Chris Otaigbe
Dressed in a red cassock, recognisable with his usually dreadlock hairstyle, bell in hand, he is led onto the stage by the former Chairman of the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN), Tony Okoroji. Midway in their journey through the auditorium to the stage, Chief (Mrs.) Florence Ita-Giwa, who could not hold herself, interrupted the duo as she hugged him so passionately, ending the long and heartfelt deep embrace with a near tearful pat on his back.
The mass of the audience at the Copyright Society of Nigeria (COSON) concert in 2015 were young and middle-aged Nigerians who had been blessed with the Majek Fashek experience.
Also listed among other musicians and celebrities, Majek was still able to give an electrify inspirational performance that got the entire audience dizzy with wild excitement. At some point, Bisi Olatilo, the Biscon boss and popular multilingual MC, could not resist relieving himself off his Agbada to properly savor and enjoy Majek’s melodious rain of tunes the music legend had edified the nation with in the 80s and 90s.
Even when his contemporaries, such as Ras Kimono joined him on stage, Majek’s magical stage presence retained its gloriously mystical resonance, looming large over all the celebrities who crowded the stage to enjoy and share in his enchanting music.
We have all had our different personal experience with the Rain Maker at close contact. My first taste of Majek’s live performance was at the Trencherd Hall, University of Ibadan in the 90s. It was crowded with far more students at the gate. To Nigerian students and youths, Majek was a sudden light in Nigeria’s musical firmament and we all loved him.
As he stormed through the auditorium, I could see his skin-glowing complexion like that of angels. He was such a handsome personality with an engaging charisma. When he stepped on stage, the whole audience went wild. Throughout his 2-3-hour performance, Majek brought the audience to its feet, dancing and what is most profound; the Reggae maestro filled the auditorium with an aura that took the audience to another realm, indescribable but known to the legend alone.
He was still fresh and Nigeria was basking in his reign under the refreshing downpour of his music rain.
Fast forward to around fifteen years later in 2000s. He was billed as the main show for the night at the Muson Center. By this time, news of his drug addiction and the pitiable state its impact had thrown him into, while he was outside the country continuing his powerful impact on people, was the gist at the time.
He was not looking like the Majek I had known during my UI days: His dentition had taken its toll on his physical beauty; he had grown older and was looking far too old for his age.
Nevertheless, that mystical Majek was still there and once he climbed the stage to sing, it brings on onto his persona some glow, man cannot explain. Muson was blown out of this world that night as he took his audience back in time to his rainmaking days as Majek, the Rain Maker.
Singing virtually all his songs with him, the audience desperately wanted to show the international music star that we were well-schooled in his lyrics.
Such is the impact Majek has over the world.
Majekodunmi Fasheke, popularly known as Majek Fashek, is a Nigerian reggae singer-songwriter and guitarist.
Fashek was born in Benin City to an Edo mother and a Yoruba father, but identifies with his Benin roots. Various translations of his name Fasheke (Ifa-kii-she-eke) include “high priest who does not lie”; “powers of miracles”; and “(system or medium of) divination does not lie”. After his parents separated, Fashek remained in Benin City with his mother, and soon, joined the choir in his local Aladura church and learned to play the trumpet and guitar whilst composing songs for the choir.
He is best known for the 1988 album – Prisoner of Conscience, which included the single “Send Down the Rain”, winning him several awards. Also known as The Rainmaker, he has also worked with various artists worldwide including Tracy Chapman, Jimmy Cliff, Michael Jackson, Snoop Dogg, and Beyoncé.
He began his music career with a group called Jastix in the early 80s. In the early eighties Fashek, who at the time, went by the stage name Rajesh Kanal, joined the group Jastix with musicians McRoy Gregg and Black Rice.
They were best known as the in-house band on the show, Music Panorama, on NTA Benin, and toured with fellow reggae group, The Mandators. Jastix were also session musicians for upcoming reggae singer Edi Rasta, who would later be known as Evi-Edna Ogholi.
Shortly after Jastix disbanded in 1988, Fashek, who then used the name, Majek Fashek, signed with Tabansi Records and began a solo career by releasing the album, Prisoner of Conscience, and quickly became Nigeria’s top reggae artist after the song; “Send Down The Rain” became the most popular song of the year.
In 1989 he won six PMAN awards which included “Song of the Year”, “Album of the Year”, and “Reggae Artist of the Year”. Fashek’s next album was “I&I Experience” which was released in late 1989 under the Tabansi label.
After leaving Tabansi Records, he was signed to CBS Nigeria, in the early 1990s and released “So Long Too Long”. In 1990, he was signed to Interscope Records and released the critically acclaimed album “Spirit Of Love”, produced by “Little Steven” Van Zandt.
In 1992, he appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in support of his new 1991 album, and performed the song “So Long Too Long” for the television audience. Flame Tree released “The Best of Majek Fashek” in 1994.
He was later dropped by Interscope before he moved to Mango, a division of Island Records, as it was more accustomed to marketing reggae internationally. His first album for the company included a cover version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”. He has recorded several albums for various labels, including “Rainmaker” for Tuff Gong (1997) and “Little Patience” for Coral (2004).
Fashek’s musical influences include Bob Marley, whom he resembles vocally, Jimi Hendrix, and Fela Kuti.
He was one of the original Nigerian artists to be drawn to the music of the Caribbean, specifically reggae, rather than indigenous hybrids such as fuji, jùjú, but has been known to mix these genres into his own style which he calls kpangolo, and the song “My Guitar”, an ode to his favourite instrument, was also heavily influenced by rock.
Fashek played a supporting role in the 2000 Nollywood movie “Mark of the Beast”, and starred in a commercial for non-alcoholic beverage, Diamalt. In 2016, he performed in a comedy show (with more than ten thousand audience in attendance) in Lagos, Nigeria, with a roundly power-filled and soul-lifting performance.
In December 2016, Fashek contributed to the song “We Are Not Afraid” to a video featuring 200 celebrities to raise funds for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Human Rights Watch (HRW).
Fashek was married to Rita Fashek who inspired the song “Without You”; the couple had four children together, but have since divorced.
In 2015, it was revealed that Fashek was bankrupt and battling drug addiction. After admitting that he needed help, he was admitted into a drug rehabilitation center in Abuja. He recovered and returned to music making.
Besides his struggle with drug addiction, other health conditions required Fashek’s hospitalization on several occasions.
He was rumoured dead in September 2019 but his manager quelled the rumours, confirming that Fashek had indeed been critically ill, hospitalised at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich in the UK, and in dire need of financial assistance. Billionaire businessman and philanthropist, Femi Otedola, had pledged to cover all the singer’s medical expenses.
Fashek died on the 1st of June, 2020 at 71 in the United States, after battling an unknown illness. His death was confirmed by his manager, Omenka Uzoma, on the Late singer’s official Instagram handle.
Historically, Terra Kota blazed the trail for reggae music in Nigeria with his 1984 release of “Lamentation of Sodom”. It was followed, a year later, with Pat Bio’s 1985 “Afrikan Reggae” but Mandators, whose emergence on the reggae scene predated both crooners of that genre, did not make a hit album until the third album with “Crisis”, in 1987. The “Inflation” track was massive.
Although, before them was a Sonny Okosun’s ‘Fire in Soweto’ which became a huge reggae hit, but he was no reggae Artiste. Majek came onto the music scene and the Reggae sphere of the Nigeran entertainment industry and eclipsed all.
In a sense, it could be argued that Majek’s debut outing “Prisoner of Conscience” in 1988 gave a big boost to popular music in the country.
“Send Down the Rain”, was as popular as the most popular music, tune or universal song that existed. The track had become so popular and loved, that it was accompanied by the myth that anywhere he delivered the song, heavens opened up and the rains came pouring down.
Majek’s concerts were filled to capacity with a characteristic spectacle of umbrellas as Nigerians made a duty of taking umbrellas to his concerts. Come to think of it, it rained today, June 2, 2020, the day of his death. The rains did fall occasionally but not at all his concerts.
His stock was on the rise, challenged on the pop scene only by Shina Peters’ “Afro juju” series. No party was complete without the two, in most cases, back to back. They were both the heartbeats of clubs and parties across the nation.
Nigerians were eager to worship him as the real superstar because he had become the nation’s and indeed, Africa’s equivalent to Bob Marley, the King of Reggae. That crown, left by the world reggae Jamaican music god, proved too big for all contenders including Marley’s children.
So much was Nigerians’ love for the new star that when he bought a Peugeot 505 Evolution, that was the (Range Rover Sport of those days) for N500,000 in 1989, it was the gist about town.
One of the great producers in Nigeria’s limited music production space, at the time, was Lemmy Jackson. He was the brain behind Terra Kota’s “Lamentation of Sodom” and so many other albums in the nation’s music industry. It was his masterful hand that brought out Majek’s “Prisoner of Conscience”. In the same way, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” gave Quincy Jones the royal limelight, was the impact Majek had on Lemmy as a music Producer.
So great was the passion with which Nigerians patronize the song that they bought both the LP and the cassettes. The nine-track hit had Bob Marley’s inspiration running all over it, as there was hardly any track that did not borrow a line or two from the Jamaican legend.
For instance, “Send Down the Rain”, took “I’m a living man/I’ve got a lot of works to do” directly from Marley’s “Soul Rebel”.
Lyrically, also, he had a near-negligible flavour of Peter Tosh’s “Feel No Way”, with “You don’t expect to sow cassava and reap up cocoyam/You don’t expect to sow rice and reap up cassava”, similar to Tosh’s “Can I plant peas and reap rice/Can I plant cocoa and reap yam/Can I plant turnip and reap tomato”. “Hey Joe” from Jimi Hendrix is felt in “I’ve Got the Feeling”, but took the line, “When it hits me/I’ve no pain to feel in my mind anymore”, with Marley’s “Trenchtown Rock” sounding loud in his “One good thing about music/When it hits you feel no pain”.
While he nailed his rendition of Marley’s “Redemption Song”, concept-wise, Majek’s
“Genesis” is similar to Marley’s “Exodus”.
“Let the Righteous Cover the Earth”, is an echoed of a line and tune from Marley’s
“Revolution”, a track from his 1974 debut solo album, “Natty Dread”.
As awesome as his music was, Marley was without a doubt, Majek’s inspiration as reflected in the Late singer’s lyrics, music and performances, while it also borrows from other influences such as Hendrix, flirting with rock, in “Without You”, the opening track of “I&I Experience”, his second album.
To avoid being stereotyped in the shadow of his music mentor, which had become all too visible to millions of his fans and well-wishers, with indicators that included: wearing of dreadlocks, liberal use of the rhythm guitar, playing of the bass instrument, the Jamaican way, flying the green-gold-red flag and even having a spouse named Rita, just like Marley, Majek decided to brand his music as kpangolo.
Rapidly, his music was becoming more of rock and less of reggae and he felt he had primed his music feel, good enough for the international market.
Soon, Majek began to have an eye for the United States by starting with courting some of those countries with concerts and record deals.
Even though it did not go as he expected, Majek came back to Nigeria a hero as he consistently played the top bill at virtually every major concert in the country. One notable and memorable moments of Majek was when Nelson Mandela was released few months after he had launched the hit song, “Free Mandela” into the market.
Majek’s tragedy and tragic ending is a symptom of the usual virus that bring legends and great celebrities to their end: the virus of drug addiction. For this African legend, the road that led to the end of his journey on June 2, 2020, began when he relocated to America.
Immediately, he left the shores of Nigeria, his shored-up goodwill, fame and followership began to wear thin until it virtually thinned out.
For so long his music reigned and for too long the pain he carried in heart haunted him, destroying him piecemeal. While it tried to deface the beautiful personality of the reggae legend, it could not defeat his voice and the charisma of his performance on stage.
What is most cheering about Majek’s battle is that he defeated those spiritual forces he claimed were attacking him, as they can no longer reach him because even though he has left the world for them physically, he has resurrected in the minds of millions of people all over the world.
The beauty of the moments we all had with him, remains potent and undeniably edifying because in life and in death, Majek remains the only musician who had his feet in shoes belonging to two different legends: Fela and Bob Marley.
