The
‘Eko Oo Gba Gbere’ crooner, aged 91, passed on in the early hours of Saturday at Wesley Guild Hospital, Ilesha, Osun State,
Tribune Online gathered.
A top musician, Orlando Julius and his wife, Latoya Aduke based at Ijebu- Ijesha as well and close associate to Pa Ajilo, confirmed that he was hale and hearty when they visited Ajilo on Thursday.
“It is a painful loss to us. I took Orlando to see him on Thursday at his house. Pa was so happy,” Latoya said.
Ajilo is the last of a generation of veterans like Victor Olaiya, Bobby Benson and others that formed the Nigerian Union of Musicians, the first guild for musicians.
In December of 1980, the jazz musician and activist Hugh Masekela was set to return to South Africa for the first time in twenty years. His friend Vic Moloi got him on the phone and told him it was time. It was time for him to return to the country his global liberation work had gotten him banned from.
Hugh Masekela performing at SOBs NYC, July 9th, 1998. Photo by David Corio.
Masekela left South Africa 20 years earlier. Shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre.
It happened on March 21st, 1960, in the South African township of Sharpeville, when a day of demonstrations against pass laws wore on. The pass laws were created to – among other things – segregate the population and allocate the labor of migrants. The laws most adversely impacted Black African citizens, who would have to carry passbooks when venturing beyond the borders of their homeland. Pass Laws were one of the defining features of South African Apartheid.