Today In History: Celebrating Osun Born Highlife Musician, Orlando Julius

Osun Defender travels back to April 15, 2022, when veteran highlife musician Orlando Julius died at the age of 79.

Osun Defender reports that he hails from Ijebu-Ijesha in Osun State.

His full name was Orlando Julius Olusanya Ekemode, but he was popularly known as Orlando Julius. He was born in 1943 in Ikole-Ekiti, Nigeria, to a merchant family during British colonialism.

Julius was the fourth son in the family and the younger brother of Professor Gabriel Ekemode of the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University).

His first musical teacher was his mother, who would sing and dance while he played drums. He went to St. Peter’s Anglican School in Ikole and played in the school band.

He was married to Latoya Aduke Ekemode, an American-born Amazon, whom he met through Ambrose Campbell in Los Angeles. He was said to have influenced Fela Kuti, James Brown, Lamont Dozier, and the Crusaders.

He recorded his first single, ‘Igbehin a dara’, with the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1960. He formed Modern Aces in the early 1960s and incorporated American Pop, R ‘n’ B, and Soul into African music.

He had his first hit in 1965 with the song ‘Jagua Nana.’ Julius moved to the United States in 1974, where he produced an album with Hughes Masekela, titled: ‘The Boy is Doing It.’

He spent time as a session musician in Los Angeles, and took on an acting role in Roots: The Second Generation, before moving to Oakland in 1978.

Modern Ghana considered him “the last of Nigeria’s titans in the highlife music genre.” Lopa Kothari of BBC Radio called Julius a “legend” and Robin Denselow of The Guardian wrote that he was “one of the heroes of Nigerian music”, a “master of the simple, stomping riff” with a significant influence on afrobeat music.