Joni Haastrup

The one and only solo album by one of Nigeria's
most respected and beloved musicians. While Joni
Haastrup is mostly unknown to kids who came of age
in the 1980s--my generation--among the folks who
were grooving in the late 60s and the 70s, the
mere mention of his name is apt to elicit
responses of tremendous affection and awe.
I've gotten the sense that more than any other
single musician, Joni Haastrup embodied the all
aspirations of Nigerian music in the post-highlife
era.

Earlier in his career, he was billed as Johnny
Haastrup; the later Joni spelling appears to be a
tip of the hat to Jimi Hendrix, and like Hendrix,
Haastrup exuded the aura of an individual who just
has music spontaneously pouring out of his soul.
He started performing as a teenager in the town of
Ilesa, singing in school bands with his older
brother, guitarist Segun Haastrup. During a trip
to Lagos, the brothers tried out for immortal
bandleader Bobby Benson's Jam Session Orchestra;
neither of them made the cut, but Joni brought the
house down with his animated Chuck Berry impression.
Soon thereafter, legendary trumpeter Victor Olaiya
witnessed Joni's energetic dancing and singing in
a high school drama group and was sufficiently
impressed to recruit the youngster to join his
Cool Cats band (in which no less a personage than
Fela Ransome-Kuti had apprenticed in the late 1950s).
This was 1965 after all; the rhythm of Lagos nightlife
was changing. Beat music--rock & roll and soul--was
seeping onto the scene and Olaiya (true to his
reputation as the evil genius of highlife) presciently
realized that he would have to incorporate the new
foreign sounds. The Cool Cats became The All Stars
Soul International, which Joni Haastrup fronted for
a year and a half.

In 1966, saxophonist Orlando Julius (a contemporary
of Fela, credited in some quarters as the true
originator of the term Afro-beat music) released the
album Super Afro Soul on which Joni Haastrup featured
as a guest lead vocalist on a few tracks, such as
Bojubari and a cover of the Temptations' My Girl.
The album was a momentous success, helping to usher
in the ascendance of soul music and cement Joni
Haastrup's reputation as Nigeria's Soul Brother
Number One.

During the war, beat groups prevailed Segun Bucknor
& his Soul Assembly, Tony Benson & the Strangers,
The Clusters (whose lineup included future BLO
members Laolu Akins and Mike Odumosu and, briefly,
Joni Haastrup) and The Hykkers. It was with the
latter band that Haastrup was sitting in when he
caught the attention of Ginger Baker, on his first
visit to Nigeria in 1970. Baker was so besotted by
Joni's electrifying stage presence that he snatched
him off to London to join Ginger Baker's Air Force.
Baker envisioned him playing a multiinstrumental
role, which was initially a surprise to Joni. As
he recounts in Gary Stewart's Breakout Profiles in
African Rhythm

"There was a lot of misconception about what I
could do. When I went with Ginger, he saw me singing.
He never saw me play an instrument, but he had this
great belief within himself that I could play any
instrument. So he wanted me to play the organ because
Steve Winwood was leaving. And he also wanted me to
play guitar because Denny Laine was leaving. So I got
into London on a, I think on a Tuesday. The first gig
was on Thursday. I have never heard the music of the
band. I don't know what they sound like. I don't know
anybody in the band but Ginger. I've never even heard
Ginger play drums face-to-face except on record. He
wants me to play organ and guitar and sing in this
big ten-piece band with Graham Bond and Bud Beadle
and all these people. And I uh, and I said, Well,
Ginger I don't really play any of these instruments.
I'm just a singer. And he goes, Hey! You can do it.
You can fuckin' do it." [laughter]

It's a testament to Haastrup's innate musicality
that, despite his initial reservations, two days
later he was playing guitar and keyboards in the
Air Force!

Haastrup returned to Nigeria later in the year,
playing the keys for Baker again in Salt.

Confident that Monomono was about to cross over
into the big time, Haastrup traveled to the US
to urge Capitol to back a tour for the band.
Capitol balked, and Haastrup returned to Nigeria
dejected. He made another attempt in 1976, but
when it became clear that Capitol was not
interested in promoting them, Monomono disbanded.
It was at this point that he recorded his solo
album, with some assistance from some of his
bandmates.

Wake Up Your Mind was released in 1978, the year
after FESTAC, so it's unsurprising that it finds
Haastrup in a pan-Africanist mood. In the music,
one can hear echoes of Stevie Wonder, Kool & the
Gang, Mighty Sparrow and even KC & the Sunshine
Band's Bahamian junkanoo-inspired disco, as the
lyrics exhort the unity of the African disapora.
The album is definitely designed for maximum
crossover effect, but Haastrup has never been
shy about his ambitions to transcend the
conventional ideas of what an African musician
should sound like

"[We need to] show the African musician as an
artist first, then as an African... We can be
pop, we can be rock, we can be jazz, we can be
soul, we can be everything because in actual
fact we have [made] an incredible contribution
to all of that already. So why deny ourselves,
or why deny us, the opportunity to cross over
into the commercial industry."

I don't know to what degree the album was
successful in penetrating the international
market, but after Wake Up Your Mind, Haastrup
left Nigeria pretty much for good. He worked
as a session musician and producer in London
and by the early 80s he was in the Bay Area,
fronting Joni Haastrup & the Afrikans and doing
more session work (most notably on several Chris
Isaak albums from the late 80s up until the mid-
90s).

Just yesterday, I was chatting with Calumbinho
about Joni Haastrup and he made an interesting
observation about Joni's singing. Despite his
reputation as a showman, his vocals have a
decidedly understated quality to them, and even
when if he's singing in Yoruba and you don't
understand the lyrics, you can feel the humility,
honesty and intense love radiating from his
delivery, much like Milton Nascimento. By all
accounts, Joni is a really zen dude, and while's
he's been a practicing Buddhist for many years,
music is his real religion. As he says, "I just
want to play my music and make people smile,
keep people happy. Not limit myself to what
people think I should be."

Today he still lives, plays and teaches in
Oakland, California