FEMI SOWOOLU: NIGERIA’S MICROPHONE DON
In the fast-paced city of Lagos, Yinka Olatunbosun meets Femi Sowoolu, the man whose radio programme made every listener’s day”
It is cheap to acquire a radio set. But it is rare to find good content today in the art of radio presentation. Today, the noise on the airwaves has nothing to do with generators or transmitters. It usually comes from poor presentable style and semantics. It is that search for the ideal that led this reporter to Surulere, where the veteran broadcaster, master storyteller, social commentator and writer, Femi Sowoolu was lounging, deservedly. He has paid his dues. Having spent his childhood in the United Kingdom, Sowoolu’s early years in broadcasting started with Ogun State Broadcasting Corporation in the 80’s where he spent 13 years. For the younger generation, he probably became popular as part of the pioneering team for the Rhythm 93.7 FM with The Morning Drive. He was an on-air personality whose witty, conversational style of presentation was not just attention-grabbing but a great company in a lonely apartment.
Wongiwongi, he called himself. He always had fables, strange but true sto- ries to tell. He never ran out of ideas. The only thing he wanted to run away with was the reason behind the nickname, but not so fast.
“I have actually written a book not published yet where I mentioned the origin of the name wongiwongi. But let me just oblige you with a little bit of the story,” he smiled as he began.
“When I was a young broadcaster back in the day at the Ogun Radio, we were all young, feisty. Broadcasting was not only a profession; it was fun. I used to listen to shortwave radio, BBC, VOA, Radio Luxemburg. I grew up listening to a lot of foreign stations and there was one station that would come on for about one or two hours, around 1am every day. I wouldn’t sleep because of it. I had a tiny transistor radio and you could hear all sorts of funny interference but I would stick my ears to everything that was said. There were two deejays on shift. Between 12 and two was Barry Alldis and he used to call himself the boy from Wogawoga.
“I tell young guys this; find someone you like. Copy him if you have to. From there you’ll build your own aura. So I copied everything Barry Alldis did and I called myself the boy from Wongawonga. That was my first signature tune. Over the years the name has evolved. Friends started calling me Wongiwongi, some shortened it to wongi, the name now has a life of its own.”
From imitating the Australian presenter, Wongi developed his style and so did his contemporaries. Jacob Akinyemi Johnson would call himself “the top gun” and the late Felix Femi Fashina was the “Bionic Boogie Man.” Like performing artists, OAPs developed their brand identities with knowledge-driven substance.
“Knowledge is important. We have about 30 radio stations in Nigeria and to grab the listeners is a lot of work. You have to do something different. I tell people that everybody plays the same kind of music and we buy it from the market. All the radio stations have the same kind of equipment and everyone is on the FM Band; we play the same Wizkid, Davido. To stand out, you have to find a style of delivery. Knowledge always sells. I always keep my style every station I went but it is always information-driven. Try and tell the listener what he has never heard before. If he hears it from you for the first time, he will tune in again to hear another one. Look for strange articles, weird stories and they don’t have to be the latest. So many people are trying to do the latest. It is not important. What matters is what is strange and that is news.”
Sowoolu is very active on the social media, dredging information and sharing invaluable content. Making noise quietly is his technique and once he found himself in a restaurant where people were talking about him. He signalled to those who knew him not to reveal his identity. He’d rather do his job behind the microphone, off-the-screen. Well, the Ebola awareness campaign forced him to come to the screen this year which he shared with the likes of Joke Silva to educate Nigerians against the dreadful epidemic. Other than such national responsibility, he likes his privacy which is not a common attribute in the new
school of broadcasters.
OAPs generally have the opportunity of listening to songs before airplays and arguably, they contribute largely to music artists’ success stories. In his assessment of the current music scene, he looked deeper into the cultural temperament that birthed the new school of music in Nigeria and how a broadcaster adapts to every music generation.
“Lifestyle changes, culture changes. I always appreciate good music,” he said. “I wouldn’t come from the school of those who will castigate today’s music. Although there was a point in time when there were quality recording studios in Nigeria and at some stage, they started packing up one by one. During that vacuum, a couple of musicians came out and did some great things before the Alaba people encroached on the industry and took over music business and everything became bastardised and assaulted. These young artistes did all by themselves and the same thing happened to Nollywood. One day, we will get there.
“Music is culture and the culture of yesterday has evolved into the culture of today. Today’s children are listening to Olamide, Wizkid, Braimoh and Phyno. If you can’t handle it, I’m sorry but you can’t go back to old times. They are the ones who are going to be there tomorrow.
“When James Brown came and we were dancing in my time, our parents didn’t understand. My father never liked Fela till he died. He didn’t understand why I was always playing Fela’s music. Yesterday, I was today’s child. Culture changes. Give them a break.”
But if there’s anything particularly vexing about the fresh crop of Nigerian artistes, Sowoolu would call it “miming” at shows. For him, sustaining originality and artistic truth is strongly tied to the performer’s vocal strength and breath control on stage. Otherwise, it would be history repeating itsself. Remember Milli Vanilli, the pop group that got into trouble for lip-synching n July 21, 1989 during a live performance on MTV in Bristol, Connecticut. As they performed onstage live in front of an audience, the recording of the song “Girl You Know It’s True” played and began to skip, repeating the partial line “Girl, you know it’s...” over and over on the speakers. They continued to pretend to sing and dance onstage for a few more moments, then they both ran offstage, shame-faced.
The performers, Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan and their German producer had to admit that the song, which had sold seven million copies, was done by some other fellows namely Jodie and Linda Rocco, John Davis and Brad Howell. What followed was disgraceful. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences revoked Milli Vanilli’s 1989 Grammy for best new artist which is the first such action in the 33-year history of the recording industry award.
Sowoolu’s argument must have been founded on that history. No wonder he called it “fraud”. He went on to blame corporate Nigeria for allowing musicians to play without a band and paying them millions for lip-synching. That’s for music and now, Sowoolu is no longer a fan of most radio stations in Nigeria.
“Honestly I don’t listen to radio anymore. I stopped listening to radio a long time ago. These days, I have a lot of music in my head, I listen to music in my car but radio gives me headache when I listen. But there is one person I love and I think all Nigerians should go and listen to Bukky Sawyer. She’s on classic and she is brilliant. I love her. She’s marvellous. You’ll hear the research, you’ll hear the tonation the diction the intelligence, the knowledge of the music she is playing, the background of whatever song she is playing and when she is discussing the effortlessness with which she conducts interviews, she is a throwback from the Ol’school.”
Recently on Facebook, the ace broadcaster wrote that “very soon intelligence will go extinct” and the responses that simple comment generated was enormous. He later told his reporter-guest that he had noticed a fewer proportion of knowledgeable and intelligent people in Nigeria and he had to raise alarm.
“People are going to school but nobody is getting educated. I always felt the system is wrong but I also think it is also deliberate that the polity is deliberately making Nigerians less knowledgeable. I don’t know why that is happening. Look at the graduates today. Nobody can speak English language anymore. It is sad. I mean you don’t have to come from an elitist background to speak good English back in the days. You didn’t have to study in England and America to speak good English.”
For the forthcoming 2015 elections, his task for the fourth estate of the realm is to stand for truth. He was particularly pained by what his colleagues-junior and senior- has done to the journalism profession, allowing the piper to dictate the tune. His serial resignation from different media houses had been founded on his quest for principles to be respected. Rather than a journalist becoming a lapdog, he said every journalist is a writer and should write a variety of creative pieces to earn a living.
“Stand up for your right,” he advised. “If you have not got to that point in your career where you stand up for something, then your career is far from successful.”
Since he sounded very passionate about making a good name for himself and Nigeria, he was asked whether he would accept the offer of being a presidential adviser on media and publicity.
“I wouldn’t decline the offer but I probably wouldn’t last there for too long. I have track record of places where I have been and left for principled reasons. If I am not happy, I can’t work. I have lost a couple of friends because of that. If you knock on my door I will shout from whatever I am that who the **** is that? I won’t go scurrying under my bed in fear because my heart is clear.”
Returning to his days at Rhythm 93.7FM, he was one of the few presenters who tactically broke the in-house rule of “more music, less talk”. The private station arrived at the time when radio broadcasters in private stations talked too much, brought family business on air and government-owned stations were still announcing each song on the playlist, mechanically. After the test transmission, listeners were expecting that standard to fall but it didn’t for a long time. Sowoolu’s preference for a little talk on the morning show is out of sensitivity for the variety of the listening audience. He was conscious of the listener’s need to be informed, educated and entertained. He reasoned that if the talk is intelligent, the listener will stayed tuned. Sowoolu had also veered into advertising before he joined the Silverbird Group.
“I was there for three and a half years and I didn’t enjoy it much. I was in production mostly. I was producing radio and television commercials. I did a lot on copies without being in the copy department. Then I started my own media production company that is into radio jingles and TV commercials. I have series of lectures that I hold here every month. I call them Femi Sowoolu’s classes and they are meant strictly for practicing broadcasters. There are professional schools that teach you how to be a broadcaster. I only teach you to become better. I can’t be teaching you phonetics and how to speak.
Nigerian Broadcasters Merit Awards was held recently in Lagos and that created the basis for asking why a separate award ceremony should be created for broadcasters.
“Awards are good because good work should be commended. You’ll also set an example for the next generation for them to know that what is good should be rewarded. Yes I have issues with the preponderance of awards because most of them are really wishy-washy. For the broadcasting awards I’ll say this one is an independent award. It is not organised by broadcasters and I commend the young man who is doing it, he’s Kazeem Popoola. He is not a journalist. For national awards, I have always believed that a man should not reward himself while in office. Hello? Work neva finish now. You shouldn’t be the one saying I was a hero, give me this prize.”
He also thought the era of new media has changed the dynamics of journalism but warned that ignoring the fundamental training in media practice can spell danger for anyone who gets overtly ambitious with the pen.
“Most of the people online are not trained journalists,” he said. “Everybody thinks that he can write these days. That popular girl got into that mess because she went into a profession and people are trained for this job. There are rules and regulations to follow and she should have known that if she went through that training.”
The father of five is part of the team that conceived the Guilder Ultimate Search and Multina Dance Show. Though, he never said anything about the influence that his father, who was the director of the National Archives, had in his work, in some very weird way, his knack for research might have borrowed its stem from that background.