OBEY & CO: DRUMMING UP INTEREST IN AFRICAN POP

Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey’s 75-minute opening set Sunday night at the Music Machine demonstrated the appeal of African pop music and the ongoing difficulty in expanding its audience beyond a cult following. Despite the inviting combination of strong musicality and open spirit, African music leans toward extended songs and most aren’t sung in English.

Unlike fellow countryman King Sunny Ade, Obey is not a natural performer and functions more as a benign patriarch a la blues great Muddy Waters. On Sunday, Obey never seemed comfortable until he stepped back from the microphone to blend in with his 13-piece Inter-Reformers Band, leaving the group’s three singer-dancers to work the audience.

This lack of charisma is unfortunate because Obey’s “Miliki system” style of Nigerian juju music is more elemental and accessible to Western pop fans than Ade’s. The music was brightened by occasional blues/rock guitar solos and toughened by bandleader Samson Ogunlade’s congas, which provided a percussive undertow. The nicely varied sound was also highlighted by arrangements that sported an appealingly funky, soul-tinged edge.

The singers’ melodies and unison harmonies dominated during the vocal passages, yet when pedal steel guitarist Lai Yinuse soloed, the band could have been a group from the West Indies performing at Carnival time.

The band hit its stride 40 minutes into the performance when the superb talking-drummer Simoni Adeleke unleashed a volley of solos that ignited the audience on the dance floor. The crowning moment was a set-closing workout by the five percussionists, marked by a spectacular series of shifts in tempo and dynamics.