How Gentleman Mike Ejeagha's Highlife Classic Became Popular Again
The 1983 highlife classic is getting a resurgence thanks to a dance trend popularized by Nigerian comedian Brainjotter.
The video is initially unassuming. Brainjotter (real name Chukwuebuka Emmanuel), a well-known Nigerian comedian famous for his Instagram skits, is seen walking down a street across from a friend. Mike Ejeagha’s 1983 classic “Ka Esi Le Onye Isi Oche” is playing in the background and just as the chorus comes on — a catchy “gwo gwo gwo ngwo!” — Brainjotter and his friend raise a side of their legs to the beat. This is how the “Gwo Gwo Gwo Ngwochallenge” began. All over TikTok, thousands of videos have been made to the sound, with playful and well-timed movements often involving leg raises and a small chase at the end.
Forty years after releasing his highlife classic, Ejeagha is finding a new audience previously unaware of his work. The 94-year-old Igbo highlife musician and well-celebrated folklorist is renowned for songs filled with fantastical elements and an overarching moral skeleton. In one of his songs, a man’s mistreatment of his older son brings about dangerous consequences, while in others, like “Ka Esi Le Onye Isi Oche”a young princess repeatedly turns down suitors seeking instead a suitor who would display incredible strength and would come for her hand in marriage bearing an elephant. The story he weaves in this sprawling song, aided by sharp guitar riffs and highlife instrumentation, is filled with plot twists and surprising sub-plots before culminating in a didactic swing calling out manipulation, greed and the cyclically destructive effect of selfishness.
Back in time
One of TikTok’s biggest strengths is in the power it has given creators and everyday music listeners in dictating the trajectory of music in today’s world. While labels still have some level of oversight, listeners are now better positioned to implicitly determine which music is worth making videos to and by extension, breathing new life into. And for as long as the app has existed, it has been a driver for the resurgence of old music.
Music like Ejeagha’s — which he began to make long before Nigeria’s independence and had a niche but dedicated audience for, with its own lores and backstories well away from the mainstream — is now being appreciated in a new way. This resurgence is helping long-forgotten records gain new life, emphasizing the formidable spirit of music created to transcend generations and speak to various time periods. In recent times, songs like TJ’s “Elewe Ukwu”(2009)and Obesere’s “Egungun Be Careful”have also triggered a crop of reinterpretations spanning videos, memes, unauthorized remixes and renewed appreciation.
After Brainjotter posted his video, which racked up nearly a million likes and over 30,000 comments, Ejeagha’s streaming numbers on Spotify have grown to 74,600 monthly listeners. Ejeagha, born in 1932, began his career as part of an Ogene band at an early age. His music career began in the 1940s but only really took off in 1960.
According to a retrospective by Chimezie Chika in Afrocritik, “Observing the musicians and musical groups that performed in the streets of Coal Camp, what fascinated Ejeagha was the rhythm of the changes between the long percussions of the ekwe and ogene instruments, and bawdy lyrics interspersed in the beat. He was interested in the interplay of rhythm and words, the enthralling technique of stringing heady rhythms, of making music.”
And while speaking with a reporter at his 91st birthday celebration, a friend of the family, Chief Benjamin Ugochukwu Ikeokwu, described him as an icon.
“Gentleman Mike Ejeagha is a wonderful man. He is an icon. We Igbos are proud of him. He maintains our culture and language, language being the greatest value of culture. This is why he is being celebrated today. All his music is unique. We call it ‘Akuko na Egwu Mike Ejeagha 1 in Africa.’ You cannot see another person playing his kind of music. Just like Fela playing Afro, in our culture here we have Mike Ejeagha playing ‘Akuko na Egwu.’”
In his retrospective, Chika also notes that Ejeagha spent time traveling across Eastern Nigeria enriching his practice as a folklorist — a practice that has enriched his work and endeared him to a new crop of listeners.
“Folklore rules the mythical landscape of Mike Ejeagha’s music; his lyrical calibrations are more about the prosody of folksongs and folktales; his language of the music is Igbo, and the purpose is didactic. Having learned to play the guitar when he was barely twenty, Ejeagha’s first act was to establish his difference,” he writes. “According to him, he put his personal feelings into the stringing of his guitar, not unlike the tocadores of the Spanish Andalucía. Ejeagha pioneered a distinct style, inimitable and captivating. There is usually a mythical bent in his music, as if the listener has suddenly turned a corner into an improbable world, distant, animalistic, and yet familiar — something similar to folktales and legends — with the complement of proverbs, idioms, and ancient speech rhythms.”
With over 300 recordings contributed to the National Archives of Nigeria and this strong resurgence, it is evident that Ejeagha’s legacy has been solidified in both past and recent history.