Listening to some popular Afrobeats music, one often feels like the songs don’t need to be embellished by any live instrumentals. Although they seem complete, some of these songs take on different moods and spirits when, for instance, a saxophonist, a drummer, or a pianist improvises to improve the sets during playback.
The drummer Asi Daniel Agwu, better known by his professional name, Dagas, confirms the notion when he changes the tunes and moods of the set at the Afro KANTAB in Canterbury this June. Playing live over the DJ’s selection of Afrobeats songs, Dagas’s improvised drumming reinterprets the music, adding new meanings to the existing ones. His playing finds small pockets between the recorded instrumentals and fills them with melodies the record never had.
When the DJ plays Wizkid’s classic song, “Ojuelegba,” it seems as if Dagas would lose his flow and go off rhythm. Surprisingly, he coasts alongside the song, occupying the spaces as though his beat has always been part of it all along.
Inserting live drumming into the already established one is a tough feat to achieve. “Ojuelegba,” unlike other fast-paced Afrobeats songs, isn’t meant for a drummer to ride on. Where a log-drum and heavy percussion record like Asake’s “Terminator” allows a second, off-studio percussionist to fill the rhythmic gaps, the song moves at a looping, unhurried pace that requires patience to match. There is less room to hide if things go wrong, and less room to outshine the song’s already set-up melodic flow. Its guitar line and half-spoken verses hold most of the song’s relevance, as the drum arrangement remains modest and repetitive underneath.
To keep up with the rhythmic cadence, Dagas is cautious from the first bar, which is the right way to engage such a slow-paced song. His decision not to heavily fill over the song’s recognisable guitar hook with his drumming, but to gently fill up the spaces with a simple hi-hat pattern to allow the song to maintain its originality is wise and admirable. Given how many listeners know and love the song, his controlled drumming serves as an homage to a much-appreciated classic.
Dagas’s set wobbles at one point, almost ruining his effort. As stated earlier, “Ojuelegba” doesn’t offer the same recurring drops and log-drum surges of Asake’s propulsive “Terminator” that make it acceptable to a live drummer in search of entry spaces to fill.
During the song’s chorus, which slightly goes above the relaxed tempo of the verses, he becomes overzealous, reaching for activity the song doesn’t require. He plays a double-time fill across the toms and hi-hat, briefly overwhelming Wizkid’s laid-back, emotive vocal phrasing. That enthusiastic drumming reaction misjudges Wizkid’s emotional delivery as angst, and that outpaces the calmness of the original instrument.
“Ojuelegba” has a specific sound interplay between Wizkid’s reflective voice and the spare, melancholic guitar line, and slumbering head-bobbing drum. A drummer playing live on the song is like a distortion of the original, which many people considered a paradigm shift in the evolution and globalisation of Afrobeats. Where Dagas’s previous work coasting alongside high-energy Afrobeats songs worked, his playing this time tends to overamplify a song that doesn’t require any.
