World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who is William Onyeabor? (3LP) [Luaka Bop]

Format: 3x12" in gatefold sleeve.
CAT: 8089900791

Little is known about William Onyeabor, and that’s just the way he likes it.

Sure, you might hear a thing or two about him if you go to Enugu, a rural, isolated village in Eastern Nigeria, where he lives in a hidden palace in the forest. As a crowned High Chief of his Igbo village, he is an authority figure in his community. He also enjoys expanding Nigeria’s energetic Christian music scene. He’s not a man who is hiding. But he has turned his back on the music that made him a star to the youth of Enugu in the turbulent 1980s.

What leads a man to disavow his past? William Onyeabor is a powerful man, and yet he chooses to remain a mystery. It’s as if Onyeabor, at the height of his strength, decided to forget the work of his youth… that pungent afro-funk; the playful wah-wah guitars; the incendiary jazz synthesizers; passages evoking spaceships followed by choruses with helium voices singing among jingles; tunings from distant stars; and that very particular and nostalgic sound that appeared with the arrival of the first electronic drum machines, which fascinated drummers around the world.