JANE MAYNE
The voice of Tunde Baiyewu was always the focal point of Lighthouse Family’s mega hits. Paul Tucker made up the other half of the soulful pop duo, who, in their heyday made a splash with their debut album Ocean Drive, which featured the lead single Lifted, a top fiver on the UK Singles Chart.
Ocean Drive was certified six-times Platinum by the end of 1997, selling more than 1.8 million copies in the UK, and spending 154 weeks on the UK Albums Chart. Their next Postcards from Heaven release achieved similar sales status, reaching six-times Platinum status, whilst Whatever Gets You Through the Day also made Platinum status.
In subsequent years, Tunde chose to pursue a solo career, and it’s in that format that we’ll see him on The Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF) stage in 2024 at The Cape Town International Convention Centre.
A real connection
But before that, he’s also on the move with a couple of other UK gigs: “Yes, we are quite busy at the moment. Which is like the polar opposite to what it was like three years ago during the Covid period when everything was shut down. It was really surreal. I did a tour last year which was really good, when everything was opening up again. It’s always nice to go out there and perform live and have that real connection with the people.”
“I’d much prefer being in the studio and making music writing songs, because that’s kind of quite a private little situation and you can just fool around and be stupid and you don’t feel like there’s anybody hovering over your shoulder looking at you. So I much prefer that because the live thing is great, but that comes with a lot of anticipation and nervous energy. But once you step on the stage and start singing and people and people react in a positive way then it’s all good,” he says.
Lighthouse Family songs
Will he be playing material from his solo career or Lighthouse Family era at the festival?
“It will be a combination of both. The funny thing is like for me, I don’t really make any distinction, because to be honest, a lot of Lighthouse Family songs we wrote together. They’re my songs as well as the group. But, but yeah, for sure, we’ll be doing those songs that generally people tend to associate me with and recognize straightaway. So definitely, we’ll do some Lighthouse Family songs, but we’ll be mixing them in with some of my own solo material as well. And the other thing is, because of last couple of years, I’ve been working on an album, which is practically pretty much done and there’s just one or two loose ends we’re trying to tie up. So I might pick one or two things from that record as well.”
“Considering that Lighthouse Family started and we got signed in 93 and we’ve been making records since then, there’s a huge catalogue to pick from and choose and in terms of like performing live, as well as my solo stuff. So why not give everybody what they expect and what they recognize.”
A small unit for Jazz Fest
For the CTIJF gig he’ll just be bringing, “a small unit, because it’s just me and three other musicians. So, there’ll be four of us on stage. But we make a big enough sound. I always use the analogy of if you look at bands like U2, and I remember I used to look at them and think, wow, they’re only four or five of them on stage making such a loud noise to make for such a small setup. So, yeah, I mean, it’s not it’s not going to be we’re like the way we used to do it, especially in the early days of Lighthouse Family where we’d have about nine people or something like that on stage, but this, I like it as it’s a small unit but it doesn’t take away from the emotion that we try to express with our sound and music on stage.”
Nigerian heritage
Tunde was born in London, but at five moved to Nigeria. Ten years later he returned to Britain, going to the University of Northumbria in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Has his Nigerian roots influenced his music, or has he generally been more drawn to the European pop style? “Oh, definitely my Nigerian heritage. I went back to Nigeria because my biological father passed away, so my mother relocated back to Lagos with my sister and I. From the age of about five the whole environment of Nigeria, and Lagos in particular, is seeped into and has become a part of my DNA. I grew up and lived in both the city of Lagos as well as in a very rural area growing up as a kid. I remember then you’d just be surrounded by, apart from the food and the sense of the sights and stuff like that, the sounds, the music. Sometimes you’d see a whole commotion on the main road and it would be Fela Kuti going past in his car with his entourage. ”
“So the music, then the language and the culture, I feel influences me more than my European or English side. I realised at one point when we were making Lighthouse Family records, especially when we were writing the songs, a lot of my melodic ideas would come from the language. So, I would say something in Yoruba in my head, and then find the melodic equivalent of that phrase, and that’s what I’ve come out with. And I suppose those kinds of things make what you do a little bit unique for you as an artist. So, without a shadow of a doubt, the African side of me seriously impacts on what I do.”
Mythical creatures
He’s mostly been mostly influenced by the 1970s. singer songwriters – does this still stand, or are any contemporaries currently influencing his music, or does he still look to yesteryear for inspiration?
“I think yesteryear still for me. There’s lots of good things out there. But you know, when you’re in the middle of making a record I tend to avoid listening too much to what’s going on at the time, because knowing the way music works. If something has caught your attention, before you know it that same idea comes out in a slightly varied way when you’re writing your own stuff – sometimes without you even realizing it. But in terms of the type of stuff that I like and I try to do, a lot of it comes from that era, because the 70s in particular was when I grew up in Nigeria. As a kid I remember we used to switch on the radio, and apart from hearing people like Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba and all these kinds of things you’d hear songs by James Taylor, for instance. I remember one of the songs I used to like, Carolina in my Mind. I used to think it was an African and Nigerian that was singing it. I didn’t know it was James Taylor who was far from far from being an African man. But I really loved it. I loved a lot of that sort of stuff. So I think all that stuff is still percolating around in my musical brain somewhere,” he explains.
“People like James Taylor, and a lot of the early Elton John stuff, Crosby Stills & Nash, and a band like America – when you listen to those songs now, they seem like mythical creatures, because there’s almost no artists like that now. I’m sure there are, but it’s just because of the way radio is formatted nowadays it’s hard to find those sorts of artists nowadays. You don’t find songwriters like that anymore.”
Tunde’s Cape Town showcase is somewhat timeous, as he’s soon releasing a new album with South African guests. ”Call it karma, but this new record features quite a few African artists on it, so it’s not just me. It’s like a bunch from all over Africa and especially South Africa. So there are some pretty, pretty good artists that collaborated so it kind of works out perfectly that I’m coming on the back of an album that I’m about to release. There are tons of African artists still that I would want to do stuff with in the future. So the way it’s worked out now is couldn’t have been better. It’s like perfect, you know, because it ties into the record. And just the timing of it. It’s like, yeah, let’s go!
To see Tunde Baiyewu at The Cape Town International Jazz Festival, get tickets here.
Who: Tunde Lighthouse Family interview
What: Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF 2024)
Where: Cape Town International Convention Centre
When: 3 and 4 May 2024
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