King of world beats and Juju music maestro, King Sunny Ade has been accused of intellectual theft and lying by a Popular gutarist and former member of his band, Ademola Adepoju.
The Oyo born America based gutarist who claimed ownership of a song popularised by Sunny: Ode ma ti pogidan loko…contained in one of his highly successful albums, said another member of the band who was privy to his recording of the song gave it to Sunny claiming ownership.
” The song in question was part of my unreleased works which another member of the band, Dosunmu was privy to.
” I was surprised when I got to rehearsal one day and my song was being rehearsed and I told chairman immediately that i own the song. He confronted the guy who gave him the song under the pretext that he owned it. The guy was too shameful to respond and couldn’t not even look into my eyes.
Sunny discarded the song immediately and stopped the band from rehearsing it further”
Adepoju who mentioned this while fielding questions on a musical program, Agbaletu on Adamimogo FM, Lekki,Lagos, anchored by Dele Adeyanju, monitored by ThePageNews, said things however took a new turn when the band went to record an album in London.
” We were already in the recording booths and unfortunately, the first song Sunny sang was my song. The same song I told him belonged to me and he discarded.
” I was deeply grieved and I was too troubled to play my Hawaii into that album. That was how I ended up not playing to that particular album” Adepoju divulged.
Not done with the accusations, Adepoju also faulted a claim by KSA in his published autobiography,where he said he was already learning to play the steal guitar which he purchased from Bobby Benson, before he met Adepoju who is reputed to have introduced the Hawaii guitar into the Nigerian Juju music in particular.
Adepoju who played the same instrument in Grace Land, Paul Simon’s 1986 release, said Sunny was economical with the truth adding that till date, the master guitarist can not handle the Hawaii guitar, stressing that the Juju maestro only wanted rubbish his reputation of being the first to introduce the musical instrument locally.
The instrumentalist who had performed with acts like Dele Ojo, Dele Abiodun among others registered his respect for KSA whom he described as a good boss, adding however that the issue of the copyright theft and the zero Integrity among some other members of the band made him quit the band when he eventually did.
