What It’s Like To… Be the Musical Director for Afrobeats’ Biggest Stars

Born and raised in Lagos before moving to the U.S., Lekan’s musical interest started in church (in the well-known Christ Apostolic Church). A multi-instrumentalist, he started off playing drums, “and then I started playing bass and then keyboard and then I played guitar and then also percussion.”

Down the line, he formed the band Kingsmen, which has supported more than a handful of Afrobeats stars. As the music director, King Lekan is responsible for fitting the music of the artist he works with into the context of a live show, which means arranging the music, making sure all band members are on the same page, and putting out any small fires that might come up while the show is going on.

Lekan has worked with Tems, Asake, Davido and many more artists, especially as these artists perform to audiences outside Nigeria and on some of the biggest stages — from Ayra Starr at Glastonbury to Fireboy DML headlining the OVO Arena Wembley. “Artists that are really serious about their live performances have a music director they work with and it shows in their performances,” he says. “It shows that there’s a person they trust to relate the vision of the live show to the rest of the band.”

King Lekan: The work of a music director is very broad. It starts with arranging — some music directors arrange music, some don't — but as far as I'm concerned, I would say I arrange 100 percent of the music whenever we’re working with an artist.

First, I talk to the artist’s management or representative, or sometimes the artists themselves, to know what their vision is for their live music. That’s the most important: what they want their fans to get out of their performance.

I also do a lot of research on the artists before meeting them, reading articles, watching videos and stuff like that, to kind of get to know who they are as a person. I've learned to understand that, for a lot of artists, their personality shows in their music and their performance. For instance, Wizkid is a very chill, cool guy, so it shows in his performance. Somebody like Burna Boy is very vibrant and Davido is very outgoing, and it shows in their performance as well. That helps me understand how to arrange the music, what kind of sounds will bring out that personality. Whether it’s some cool piano chords or some hype synthesizers for an artist like Davido, because he's very active and outgoing on stage, jumping up and down things of that nature, we know his music is gonna be heavy.

Then we start rehearsing as a band before we get to meet the artist. I get the guys together, send them the music ahead of time and the arrangements. Programming is another thing that’s also a part of music directing made and that goes through arranging the music, like adding some live elements to the original music to make everything come to life. On stage it's a whole different ball game. That's when you’re directing the band, letting them know what to do while everything is happening in real time.

The role of a music director on stage is basically as someone who gets the voice and vision of the artist and then relays the message to the rest of the band in musical terms. A lot of times, the artists don't know these musical terms to fully communicate themselves, so my role is to understand what the artist is trying to say, that’s the first important thing from rehearsals.

A lot of times on stage, even after you rehearsed, there's a lot of things that happen, impromptu moments on stage, that's where the music directing has to kick in.

There's something called a talkback microphone that I have while I'm on stage, the audience can’t hear it. It's only going from me to the rest of the band in our ears, so even while rehearsing we need to make sure that the talkback microphone is clean and clear in everyone's ear. That way, when anything happens on stage that wasn't rehearsed, everything is seamless and flawless as I'm directing them and letting them know what chords to play, what direction to go with the music.

There’s been a lot of great moments but one memorable moment was when I directed the music for Fireboy DML’s show at the OVO Arena in London about two years ago. We really didn't have a lot of time to rehearse how I would want to, but we put the choir together and the band flew to London, it was kind of like working from scratch. There was a lot of new music that we learned that time and Fireboy came to rehearsal. One thing I like about Fireboy is that he’s always willing to hear you out. He drops his input and he just leaves the rest for you to take from there, he basically trusted me with his music and, of course, that came from working with him before.

It was very memorable because, a lot of times when you're performing in real time, you don’t get to enjoy the show. As a music director you're listening to everything that's going on, so you're really just not fully enjoying the show, you just want to make sure everything goes as planned, you know, make sure that the audience is having fun and enjoying the music. But this particular performance with Fireboy, I was enjoying the show. I was like, ‘Wow, this, this is amazing.’ I kind of relaxed a bit while on stage even with the music director hat on. I was like, ‘Okay! I'm actually having a good time right now.’ I'm not thinking about what song is next, because everything felt well-orchestrated and arranged properly. Finally getting in that moment and soaking it in really stood out.

More African artists are working with music directors now but it needs to be a bigger thing. Everyone wants to get to the level of the greats, but when you study the greats, they all had a music director who took them to the next level. Artists like Bruno Mars and Beyoncé, they all have music directors who put the band together, they sit with the artist and also sit with the producer most times as well. It's the artists who take their music director seriously that you can see where they're going.

Right now, Burna Boy is the standard if we’re being honest and you can see that he and his music director are really intertwined. They've been together for quite a while and they've fully understood each other, and you can see the progression in his performances from, say, 10 years ago until now. You can see that each performance gets better and better, because every single time they rehearse, the music director is present, and they are fully grasping what Burna Boy wants to do on stage.

As I said, you can see Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Burna Boy, and many others and you know they have a consistent music director. It shows in their live performances. For Afrobeats, I guess some artists are starting to find out that they don’t actually have a music director. Most of them say music director, but I end up finding out it's a DJ. Of course, DJs are great but the role of a DJ is different from the role of a music director.