Africa: Amayo’s Inner Lion Awakes

Duke Amayo is a familiar figure to fans of America’s pioneering Afrobeat band, Antibalas. A charismatic and flamboyant frontman, Amayo has provided Antibalas shows and recordings with an authentic shot of Nigeria-ness. And no surprise. Amayo grew up in the same Lagos neighborhood as Fela Kuti, and began attending shows at Fela’s Shrine at a tender age. Fast forward to 2025, and Amayo is releasing an ambitious, themed album called Lion Awakes, an ambitious mashup of Afrobeat punch, Chinese martial arts lore, and optimistic Afrofuturism. Afropop’s Banning Eyre spoke with Amayo about his life, career, passions and the new album. Here’s their conversation.

Amayo debuts his new music at the Brooklyn Bowl on January 29.

Banning Eyre: Amayo, I don’t think we’ve ever done a proper interview before, so let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about your beginnings in Nigeria and how you ended up in New York.

Duke Amayo: If I can go a little bit further back, it started with the Nigerian Civil War [1967-70]. Like a lot of us, I was uprooted. I ended up in Ghana with my grandmother. She was the one that raised me and my other cousins.

Were you in the East before that?

No, we were in Lagos, but believe it or not, the war affected us. My father was the head postmaster, and somehow his position placed him at risk during that time. So, you know, our neighborhood, our house, sometimes got caught up in fires, related or not related. I was nine years old at the time, and the climate then was just a lot of chaos. So I ended in Ghana and I happened to arrive there the day that the neighborhood was hosting their monthly fights, an organized fight for the community.

Boxing? Wrestling?

No, just freestyle fighting, whatever. Wrap your t-shirt around your arm. It was just to help control violence in the community. This was the day of aggression, the day you let out your aggression. Anyone that had issues, this was your chance. Then there was never any violence in the community.

Wow. Interesting.

So, I arrived on that day and my grandmother pushed me. She said, “Go. Make yourself known.” So, right there, that’s where I developed my fighting spirit. Once you go through your first of those type of organized fights, it kind of gets rid of fear. You are accepted, and then you’re one of the people. It’s some sort of communal glue, a rite of passage, if you will. “This is our community.” And every weekend we played rhythms with congas. This guy was teaching us congas, and all the kids in that class learned this one piece. That piece has stayed with me ever since. I built around that piece. It was my comfort zone when it came to playing. “Take a solo, Amayo.” That’s it. That was my thing.

So, not knowing that music was something I was gonna be pursuing, I went back to Nigeria after there was a government change. Sani Abacha came into power and Ghana tried to expel all foreigners. So I was in that group that was expelled. That was very traumatic. Later on, Nigeria had their own little revenge.

Yeah. I remember that. Ghana Must Go!

Yeah, things got a little testy between Ghana and Nigeria then. But you know what? Nigeria’s revenge created this whole fashion statement called Ghana Must Go. Remember that? Anyway, that whole era for me was all about teaching and learning. There were opportunities for me as a kid. I was very, very lucky to have read this book called The Third Eye. The book was given to me by this guy who sold books in our neighborhood. He gave me comic books and then one day he gave me this one. “Yo, check this book out.” And that changed my life as a 10-year-old.

I found myself thinking of myself as a yogi, you know? It felt like I knew what was going on, and it was very natural. It gave me this little extra thing. I lived in a household of 10 people, because my father was a polygamist. My mom raised all his kids; she raised everybody else’s kids. So we always had at least 10 people in our house. It was communal living. My grandmother was also a priestess in a church, the Aladura Church. It’s the Baptist Church and they do a type of worship where you wear white robes. You all dress like popes, and we play music. There are sections for the worshipers, and the section for musicians, and the sections for dreamers. And I was one of the dreamers and I played an instrument. I was allowed to play this banjo instrument, like a one-string banjo. The rhythms in church were very simple.

Okay.

That was my foundation coming back to Nigeria. So I’m watching how my grandmother was navigating. She was like a shaman, a priestess, rocking the church thing. We were able to kind of blend into that lifestyle because she was doing it so smoothly. She actually helped heal me. I was a very sickly child. I was always sick. My mom didn’t know what was going on. My grandmother found the cure for me and it came through traditional medicine. So my foundation was kind of solidified. I didn’t have to look for spiritual conviction anywhere else. I was living it, it was around me.

I was also an illustrator. I had the ability to see, I mean, not a superhero-style see through walls. But I had a perception of space, kind of a gift. I was not just an illustrator, I was a technical illustrator. I could do engine dissections, how to put it all together. That was my world. So I applied that to everything I was doing, and music was just one of those things where that came into play.

I see. There’s precision there.

Yes. Then martial arts was also my thing, and the music was like the soundtrack for my martial arts. Fela Kuti became like my teacher. I grew up in his neighborhood and that’s who you aspired, not to be like, but to actlike. He just had this air around him and what he was saying back then… Those of us, my peers, we believed what he was saying. You know, when you’re a teenager, you want to be radical.

Were you one of those guys who would show up at the Shrine for those rehearsals? I know he would rehearse new songs in front of fans to gauge their reactions.

Actually, I did not go for rehearsals. I went for shows. When I came from boarding school Iin Benin City, I went straight to Shrine.

Boarding school?

Yeah. When my mom found out that I was doing martial arts, she got upset with me and put me in this boarding school. It was in a deep, deep, deep village, a place called Ashaka in Kwale. This is the area where the best dancers in the country come from, the Atilogu dancers. So I went to school there at this incredible school that just happened to have really cool people who were ahead of their time. Our school prefect was obsessed with vocabulary. He collected words. So he kind of inspired us too. We had a little debating club and he became the debating society president. Then there were classes in agriculture. They’d give you a little plot of land. “Go grow your own food, and harvest it.” And you got graded.

Hmm, interesting.

So we were in this really cool school. Our basketball coach was the Reverend Father of the Catholic Church of the town. He was kind of an alcoholic, but was so cool with us because he formed our basketball team. He was like one of us, even though he was our coach. He was Irish, so he had this edge about him. He was a very activist type guy, like the people me and my peers looked up to. And the village next door to us was the place where I would say most of the marijuana that would be delivered to Lagos came from. So there was this guy who drove this taxi, a Citroyen 504 station wagon, that was my transport to go back to Shrine. I could take it back to Lagos, loaded with stuff.

That must have been a wild ride.

We’d head into Ikeja for a short break. But I spent my first two days at the Shrine before I got home to my mom.

And she probably didn’t know what your mode of transportation was, did she?

She knew. Everyone knew. Because that was the only way to travel. It was the fastest way to travel. You could take the mini buses or you could take the 504s.

But the ganja car, the one that goes straight to Fela?

Well, no one knew about that. That was inside info. But you know what? Besides the fact that it was inside info, that whole village that we drove by… the entire place smelled like it. You know, when you drive through rural America, you smell the product, whatever it might be. So I grew up in that. My last year, I ended up participating in this arts cultural event we had in that school. That kind of set me up, because in that event, I performed as a singer, I did a Marvin Gaye song and I got first place.

What was the Marvin Gaye song?

My God, man. You know, “Sexual Healing” was my mom’s favorite.

I had a feeling. Beautiful song.

Anyway, that part of my life was what set me up in a direction where I could go into art. And then Festac 77 happened. During Festac, I was able to shine with all the little skills I had developed in school. I was offered this gig to drive, to shuttle people from Festac Village to their performances. I was driving this little Volvo car that was owned by this guy called John Chuku, who was famous Nigerian comedian. He took a liking to a lot of kids my age who were pretending to be Americans, even though we were just being hip.

That must have been a fun gig.

My goodness, Festac! Festac gave me the motivation that I wanted to go to where all these artists came from. I wanted to go to where Stevie Wonder came from, where Sun Ra came from. All these people that I got a chance to catch a glimpse of during Festac. And during Festac, I also got to go to Shrine a lot more, because all the artists at Festac would go to Shrine after hours.

That was where I first saw Sandra Izsidore [the American woman credited with “radicalizing” Fela in 1969.] I remember exactly: she had an afro, and she was wearing white, white, white, white jeans. I don’t know, Jordache was not in style then, but it was one of those Jordache-like jeans. Man, that was some impressive times. And hey, those were the times that I credit for what I’m doing today, because I try to encapsulate those moments, I try to express it every time, my Festac moment, you know?

That’s a good muse to have, I’d say. So when did you end up actually pursuing that dream and going to where all those artists came from?

Right after Festac, I was working in a bank, because my mom was a bank manager. She was one of the first female bank managers back then, and when she was going through her own difficult times. She was basically helping to elevate a lot of her friends to work in her circle. So she put me in a bank to work in foreign exchange, right after high school. And while I was working in foreign exchange, I was saving all my pennies because I was planning to come to America. In that bank, I had access to copy machines, so I would go to the library to collect university names. I had about 50 universities that I applied to. It’s kind of the thing you do. I knew I wanted to go to college in America, and my ticket out was to get accepted and use my acceptance letter to get my visa. That was the plan. Now, how that would happen was all going to be like a miracle. It was really difficult back then.

I’m sure it was.

Because universities in Nigeria were oversaturated. You could get accepted in the university in Nigeria, but you’d be on a waiting list. You could sit on a waiting list for years. A lot of people who end up on a waiting list just basically gave up. So I had plan: I’m gonna make my move to the U.S. by applying to colleges. I had very good soccer skills, and I ended up winning some soccer scholarships. I got soccer scholarships to two universities and I took the one in Texas. But Texas gave me a tuition-only scholarship. I wanted to hustle for a full scholarship. So while I was in Texas, the school won the championship. Then I was eyeing other schools that I could transfer to where I could find a better and get a full scholarship.

Fortunately for me, my uncle, who was also a very famous soccer player, was going to Howard. So he invited me to come up to Howard and I went. When I got to Howard’s campus, man, I was like, “This is Mecca. This is the Black Mecca.” Howard back then, man, had girls, the finest girls!

So this is late 70s, early 80s now?

1979 was when I transferred to Howard. I came to Texas in ’78, so in ’79 I was at Howard as a sophomore. The soccer coach said, “We’re gonna extend your scholarship from Texas because you guys won the championship.” We were known in the soccer community, but I was like, “Man, I still want the full scholarship.” So one day I was watching football practice. The first game I had seen on television was Dallas Cowboys playing Washington Redskins. And I saw Rafael Septien kick a field goal. And when I saw that field goal that guy kicked, it left a little mark in my head. “I think I should try that. That’s how I can probably get my full scholarship.”

So at Howard, I tried out with the Howard football team. They knew I was Nigerian, and they knew I came from the soccer team. I had the perfect situation. Three seconds to the end of the game, and it came down to fourth quarter, and I had to kick a 62-yard field goal. So the coach said, “Put that Nigerian boy in there! What’s his name again? Duke Amoko?” He called me Duke Amoko. “Get him up in here!” You know, they got me on the field, and man, I looked at the post, I put my head down and I kicked that ball because, you know, that was my thing in soccer. I was a midfielder, defensive midfielder, and I could put the ball wherever you wanted.

You had that skill.

I had that already, you know. So I looked at that post, man, I hit that thing. Then, you know, the typical story. The whole team screamed. They picked me up in the air. They carried me up the mile. They were calling me Mayonnaise, because they didn’t know how to pronounce my name. “Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise. Duke Amoko!” Then the coach was, “Give the boy a full scholarship.”

I love it. That’s great.

That was how I got my scholarship. Howard University was very gracious for me to have spent that whole, like the rest of my three years with a full scholarship in the art department, which was another a weird combo. I was in the art department with a football scholarship, playing football and being gone every weekend. know, like that was, that actually was my first experience of being on a flight with a team, you know? Fast forward, and here I am on flights with Antibalas. You know, when I was 11, 12, 13, growing up with 10 kids, my comfort zone had always been in a group. So I always look at Antiballas as the point where that group setting finally met its match.

Talk about the beginning of Antibalas.

It was a whole bunch of leaders in the first generation of the band, in the very beginning. When I say very beginning, it was 1998, pre-millennium. That’s when we had a solid band. We were ready for the world. I joined in ’99, the year before the millennium. So that whole next year was when we rocked out at No More in Manhattan.

I saw you guys a number of times. I particularly remember your night-closing show at WOMEX in Spain in 2005. That was something.

Oh, man. Spain. That was a tough one because to get to that venue, we had to carry all of our instruments. I remember that I was playing three congas then, so I had to carry two and one person carried the third one for me. And we had to walk. Not only that, there was heavy traffic. We had to walk through traffic, hauling gear, so we couldn’t get to the venue on time.

Well, you guys killed it anyway. I remember being so impressed by that show.

I’ll tell you, man, there are so many high points that made that happen. We were on this high vibration. We’re playing, everyone’s feeling good, we’re changing the world. That was important to feel like you are making a change, because the first year of playing at No More in Manhattan, that was the defining moment where we had like an 18-piece band. Everyone who came to New York would show up. It felt like the Shrine in a way, because it had this organic feel to it. That made everything. And that was when I wrote my first song, “MTTT.”

Which stands for?

“Mother Talker Tik Tok.” I wrote a song and I said, “This song is gonna be timeless.” So my first year when I joined the band, I spent that year writing that song because throughout the whole time the band was playing Fela’s repertoire, and a couple of instrumentals that Martin [Perna] and Gabe [Roth] pulled out of repertoire. You know, we all kind of contributed. But mostly, it was all Fela’s music in the beginning. But I was determined. I know that if I’m in Nigeria, I would never play Fela’s song. You wouldn’t dare. But we had the liberty of advancing his music without any interruption. Everyone was just in awe because we came in with an authentic approach, not trying to dilute or make it sound better. All you can do is just honor it and hit your notes, right? Because Fela has all these musicians who were kind of learning, so musicianship got much better. But it was that whole authentic sound, you know? That was so important, and that was my role. My role was to lend authenticity. And I did not let notes fly by without me making a comment.

Oh, yeah?

Yes. But also I had, if you want to say, an elegant way of doing it, without sounding like I knew everything. Because the person that I was dealing with was Gabe. Gabe Roth was a master at taking the music and reverse engineering it. He could figure out what makes this song work. The deconstruction of the songs is where it’s at. When you can figure out how to deconstruct and then recompose. Obviously, that is a high-level way of making music sound authentic, just to be able to understand the language that is being written in and the nuances of those rhythms, because Fela was writing primarily in the Yoruba language. So if you mess with that melody or you mess with the shape of it, you’re now speaking in another language.

Yup. Absolutely.

Or you could say you are now speaking the other dialects.

Sure. Afrobeat is like that. It’s got its core, but there’s room for innovation, as the new generations has shown.

Exactly. And hey, there are many more rooms. This is just the beginning, you know what I’m saying? Fela wrote in Yoruba. Well, how about Efik? How about Igbo? How about Ibibio? You start looking at all those other languages that all sit on a bed of what? Orisha rhythms. All sitting on top of the underlying clavé.

Let’s come to your current project. I saw you guys opening up for Femi in Norwalk, CT, in 2022. I liked the music. It felt to me like an original take on Afrobeat. Talk about the point when you decided to have your own thing.

Well, there have been many moments when I wanted to do that. Right after my first song, “MTTT,” which I presented to the band towards the end of our run at No More and before 9-11 happened. I presented that song and it became the one song that just changed everything for Antiballas at that time. It started the journey to write new material. The originality door was open for me. That song became my template for writing.

Now, after I did that one song, I started looking more into my Kung Fu teachings. I was teaching Kung Fu classes, and I was using the methodology of how I was teaching to write songs. It was very intentional. I didn’t want to be rushed. I was experimenting. I was in my laboratory because it was my home, it was my dojo, it was my print shop. I had all this stuff around. I started taking little pieces and just messing around. I wasn’t a pianist, but I was learning how to play, so my limitations helped me create interesting combinations, call-and-response, all the things that I learned in Ghana, or from my grandmother. So all those things were seeping through now. This is how you find your voice. Anyway, as those songs developed, I had a group of ideas, and the first ones were on the album The Fu Chronicles (Daptone, 2020).

All those songs were taking their inspiration from my first song, “MTTT,” and from all the touring that I was doing with Antibalas. That created that palette. But in between then, during holidays, I would write all these really cool things, because I was always hanging on Thanksgiving Day, on Christmas–those days I didn’t go anywhere; I didn’t have any family. I was at my office in New York, or my clothing store, because I was designing clothes and I would sell them. Every three months I would do a fashion show. So that was the cycle of my creative process. So within that, I would write things.

And that’s where this album came from. Lion Awakes. Talk about that.

The songs are based on the lion dance. The lion dance was my thing, my specialty in martial arts. So when I was studying, I specialized in the drums, and when we do the lion dance through Chinatown, you go to restaurants and bring people good luck. But you gotta touch the lion to get good luck. That tradition for me is very African, very Nigerian. So I really got into it. I would play these drums for hours. My hands would have blisters, and I’d be bleeding because it’s cold, it’s raining, we’re playing the drum in the rain. We did that whole thing every year, Chinese New Year. So that drumming created my palette. That’s why it was called Fu Orchestra: Kung Fu meets Afrobeat. That was just me meeting myself, my African side of me trying to communicate with the Kung Fu side of me. It was like my yin and yang, if you will, or how I was collaborating with the two teachings I was involved in.

In the earlier parts of my days in New York, when I was in fashion really heavily, Chief Araba Adedayo Ologundudu was my Babalawo friend, a very good friend. He passed away recently in Georgia. Interesting story. Because he came out of Nigeria too during Festac, and his whole thing was to spread the knowledge of the Orishas. He had a place in New York called Spoken Word Cafe, and I helped him do the construction there. So I would do some shows there. I brought Antibalas to play there. I was helping to get his thing going, because I had my own store. So both of us had very similar inspirational sources to push and express the culture, but he was doing it from an intellectual place as a Babalawo.

Chief Araba made a lot of visits to Cuba and Brazil. He started encouraging me to sing all the Orisha songs. So being close to him, and knowing how he was close to my mom and my grandmother, that whole lineage for me was something I’m supposed to continue. So he and I had been like spending time together, and since he passed, literally about four months ago, he didn’t get a chance to see the release of the songs. But he heard them all. He brought all his people to my shows in New York, at Joe’s Pub, you know. He was really one of my big fans encouraging me to constantly find new ways to express the culture.

I wish we were here to talk about the predictive power of your song last fall, “Madam President”, but alas, it didn’t work out that way.

Well, you know what? It’s gonna happen at some point in our lifetime, you know? And for me, it marks the beginning of the Aquarius age, because Aquarius just began and all the things that are happening now are like the wrap-up of the previous age. This is just the beginning of it. It’s hard to hold on to things that are not positive, you know? Because negativity can kind of tear you up after a while.

It sure can.

I mean, we’ve seen this before. When you pull the lens back, you know, you see a whole pattern, it’s a pattern. This is the one that really challenges you. They say activism is not something that you do in one lifetime. It takes several. It might take many, many, many lifetimes. You build on it; you stumble a little bit; another person comes up and picks it up.

Let’s get to Lion Awakes. What was the concept of this album?

It comes from the myth story of the traditional Chinese lion dance. The Chinese lion gets tossed out of the heavens. He lands. Obviously, I made up my own story where I had to you know, embellish it more with like something that would be more in fitting with where we are, where I think we’re heading with revelations in our world. I placed him in an ancient Africa, before the land was split up.

Let’s imagine this myth experiencing another setting now, right? So in the story of the Chinese lion dance, the lion has to find the right medicine so he can get his power back, so he can go back to his rightful place in the heavens. He had the coolest gig in the world. His gig was to protect the secrets of creation, the flower of life. That was his gig, but he took it for granted. He gets tossed out of the sacred temple by the Jade Emperor. That’s the story. So now he has to find the right medicine, which is embedded in this thing called Lin Chin. And when he eats this medicine, he gets his power.

And because he’s so happy to have gained his power back, he brings you good luck as he departs back to the heavens. So in my story, or at least in the song, it expresses not only the remorse of having been tossed out of the heavens, he finds a new way of living. He meets a good-doer. And Africa always is never short of good-doers. And I also put in Babalawo because it always has a negative connotation. I put the Orishas in a positive light where they are all good-doers. And we are in an era of good-doers. Good-doers always come to save the day. We are the ones who are going to set things right.

So that is the way I look at the story. The lion eats this medicine, and not only does he gain his power back, but then he starts to collaborate. In Chinese culture, this is a way of me trying to express how the relationship could look like if the new colonizers of China were using their myths to tell the real truth of what they could do for our society. They would be colonizing in a much more positive way, where it’s a win-win for everyone.

And if our cultures and our myths can collaborate and our gods can collaborate like all of our internal organs collaborate, we would have a thriving society. So that is what Lion Awakes in a broader sense means.

Wow. So these five songs tell this story. They take us through these events.

Yes, it’s a continuous story. The lion awakes, he’s happy, I’m a happy Lion. And while he’s offering his good deeds, he becomes “Shadowless,” a good doer that doesn’t need to be seen because he always does all the good while we’re sleeping. And some of the things that he does are things that happen when we are not aware of what’s actually keeping us alive. That is what the song “Shadowless” is representing. And then ascended Lion is the completion. Lion has now gained all his full strength, done his job. Now he can ascend back to the heavens, to the seven stars. And seven stars represent the Big Dipper where thunderstorms come from in the Chinese myth. It’s also the place of equilibrium where life and death meet, where you can choose life or choose death. So it’s a cool myth concept that I’m weaving into the song.

Beautiful. Musically, I love the polyrhythms in the first two songs. “Lion Awakes” can be counted in either four or six. They both work. I love that. And then we get “Happy Lion.” I hadn’t thought about the martial arts connection, but that song has a kind of military vibe going.

Yes. Yeah.

Are you working with the same musicians that I saw in that show in Norwalk, when you were opening for Femi?

Yes, many of them. The only different lineup on the crew would be the percussionist, because Dende, who plays with me normally, was not there then. Dende brought all these incredible drums from Nigeria.

Dende is great. He told me about buying drums in Nigeria. Being from Brazil, he was very excited about that.

My goodness. When we went on that trip to Nigeria, he had reached out to a Samba group. There’s a Samba group in Lagos who live in this favela-like situation, very, very similar to Brazil. And they’re this small town in Lagos, one of those reclaimed neighborhoods. I never went with him there, but this guy came and came to our hotel, and Dende was ordering drums. Then he came to one of our rehearsals with like four sets of talking drums and to show Dende, and wow, he bought them all. So yeah, he featured on the album. I sent him all the tracks and then he played everything he had. I mean everything. When we got to the studio, Tommy had a lot of work to do.

That’s Tommy Brenneck, your producer.

Tommy is a genius. I love Tommy. And you know, he didn’t want me to tell, but he really did a lot of work. You know what producers do. He replayed some bass lines, all kinds of things. We recorded at his studio on the West Coast, in LA. His studio was just being completed. So we were the first band to play while the walls still had fresh paint.

An inauguration. Beautiful.

It totally was. Anyway, Tommy played second guitar on “Black Magic Sister.” He’s multi-instrumentalist, amazing pianist, amazing everything, fast worker. Mr. Analog. I knew him back when he started doing his thing in his bedroom in Brooklyn, with Budos Band. He recorded all their first album there.

Well, Amayo, this album is a real fruition of a lot of things coming together. It drops on January 17, and I look forward to seeing you do this stuff live.

You know Eddie Vanegas who leads the Sweet Plantain String Quartet? He plays violin and trombone, and he’s going to be featured in the show. He’s incredible. We’ve talked about doing a thing in Cuba. We’re going to transpose a lot of Fela’s music with a string quartet and my voice and percussion.

How cool is that?

It was a really ambitious project but the cellist David Gotay, who is Cuban, passed away recently. He was the fire behind Sweet Plantain and Eddie was his right-hand guy. Anyway, they played the strings on the album. Our idea is that once we get a short tour going, when we do some cities, we would work with like the local symphony to beef it up a little bit so we can kind of do a collaborative thing.

Well keep us posted on all of this, and all good luck with the release.

Thank you.