palongo... with seyi solagbade

Here's a picture I took of Palongo exponent, the musician Seyi Solagbade, at the 7th Lagos Book & Arts Festival last September.

Solagbade heads the new season of events at the French Cultural Centre in Lagos.

The musician started playing music in 1983 and founded his group, Blackface, in 1994. The group's first performance was at African Refugee Day in 1997. His songs include Condom, Mr. Stupid and Black Face - the title track of his CD. Palongo is Solagbade's own musical style, and comes out of the musician's quest for "unique and futuristic" music. The musician describes Palongo as "a dance rhythm with heavy and aggressive rhythmic pattern. It is a concept in 6/8 rhythmic pattern and it emanated from Ghana and other rhythmic percussion of some southern Nigerian States."

The fair-skinned Solagbade gave the reasoning behind his band's name. "Black Face is not talking about my complexion. It is an ideology. I am not talking about my 'white' face. It is the African pride I am talking about." He added that being an African automatically endows even a fair skinned person with a 'black face'.

Seyi Solagbade and the Blackface group will be in action at the French Cultural Centre from tonight, 7th January.

There will be other performances at the same venue on the 14th and 21st of January. All shows start at 7pm