King Sunny Adé cancels US tour due to deaths

Lots of musicians have been canceling international tour dates lately, mostly because of the hazards posed by the volcano eruption in Iceland. But concerns at once more tragic and more ordinary have forced King Sunny Adé, the legendary Nigerian bandleader, to call off his North American tour, which was scheduled to start in Canada last week and come to the Highline Ballroom in Manhattan on May 20.
In late March two percussionists in Mr. Adé’s 17-piece touring band, Gabriel Ayanniyi and Omo Olope, died in a car accident in Nigeria on the way to a music video shoot. With just a few weeks before the tour was to start, attempts to get American visas for replacement members of the band proved unsuccessful.
Andy Frankel, the band’s Philadelphia-based manager, said that the band had applied for visas but that American officials in Lagos “just flat-out failed to respond.” For help Mr. Frankel turned to his Congressional representative, Chaka Fattah, Democrat of Pennsylvania, but there was no luck there, either. “We got a response a week later,” Mr. Frankel said, “saying that unless it is a matter of medical emergency or business emergency they will not respond to any issues out of the normal time frame. I don’t know how this doesn’t constitute a business emergency.”
Finding replacement players in the United States was next to impossible, Mr. Frankel said, for financial, logistical and, especially, musical reasons, given Mr. Ayanniyi’s key role: lead talking-drum player. In Mr. Adé’s juju music — a Nigerian pop style rooted in Yoruba traditions — the talking drum is, Mr. Frankel added, “equivalent to the lead guitar in a rock band.” “After King Sunny, it does everything,” he said.

 Ben Sisario @'NY Times'