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Steve Rhodes (1926-2008) - Legendary Composer, Broadcaster, Theatre Practioner & Classical Music Maestro

Sun News
10th June '08

Steven Bankole Omodele Rhodes, Nigeria’s foremost musical ambassador and musical icon, musicologist, manager and packager of musicians par excellence has transited into immortality. He was a legendary composer, broadcaster, theatre practitioner, classical music maestro and a major participant in the building of the essential music industry in Nigeria.

He will be remembered for many things and had meant diverse things to numerous people and interests in Nigeria’s cultural and artistic world. He was a role model, a musical genius, a perfectionist and disciplinarian who helped define and etch the critical character of the Nigerian musical tradition.

Born on April 8, 1926, at Igbosere, Lagos, he attended the famous CMS Grammar School, Bariga, Lagos, having earlier schooled at Queens School, Lagos as the first and only male student in a female college. The son of a practising barrister, he was almost an itinerant student, having had to attend many schools in the East, including the Enitonna High School in Port Harcourt, the Hope Waddel Training Institute in Calabar and the Bishop Dennis Memorial Grammar School, in Onitsha, before proceeding to Oxford University, in the United Kingdom, to study Modern Greek. He had his practical music training in Germany. He had been a practical Jazz musician, dancer and classical performer.

All of these chequered education and apprenticeship prepared him for a multi-valent professional life as a broadcaster with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS), the Western Nigerian Broadcasting Service, Ibadan and the Philip Morris Tobacco Company before forming his own company, the internationally famed RhodeSoundVision in the late sixties. This was an entertainment and public relations company which was located on Broad Street, Lagos. He later founded The Steve Rhodes Voices which undertook a performance tour to the Tampere Music Festival in Finland and another performance tour to Switzerland in 1979.

An essential and inimitable dimension to the development of music was his work as a promoter, professional manager and production packager of many leading Nigerian musicians. He was the first professional manager of Fela Anikulapo-- Kuti (then Fela Ransome -- Kuti). He also managed the late Sonny Okosuns, Sir Victor Uwaifo, Pat Finn and the Hykers and the Rolling Dance Troupe of Ghana.

His chequered theatre and stage professional practice was notably at the Glover Hall and The Pec Repertory where he produced plays, revues, music and previews. He was on the Board of Trustees of J.P. Clark’s The Pec Repertory. He contributed to stage lighting, stage effects and stage design in the Nigerian performance experience. Some of his numerous major productions and concerts in which these effects were notable include Madam Tinubu and Echoes from the Lagoon.

Steve Rhodes impacted upon many lives to whom he became, a mentor, hero and icon. Among these were some of the more notable culture workers, musicians and theatre practitioners, such as Ahmed Yerima, Duro Oni, Sunmi Smart-Cole, Funke Lijadu, Eme Iheanacho and Odein Ajumogobia. Through these numerous acolytes and proteges and through his numerous concerts, performances and shows, his great works as an artiste, musician and cultural activist will continue to blossom.

His personality as a man of great sense of humour, an original and inimitable musical creator, a man of indomitable integrity, compulsion for perfection and creative excellence will remain a legacy and a yardstick for measuring cultural excellence. We join the rest of the cultural and media world to pay glowing tribute to a consumate artiste, a patriot and a cultural ambassador, whose works help define the high cultural sensibility of our nation. Steve Rhodes’ immortal melodies will subtend for generations to come.

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May we be strengthened with the ability, willingness and capabilities to be good ambassadors of Nigeria contributing to its uplifting, rather than its detriment. - Cxsm