Doye Agama (pictured right) is a passionate writer dedicated to creating engaging and meaningful texts that inspire, inform, and entertain readers. With a deep appreciation for the power of words, Agama explores themes of culture, pride, resilience, and history through thoughtful, compelling, and informative writing. Through this journey of the history of music, Agama leaves the reader with a fresh perspective and lasting insights. The Sound That Would Not Die invites you to embark on a journey of imagination, learning, and discovery. 

Abena: What inspired you to write this particular book, The Sound That Would Not Die?

Doye:  I’ve been writing about African history for a while, usually from a theological standpoint because of my other role as a clergyman but I’ve also had a longstanding interest in music. I noticed something about what we call African music. It’s really West African music when you talk about what has influenced global music. It came out of West Africa. There’s been a lot of emphasis on the North African influence, but even there, writers talk about that as if there was no music there before Islam came, so they call it all Islamic music. Yet, when you come a bit further south, there’s not really been a recognition. When they do talk about it, they talk about African music, that it is the music of that Atlantic coast, because that’s where the people left from.  And it happens that my ancestry is along that coast. One half of my ancestry comes from the Ijaw people [from what is now the Delta region of Nigeria]. And then my father’s side comes from another group of people who are also down on the coast.  A lot of those coastal people, as I wrote in another book a few years ago, have been pushed to the coast. Many of them were not always on the coast. They are known as the Delta/Edo. The Edo Empire of Benin is also related to the Yoruba. And so that’s the sort of ancestry that I have. 

The book tells the story; two stories. As a very young boy, I travelled to Africa for the first time. It was on a ship, a colonial ship, belonging to a company called Elder Dempster.  They had had this monopoly of shipping on that coast for a long time [since the 19th Century]; one of these relics of Empire. In those days, like now, the heavy goods came by ship. But those ships were adapted so that they would carry passengers and cargo and they stopped at every port. You could go ashore, wander around, there was no passport control, nothing — just don’t miss the boat or you’ll be stuck. And so we had some nice times and some adventures on that journey down. And then much later when I was older, I was making documentary films which was one of the things I trained for much younger in life. I began to visit some of the lesser known slave ports, because you hear about Elmina Castle in Ghana and places like that. However, there were probably at least a hundred small places that nobody talks about and those are the ones that I wanted to visit. 

While I was doing the documentaries, I was also making some music with a band that I had.  We had a music festival where we tried to use some of the indigenous sounds and merge them with the jazz sounds that were returning to Africa. This was at the time when most people I would meet in Africa would say that jazz had no place on the continent – that it was North American music. That’s where this book comes from. It was as if I could ‘hear’ the book, something saying to me ‘this story has got to be told’, and so that’s what I’ve tried to do. 

Abena: In the text you talk a bit about what you call musical racism. Can you define that for us? 

Doye: That brings two things to mind. One is the appropriation of the music from a people, and denying them the credit and the profit. The other issue, if we can separate it, is the characterisation of the people who are the producers or the originators as being incapable of making good music. It’s probably two sides of the same coin. These issues would find their way and their expression into popular language and culture in various forms, at various times. I think those are the roots of the problem. For example, you have a lot of people who have no idea that Rock and Roll has any African roots at all. A similar thing happens with Jazz.

That is because the voice of the music industry belongs disproportionately to a particular group of people, so it’s going to take quite a lot to change that. However, what digital has done is that it has flattened the industries. Whereas before you had huge hierarchical structures, you now have a much flatter perspective.  The ability of the industry to police and to gatekeep who reaches an audience is being diminished.  In fact, they are playing catch up. They’ve still got a lot of clout, mostly with the marketing but it’s an evolving picture. The problem is the story is not being told.  I believe African scholars who are interested in Africa need to begin to tell some of these stories better and allow people to regain a sense of ownership, of pride, and utility.  Maybe it’s that I’m getting on a bit in life. I am always concerned that there is some knowledge that we are losing, and that we may never get a chance to get hold of again. Whether or not it’s going to be particularly lucrative or extremely useful to anybody, it’s important that it is preserved. 

Abena: I agree. You also mentioned that you want the book to serve as counter evidence to more negative stories about Africa and the continent. Why is that important to you? 

Doye: Well, Africa’s had a very bad press. Principally because not enough people, from an African context, have tried to say something different. Recently, maybe in the last 20, 30 years, post- voices such as Chinua Achebe, we’ve had a new generation of people talking about Africa differently. However, there’s not enough being said. 

Africa is a huge, huge place, and there’s still so much of its story that is not told. I mean, when you see K-pop bands, for example, nobody talks about them as being African.  That’s African music; the rhythms and the roots of it all. I point out towards the end of the book that we’re getting another season of this happening again. Where the digital creativity of African and Afrodescendant music, if I would use that term, is being scraped up by these music websites, and they’re selling this intellectual property with nothing really going to the creators. 

Then again, you can’t keep the Africans down. There’s a  whole movement, called  ‘the bedroom producers’. These are kids in places like Lagos, Accra and Cape Town; kids who, literally in their bedrooms, are using mobile phones and the apps that are now available, and they are making their own music.  The Afrobeats and Amapianos and music like that.

Abena: What do you feel about the recent surge in popularity of Amapiano and Afrobeats? Do you feel it was inevitable? Do you believe it can get to a point where it’s maybe too commercialised? 

Doye: Yeah, it could, and it probably is. I think that it’s good that the generation that are pioneering it are having their turn at creativity and venturing into the business of music. And there’s a realisation now, from major music companies, about the size of this market. A number of major music companies now are investing in divisions that will work with these young people, and try to bring them into the mainstream. I think that’s a good thing.

Abena: Yes. It’s great to see these young, ambitious creators getting more opportunities. In the text you talk a lot about how those of African descent didn’t just survive centuries of oppression to simply exist, but that they also created this cultural force, the music. You want readers of the book to be instilled with a sense of pride about this. Is there a particular moment in your life which inspired your desire to spread that message? 

Doye: Yeah, I think there was, but I might not have realised it in those terms at the time. It was when I met an African master drummer of water pot music that the penny dropped. Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but down in the Niger Delta, there is this concept of tuning clay pots with different amounts of water. Then they hit them with a fan that’s made from the pith of the raffia palm tree, which is where the palm wine comes from. They don’t just play rhythm. They actually play a melody. It’s associated with some of the shrines there and the spirits that people engage with in those shrines. However, my fascination was how this would merge with some of the percussions and the melodies that had come back to us from across the Atlantic, so we did some experiments with this.

It was like a little light bulb came on, and I realised that when we talk about the music of Africa, there’s something much more, as you alluded to just now.   It’s not just that people survived slavery and all of that.  For instance, you have another master drummer who has played with Paul McCartney and people like that, playing side by side with this guy who’s come up from a village somewhere.  Something clicks.  That’s when I began to understand.   What we are digging in the music is actually a reclamation or a projection, not just of the people, but of the resilience of the creativity. The fact that this is so irresistible to people around the world is saying something to us. 

Abena: Truly fascinating. Thank you so much for speaking with me, Doye. I appreciate the chance to sit down and learn more about you. All the best.