Ayinla

Ayinla tells the story of the legendary singer, Ayinla Omowura, who passed away in 1980 after a career spent performing and popularising his beloved Apala music. The movie aims to be a semi-biopic, but as it begins in the year of his death, a puzzling decision, it rules itself out as a biography and instead focuses on the last lap of his life and the build up to his death.

Here Lateef Adedimeji stars in the titular role, and a lot of the film’s success rests on how well he can bring Ayinla’s charisma and star power to life. Some of the film’s struggles, too, are attributable to this. Adedimeji’s acting prowess is established by now, but for a role portraying a star this big, he was either a little ill-suited or ill-prepared. The film is directed by Tunde Kelani, produced by Jade Osiberu with executive production by Kunle Afolayan (amongst others), but having thought up this idea to honour a music legend in a country where so much greatness is lost to poor documentation, their fulfilment of this vision is not set to high standards, as if simply setting out to tell the story was good enough. There was potential, however, for so much more.

The film begins with a series of accounts of Ayinla Omowura from a number of prominent people who knew him or knew about him, like band members, journalists and scholars. They present a harmonious description of Ayinla’s personality and music and a fairly ordered account of his death. In 1980, Ayinla was at the peak of his music prowess. He was in his late forties, a ripe age for Fuji and Apala artists, and a promoter, Ajala (Kunle Afolayan) was set to take him and his Apala group to London, an unsurmounted feat in Apala at the time. 

His manager, Bayowa (Debo Adedayo, or Mr. Macaroni), as well as the rest of the band, is of course excited by this prospect, but as they grow in fame and stature, cracks begin to appear in their well-formed team, especially between Ayinla and Bayowa. The presence of a woman, Deborah (Omonwunmi Dada) whose affections they are both in contention for, widens this acrimony, and it all culminates in Bayowa killing Omowura after they have a scuffle at a bar.

Ayinla sometimes feels like, just like the prologue, the screenplay itself was pieced from several accounts of events in the artist’s life. There is a scene where Ayinla arranges for a troublemaker to cause a commotion at a show he is playing at, so that he can escape having to give a performance to a stingy host, or another where he is bailed out at a police station after an altercation with a rival artist. Memorable stories that would make great additions to nostalgic tales being shared at a gathering of Ayinla’s old friends, but in the movie they bear no real purpose to the story. Which is a shame, because they could have made for important plot points if the writers had not half-heartedly confined them to one or two scenes each. The story involving Ayinla and a rival, in particular, deserved much more screen time than that, because real-life Ayinla was involved in many feuds in his lifetime with other Apala and Fuji artists.

Some additions, though, help humanise the person Ayinla was, and some of these scenes are handled better by Adedimeji. Like the moments he shares with his children, showing him to be a warm-hearted family man, or the times he orders drinks for the whole bar in celebration, displaying his generosity and life-of-the-party essence. The set design and costume departments also enhance the immersive world the film is set in; from olden-style cars to dressing to hairstyle and even newspapers, a lot of work was obviously put in to recreate post-colonial Abeokuta, where the film is set.

Supporting cast members also play important roles. Kunle Afolayon is excellent in his role as Ajala, the show promoter, and every moment he spends on screen pulls you deeper into the film’s world. Mr. Macaroni’s pivot from Instagram comedian to cinema actor is well handled, especially because he takes on a serious role and not just an extension of his skit personality. He makes a decent effort in playing Bayowa, but he cannot properly convey some of the nuances of Bayowa’s relationship with Ayinla, like how he adores his boss so much yet envies him, a dynamic that should have been more magnified considering the film’s premise. 

Ade Laoye works well as Jaiye, the enthusiastic reporter attached to follow Ayinla and his band and write on them, but some of the scenes she shares with her editor at the newspaper house should have been sacrificed on the editing table in exchange for a greater attention on Ayinla himself. Also, some of Ayinla’s band members should have featured more prominently, or at least been given names, as they also deserved to be honoured for their roles in Ayinla’s career. Again, fleshing out their personalities would have presented an opportunity to create more drama around Ayinla or heighten the already existing tension with Bayowa. 

However, since Ayinla’s life as a musician is the focus of the story, the scenes where he performs music are some of the most crucial to its depiction. Sadly, they are also some of the worst directed. It seems so little effort was made by both actor and director to make these scenes pass off as genuine performances by Adedimeji. The music is obviously prerecorded, ripped straight from his albums without any editing to make it sound more natural. Adedimeji’s lip-syncing is poor, so sometimes he is quiet when Omowura’s voice is being heard, other times, he is seen singing a part Omowura left to his back-up vocalists. The execution of these performances varies from scene to scene, and there are a few of them, so there is no way the director and producer could have all missed something so important.

It can then be assumed that they saw these errors but let them go, satisfied with the work they did here. Once more it calls to mind the standards set by Nollywood in general and for Ayinla in particular, especially because these problems cannot be put down to budgetary restrictions. Former Governor of Ogun state, Sen. Ibikunle Amosun, is one of the men who speak about Ayinla in the prologue, and he labels Ayinla Omowura as an unsung hero, one whose prowess had been left ignored for too long. Making this film in celebration of him is a big and important step towards documenting and immortalising a legend, and if this was the objective,—transcribing his story into film—it was good enough, but Tunde Kelani should not have settled for such a low bar.