May the 24th marked the eighth anniversary of the death of Ozzidi King: Sonny Okosun.
The Esan born social campaigner died in 2008 at a Washington DC hospital from complications related to colon cancer at the age of 61.
While alive, Okosun used his music as a vehicle to talk about societal ills, human rights abuses, and actively campaigned against the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
His preoccupation with the problems that faced African people wherever they could be found was a primary theme that pervaded the music of the veteran musician, and was worlds removed from contemporaries who wrote love songs and other mundane concerns. As he put it, “All my mates were singing love songs. “I was trying to talk about what was happening to black people.”
Okosun’s musical style infused strains of reggae, highlife, Afro-funk, and later on gospel rendered in his native Esan, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, as well as English. His 1977 hit; Fire in Soweto was an international hit bringing him to the world music stage. Other popular hits By Okosun include the likes of Which Way Nigeria, Papa’s Land, Mother and Child, No More Wars, Tire ni Oluwa and lots more.
Also philanthropic minded, he was known to have thrown open the doors of his home to quite a number of people, and had many children who were not biologically his but whom he gave his name to.
