Are Defamatory Words Of A Talking Drum Actionable? -By Festus Adedayo

Having been a journalist for close to three decades now and one who takes special delight in the laws of defamation, whether or not a talking drum’s bilious defamation is actionable has posed a mental dilemma to me. Put differently, are drummed lyrics which damage the reputation of the victim actionable? For instance, in the hypothetical case of a gathering at a party, with one who holds the talking-drum drumming to abuse his victim by impugning his character as an armed robber, can the victim sue?

What brought this hypothesis was the clash among the musical family of Late Ayinla Omowura, Yoruba Apala music genre lord, which I dissected in my forthcoming book, Ayinla Omowura: Life and Times of an Apala Legend which would be available on bookstands from May 6, the 40^th anniversary of the assassination of this bohemian musician.

Alao Adewole, who is now about 95 years, was the lead drummer of the Ayinla band. He claimed that he owned the band and merely invited a younger Omowura to be his lead singer. However, in the mid-70s, a feud ensued between the duo and Adewole abandoned the band.

Like the scenario which played out between the late Jamaican reggae star, Bob Marley and his friends, Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingstone, the same equation could be said to have been replicated in the rift between Omowura and Adewole. In the former case, while the trio happened to be friends who lived in Kingston and discovered they each had talents that could he jointly harnessed to reach stardom, they were set apart for a life-long acrimony when Briton, Chris Blackwell came to Jamaica seeking reggae stars to promote for his record label, Island Records. Before the advent of Blackwell, the group was merely The Wailing Wailers but at his entrance, the same could not be maintained. While Bob was mulatto, the other two were black and their skin pigmentations sold them out. On their first tour out of Jamaica, to the United Kingdom, Blackwell reportedly promoted the group as Bob Marley and the Wailers, ostensibly for commercial purposes because, a Bob leading the group would appeal more to the white British audience, than a set of weed-smoking, awkward dreadlocks haired non-conformist blacks on stage. In the Omowura and Adewole case too, it was the white men who owned EMI who dictated who the boss was and who to relate with, said Adewole Oniluola when I interviewed him. 

“Oyinbo people at EMI were the ones who made him the boss of all of us; they said that the person who was the lead singer was the person they reckoned to be the boss and who they could relate with. They said they couldn’t take the signature of anyone else. I had to take it because that was what they said they wanted and I also didn’t want the disintegration of the band,” Adewole said. 

Pronto, Omowura engaged the drumming services of his old time friend named Yebere Adisa, who became Omowura’s lead drummer. He sang Volumes 13 to 17 of the 20 volumes Ayinla did for EMI. It was said that Yebere, so called because he was an Abiku, had inundated his friend and boss with demands for a car and Ayinla reportedly contacted EMI management. Yebere, it was gathered, had been specific about the kind of car he wanted – a Peugeot 504 saloon car. 

Whether Ayinla didn’t agree with Yebere’s choice of a car but requested for a different type from EMI or that he changed his mind on the agreement with Yebere, a Datsun 120Y was eventually supplied to Ayinla’s Itoko, Abeokuta home by the recording company which Ayinla, proudly, handed over to Yebere. Feeling insulted by the abridgement of the agreement he entered into with Ayinla, Yebere was reported to have stormed out of Ayinla’s house. Annoyed at his insolence, Omowura reportedly ordered that the car be immediately repainted in an Abeokuta taxi colour, which he handed over to his erstwhile driver called Alasiri. Alasiri is alive and was interviewed in my book. He drove the Datsun and gave Omowura daily returns.

Yebere took his anger with Ayinla a step further: he stopped going for musical rehearsals and disconnected from Omowura. By this time, Rasaki Isegoju, Raufu Adeola and other friends of both Ayinla and Adewole had stepped up their attempts to reconcile both.

Upon the resolution of their tiff, Adewole drummed for Ayinla from Volume 17 to 20. This was why, as the flipside of the album Omi tuntun ti ru with the track entitled Pansaga ranti ojo ola began, (This track was an acidic sting of women who changed men’s houses as frequently as a diabetic visits the loo), Adewole drummed to attack the man who held the forte for him in the interregnum. He called him an ingrate who was exposed to wealth and wanted to destroy the house where the wealth was incubated. He also accused Yebere of sowing discord in a house built with toils. This, he drummed: Yebere, oku’gbe, abatenije, o fe b’egbe wa je, Omo aije’beri, oku’gbe, Ajabes’aya, ko ma b’egbe wa je…

So, assuming this scathing talking drum from Adewole was defamatory, could Yebere sue?