The bandleader, songwriter, singer, saxophonist and keyboard player Orlando Julius, who has died aged 78, helped to transform the Nigerian music scene in the 1960s with highly commercial, ground-breaking fusions that influenced Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat.
He began playing professionally as a teenager, working with leading musicians in Ibadan, a major Nigerian cultural centre, before starting his own band, the Modern Aces, in 1964. The group developed a strong local following thanks to Orlando’s experiments in mixing highlife and other African styles with American influences – and the young Fela took note. He regularly attended the band’s concerts at the University of Ibadan or the Independence hotel, and Orlando allowed him to join them on stage.
