Alhaji Waziri Oshomah

From 1973 onward, Alhaji Waziri Oshomah has woven his profound Islamic faith and communal commitments into dozens of recordings that fuse Nigerian highlife with Afemai traditions. His sonic palette unites secular and sacred elements, merging regional folk idioms with nationwide highlife currents—from Lagos’s horn-heavy variant to Estatko’s earthier, guitar-centric village approach—while incorporating Western and Afro-pop textures. Lyrics weave Judeo-Christian motifs to render Islamic principles more approachable. Decca West Africa issued his first album, Ikkhayeapeya Iyowame, in 1973 along with two singles; he maintained that pattern for years. Landmark releases encompass Life from 1977, Conscience from 1993, and Grace from 2021. Luaka Bop introduced The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah in 2022 as the third installment of its World Spirituality Classics series, then followed with the successive rollout of Vols. 1-5 (1978-1984) in 2023, drawing from his intermediate catalog.

Born Isah Sule in 1948 to a Muslim household in Osomegbe within Afenmailand, Edo State, southern Nigeria, Waziri Oshomah grew up with parents who composed and sang lead in local cultural ensembles, passing the musical lineage directly to their son. He began performing early, leading his primary school band by age seven. Alongside an innate pull toward community traditions, he became captivated by the highlife sound that gripped youth in the 1950s, committing to memory numbers by Bobby Benson, Sir Victor Uwaifo (whose honorific he later adopted in tribute), Eddy Okonta, and I.K. Dairo. By age ten he was already frequenting and playing nightclubs, prompting concern from his devout parents, yet he reassured them by finishing secondary school and obtaining government employment as a gauge reader at the Ministry of Water Services and Hydrology, all while continuing to pursue music.

He established the Waziri Oshomah persona by 1965 and, during evenings and weekends, appeared with traditional percussion ensembles. Afemai music’s reach grew through Estatko bandleader Anco Momodu, the first to gain nationwide recognition; Oshomah joined that ensemble in 1967 on vocals and keyboards, acquiring professional experience and initial studio exposure. Convinced the music could evolve further, he formed the Traditional Sound Makers in 1970 amid the Nigerian Civil War’s gradual conclusion, pairing amplified Western instruments with deep regional folk roots. The group often trekked miles on foot to performances, equipment balanced on their heads. After leaving Momodu’s band and his civil-service post in late 1972, the Traditional Sound Makers operated in 1973 as an improvisational garage unit powered by a locally fabricated amplifier running on flashlight batteries. Despite these constraints, Decca West Africa signed them; the single “Agiode Ofe Emo Mie Ise” succeeded on radio and jukeboxes, securing an advance for equipment, and Ikkhayeapeya Iyowame followed in December.

American soul music held strong appeal among the young at the time, prompting Oshomah to blend Estatko highlife with emerging reggae, rock, and funk strains while drawing influence from Fela Kuti’s dominant Afrobeat. His renown soon surpassed Momodu’s, expanding further after he affiliated with the juju-focused Shanu Olu label in 1978. Over the ensuing six years he delivered five volumes of self-titled albums that achieved wide national circulation, airplay, and brisk sales. Departing after the charting Message to My People in 1986, he persisted with production and recording for assorted regional imprints, including his own. The ongoing sequence of themed projects commenced in 1993 with Conscience. Oshomah stays active and sought after; despite the volume of releases across numerous labels, no exhaustive discography exists—even he cannot tally the precise count, though he estimates roughly 150, among them the recent Grace in 2021.

During the 2010s, Luaka Bop’s Eric Welles-Nyström traveled repeatedly to Nigeria to work with William Onyeabor, whose catalog the label had anthologized and reissued. Welles-Nyström regularly acquired rare local LPs from a Lagos vendor; one such find yielded an Oshomah album that captivated the entire office with its singular innovation. In 2018 Welles-Nyström located the artist, and a contract followed in 2019. The resulting anthology of formative mid-1970s to mid-1980s recordings appeared in September 2022 as The Muslim Highlife of Alhaji Waziri Oshomah. Five volumes of assorted tracks issued between 1978 and 1984 supplied material for that compilation; in 2023 Luaka Bop issued Vols. 1-5 (1978-1984) as a five-LP box set presenting that mid-career output in chronological sequence and including the limited-edition book The Journey So Far, written and designed by his children to honor the artist’s life and work. ~ Thom Jurek