Press Reader

ABIODUN KOYA, The GOLDENVOICE!

[as originally published on pressreader.com]

Abiodun Koya is one of the very few pro­fes­sion­ally trained opera singers not just from Nige­ria, but the African con­ti­nent. So well has her ca­reer grown that she has sang to Pres­i­dents, world lead­ers and even at the White House dur­ing the Demo­cratic Na­tional Con­ven­tion. Her beloved fa­ther in­tro­duced clas­si­cal mu­sic to her at the ten­der age of three. By age six, she be­gan play­ing the vi­o­lin and singing clas­si­cal mu­sic at church. Af­ter study­ing Busi­ness Man­age­ment at Univer­sity of Co­lum­bia, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Bio­dun went on to pur­sue her first love and stud­ied Mu­sic for her Mas­ter’s De­gree at Catholic Univer­sity, Wash­ing­ton.

To­day, Bio­dun has es­tab­lished her­self as an all-round artiste with pas­sion, pur­pose and an il­lus­tri­ous voice that is pow­er­ful and in­spir­ing. But aside from singing to the high and mighty, Bio­dun also sings to those close to her heart. She loves car­ing for the less for­tu­nate in so­ci­ety and never ceases to do phi­lan­thropic ven­tures to make their lives more bear­able with her char­ity or­ga­ni­za­tion and men­tor­ship ac­tiv­i­ties. She spent a riv­et­ing af­ter­noon with FUNKE BABS-KUFEJI talk­ing about how im­pact­ful clas­si­cal mu­sic has been.

Pho­tog­ra­pher- @spot­lightpi in the lives of many.

How did your par­ents ini­tially feel when they re­al­ized you wanted to be­come an opera singer?

My par­ents were not par­tic­u­larly ex­cited at the prospect of me be­com­ing a singer, but for me it has al­ways been a pas­sion from child­hood. They wanted me to be­come an ac­coun­tant and steered me in that di­rec­tion; Ac­count­ing was not my strength so I was se­ri­ously lag­ging be­hind. They got me pri­vate coaches to tu­tor me yet I had chal­lenges. This re­sulted in al­ways be­ing sad when­ever I had to go for Maths or Ac­count­ing lessons. Back then I al­ways felt and came alive at the sight of or any in­volve­ment in any­thing to do with the arts.

How has your Busi­ness Man­age­ment de­gree come in handy in your present ca­reer?

I have al­ways liked the idea of man­ag­ing and run­ning a busi­ness ef­fi­ciently. Cre­at­ing some­thing with a mar­ket value, things that peo­ple would al­ways need and de­pend on, ap­pealed to me. So also is the pool­ing to­gether of re­sources, time and value, and merg­ing them to form some­thing for com­mer­cial pur­pose. I am able to ef­fi­ciently man­age the team un­der me be­cause I have a clear un­der­stand­ing of hu­man re­la­tions and time man­age­ment. Man­power is one of the best, if not the best as­set in busi­ness. Prior to work­ing with my cur­rent per­sonal team of man­agers and staff, I man­aged my ca­reer at the very early stage. I had to wear many hats at once be­cause I ba­si­cally did ev­ery­thing my­self. This re­quired a lot of dis­ci­pline which has helped me run the busi­nesses I have out­side mu­sic.

What was your first big break?

My first big break was when I sang to an au­di­ence of 15,000 at a sta­dium in Wash­ing­ton D.C. Iron­i­cally, this was my con­vo­ca­tion cer­e­mony where I had the priv­i­lege to be called upon to per­form for the vast num­ber of guests in at­ten­dance. My Univer­sity Pres­i­dent and his wife had dis­cov­ered that I had a tal­ent for singing. Word some­how got to them of this gift so they took me un­der their wings, loved me and were al­ways ea­ger to show me off to their guests at School sem­i­nars, ban­quets, galas. I was al­ways in­cluded in the School’s so­cial pro­grams. So when it was time for me to grad­u­ate, they gave me my first big break to sing at my com­mence­ment cer­e­mony be­fore May­ors, Am­bas­sadors, friends, fam­ily, for­mer class­mates and other spe­cial guests of honor. On that stage at the Sta­dium, I opened my mouth to sing, gave it my all and the rest is now his­tory. This break pre­sented me with sev­eral op­por­tu­ni­ties as I had peo­ple rec­om­mend­ing me and invit­ing me to sing at events from there on. Be­fore I knew it, peo­ple started call­ing me The Won­der Woman: the skinny girl with a big voice!

What are you do­ing to make opera more ac­cept­able to the pub­lic?

I have a great bur­den and de­sire in my heart to make some lan­guages from cer­tain parts of Nige­ria rec­og­nized glob­ally, just like the world has come to ac­cept and rec­og­nize French, Latin, Ital­ian and Span­ish. My new mis­sion is to sing in th­ese lan­guages around the world to my in­ter­na­tional au­di­ences. I in­tend to add ex­ist­ing folk­songs from th­ese re­gions to my reper­toire of songs and sing them on global stages. This way, peo­ple will get in­tro­duced to the lan­guages from my coun­try.

Are you plan­ning to make any col­lab­o­ra­tion in the near fu­ture?

Yes, oh yes! Ab­so­lutely! I love col­lab­o­ra­tions and the com­ing to­gether of great artis­tic pow­er­houses. It is al­ways eclec­tic, mag­i­cal, and dy­namic when this hap­pens. It will def­i­nitely be no or­di­nary mix. I have my eye on cer­tain mu­si­cians for pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tions. I par­tic­u­larly like to col­lab­o­rate with cer­tain type of rap­pers, the ones who have it to­gether.

How does one learn to ap­pre­ci­ate clas­si­cal mu­sic?

You have to open your mind be­fore you pass any judg­ment on this genre. No half or full judg­ment. Clas­si­cal mu­sic is the only genre that has the most ben­e­fits to of­fer any liv­ing soul (an­i­mals in­clu­sive) out of all the gen­res of Mu­sic. Many peo­ple al­ready have a pre­con­ceived mind­set that clas­si­cal mu­sic is com­plex, it is for the elites and it is in­tense. With th­ese thoughts, you have al­ready blocked out all the ben­e­fits. With clas­si­cal mu­sic, you have to al­low your­self be im­mersed. Soak it in, lis­ten in­tently and learn to savour the ex­pe­ri­ence. It may re­quire some pa­tience but it is to­tally worth it. Lis­ten­ing to it is a spir­i­tual and su­per­nat­u­ral ex­pe­ri­ence as a lot tran­spires within that time.

You have an up­com­ing con­cert. What is the theme?

It is a sci-fi themed mu­si­cal con­cert event that I en­vi­sioned and cre­ated. It is called The Fu­ture Sym­phony: Days of the Avenger. It is tak­ing place in Abuja on April 21st. For my scifi con­cert, I en­vi­sioned cre­at­ing a stage that will be like a space ship and as soon as peo­ple walk into the hall, they will feel like they are in a sci­ence mu­seum. I have com­mis­sioned art­works rep­re­sent­ing plan­ets from outer space that would be hung from the ceil­ing around the hall to cre­ate an ex­cit­ing sci­ence themed dé­cor. I get bored eas­ily which is why I like to think out­side the box. This is very rare and has never been done in Nige­ria or even in the en­tire African con­ti­nent.

Tell us about your orches­tra of drums as op­posed to just strings and brass in­stru­ments.

It is a kind of a per­for­mance with the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the tra­di­tional drum­mers back­ing up my oper­atic singing as op­posed to the reg­u­lar orches­tra of strings and brass in­stru­ments. It is a mix of var­i­ous lo­cal drums and clas­si­cal in­stru­ments brought to­gether.

How do you main­tain your voice? What kind of things do you avoid and why?

I do vo­cal warm-ups ex­er­cis­ing at least 20-30 min­utes ev­ery­day to keep the voice in­tact as fail­ure to do this will af­fect the qual­ity of my per­for­mance. I also do not scream or smoke. When­ever I am in a cold re­gion, I like to cover up my neck area with a scarf. Once or twice a week, de­pend­ing on our sched­ules, I meet with my Chi­nese voice teacher for voice lessons and train­ing. If we can­not phys­i­cally meet, we have the voice lessons vir­tu­ally.

Is it true that when you have an up­com­ing show you don’t speak? How long for and what im­pact does it have on your per­for­mance?

Yes, it is true. When­ever I have a ma­jor per­for­mance, I go on a vo­cal rest for two or more weeks. It goes like this: no speak­ing, no form of ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion ex­cept for re­hearsals and vo­cal warm ups. This pe­riod, I com­mu­ni­cate via text mes­sages and emails only. Fur­ther­more, my team does most of the ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion to peo­ple on the out­side and when I’m in the same room with some­one and I have a mes­sage to pass across, I just scrib­ble it on pa­per.

What is the com­mon trait opera singers have? Does this help in their form of per­for­mance and ex­pres­sion on stage?

Opera singers have some com­mon traits glob­ally. They are usu­ally very strict, larger than life, ded­i­cated, funny, hard­work­ing and highly dis­ci­plined. In ad­di­tion, 99% of the time, they have zero tol­er­ance for slop­pi­ness, lazi­ness and un­pro­fes­sional peo­ple. Th­ese traits help us give our best, turn­ing us into per­fec­tion­ists yield­ing huge suc­cesses. Per­son­ally, th­ese traits have spawned a high level of dis­ci­pline in all as­pects of my life. I dis­cov­ered I am more dis­ci­plined than my coun­ter­parts that are not in my field. I am even some­times re­ferred to, jok­ingly as “Mil­i­tary Woman” but above all, hav­ing dis­ci­pline and bal­ance works. Opera singers give their all and ex­pect per­fec­tion in re­turn when they charge you with a task.

Did you study drama to en­able you ex­press your­self bet­ter while per­form­ing on stage?

I’ve stud­ied drama since child­hood as I have al­ways had an in­ter­est in act­ing. The knowl­edge and the art of drama artistry in the con­ser­va­tory helped a lot. Of course, I also think it is a nat­u­ral instinct for opera singers to be dra­matic but even if you don’t study drama, you can still be a fan­tas­tic ac­tor on stage. While grow­ing up, just be­fore I turned 15, I had read most of the books in my mother’s li­brary writ­ten by lit­er­ary icons like Shakespeare, Wole Soyinka, China Achebe, George Or­well and others. While read­ing them, I would be trans­ported to their world and play out the scenes in my head. That was my first drama study from home.

Can you men­tion a few of the high cal­iber peo­ple you have per­formed for so far?

Pres­i­dents Bush and Obama, the United States Congress men and women, Pres­i­dents and Am­bas­sadors from all over the world, base­ball leg­end Hank Aaron, the May­ors, CNN founder, Ted Turner, the Prime Min­is­ter and First Lady of Ba­hamas, United State se­na­tors, Gen­eral Oluse­gun Obasanjo, BET Pres­i­dent De­bra Lee, Madam Ellen Sir­leaf, Jerry Rawl­ings, Prince Michael of Kent, Ace co­me­dian and ac­tor, Chris Tucker, the Princess of Saudi Ara­bia, Princess Bas­mah Bint Saud to name a few. I ac­tu­ally al­most sang at Pres­i­dent Trump’s in­au­gu­ra­tion but the In­au­gu­ral com­mit­tee wrote me say­ing they’d con­sider me for fu­ture White House events and that the artistes’ ros­ter was full. Look­ing back now, am I glad that deal didn’t go through!