Alhaji Dauda Akanmu Kolawole, widely remembered as Dauda Epo Akara, holds an important place in Yoruba popular music history. He was an Ibadan musician whose work helped carry Awurebe from its roots in Yoruba Muslim Ramadan performance into a recognised urban sound. His name remains respected among lovers of older Yoruba music, especially those familiar with the sound worlds of wéré, ajísárì, Apala and early Yoruba urban performance.
Dauda Epo Akara was born in Ibadan on 23 June 1943 and died on 18 February 2005. His career belonged to a period when Yoruba popular music was deeply connected to community life. Musicians were not only entertainers. They praised, warned, remembered, mourned and commented on public life. Through rhythm, proverb and performance, they gave listeners a way to hear their society reflected in song.
In Dauda’s case, that voice came through Awurebe, a musical form closely linked to wéré, also called ajísárì or ajiwere in related usage. Wéré was associated with Ramadan nights in Yoruba Muslim communities. Singers moved through neighbourhoods before dawn, performing to entertain and awaken Muslims before the pre dawn meal. From that religious and social setting, some performers developed broader musical styles that reached beyond the Ramadan season.
From Wéré to Awurebe
Dauda Epo Akara’s early musical identity was tied to the wéré tradition. His group was known as Dauda Epo Akara and His Ajisari Group, a name that placed him within the Ramadan performance world. After his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1974, he adopted the name Alhaji Dauda Epo Akara and His Awurebe Sound.
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That change marked the movement of a performer from a seasonal religious setting into a named public music identity. Awurebe grew from wéré, but it developed its own character. It became a recognisable style with public appeal, drawing from Yoruba musical forms such as Apala, Sakara and Woro, while also carrying traces of Dadakuada from Kwara musical culture.
The strength of Awurebe lay in its directness. It used percussion, chorus, proverb, street wisdom and strong vocal delivery. It could praise important people, comment on government actions, challenge social behaviour, mourn tragedy or respond to public conversations. In this sense, Dauda Epo Akara’s songs belonged to the larger Yoruba tradition in which music carried memory, feeling and moral instruction.
A Voice of Ibadan and Yoruba Public Life
Dauda Epo Akara was strongly associated with Ibadan. While some musicians saw Lagos as the natural centre of musical success, Dauda’s public image remained tied to the city of his birth and fame. His songs celebrated Ibadan, praised its people and reflected the confidence of a performer who did not need to abandon his cultural base to command respect.
His music was not limited to praise singing. He commented on issues of public importance and gave musical expression to moments that affected ordinary people. One example often remembered is his response to the creation of additional states under General Murtala Muhammed in 1976. In Ipinle Tuntun, he welcomed the development and placed it within the emotional world of Ibadan and Oyo people.
This kind of musical response shows why Dauda’s work matters. He was part of a Yoruba musical world where songs could preserve events more vividly than formal records. The people who heard those songs did not only hear rhythm. They heard news, opinion, humour, grief, warning and pride.
The Storyteller in Song
Dauda Epo Akara was more than a bandleader. He was a storyteller whose music carried lessons about life, conduct and community. His songs were built around moral instruction, social observation and memorable language. They did not only invite people to dance. They asked listeners to think.
In Yoruba oral culture, storytelling has long served as a way of passing wisdom from one generation to another. Dauda brought that spirit into Awurebe. His songs could point listeners toward patience, humility, courage, loyalty and social responsibility. Through repeated lines and memorable phrases, his lessons entered popular memory.
This explains why Dauda Epo Akara’s importance cannot be measured only by how easily his recordings can be found today. Much of Nigeria’s older music archive remains scattered across vinyl collections, private memories, digital reissues and incomplete catalogues. Many artists who shaped local sound worlds are better remembered by communities than by formal archives. Dauda belongs to that class of musicians whose influence survives through both recordings and memory.
The 1975 Accident and the Pain Behind Ijamba Moto
One of the most painful events in Dauda Epo Akara’s career was the 1975 road accident that killed two of his band members, Omoboade and Dauda. The accident happened as the band returned from a musical engagement in Lagos. The crash took place around the Alapako area of the Lagos, Ibadan Expressway.
The tragedy stayed with Dauda. He later recorded Ijamba Moto, a mourning work associated with the accident. The song was not merely another release in his catalogue. It was a musical memorial for men who had travelled, performed and lived within the same artistic family.
The accident later entered public discussion because of rumours involving the Apala musician Ayinla Omowura. In the world of Yoruba popular music, rivalry, friendship, competition and public interpretation often lived close to one another. Stories could grow around musicians, especially when tragedy struck. In Dauda’s case, the lasting importance of the incident is not the rumour, but the grief that produced Ijamba Moto and the way Awurebe carried that grief into public memory.
Awurebe, Fuji and the Wider Yoruba Soundscape
Dauda Epo Akara’s Awurebe belonged to the same broad musical environment that produced other major Yoruba sounds. Fuji, Apala, Sakara and wéré all shared connections to Muslim Yoruba performance, street singing, percussion and praise traditions. Yet each form developed its own identity.
Awurebe should not be swallowed inside Fuji history. Dauda’s contribution deserves to stand on its own. Fuji later became more nationally visible, especially through figures such as Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, but Awurebe had its own sound, structure and audience. It carried the voice of wéré into a different kind of public life.
Dauda’s place in this history is important because it shows that Yoruba popular music did not grow from one line alone. It grew from several overlapping traditions, cities, performers and audiences. Ibadan, Lagos, Ilorin and other cultural centres all contributed to the soundscape. Dauda represented the Ibadan Awurebe voice, rooted in Ramadan performance but open to the wider world of public entertainment.
The Question of Ayinla Ròrùn Kò Dé Mò
A title connected to Ayinla Ròrùn Kò Dé Mò has circulated in association with Dauda Epo Akara. Its interest lies in the way it points toward the musical memory surrounding Ayinla Omowura and the larger culture of Yoruba musical conversation. Yoruba musicians often used songs to remember events, answer rivals, offer tribute, express grief or speak to public controversy.
Within that tradition, a title referring to Ayinla would not be unusual. Musicians lived in conversation with one another, sometimes openly, sometimes through proverb, sometimes through praise and sometimes through sharp musical response. The world of Dauda Epo Akara and Ayinla Omowura was one in which music could carry reputation, rivalry and remembrance at the same time.
Even so, Dauda’s place in history does not depend on that one title. His legacy rests on Awurebe, on his roots in wéré and ajísárì, on his Ibadan identity, on his moral storytelling and on the songs through which listeners remembered joy, warning, tragedy and communal life.
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A Legacy That Deserves Preservation
Dauda Epo Akara’s career shows how rich Yoruba popular music was beyond the most widely celebrated names. Awurebe, like Fuji, grew from the energy of wéré, but Dauda’s path was distinct. He gave Awurebe a public voice of its own and carried it into recorded music with pride, rhythm and moral force.
His work also reminds us that the archive of Nigerian music is still incomplete. Some musicians remain famous in memory but underrepresented in formal documentation. Some recordings survive only through private collections. Some titles are known to listeners long before they are properly catalogued. In such a landscape, cultural preservation becomes urgent.
Dauda Epo Akara should be remembered as one of the important Ibadan musicians who shaped Yoruba urban music in the twentieth century. His songs preserved praise, grief, warning, public commentary and communal identity. He was not merely a performer from a fading genre. He was a cultural voice whose Awurebe sound carried the spirit of Ramadan wéré into the wider story of Yoruba music.
Author’s Note
Dauda Epo Akara’s story shows how deeply music can preserve a people’s memory. From Ramadan wéré to Awurebe, he carried the sound of Ibadan, the wisdom of Yoruba oral tradition and the emotional weight of public life into song. His career reminds us that Nigerian music history is not only built around the most famous national names, but also around regional voices whose work shaped communities, guided listeners and kept memory alive through rhythm, proverb and performance.
References
Adedina, Femi, and Idris Adesina. “The Musician as a Storyteller: A Didactic Study of Selected Songs of Dauda Epo Akara.” Journal of Nigerian Music Education, No. 14, 2022.
Ganiyu, Waheed. “Dauda Epo Akara: 15 Years After.” MegaIcon Magazine, 18 February 2020.
Adedayo, Festus. “Did Ayinla Omowura Kill Epo Akara’s Band Members in 1975?” MegaIcon Magazine, 21 April 2020.Olaniyan, Ayomide. “The Birth of Fuji Fantasia, Part 1.” Pan African Music Magazine, 12 January 2023.
