With an iron will, strong enough to drop out of university in his third year to pursue music, multiple award-winning and internationally acclaimed songwriter Cobhams Asuquo is a man on a mission in a world he can hear, but cannot see. His love for music, since he was a child, led him to nurse quietly the ambition of one day owning a music production company that would discover and nurture talent.
Asuquo grew up in the ‘Tin City’ of Jos in central Nigeria, before moving to the buzzing city of Lagos. His early musical influences came from Ken Lazarus, Jimmy Cliff and Don Williams, as well as Nigeria’s Rex Lawson and Inyang Henshaw, to which his family often listened. As a child, he began to express his love for music by using anything he could find.
“I created music with everything around me; every element around me was potentially a musical instrument or a path to creating music. So whether there were barrels for storing water on the dining table, forks and knives, my chest or my stomach, everything basically,” he says.
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As he grew older, he sought more ways to express himself and began playing the piano, first at church and then in the school band, while at King’s College Lagos. He became involved in music production after he fortuitously stumbled upon Music Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). This discovery was a turning point in his life, of which he says, “Joy knew no bounds”. Given that he had found a way to create music by using MIDI technology, which is a recognized industry specification, he began producing songs in the mid-1990s.
By the turn of the century, Asuquo was producing consistently. As a singer and by virtue of his production work, which had become prominent in the Nigerian music industry, he became well-known in the industry circles and among aspiring musicians. He worked with a Nigerian record label as the head of audio productions, after which he was signed by Sony ATV as a songwriter. While at Sony, Asuquo wrote songs for and produced a number of successful international musicians, including Asa’s self-titled debut album, which achieved international success.
At the end of his five-year deal with Sony ATV, Asuquo set his sights on realizing his lifelong dream of owning a production company and established CAMP, which stands for Cobhams Asuquo Music Production. From a business perspective, his vision for CAMP is for it to be a successful company that is structured along the lines of renowned globally successful companies.
“The dollars are great, and yes we are going there, but for us, the foundation is important, and we want to build against the background, the structure, the premise and principles on which companies like Procter and Gamble, the oil giants, the Mobil’s, run because it’s a sustainable enterprise. So that’s where we are,” he says.
The company, a registered entity, consists of a four-person management team, of which he is CEO. Completing the team are a head of business development and strategy; a head of artists and repertoire and an external consultant, who does promotion internationally for the company.
Having run CAMP for just over two years, the magic touch of this ingenious producer cum entrepreneur, who has drawn comparisons with the American singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stevie Wonder, who happens to be one of his idols, has led the company to achieve remarkable success.
Asuquo’s unique ear for talent and rare ability to produce a unique genre of music, is what makes him, and CAMP, an emerging force in the music industry. The alternative soul musician Bez, whose debut album Super Sun was released in 2011, is recognized as a commercial, international success. The Boston Globe ranked the album third on its top ten ‘world music top albums of 2011’ list and the video for the album’s debut single, That Stupid Song, received a landmark premiere on BET’s 106 &amp; Park, the channel’s flagship hip-hop and R&amp;B music video show. It was the first time that a song from the region received such recognition. To Asuquo, these facts attest to the hard work being done behind the scenes. Even so, he has no plans to rest on his oars. He acknowledges that the company has to establish a widespread presence in the industry before expanding beyond Nigeria. CAMP has recently concluded a deal with a major international publishing company to promote its work and acts internationally. For the eloquent and astute producer—who speaks four Nigerian languages and enjoys train rides through the countryside and long interstate drives in the States—the journey towards dominance of the global music industry is just  beginning.

Blind Faith

Perched on a stool with a spotlight sculpting her fine face with light and shadow, Nneka strums her guitar and melancholically sings lyrics with both religious and political undertones.
“Your phrases are highly majestic, I am amazed by your great linguistics, yet your words are placed together, to sell dubious manifestoes,” says Nneka.
The audience sits in silence as the stars shine in the dark sky spanning above the auditorium in the Ghanaian capital of Accra.
Tonight, Nneka casts a fragile form—her signature sprawling afro is pulled back, her diminutive figure is shrouded in layers of grey, and she is awkwardly reticent throughout the performance. But if Nneka’s music has a central theme it is that appearances can often be deceptive. The German-Nigerian singer’s delicate beauty and soft voice belie the anger, the confusion and sense of injustice threaded throughout the lyrics of her songs.
For the past two years Nneka has been touring Europe, East Africa and her motherland to promote her third album Soul is Heavy, which was released last year . Written and recorded over three years in her home city of Lagos, the album is both thematically and stylistically eclectic with reggae, hip-hop, soul and afrobeat influences. Her songs address corruption, neo-colonialism and oppression, as well as more introspective matters of the heart and soul.
Nneka has made her way from being a little-known singer-songwriter to an internationally acclaimed artist who has toured with the likes of American singer Lenny Kravitz and New York rapper Nas. But gaining recognition in her homeland was difficult, at least until her big break in 2010 when she performed her hit single “Heartbeat” on the David Letterman Show and later appeared on CNN.
“Before Letterman, before CNN nobody wanted to hear my stuff in Nigeria. It was quite difficult for people to relate to my music because the topics are quite heavy: I talk about corruption, I talk about hypocrisy and things that I deal with on a daily basis that we Africans and Nigerians deal with on a daily basis. Many people are very scared of facing those issues they would rather you entertain them,” she tells me during an interview at a restaurant in Accra.
Nneka says the popularity she gained in Nigeria, due to her overseas success, was an example of the “colonial mentality”, which is still pervasive throughout Africa.
“It’s an inferiority complex that we are not very aware of. We are really not proud of ourselves.”
But the singer says that while Nigerians are often drawn to the shiny and superficial; “political” music is becoming increasingly popular in Nigeria, as shown during the Occupy Nigeria protest movement last year, which was sparked by the removal of fuel subsidies and inspired by the Arab Spring.
“There are lots of musicians and artists who are becoming more conscious about their surroundings and courageous in speaking out their minds, when it comes to speaking out about our state and our condition and the system,” says Nneka.
While the singer describes her homeland as divided and corrupt, she says the Occupy Movement, at which she performed, gave her hope that things in Nigeria can change.
“A demonstration like that hasn’t been done in my lifetime. It was a peaceful demonstration—people of different tribes gathered, Christians and Muslims were praying together. Seeing so many people in one place having the courage to speak their minds helped connect us amongst ourselves.”
The artist was inspired by the pain and injustices she saw in Warri in the Niger Delta, a city where economic division and ethnic conflict are rife.
“When you grow up in that area, you either become a militant or maybe a musician. There is so much grief and tribal war and so much conflict,” she says.
But Nneka says Nigerians continue to hold on to the hope that their country can change and that some kind of revolution will take place in the future.
“We need proper leadership, selfless politicians who are not in power looking to profit, we need government to be more concerned about the youth and we need more rich people that are concerned about the poor.”
On what inspires her creatively, Nneka is endearingly bumbling and inarticulate. She cites spiritual figures such as Gandhi, Jesus and Saint John the Baptist and iconic African leaders like Thomas Sankara, Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba, as figures who have informed her ideas and lyrics. Like these great men, Nneka sees herself as a spokesperson of the poor and the oppressed.
“Seeing the many people who are sick in the Delta due to the pollution, and the deaths… being from that area alone has made me into who I am. I feel it is my responsibility to be the voice for those who don’t have the courage,” says Nneka.

Tag: Songwriter

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