“Please, let's have me and Ayo for a while. I like to perform some jazz standards,” says Jimi Solanke (b. July 4, 1942), one of Nigeria's folklorists and musicians, to members of his eight-player band. It is July 4, 2013, and the group is performing as part of a program celebrating Solanke's seventy-first birthday. Solanke is well-known in the Nigerian music and entertainment industry by many stage names, such as “Baba Agba,” “Uncle Jimi,” and “Master Storyteller,” and his band draws from a wide range of styles like highlife, jazz, and folk. While I double as the second keyboard player on the group's African popular music songs, my primary job at this particular gig is to act as a jazz keyboard accompanist. As the other band members leave the stage, Solanke and I begin with “Fly Me to the Moon,” one of his favorite jazz standards. This is followed by...
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