It is amazing that decades after Juju maestro, King Sunny Ade composed some of his evergreen songs like Ja Funmi, Mo beru Agba, new generation pop stars still find them relevant and they adopt these songs in their music.
Clement Ige who is KSA’s manager as a guest at Goldberg’s Ariya Repete Roundtable Discourse in Abeokuta revealed that Davido and Small Doctor didn’t obtain copyright permission from KSA before using his lyrics in their songs.
In his words:”They use English language to speak Yoruba. Like the young man who sang ‘makole marale’: how do you build house before buying a land?
Many of them don’t give credit to the original composer of the song they adopt. They just sing it without seeking permission. That’s a copyright infringement. It’s not done in developed societies. Till today Small Doctor didn’t get our permission before and after singing “ijó tí m’ojó l’àná, tí wọn n’pariwo, oni nkọ, ola nkọ”. And many of them are guilty of this. The Davido that used Sunny’s lyrics in his song didn’t even get it right and that’s because he didn’t ask for permission; if he did we would have corrected him. What is ‘Kuluso ewe, agbagba ewe…?” The line is actually ‘Seleru agbo, agbara agbo’. I know because I co-wrote the song!”
At the event, the panelists discussed the evolution of Yoruba traditional music and its influence on modern pop music and it featured ace musicians such as K1 De Ultimate, Sir Shina Peters, Lekan Babalola and a host of others.
Staying away from music for so long has affected me- Paul Play Dairo