I remember that the king at that time, who was my grandmother’s husband, took special interest in me. I got my first musical instrument from him as a present − a mouth organ. I think it was given to me after I did a birthday rendition for him. I was around seven years old. But in all this, as much as I had love around me, my grandmother was a strict person. Yes, she loved the tradition, but she drew a line. For instance, there are some royal drums in the palace which were beaten by the initiates. Out of curiosity, I studied the drums from a distance. I got close to them at one point and I remember one day taking the sticks to beat them. That incurred the wrath of my grandmother and I was spanked. But I am not too sure it stopped me. I still sneaked out there once in a while to do it. That was a major part of my learning experience within the traditional setting.
At other times, as a little boy, I remember having a rag-tag band of boys of my age as friends. We made our drums out of milk cans, sugar boxes and other little things that we found around us. I was the leader of the band. How did I get to that? It still comes back to my grandmother’s influence because she loved music and she had huge number of records of both the local as well as foreign musicians. She loved the juju music, the blues, country music, we had all that. Whenever we had events then − maybe burial, marriage and so on − she used to invite live bands. I watched all these closely. So the songs I sang with my bands then were songs learned from those experiences.
Also at that tender age, I created my own little