ON his 2007 album, ‘Controversy & Precision’, the late Fuji music maestro, Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, did something noteworthy that went under the radar. He dedicated the eight-minute, thirty-three-second ‘Precision’ track to appreciating his colleagues in the Yoruba-language part of Nollywood.
A towering figure in entertainment who continues to inspire several other aspiring musicians despite being dead for over a decade, the Ibadan, Oyo State-born artist displayed remarkable humility by listing the names of the players in Yoruba Nollywood, uniquely praising them the only way he had mastered.
Adebayo Salami, Sunday Omobolanle, Ronke Oshodi, Iyabo Ojo, Bolaji Amusan, and many others, favourites of millions of Nigerians, were mentioned, as Barrister celebrated his fellow entertainers in acting.
It was the turn of Taiwo Hassan, better known as Ogogo, around 5.05 minutes of the track. He acknowledged the close ties between Yinka Quadri and Ogogo, asking the latter, “Sho n ti e bami toju handsome Taiwo Hassan mi o. Ogogo kulodo…”, that is, are you caring for the handsome Taiwo Hassan? Barry asked rhetorically before moving on to other artists.
Nineteen years after Barrister’s tribute, Ogogo passed away on Sunday, August 23, at the age of 66. Earlier, one of his children had told the public about his battle with cancer, making it clear that the family was not asking for money but hoping to find doctors who could help.
Ogogo will be remembered primarily as an actor, director, producer and mentor; a towering figure whose face and voice became familiar to generations of Yoruba film audiences. But before the films, there was another artistic foundation to his career: praise singing and chanting.
Ogogo’s journey into the performing arts began with ràárà, Yoruba praise singing and poetic chanting. He performed as a chanter in stage productions before finding his way into film and eventually becoming one of the defining figures of Yoruba Nollywood. He trained under Awo Ademola Fagbemi, learning the art of reciting eulogies, while his famous name, Ogogo, was drawn from his family’s oríkì.
In that sense, Ogogo represented something that is sometimes overlooked in discussions of Yoruba cinema. He was not simply an actor who happened to chant. He came from a performance tradition in which acting, music, poetry, praise singing and storytelling often overlap.
Like Barrister, Ogogo possessed a powerful voice, and throughout his career, he occasionally returned to those roots. His performance in productions such as the award-winning Seven Doors, for instance, reminded audiences that behind the actor was a performer shaped by the older traditions of Yoruba oral art.
Since his death, short videos of Ogogo chanting and singing have circulated on social media. Beyond the understandable nostalgia, those clips have served another purpose: they have reminded many people of the artistic range that existed behind the familiar screen persona. They have also drawn attention to an important question: what happens when the generation that carries these traditions begins to disappear?
That question became even more urgent with the death, a day after Ogogo, of Pa Alabi Ogundepo, the veteran poet and ìjálá chanter.
The coincidence of their deaths brought two related but distinct traditions of Yoruba oral performance into the same moment of public reflection. Ogogo took the skills of praise singing into theatre and eventually into popular cinema. Pa Ogundepo remained more closely identified with ìjálá, the rich poetic tradition historically associated with hunters, although his talent also took him into theatre, broadcasting and film.
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Born in Saki, Oyo State, into a family with a hunting background, Ogundepo learned ìjálá chanting from his father and from other masters, including Lasisi Alarape Oni. After his primary education, he worked several jobs, including milling and gathering gravel, before his unusual gift for performance opened the door to theatre.
The late Pa Oyin Adejobi recognised that talent and brought him into his theatre company. From there, Ogundepo›s voice travelled across different artistic spaces. He appeared in Professor Ola Rotimi›s Kurunmi as a praise singer. He later auditioned for Professor Wole Soyinka’s Kongi’s Harvest, directed by the late Ossie Davis and produced by Pa Francis Oladele’s Calpenny Nigeria Films.
His journey also took him into The Acting Company at the University of Ibadan, where he became friends with the late Wale Ogunyemi and Uncle Tunji Oyelana. He performed with Oyelana’s band, The Benders, chanted at occasions and worked with other theatre companies.
For Ogundepo, ìjálá could belong to the hunting tradition, the theatre stage, radio or television. If you don’t remember what Chief Ogundepo’s chant sounded like, you can find it in General Kollington Ayinla’s 1984 album ‘Knockout Special’. Listen to his beautiful chant in the ‘Ogun Onire’ track.
But perhaps his widest impact came through broadcasting. Ogundepo spent most of his life in Osogbo while promoting Yoruba culture through his work with Radio Nigeria, Ibadan; NTA Ibadan; Radio OYO; and the then Television Service of Oyo State.
For many people of my generation and those before us, his voice was part of everyday life. We grew up listening to his poems and ìjálá on radio and television,
One of the poems that remained particularly memorable was his warning about the dangers of children engaging in street trading. It goes thus:
Gbogbo abiyamo pata, e je ka si rawa leti
Gbogbo alagbato pata, e je ka jo sapero
Se omo ti ko ti dagba to eniti da oja ta, lo gbe ‘gba lori ko maa kiri worobo
Lomo o si mogba ti onimoto nbo
Gbe bisiki wa lawe gbo, lomo ba fo sona lo b abo senu irin
Oro yi di ikaya, o di howu howu
E maa taja loju ona mo, tori moto o mo enikan. Ogun o nifi eran wa yi lele
The power of artists like Ogogo and Pa Ogundepo lay not only in their talent but also in the worlds that produced them. They emerged from traditions in which young performers could learn directly from masters; where oríkì, ràárà and ìjálá were not simply subjects for academic discussion but living art forms.
Barrister belonged to that wider world too. His decision to celebrate actors on ‘Precision’ was more than a musician casually mentioning famous names. It reflected the interconnectedness of the Yoruba creative tradition. The musician could celebrate the actor because they drew from many of the same cultural wells: language, praise poetry, oral history and performance.
Today, however, those wells appear to be producing fewer practitioners with the same depth of grounding. There are still artists keeping the traditions alive. Ibrahim Chatta, for example, in movies, and Akeem Lasisi in ìjálá,.
But the question raised by the deaths of Ogogo and Pa Alabi Ogundepo is larger than whether a few talented individuals can continue the work.
The more urgent question is whether we are still creating the conditions that produced artists like them. Who is teaching young people the intricacies of ìjálá and ràárà? Are our creative institutions preserving these art forms as living traditions, or are we waiting until their talented practitioners die before rediscovering what they represented?
Ogogo and Pa Alabi Ogundepo belonged to different generations and travelled different artistic paths. One became a household name through cinema; the other remained more closely associated with poetry, chanting and broadcasting. Yet both represented a level of artistic grounding that connected contemporary entertainment to older Yoruba traditions.
Their deaths should force us to ask a more difficult question: not simply whether another Ogogo or another Ogundepo will emerge, but whether we are still building cultural institutions capable of producing them.
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