![]() ![]() ![]() Emma Ogosi turned me to his PUNCHING BAG, while I was married to him.” It wasn’t until 2016 when Ogholi publicly spoke out about the abuses she faced by the hand of her ex-husband, Emma Ogosi: “I travelled out of Nigeria because of my ex-husband (Emma Ogosi). However, in the late 1990s, Ogholi abruptly disappeared from music when she fled to Paris with her two children. Ogholi went on to tour West Africa with sponsorships from Pepsi and other big companies, entrancing audiences with her smooth vocals that oscillated between English and Isoko. In brief, I just try to be myself, R A S T A F A R I A N-style.” The Guardian Nigeria I get inspiration from Jamaican reggae greats like Bob Marley, Sugar Minott, Dillinger, U-Roy, I-Roy, Yellow Man, and John Holt, etc. “The ingredients that make my music special are melody, the message, rhythm, simplicity, and right from the very start, I don’t sing like anybody. Around this time, she also met musician Emma Oghosi, who became her manager and producer, and eventually her husband, with whom she had two children with. She was a maven of the guitar, and her fans called her ‘Njoku Reggae’ because she made ‘njoku, njoku’ sounds as she strummed. She moved to Lagos with a demo tape in 1987, and that same year she released her debut album, My Kind of Music, on Polygram (now known as Premier). Whatever the reasons, and despite the few facts available, Ogholi’s story is one that needs telling.īorn in Isoko, a region in the Delta State of Nigeria, in 1965, Ogholi began her music career at just 22 years old. As is the case with so many black women musicians throughout history, the lack of recognition has been detrimental to both black culture as well as our consummate understanding of music history. Or maybe the world just didn’t see the significance at the time-or after. Or maybe, following her flight, she felt silenced out of fear. This shortage of information could be for a variety of reasons: Maybe it was her disappearance in the 1990s, during the height of her career, when she fled to Paris with her two children to escape an abusive marriage. And even there, not much public documentation, aside from a few brief articles, can be found on the internet. ![]() Yet, outside of her home country, we’ve heard very little about Ogholi’s life and career. From 1987 through 1990, Ogholi released six albums (three of which went platinum), wrote one of Nigeria’s most famous songs to date, and permanently changed the landscape of Nigerian reggae. She’s credited as Nigeria’s first woman reggae musician, often called Nigeria’s “Queen of Reggae” and a master guitarist who is known for singing in her Isoko dialect. In the 1980s, during the golden age of Nigerian reggae and amidst a scene dominated by men, Evi-Edna Ogholi emerged as a superstar who was just as prolific as any of her contemporaries, if not more. ![]()
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