AFRICANUS: The Sound of a Continent Remembering Itself

Some projects are performances. Others are portals. AFRICANUS: A Live Recording with Udoh Band is both — a moment where Africa’s ancestral voice meets its modern imagination.

Led by Nigerian composer and multi-instrumentalist Chyke Martins, AFRICANUS fuses indigenous instruments like the oja, banusiri, and thumb piano with jazz woodwinds — saxophone, flute, and clarinet — to create a living dialogue between past and present. Every tone feels like a heartbeat from history, reshaped through improvisation and innovation.

At the core of this experience stands the Udoh Band — Flora Sparkle’s luminous vocals, Mayowa Afolabi’s grounding bass, Timilehin Teegrove’s rhythmic pulse, and Alfred Olasunkanmi’s guitar lines that shimmer with storytelling. Together they embody what AFRICANUS represents: unity through sound.

The project’s live-recording approach captures not perfection but truth. It invites audiences to witness creation in real time — the tension, the release, the conversation between musician and spirit. In those unedited moments, you hear a continent remembering itself.

More than a concert, AFRICANUS is a cultural archive and a statement of pride. It preserves endangered sonic traditions while positioning Africa’s music within the global stage on its own terms — confident, authentic, and future-facing.

In a world of algorithms and auto-tune, AFRICANUS insists on the organic, the spiritual, the human. It reminds us that Africa’s story is still being written — in rhythm, melody, and motion.

As Chyke Martins puts it, “We are not reviving the past; we are extending it.”AFRICANUS is that extension — an echo turned into light.