Remembering Victor Olaiya Music
11 March 2020
by Kenneth Kiplagat
Born on December 31, 1930, in Calabar, Cross River State doyen of highlife music in Nigeria passed on at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) on Wednesday, February 12, 2020.
Olaiya rose and wooed fans to fame in the 1950s and was once described as "The Evil Genius of Highlife" by a renowned Daily Times satirist, Alhaji Alade Odunewu.
Download FREE MP3 Music by Victor Olaiya
Olaiya was the 20th child of a family of 24 to Alfred Omolona Olaiya and Bathsheba Owolabi Motajo his parents who came from Ijesha-Ishu in Ekiti State.
His father's house called Ilijs Bar stood on 2, Bamgbose Street, Lagos Island until it was demolished on September 11, 2016.
Olaiya who instead pursued a career as a musician in the US, to the disapproval of his parents, at an early age, learned to play the Bombardon and the French Horn. Before diverting to music, he had moved to Lagos, where he passed the school certificate examination in 1951 and was accepted by Howard University, US, to study civil engineering.
He played with the Sammy Akpabot Band. He was the leader and trumpeter for the Old Lagos City Orchestra and he joined the Bobby Benson Jam Session Orchestra.
He formed his own band in 1954, which was called, the 'Cool Cats', playing popular highlife music.
His band was chosen to play at the state ball when Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited Nigeria in 1956, and later to play at the state balls when Nigeria became independent in 1960 and when Nigeria became a republic in 1963.
He will be remembered for great hits such as "Omo Pupa", "Mofe Mu Yan", "Iye Jemila"
Olaiya announced his retirement from his six-decade music career in 2017.
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