Burna Boy: The Son of his Mother, the Voice of the World
Afrobeats has continued to open doors. The world is listening. The roofs are getting raised and the heavens are acknowledging it all. The faith in culture has changed the fate of a people. The biggest of the best are pitching tents, and the story is carried by many. Foremost of them is the African Giant who’s twice as tall. He’s Love, he’s Damini.
But Burna Boy is a product of not just musical mastery and a favourable season. Every step of the way in his career, intention has been the ultimate.
His talent is a burden. He tries hard every day to carry that heavy load and not break a back. This extraordinary belief in himself, and the ability to weather the storm passes him off as arrogant. The world wants who listens, and convention is dubbed gentlemanly. In situations like Burna Boy’s where convention is broken in carrying that burden of gift, pride and arrogance become accompanying descriptions.
Every human in the world needs someone to identify what’s in them. That thing that could make them become the world and everything in it. First we are born, next we are bred but it’s not everyone who is bred to taste, and with understanding and love.
“It’s more important what happens in your house when you lock your door,” Bose Ogulu, Burna Boy’s mum said on the ISWIS Podcast three years ago.
Her life is an interesting movie, characterised by cautious freedom and the need to allow people live in their skins, the best way they deem fit, with mentorship and guidance.
Thoroughbred in every sense of the word, a lecturer in the university for ten years before focusing on sacrifice, Mrs. Ogulu is a model in many ways. She speaks four languages. Made in Surulere, a popular part of Africa’s most populous city. Mama Burna is brawn and brains.
Burna Boy didn’t come by music accidentally. He saw it, he listened to it and he’s doing it now. He’s a global specimen whose talents and gifts have always been tailored to a path. For his kind of special gifts, and free, unconventional nature, trouble would be an accomplice without a strong guardian. His mother knew his strength and made it count.
That electric, special, intense and culturally-reinvigorating performance seen at the Madison Square Garden wasn’t written in scripts. It was made in the future. One. Night. In. Space. That tells a story, no?
It was a highlight of a man whose career was supported and his strengths protected. Where he showed weaknesses, he was mothered through. That’s breeding. And the world saw that. Dancing and vibing backstage to the greatness she nurtured with goosebumps and a heart filled with pleasure is Mama Burna.
Burna Boy’s shine in Nigeria didn’t come on a platter of gold. He had to conquer his people before conquering the world and they were difficult to convince. Adversities rose, and the roots of his perceived arrogance today can’t be distanced from the fake news peddled about him in the past. His mother said those reports got him rebellious. It would take some time to accept that same people could love him.
To his good fortunes, he had in a manager his mother and one who saw it before him. What his career projects isn’t just moulding, it’s a mothering masterclass.
“I came at parenting with the realisation that I was breeding individuals. I can’t use the same methods even if they were twins. It’s evident in the little things (this one likes soft dodo, this one doesn’t want dodo at all). From little things, you’ll know that these people are different. I also wanted to breed people that were well-rounded,” Mama Burna said.
What she has pulled is a man many have laboured to love. Loving Burna Boy hasn’t come easy for many Nigerians. His music is exceptional and is art is excellent but the man he has proven to be is one who needs understanding. And many now understand him. Many have aligned. It took some time but one powerful performance at a time, that acceptance sinks deeper.
Expectations are high and character is one of the things Nigerians look forward to seeing. Burna Boy claims originality, and the spectacle of his being is in his freedom - of expression, in all its meanings.
Decide what forms character and what’s just for show - Bose Ogulu
He’s a young man who has the world at his feet, and ears grounded. Many want music, many more want more. And the little extra rainfall, sometimes brings the flood. So far, it hasn’t flooded, and there’s a mother there to thank.
She understands her role, the possible potholes and the other hand of cheer. She has age and experience in her sails.
“Africans should own their catalogs because what I see, my biggest fear is that in 10 years…because the scramble for African music is turning to the scramble for the lands in Africa. I see the same thing happening and people are signing deals that they barely understand and collecting advances and selling their souls, ” she told DW two years ago.
“So we want to push that at least, let an African be the one to buy your catalog, then it’s easier for you to buy it back; then you don’t have this problem of them telling you what to sing and how you should sound in the next five-ten years, which is bound to happen if the people who own your catalog and own your career don’t understand what you’re about.” This is a story of guidance.
Mrs Ogulu has examples to tinker with. She grew up enjoying the fine touch of guidance and guardianship herself and saw what the future meant.
Her father was Fela’s manager and it took the intervention of one of Nigeria’s greatest females, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti to make an ‘Abami Eda’.
Fela is a global icon. He was art and his imprints are all around. His greatness is everywhere to see, and there's no talk of African musical excellence without a Fela mention. Breeding Fela’s greatness took his mother’s intervention. And the man he called to intervene and guide and guard her son is Bose Ogulu’s father - Burna Boy’s maternal grandfather.
Drawing parallels to such greatness isn’t an exercise Mrs Ogulu will like. But she saw how much a mother could do in the life of a gifted child, who can take the world if well bred, or never become, if poorly nurtured. Her first example has become greatness again, and she must be proud.
Burna Boy is easily Nigeria’s finest performer today. Masterful show killer, excellent musician. Tasteful human and one who knows his art. Having a woman who has sacrificed her personal ambition for that shine must always charge him on to do more. He’s in the best hands possible.
Every flashlight at the MSG, every chant and cheer, every chorus and bra clutched, every drop of sweat on that stage is the product of a man made by good vision.
There are many products of great parenting around and examples are never always too far away, but the dream carried by Burna Boy needed a special effect, and it got one.
Afrobeats is on the lips of the world, and the biggest show centres are graced by a people who have waited so long to take their place. It needed the help of the rest of the universe. It needed stars to align and the moon to linger and every waving flag out there today says something about the arts of Africa. It’s God’s greatest gift to these people. It’s the culture.
Burna Boy is no Fela. He’s not a Fela renaissance. He’s who he is, another African Giant. But to have such connections ultimately with Fela, in the way he does exudes the fine touch of fate. It needed a vehicle and that’s his mother. The world will hear more and ‘see in every sound’ the woman who made those nights what we live to love.
They’d make history together, they’d tell stories together, and will be the highlights of many nights to come. They’re products of freedom. And they are here to tell a story. One night, one performance, and one space at a time.