William Onyeabor

William Onyeabor occupies a singular place in Nigerian popular music as the originator of its electro Afro-funk strain. Details of his life remained elusive because he declined to address either his past or his recordings after embracing born-again Christianity in the mid-1980s and withdrawing to operate a flour mill as a private businessman.

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1946, he began piano and organ lessons in childhood. Early in the 1970s he reportedly studied cinematography at a university in Russia before returning to Lagos in the middle of the decade to found his own enterprise, Wilfilms. Although Fela Kuti’s Afro-beat dominated the local scene at the time and clearly left its mark, Onyeabor pursued a separate, idiosyncratic, and irresistibly rhythmic direction.

Synthesizers, drum machines, and independent studio techniques held particular fascination for him. He assembled a sound that combined Nigerian folk elements, cyclical repetition, and references to Afro-beat with American R&B, disco, and funk, producing a spacious, futuristic mixture unlike anything else then being made; that mixture has since inspired, been sampled, and been emulated by many others. All eight of his albums appeared on his own Wilfilms label.

Crashes in Love, his first album, was issued in 1977 and contained four extended tracks whose buoyant rhythms and intricate electro-funk arrangements were frequently paired with militant political lyrics. Atomic Bomb followed in 1978; its title song became a regional hit, and the album itself established the pattern that shaped every subsequent release. Tomorrow appeared in 1979, Body & Soul—whose title track is regarded as a classic—in 1980, Great Lover in 1981, the confrontational Hypertension in 1982, the widely celebrated Good Name in 1983 (limited to two long tracks), and Anything You Sow in 1985.

After his conversion and retirement from recording, Onyeabor was installed as a High Chief in Enugu, Nigeria’s economic capital, where he has lived ever since inside a palace set within wooded grounds. He is also recognized locally for his active support of the city’s thriving Christian music scene.

In the twenty-first century his music surfaced only on compilations and in limited unofficial LP editions. In 2013 David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label released World Psychedelic Classics, Vol. 5: Who Is William Onyeabor?, the first authoritative collection of his work and one issued with reluctant authorization after years of preparation. Later that year Luaka Bop joined with Moog Music—manufacturer of the William Onyeabor-branded Little Phatty and Moog Minitaur synthesizers—on a various-artists remix project that began with the vinyl edition of What?! on Record Store Day 2014; the set appeared digitally the following September. Onyeabor died in early 2017 at the age of seventy.