Fatai Rolling Dollar plans comeback with new album

Highlife music legend, Fatai Rolling Dollar, has revealed plans to make a comeback into the Nigerian music scene after a lull in his recently-rejuvenated career. The veteran music maker says he’s been writing and recording, and will now bless fans with a new body of work, as he prepares to release another album.
The 85 year old highlife singer, whose protégés included Commander Ebenezer Obey, and who once dominated the West African music scene with his brand of upbeat highlife music, is making no bones about reclaiming the enviable spot enjoyed by highlife music during its heydays of the 50’s and 60’s.
‘We are reviving and reforming highlife,’ he told AFP in his Lagos apartment. ‘Highlife makes people happy.’
He also sounded critical of today’s Hip-hop music, which he claims is enjoying its time in the sun, but will in due course pass.
‘Hip-hop… has its own time, when this time will pass, everything will close up, but highlife will be there, because highlife is the root of the music that we have in Nigeria today,’ he said.
‘If you want to know a good musician, a good musician should know how to play any instrument’, he said apparently referring to the growing culture of youths who take to music but have no skills in using musical instruments.
The octogenarian, decrying the level of unemployment in the country, expressed hopes to set up a music school for young artists who have no opportunity to develop their talents.
‘They are roaming about the streets…. They leave university, they have no jobs but they have the talent to play music,’ he said.
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