Eleleture and Udeme producer, Akeem Lasisi, has officially released a new musical poetry album titled ‘Orere: A Gift of Poems’. The album, which is now on popular music platforms that include Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music, is a 10-track offering covering various subjects. Perhaps because poetry and love are Siamese twins, romance takes a good share. But some of the tracks also radiate culture, politics and good human relations.
While the title track, ‘Orere’, for instance, celebrates love and the right to dancing and other forms of enjoyment, ‘Ada, Ada; Kisimo and ‘Ododo Rose’ are a celebration of beauty and passion. ‘Apala Romance’ also predicts a similar theme, going by the title, but its major contribution to the Orere project is the pollination of poetry with Yoruba’s popular traditional genre, apala, for which the likes of the late Haruna Ishola and Ayinla Omowura were renowned.
But, in ‘Chibok Girls’, the poet revisits the fate of many of the schoolgirls kidnapped in Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, 10 long years ago, many of whom are still in bondage, while their parents and other loved ones live with the nightmare. In the work – ‘For Chibok Girls’ – the poet uses a Yoruba folklore song in which a woman begs an eye igbo (agbigbo the hornbill), which had abducted her child, singing:
Eye igbo ba n gb’omo mi o
Eye igbo…
Igbo bird, release my child to me
Eye igbo…
As expected, the poem in ‘Chibok Girls’ is not only sorrowful but is also critical.
Lasisi says on the track: “I still feel pained like many other concerned people. The best way to feel what the abductees and their parents are going through is to imagine the tragedy happening to one. Imagining having one’s own daughter or son – or both in the jaws of terrorists, somewhere in the anonymous bush, not just for a month or a year, but for 10 long years. It is extremely painful.”
He, however, adds that producing the track for Chibok girls is a source of relief to him because making a case for such embattled young ones is a debt that whoever has a voice should pay one way or the other.
Since Lasisi’s poetry is intensely African, he never walks alone. In ‘Orere’, as he did in his earlier six albums such as ‘Eleleture’ and ‘Udeme’, he collaborates with highly talented artistes such as Edaoto, Phumzee and Kolawole Oduremi, while top drummers, including veteran Ayanlere Alajede, are also in business with him. Many of the songs were produced by Oduremi, with consummate cinematographer and singer, Sanjo Adegoke, also being part of the production of the title song.
A surprise element in the album is the discovery and featuring of Olamide Yusuf, an Ibadan, Oyo State young lady who injects Yoruba bridal poetry – ekun iyawo – into ‘Ile Oko Ya: Wedding Bells’ and ‘E wa Wo Wa: Colour of Love.’
Click Orere in Spotify: