Lijadu Sisters
In Afrospect:
The Lijadu Sisters
BEHIND THE MUSIC: THE LIJADU SISTERS- This Nigerian 70’s band was made up of a set of twin sisters with a wicked sense of humour and a unique perspective on life. Here’s a transcript of a short interview they did, along with a snippet from a documentary from the 70’s in which they talk about the role of women in the music industry at the time.
A reporter once asked them: Now that your horizon is opening up, what plans do you have for your future?
Lijadu Sisters: We don’t always look beyond our noses, because Man proposes but God disposes, but we are optimists.
R: Are you as rich as you are famous?
LS: As rich as rich can be. We are comfortable. We own one Volkswagen beetle and a joint bank account with plenty of money in it. Most of the time we are broke.R: Are you religious?
LS: Very. We are catholics although not the Church going type. Every time we feel the spirit moving in our hearts we walk into the nearest church or Mosque and pray.R: Do you have lovers?
LS: We are not dead. Not yet. We are living beings. To live and to love is the essence of our life. If you don’t have someone who loves you, you are dead. If we didn’t have lovers how come we compose love songs?R: Do you take drugs?
LS: NO. We are permanently high.R: You said you have four children but you are not married.
LS: We are not baby killers. Just because we had children with men we never got married to does not mean we had to kill them. We love children because children are a gift from God.R: Would you have the same lover?
LS: If we did, we don’t see the need for it because there are many eligible men around. Even though we are twins, we want to be exclusive.R: What do you think of yourselves?
LS: We are fantastic.R: Do you wear the same clothes?
Kehinde: Taiwo is wearing my blouse and I’m wearing her wrapper.R: What do you do when not singing?
LS: Playing with our kids, cooking, painting or climbing trees.R: What kind of men would you like as friends?
LS: Simple, intelligent and responsible men.R: Do you plan to get married?
LS: You talk too much.
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Lijadu Sisters in the studio
Lijadu Sisters, Double Trouble
There is much to love about the Lijadu Sisters, identical twins of entirely self-determined nature who sing like birds, albeit carnivorous birds with roomy lungs. The sisters raised a brood of four kids, none of whom allegedly knew which Lijadu sister, either Kehinde or Taiwo, was their respective mom. The Lijadu Sisters seemed to be well in control of their professional destiny and critical of the colonial mentality that pervaded Nigerian record companies. They also had little patience for the male chauvinism that was seemingly part of the furniture in their native Nigeria.
The Lijadu Sisters also featured in one of my favorite music documentaries,Konkombé. The work of English director Jeremy Marre, Konkombé was the Nigerian installment in his 14-episode world music series, Beats of the Heart, which ran often on PBS during the late '80s. The three chapters concerning the black diaspora (Jamaica, South Africa and Nigeria) held the best blend of musical, political and cultural content, and of this trioKonkombé was beyond fabulous. It was loaded stem to stern with great performances, fascinating archival footage, revealing interviews and near-palpable neighborhood funk. (With much of the last; speaking at New York's Museum of Natural History, Marre described the horrors — corpses left in front yards —routinely encountered during his Nigerian shoot.)
The Lijadus are seen taking care of their kids and rehearsing in the side yard of their house. Without much accompaniment beyond a couple of talking drums and acoustic guitar, the sisters sing in unison, laid-back and vibrantly erotic in the same breath: "If you want to…you can touch me." Then the camera invades a session with the Lijadu Sisters at the cramped, over-heated Lagos recording studio run by their record company, Decca West Africa. The same song is being recorded, but feels rushed, not nearly the wonderfully loose-limbed affair heard a few minutes previous. Aside from coping with their crumby work environment, the sisters do battle with their overbearing producer (a Nigerian version of the evil producer portrayed so well by Lou Reed in Paul Simon's otherwise regrettable film,One Trick Pony). It's a wonder Kehinde and Taiwo got anything done at all, much less music of the quality heard on today's download.
Double Trouble, released in the U.S. by the Shanachie label in 1984, compiled tracks from then-recent albums (Danger, Horizon Unlimited) by the sisters. Though obviously working in the same climate that gave rise toAfrobeat, being the great invention of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and drummer Tony Allen, the Lijadu twins drew additional rhythmic inspiration from reggae and West African high life.
The last I had heard of the Lijadus, both sisters had moved to Brooklyn, possibly in the late '80s. They played some dates at Wetlands, the lower Manhattan club-as-Petri-dish partially responsible for culturing the jam band plague. They also did a gig in Harlem, with King Sunny Adé's African Beats as their backing band; first on the bill was Robert Farris Thompson, noted Africanist and author of a genuinely deathless work, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy.
