his success was his capacity to appeal to listeners of different ethnic backgrounds while simultaneously reinforcing the genre’s ties to ‘deep’ Yoruba culture. In addition to being a talented arranger, Dairo was among the first African musicians to learn the 3-minute song form, which was necessary at the time due to recording technology.
Dairo’s aptitude as a composer was another factor in his appeal. The songs he wrote addressed a variety of subjects, such as the 1963 song “Ka Sora,” in which Dairo foresaw the Nigerian Civil War years before it broke out, “O Wuro Lojo,” which was a song about the importance of hard work (“The morning of a person’s life is like the foundation of a house–lay it on rock, not on shifting sand”). “Salome,” a love song, praises a young woman with “eyes like traps and teeth as white as cowries.” Speaking of dreams and the wind and angels’ wings, Mr. Dairo said that songs frequently came to him at night.
Dairo received the MBE (Member of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth in 1963 in recognition of his contributions to Commonwealth culture. He is the only musician from Africa to have ever received this recognition. A popular Nigerian magazine called Spear conducted a music poll in 1966, which I. K. Dairo easily won. Readers’ comments give some idea of his immense appeal: “Dairo is the Shakespeare of music because of his unwavering drumming, sedulousness, impartiality, and unservitudeness. He is a sensible hedonist.” An earthly god of music!”; “A lot of his world’s highs and lows are captured in his music. It imparts knowledge, moral values, and other lessons to us.” “This music is tear-free.”
Peers and supporters alike in Nigeria held Chief Dairo in high regard. More than 2,000 people attended Dairo’s 60th birthday celebration and “official retirement” from music in January 1991. All of Nigeria’s leading musicians, civic leaders, and businesspeople were present in the crowd. He postponed his retirement to accompany the Blue Spots on the first of three North American tours after receiving an invitation to go on tour less than a month later.
During the 1970s and 80s, Mr. Dairo toured England, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Russia, Japan, and North America while refining his cosmopolitan-traditionalist approach to juju music. In addition to serving as President of the Nigerian chapter of the Performing Rights Society (PRS), he helped found the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria (MCSN) and advocated for the rights of musicians. The subject of multiple published biographies, he led a rapidly growing syncretic Christian movement in Lagos. The University of Washington in Seattle hired Mr. Dairo to teach ethnomusicology from 1994 to 1995, which was his last job.
Dairo and the Blue Spots were in the midst of recording new music when he passed away. Having composed songs while in the United States, Dairo was thrilled to record this fresh music that reflected his interactions with musicians worldwide. Sadly, that record was never going to happen.
Nigerian musician and religious leader Isaiah Kehinde (I. K.) Dairo, MBE, passed away in Efon-Alaiye, close to Akure, on Thursday, February 7, 1996. He was sixty-five.
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Categories: Highlife Music
