“Style of music wey dem don abandon, I convert am to dollar” Terry Apala raps, stating a fact of how he has seemingly reinvented Apala music for a younger generation. For Yoruba children from old parents and equally old time music, Apala is not a completely unfamiliar genre. And perhaps such people will understand why Terry Apala featured Musiliu Haruna Ishola on his new track, “Palongo”

Apala music has witnessed a series of evolutionary changes like any traditional Yoruba music genre. As we have with the Kutis and Afrobeats, the Haruna Ishola family is a similar equivalent family of music royalty for Apala. Musiliu’s father Haruna Ishola alongside Yusuf Olatunji and Ayinla Omowura were three of the most prominent Apala musicians of the 1950s in that order of ranking. The sound itself is an abstraction of a melody style imbued from the Islamic Mersaharty culture, whose parent form has Arabian origins.

In the early 2000s, Musiliu Haruna Ishola spear-headed one of such transcendental changes in sound with Soyoyo: Apala Disco Vol. 1, creatively reinventing his father’s original playbook with studio recorded synths, disco style four-on-the-floor drums and a rap verse to produce a “Sisi Awelorun” hit lead single only a few jazz touches shy of a full blown hip-hop Afro-fusion.

Some of that fervour from Musiliu’s attempt to tap Disco’s light-paced tempo for Soyoyo, is revisited on “Palongo”, with an energetic chorus bass that may have been stuffy on any other concept. Despite a central theme that devolves to Afropop’s tendency for dance music, Terry Apala also seemed intent on making a point with his feature with Musiliu Ishola. In between bragging about his versatility and skill level, the rapper casually shouts out to Papa Wemba, Fela Anikulapo Kutii, Mariam Makeba and progenitor, Haruna Ishola amongst others. According to Terry, these are some of the people he respects for laying the foundation for the traditional sound to explore possibilities with new ideas as technology and times evolved. For the moment, Terry Apala has been vindicated by his current row and having one of the fore bearers of his sound on a track is a way of paying homage while also doing what is progressively expected of cultural growth and relevance for good music.

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