Back in Nigeria in 1995 everybody knew King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal I. Just about every house party and club floor, every shop front and car window, pulsed to such megahits as “Talazo” and “Consolidation”; to the percussion-rich polyrhythms and Yoruba chants typical of Fuji music, a genre this one-time roadie (for Fuji music icon Ayinde Barrister) had customized by adding more percussion – congas, the sakara frame drum – and an attitude straight off the street. 

Wasiu Ayinde had nearly 20 years’ worth of national fame under his floor length robes (and occasional zebra-striped jumpsuits) when he played his first ever WOMAD Festival that same year. Booked in for a session at Real World Recording Week shortly afterwards, the artist and his 16-piece band were inadvertently delayed and pulled in to Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire eight hours late. The recording went ahead regardless. Against the clock. On-the-fly.

With a small live audience in party mode and microphones placed about the floor, Wasiu Ayinde and his crew rode the adrenalin, summoning a set that moved from trance-like call-and-response and vibrant Afropop ballads to those aforementioned megahits, all of it soaked in groove and feeling. A kingly feat, that seems even more majestic now.