Daniel Wilson (Mr. Ragamuffin)
Daniel Wilson (Mr. Ragamuffin) | |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Daniel Wilson Orunaboka |
| Also known as | Mr. Ragamuffin |
| Born | November 25, 1967 Tiko Town, Southwest region of Cameroon |
| Origin | Port Harcourt, River State, Nigeria |
| Genres | Reggae | Dancehall | Afro-pop | Afro-fusion |
| Occupation(s) | Singer | Songwriter | Composer | Actor |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1983 - Present |
| Labels | EMI | Tropic Record Company |
| Website | https://danielwilson.ng/ |
Daniel Wilson is a Nigerian singer, songwriter, composer, sound engineer, actor, politician, businessman and a social activist. He is one of Nigeria's most influential performers whose music is said to have had a profound impact in defining Nigeria's contemporary music and pop culture of today. His success actively contributed to the continued popularity of the dancehall and Afro-pop genres in Nigeria. The Music industry in Nigeria before 1983 was stereotyped by Ganja smoking, dreadlock wearing, Rasta-claiming musicians who only played an adulterated form of the better known Jamaican reggae music, but when Daniel Wilson got on the scene that year with his debut album “The Bachelor” he exhibited a free spirit of innovation in his music, incorporating a form of dancehall music, reggae, highlife, calypso and other Afro influences, which captivated a new generation of music lovers. This form of music he introduced evolved and sustained throughout the eighties and nineties until it grew into a distinct Nigerian art form, changing the form of Nigerian pop culture forever and making him one of the most influential cultural icons of his generation.[1]
His music combined with his social awareness is said to be the foremost ideological and musical framework with which today's Nigerian afro-pop music found character and identity. The work that he did at that time gave birth to different styles of music, and remains an inspiration to young people on the scene today.[2]
Biography[edit]
Daniel Wilson Orunaboka, popularly known as Daniel Wilson, was born November 25, 1967 in Tiko town, an important port in the southwest region of Cameroon. He is the third child of the ten children from Mrs Grace And Mr Wilson Orunaboka. His father Wilson Orunaboka, from Rivers State of Nigeria, was a photojournalist whose job often took the family abroad but he eventually settled down in the Republic of Cameroons in 1964 where he and his wife Grace, started a chain of bakery shops in the Tiko and Duala provinces of Cameroon while raising their family and only returned to Nigeria with young Daniel Wilson and his siblings to be counted as Nigerians in the general population census of 1973. Young Daniel Wilson was immediately enrolled to Banham Memorial School Port Harcourt where he completed his primary school and got admitted to Government Comprehensive School for his secondary school education and eventually sat for the WAEC and JAMB examinations, gaining entrance into the University of Port-Harcourt to study theatre arts under the supervision of Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi, best known as Ola Rotimi, one of Nigeria's leading playwrights and theatre directors.
His recording and performing career, which started in 1983 right after he finished his secondary school, pushed and pushed the brick walls of conservatism in the music industry then, until it gave way, so even before he gained admission to study Theatre Arts at the University of Port Harcourt, he had already built for himself a cult like image and a following of fanatic fans who were going everywhere with him as he performed his original songs at campus events, including the very prestigious MUFANU, Music Festival Of All Nigerian Universities, the SKALAS CLUB Night at the University Of Ibadan and more.
Influences[edit]
Always interested in music from an early age, Daniel Wilson initially explored the highlife music of Sir Jim Rex Lawson, the legendary highlife king who incidentally grew up and started his career in the same city of Port Harcourt as Daniel did, then he indulged heavily in reggae music style made popular by Max Romeo, Lee Scratch Perry, Eric Donaldson, Denise Brown and Bob Marley. Rummaging through his father's collection of LPs, he found and listened to several albums of the great highlife king Rex Lawson, popular calypso music of the late 1960s by, Lord Kitchener, Harry Belafonte and especially the Mighty Sparrow before he started buying dub-plates of his own by popular reggae stars like Eric Donaldson, Max Romeo, rub & dub super stars like Michael Palmer, Tony Tuff, Sugar Minot, Peter Metro, Josie Wales, Michigan and Smiley.
He fused all of these elements in his music but developed a distinctive style of his own, preferring to write songs that engaged with serious themes.
First Jobs[edit]
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Daniel started his working life in his teens singing at clubs, bars and coffee shops while still at school in Port Harcourt. He found his first job as a DJ for a popular nightclub called “The Music Machine” in Port Harcourt city of Nigeria where he eventually got his chance to work the turntables, famous for their exciting Caribbean music sessions on Friday nights which was usually anchored by Daniel Wilson and Mr Tee (Tony Orubo) a serial nightclub entrepreneur in the city, the two of them became a formidable partnership that dominated the nightclub circuit in the region for years.
Daniel also co-presented a reggae program on radio called “Root Vibes” in the city's first and foremost FM radio station 99.128, where alongside Mabelas Macaulay Akpoloma Jnr the host presenter and deejay, he would, toast and sing live over the instrumental tracks or dub plates as they call it, of singles from Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean and that was how he fast emerged as the toast of music lovers and as a talent to watch out for in Nigeria, achieving a local level of fame and success in an unorthodox way before he even recorded a song.
He did not receive any formal training for his voice, he speaks of his natural voice as being a “his gift from God” which he flaunts but with tremendous gratitude because like he says, it is a gift, and not something which he worked at. His voice has been described as ‘lustrous but unusual, beautiful and natural.
Music Style[edit]
He describes his music as Afro-Caribbean Music; he brought to stage music that fused traditional African music like highlife, Soukous and Afrobeats with reggae, Dancehall, calypso, rock, and some soul. To Daniel Wilson music was more than just entertainment it was about life; music could also be a vehicle for expressing social protest. He continues to record and write new songs from a variety of musical styles. Although Daniel was highly regarded as a musical performer on vocals, it is the songwriter in him that Daniel Wilson became best known for. After a long list of successful albums, multiple national/international awards and concert performances that got the most enthusiastic reviews all over in 2008, he was awarded a Nigerian Music Award for his “profound impact on popular music in Nigeria, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.
Awards[edit]
In 1991, Daniel Wilson won his first African Music Award for his groundbreaking album “Mr Ragamuffin” — the ace producer Chris Okoro produced this stunning hit-laden album. He went on to win numerous other awards for the songs “Abortion” and “Give Us A Chance” all in the same album, his biggest gratification as he said was the Platinum Disc given to him by his record Company EMI, it is still hanging in his living room till this day.
Daniel Wilson made history in April 1992 when he won 5 awards at the prestigious Fame Music Awards for the album “Mister Ragamuffin”, making him not only the first person but the only musician to win such a number of awards in any single award ceremony as at then, but also the first artist to win the prizes for Best Male Vocalist, Artiste Of The Year and Album Of The Year Awards with one album. The FMA board called the album “a futuristic collection of original song that portrays the best of modern African-Caribbean Traditions.”
One of the top-selling artists of all time in Nigeria, Daniel has received several special honours in past years from all over Africa. In November 1999, he was honoured for his efforts with the Entertainer of the Decade Award at the West African Music Awards Ceremony that took place in Ghana.
Collaborations[edit]
In addition to creating his own music, Daniel Wilson worked behind the scenes with several artists; he has been instrumental in launching the careers of numerous artists, such as Lieutenant Shotgun, Etienne T-Boy, Lemi Ghariokwu, Arthur Pepple, Felix Duke and collaborated with others such as Sunny Neji, Mike Okri and more.[3] He acted as a manager and produced the first music effort of Daddy Fresh and Daddy Showkey when they were young and members of a band called the “Pretty Busy Boys.” Working to produce the group's material, Daniel Wilson helped the teenagers find a musical destination with the monster hit “Big Belle”. He had other successful collaborations around this time as well with younger Artistes like Duncan Mighty:
Daniel Wilson remained an impressive force in the entertainment industry of Nigeria because of his relationship with several other new generation artists such as TuBaba (Tuface) and Timaya.
Other Businesses[edit]
Outside of music, Daniel Wilson is associated with an array of successful business interests; he is also a formidable businessman who retains full creative control over his music, videos and productions, he has acted in some Nollywood films.
Daniel Wilson first delved into the business world in 2004 by first teeming up with his younger brothers to take up the management and expansion of a bread and confectioneries production chain of bakeries left behind by his late father Wilson Orunaboka who passed on in 2003, a move that took him completely away from the entertainment circuit except for occasional concerts and cameo appearances in the Nigerian Home Movies.
Daniel Wilson's other business ventures include the popular Plastic Chair Moulding Factory, Neoplastics Limited, Framework Media Limited, an advertising firm that was contracted by Coscharis Motors as far back as 1992 to generate commercials for their Abro Brake fluid, a stock broking and forex trading firm called MultiCredit Finance and Securities Limited, a security firm called Ontourage Protection Limited and a waste management firm called PaintHouse Limited. Daniel Wilson is a positive role model who projects strength, confidence and empowerment, his business acumen is a blueprint for younger artists to emulate yet he has never sacrificed his sense of fun and the good life, he is involved in numerous charities and foundations. For the past couple of decades, Daniel Wilson has undertaken a relentless schedule in discovering his country Nigeria, which he calls the greatest country on earth by participating in various associations, careers and ‘’endeavours.
He is a colossal celebrated national icon who is still making music today, and has millions of fans worldwide.
Discography[edit]
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Daniel Wilson began his recording career in 1983 with the album titled “The Bachelor” recorded at Studio119, an independent music label in Port Harcourt, owned by Mr Emmanuel Kalio. The album quickly proved to be a hit; featuring two major hit songs, “Uncle Stylee” and “Mr Bachelor” the tittle track, other well known songs on the album were, ‘Port Harcourt Number” and the dancehall thriller “Champion Bubbler”. This debut recording was released to great acclaim and impressive sales for an up-and-coming recording artist.
In The Lion's Den (1986) In 1986, Daniel Wilson recorded his second album, continuing his meteoric rise to fame after he moved to Lagos to meet a host of other musicians; and began writing songs at an astonishing pace, eventually with the participation of Ben King Iyere who was Kris Okotie's manager and eventually his manager, he got his big break and signed up with a private label “Rex Records”, owned by Rex Peters Okoro to record his second album “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” and scoring his first No. 1 single on the RN2 charts with “When The Heaven’s Cry” a song that invokes an imagery of God's anger as he looks down at man's inhumanity to his fellow man. The album included his cover of “Land Of My Birth” by Eric Donaldson one of his childhood idols and the chart buster “Love Of The Olden Days.
In The Lion’s Den album showed a very deep spiritual side of the singer in songs like “When The Heaven’s Cry”, “Love Of The Olden Days” and the tittle track “In The Lion’s Den” This album solidified his fan base, not only among hard-core reggae music enthusiasts but also among college/university students and fans of music generally. Although sales for the singer's first and second album were good, it would have been hard to predict the amazing success of later releases “999” and “Mister Ragamuffin”.
999(1989) In 1989 Daniel Wilson released his third album, 999, which established him as one of the nation's outstanding musicians, winning three Awards at the PMAA Popular Music Of Africa Awards, in the Song Writer of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year categories. The album spent 23 weeks at the Number One spot on the Radio Rivers Album chart, selling 1.9 million copies.
The album included his street anthems “Gimme Calypso” and “Strictly Reggae Music.” “999” marked his emergence as one of the most original and poetic voices in the history of Nigerian popular music. The album included two of his most memorable songs, “999′ and Pack Off (the later, became a huge battle cry against the apartheid regime of Peter Botha). Just as quickly as his album shot to success, Daniel became known for his deeply personal and intimate story telling approach to song writing.
Mister-Ragamuffin (1991) Mister-Ragamuffin, his fourth album, which was released on the globally renowned EMI Record Label in 1991 with the push of his campus days friend Morgan Okunuga, raked in a record-breaking 2.7 million orders before its release, and became the first album by a Nigerian singer to debut at No. 1 on Radio Nigeria’s Top Ten charts hosted by the legendary Willie Egbe. The title track was a big hit, and the album reached the top of the Nigerian music charts. Featuring appearances by members of his band Bunmi Sanya, Lieutenant Shotgun and a guest appearance by Sunny Neji, the recording went double platinum
Mister Ragamuffin had hit songs like “Abortion” “Give Us A Chance” a song that was co written and featured his long term collaborator and friend Lt. Shotgun, now Shotgun “Ragamuffin Soldier” and tittle track “Mister Ragamuffin”, firmly establishing Daniel Wilson as the definitive songwriter of the ’80s and 90s Nigerian popular music, a reputation that only increased as he became involved with Benson and Hedges Golden Tones Tour, touring England and France with Gilbert Oboh, who was his manager then, introducing his music to thousands of fans through the Golden Tone concerts.
The Mister Ragamuffin album was a much more personal, introspective collection of songs; far less politically charged than his previous efforts and became his best-received album in years. This album represented Daniel at his most innovative. With his unmistakable voice and unforgettable lyrics, Daniel Wilson brought the worlds of music and literature together as no one else in Nigeria ever did then. The song Mister Ragamuffin was officially the most requested radio song of all time and it’s still being played today in most radio stations in the country.
Original Bad Boy (1992) Quickly following up this latest wave of success, Daniel Wilson’s 1992 album Original Bad Boy was this major icon’s musical exports and he strategically changed his management, signing up with Kunle Onime’s management outfit that was renowned for packaging the best national music tours, his was an entertainment company that handles nearly all aspects of its artists’ careers.
Original Bad Boy was said to have sold more copies in its first week of sales, breaking the previous record sales, the Music Distributors Association of Nigeria certified it platinum less than a week after its release, solely based on pre order volumes. The title track, which famously sampled its chorus from Lieutenant Stichie's “Lyrics Garden”, became one of Daniel Wilson's most popular songs to date. He also featured the legendary Artiste Lemi Ghariokwu on the cultural theme song “Omolakeji”, other tracks are “Homework” “Heed The Call” and “True Love”, each of these songs was a number one hit in its own right. Daniel Wilson took the time to tell the story of his life in the tittle song Original Bad Boy.
No Exhibit (1994) In 1994, Daniel Wilson released the studio album “No Exhibit “, which included hit songs like “Language Barrier” “Police Officer” and “Dreams Come True”, a song written by and featuring Tunde Obey, one of the nation's prolific singers. The effort earned a mixed reception from critics but otherwise fared well with fans, going on to top several authoritative music charts and achieving double-platinum status.
After hitting stores in late August, it reached the top of the album charts the next month. Several critics remarked that the album had a deliberate experimental and unhinged quality about it. It was an immediate commercial and critical success, praised for the candid lyrics and a new level of artistic maturity.
The Don-Dada (1996) The unabashedly Afro-ish Don-Dada album followed in 1996, it was far mellower than his earlier works and much less successful in terms of public acclaim and commercial success even the presence of master pieces like Obirin Dada featuring Shotgun his usual accomplice, “Get Down On The Floor featuring the masquerade Tamedu’” and the spectacular single “Heartbreaker” did not impact much on the fortunes of these albums. A mixture of Afro, Soca, Calypso and Reggae, the album was praised for its rich sound and imagery, an album, which would later pop up on several music critics’ lists of best albums.
Cool And Deadly (1998) In 1998, Daniel Wilson shocked his fans by releasing The Cool And Deadly Album and declaring in 1999 that it would be his last solo record for a long time.
He announced that he wanted to spend more time paying attention to his family and other businesses, as a result Daniel Wilson withdrew from the spotlight for many years and even refused to promote any of the songs on the album, though the album had great songs like “Do Am Well” featuring his home boy Duncan Mighty who was the rave of the moment at that time.
Other great songs on the album were the gospel styled “Drop The Phone” and “Good Old Days” a song that surprisingly still found its way to the charts even without promotion. The Cool And Deadly album would be his last studio album for over two decades, though he continued to write and produce for other artists, he also sang a few political singles.
Timeless (2020) Daniel Wilson is again reinventing himself; December 2019 his private label Tropic Music Company, announced that the artist planned to release a cache of materials made up of the remakes of some of his old hit songs and with this announcement, Daniel Wilson got back into active music and political activism.
He recently recorded these songs and released in an album he aptly titled “Timeless”, this collection of classics and hit songs from his previous albums, which have been successfully released with a couple of new songs was done all in two months and he continues to be a star performer at the many events he performs in
With the release of this recording it is obvious that Daniel Wilson has made a return to music recording and possibly performing in concerts tours too and shows little sign of slowing down.
References[edit]
- ↑ "Daniel Wilson was the ultimate smooth operator in 'Mr Raggamuffin'". Pulse Nigeria. 2017-06-22. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
- ↑ "2face attacks comedian for calling Victor Uwaifo, Daniel Wilson, others 'dying voices'". Daily Post Nigeria. 2015-07-27. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
- ↑ "EFE OMOROGBE: Working with Tuface is a blessing". Latest Nigeria News, Nigerian Newspapers, Politics. 2021-04-04. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
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