Friday, June 11, 2010

The Stephen Osita Osadebe Show - "Osondi Owendi"

It's extremely rare to encounter live performance footage of Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe because like many musicians of his generation he guarded his music and his image jealously. He turned down most invitations to play on television and demanded exorbitant sums for the rights to film him in performance. However, in the early 1980s NTA 10 Lagos finally convinced the Doctor of Hypertension to do a weekly television half-hour show.

The program took the format of a live-in-studio Osadebe concert--no skits, no guest stars, no interviews, no chit-chat, no frills. Osadebe and the band would just perform two or three songs straight. The only variation would be when Chief would step off stage to let one of the other band members lead while he danced in the wings.

Here is an early rendition of the now-classic "Osondi Owendi." It's actually a bit longer than this but I had to get it to fit in at under 10 minutes in order to upload it on YouTube.

15 comments:

PHLP said...

Wonderful!

The drummer at 3:04 is the best. The feeling he is so clearly having is one of the big reasons I play drums myself.

Comb & Razor said...

Glad you're feeling that, PHLP... Shame I had to edit out some sections where the drummer was really getting nice, but maybe I'll put them up later!

John B. said...

Hope you're back for good, Uchenna. Great video!

Comb & Razor said...

Yes... Yes, I think I am!

calumbinho said...

WELCOME BACK, U. !!! Awesome video. If you think the sections you edited out are worthwhile, maybe you could post the whole thing for dld...?

Comb & Razor said...

I think I'll post them elsewhere... There are many video sites now that allow much longer videos, but I still decided to put this up on my YouTube just for continuity's sake.

(And I'd say that the whole video is pretty worthwhile, imho)

icastico said...

Ahhh...welcome back...love this.

Comb & Razor said...

Thanks icastico!

www.electricjive.blogspot.com said...

welcome back Uchenna - chris in S Africa

Comb & Razor said...

Thanks Chris! So you're behind Electricjive? I didn't know that! Great work you've been doing over there!

Anonymous said...

Nice! I looking also all the other stuff you have uploaded. Excellent stuff as always!

WrldServ said...

Wow!

Son said...

so glad to see a new a post here, welcome back

Chris M said...

Fantastic! Thank you, Uchenna! Deft and Dextrous musics to soothe my soul.

Comb & Razor said...

Glad you like it, Chris! Hopefully I'll be putting up more stuff like this soon.