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| Eskafini. Source: Eskafini's Library |
Eskafini is a host of a radio show on Jay FM 101.9, Jos. He came to Jos from Kano, where he had already started secondary school at Federal Government College Kano. In Jos, he completed his secondary education at Federal Government College, after a one-year stint at St. Joseph College Vom. These schools, he agrees, shaped the colouration of his life, as is often the case.
Two songs blew Elkafini’s mind, making him feel the power of music for the first time. He was raised in a home with a strong music culture. His mum was a music teacher and often rehearsed for stage plays. One day, she played Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D Minor. This classical song together with Chaka Demus and Plier’s Murder She Wrote opened his mind to the vast beauty and influence of music.
Eskafini, who has angling as a pastime and who has worked for Ray Power 100 FM Jos in the past, believes his show on radio, The Evolution of Legends, is a superior version to Yakubu Lamai’s Star Gazers, a show Lamai hosted on Peace FM 90.5 from the late 80s stretching to the mid 90s. It was a show that looked at the lives of music stars. After calling his bluff, Eskafini stood by his word, believing that the internet puts information about artists in the palm of his hands. There was no internet, back in the days of Lamai. The tons of radio stations we now have in Jos make the competition stiffer and put his show ahead, Eskafini says.
The claims that Evolution of Legends is an advanced version of Star Gazers sounded hysterical sort of, but then I decided to listen to the Evolution of Legends, which comes every Sunday evening by 9 PM. I found something worth talking about. They are tons of info about the artists and their music. They are so microscopic, detailed and vast that someone is pushed to ask how much time and patience is spent burrowing into them. From this, I could see that, when it comes to the info, Eskafini is a monster.
There used to be a barbing saloon along Tafawa Balewa Street in Jos. It was Nature’s Cut. Elkafini barbed there. With time, he became drawn to it, attracted by a mountain of music magazines the barber collected. He loved the magazines because they gave him what he wanted –the stories about music artists and their works. From this, one understands Eskafini has an inborn impulse for everything about music artists, so that each time there is a new artist, he is –first of all– asking for where and when the artist was born, his early life, his hurdles and how he overcame them, his girlfriend, how he met her... When something becomes a constant part of you, it feels like blood in your veins. Thus, you do it with the ease that leaves people asking how considering its seeming difficulty.
Painting a portrait of Yakubu Lamai with words, one will say that he is a dark, slim handsome man who loves to dress in formal suits every time. He speaks beautiful accent-free English and was often the host of beauty contests back in the decades when he was among the men and women who shaped conversations regarding pop culture in the city. His music shows played ballads from artists like Peabo Bryson, Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, Tevin Campbell and others in their rank.
On the other hand, Eskafini, who still believes that Lamai also inspired him, is well known. Just that the scale of his popularity is slightly below that of Lamai. Time, not a weakness makes it so. This is the time of the internet, when most fans gravitate to YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music and other music-streaming channels, rather than radio. Aside from this, Hip Hop and R&B, which form the seal of Elkafini’s show, have been shoved aside by the global rise of Afrobeats. He, however, plans to launch his website on April 18th, the birthday of his mum, albeit posthumously. The website and affiliated Social Media handles will feature podcasts of his radio shows.
