Benin City

Five piece Benin City will play hip-hop and funk at Dance Nations Dalston

While Benin City ‘s vocalist Musa Okwonga admits that it is tough to coin what style of music the six-piece outfit produces, the message and philosophy behind it is manifest: always look at universal themes in a universal language. “The genius of Ernest Hemingway was that he made his writing accessible to people no matter what their reading or listening age,” Okwonga says. “It’s the same with Benin City: people have to relate to the music and vocals and take away from it what they can.” Now, how often have you heard a rapper rank Hemingway among their prime influences?

But this is just one of the numerous influences Okwonga and the band target to incorporate into their music. Others include New York jazz group the Budos Band (“amazing”), drum and bass DJs Logistics and London Electricity (“phenomenal”), Wu-Tang Clan, and particularly the Gza (“exceptional story-teller”), Radiohead (“absolutely my favourite band”) and William Blake (“yeah, man, old school”).

Accompanied by saxophone, trombone, drums and an electric cello, what comes out is a vigorous fusion – or “Venn diagram” as Okwonga labels it – of Afro-beat, jazz, hip-hop anything beyond that. Fronted by vocalists Musa Okwonga and Joshua Idehen, whose writings have seen them labelled as some the UK’s finest spoken-word artists, the band has an onstage swagger matching the likes and OutKast and even James Brown.

Their lyrics touch on the emotional, the outrageous and the comical; the music switches between up-beat fast tempo and slower jazz-like rhythms; and, perhaps most importantly, the themes focus on the human condition. “We want to be the soundtrack to people’s experiences,” says Okwonga. “Take (single) Work: we love that tune because we think it speaks to everyone. Josh has a lyric that goes ‘Nine-to-five can kiss my teeth,’ and people were like ‘Yes! That’s exactly what I feel.’ That’s the reaction we look for in people.”

Benin City will perform at Dance Nations Dalston on Gillett Square on July 4, part of the Barbican Centre’s annual Blaze Festival – a chapter in what has so far been a triumphant year for the band. On top of producing their debut EP The Invisible Cake, the release show was filmed by Reuters for their daily Africa program, the single Work was played on Sky Sport’s Soccer AM and plaudits have come from the likes of XFM’s John Kennedy and BBC Radio 2’s Mark Lemarr.

But Musa Okwonga never initially intended for his words to accompany music: “Joshua deserves full credit for that,” he says. The two met each other on the poetry scene after Okwonga gave up his career as a corporate lawyer to focus on his writing. Quickly recognizing each other’s lyrical talents, the two began collaborating; founding poetry collective A Poem inbetween People (PiP) in 2006, before producing a track together called This is London.

As Joshua Idehen continued to push Okwonga into music, the two founded Benin City in 2008, and, after a series of experiments, they discovered the musical vehicle that best suited their writing. After working together for so long, Okwonga admits that he and Idehen are now like brothers.

“We write our verses and comment on each others words and often we’re quite harsh …  but that’s out of respect for each other’s talents,” says Okwonga. “We both know what we’re capable of and it’s great to have such a relationship built on artistic respect and friendship.” And the philosophy of making their lyrics universally accessible is palpable in the characters the two front men depict in songs such as Work and Boogie Man. “He plays one role, I play the other. We always try to give a rounded concept to the tune, which gives something for everyone,” says Musa. “We take great care in not being too forceful with our music.”

For Musa, the importance of spoken-word and hip-hop lies in their capacity for story-telling and generating joy and passion. But the genre has, he admits, been “hijacked” by a nastier setting, which he and several poets have reacted against. “Most people can’t relate it, it turns people off, so to hell with it.”

Benin City will be performing at Dance Nations Dalston as part the Barbican’s Blaze Festival on Sunday 4 July, where they will also be premiering five new songs.