'It was supposed to take a month," sighs Eric Welles of the New York record label Luaka Bop. "That was five years ago."
He is talking about Who Is William Onyeabor?, the first compilation dedicated to the cult Nigerian musician adored by the likes of Damon Albarn, Caribou and 2 Many DJs. The title wrily refers to the label's long search for information about the man. Five years ago, all that fans knew was that Onyeabor released eight albums of exhilaratingly strange, synthesiser-led Afrobeat, laced with religious and political messages, on his own Wilfilms label between 1977 and 1985. The records remained obscure outside his hometown, the south-eastern city of Enugu, and only two songs had since been revived on compilations. Oft-recycled online claims that Onyeabor had studied cinematography in the Soviet Union and owned a flour mill could not be confirmed. He was a complete mystery.
Then, in 2008, the Nigerian writer Uchenna Ikonne, who runs an African music blog called Comb & Razor, told Luaka Bop he could track Onyeabor down in Enugu and license a career-spanning compilation. The label leaped at the chance but it took Ikonne nine months to meet Onyeabor and another two years to secure his signature. When Luaka Bop commissioned Nigerian poet and novelist Chris Abani to write the sleevenotes, Onyeabor said he wouldn't be interviewed. Ikonne told him the album couldn't be released without more information. "Well," shrugged Onyeabor, "I guess it will never come out then."
"At the beginning we thought it was a way of negotiating," says Eric Welles. "Maybe he wanted more money. But he said, 'I don't need the money. I'm not a hungry man.'" Welles became obsessed, scouring blogs, YouTube comments and social media for any biographical information and finding nothing. Whenever he phoned Onyeabor's house there was either no answer or someone hung up. It was driving him crazy. He even began dreaming about Onyeabor.
"It just didn't make sense," says Welles. "How could someone have done all these things and there be no information available?" He became fixated on a lyric from 1982's The Moon and the Sun: "If you treat me bad I'm going to run away and you'll never find me again." Was this what had happened? "Eventually I thought, 'Shit, I just have to go see this guy', y'know?" says Welles.
The Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which chronicles two South African fans' mission to find the 1970s Detroit singer-songwriter Rodriguez, is one kind of narrative: a heart-warming tale that satisfies music fans' desire to believe that talent will out and neglected musicians will, however belatedly, find the recognition they deserve. But there are many cult musicians who, despite years of effort, cannot be found or who, once located, refuse to revisit their past. How do you bring back someone who wants to remain in the shadows?
"For every happy ending there's 10 that I just have to let go," says Eothen Alapatt, whose LA-based Now-Again label specialises in soul, funk and psychedelia. "There's a shitty part of this, where you spend a whole bunch of money, time and effort to convince someone that you could do something great with something that got lost and still be told no. It's a lot of fucking frustration."
Alapatt often approaches musicians who, like Onyeabor, recorded and released their own records. "It's a special type who does that," he says. "I could be talking about a record that might only have been distributed within a 20 to 30 square mile radius and they're like, 'Well it must be worth tons of money, otherwise you wouldn't be here.' Or, 'Oh you're going to screw me over like everyone else.'"
'William is successful in his life and he doesn't feel he needs this recognition. Maybe he doesn't want to go back to that period in time. Sometimes he would say he suffered a lot during those years'
"It's always an uphill battle," says Matt Sullivan of eclectic Seattle label Light in the Attic. "It often takes years to gain people's trust because we're dealing with artists who have had some awful experiences in the music industry. You realise you're pulling some ugly ghosts out of the closet."
Alapatt has been negotiating with one musician, Texan saxophonist and label owner Leon Hutchison, for a decade now without closure either way. "Every time I talk to him he's like, 'OK man, I want to play for Barack Obama. Or, I need to meet Simon Cowell.' He's always got something." Another tricky character, Indianapolis studio owner Les Ohmit, was so stubborn that Egon eventually gave up. When he tried to get in touch again last month, he found that Ohmit had died and his archive was untraceable. "It just gutted me," he said. "That's what I'm most scared of. These guys will go to their graves and all the stuff that they consider so dear will be dispersed by people who have no idea what they're dispersing. Unless I persevere then only a few people will ever hear this music and that's a fucking shame."
Only the truly obsessed, however, persevere. The reissue business is a niche which becomes less lucrative every year. "If you were doing it for the money you definitely wouldn't be in this business," says Matt Sullivan. "It rarely makes any sense whatsoever."
When Welles arrived in Enugu this summer, the mystery of William Onyeabor deepened. The address he had been given was a dark, disused shop where a suspicious woman asked, bafflingly, "Are you from Russia?", before agreeing to escort him to Onyeabor's house on the outskirts of town. To his surprise, it was a three-storey white mansion with a fountain and a 30-year-old silver Mercedes out front. The house was like a time capsule of 1980s luxe, decorated with paintings and chandeliers and containing assorted keyboards and mixing desks. The staircase was lined with paintings of Jesus and photographs of Onyeabor, in traditional Igbo attire, shaking hands with local dignitaries. He was told the house even had its own heliport, though he never saw it.
He found Onyeabor, an imposing, muscular man close to 70, on a couch watching Christian television, and they began to talk. He ended up staying in Enugu for a week, by the end of which Onyeabor was calling him "my American son". From offhand comments and talking to people who knew Onyeabor, Welles got a sense of the man's unusual story. Onyeabor was a wealthy, well-travelled local businessman who ran a semolina factory. He was a generous, if sometimes irascible, employer. He had built a film studio, recorded and pressed all the records himself, and even paid the local TV station to broadcast his promotional videos. But many mysteries remained because Onyeabor refused to answer direct questions.
He wouldn't confirm the existence of Crashes in Love, a 1977 movie that was mentioned on a record sleeve but which nobody appeared to have seen. He kept referring to "the people from Russia" but wouldn't say who they were, or discuss his rumoured years of study in the Soviet Union. In paranoid moments, he accused his guest of attempting to copy his signature or snatch a surreptitious photograph. "We have a lot of secrets in this house," he said solemnly.
"I went there with so many things I wanted to ask him," says Welles. "I still don't know how he was able to do what he did. He's successful in his life and he doesn't feel he needs this recognition. Maybe he doesn't want to go back to that period in time. Sometimes he would say he suffered a lot during those years."
The highlight of the trip came when Onyeabor was looking at a copy of 1983's Good Name and began singing and playing air keyboards with evident pride. Welles, at last, had his moment of closure: "That was like, 'Yes! This is him! This is him right here!'"
It's the kind of moment reissue specialists live for, when the decades peel away and the old man momentarily resembles the young musician, aglow with self-belief. But sometimes the dogged fan has to accept that crucial facts will never be known. Several years ago, Matt Sullivan became "possessed" by UFO, an obscure 1969 album by LA singer-songwriter Jim Sullivan (no relation), and tried to track him down. It transpired that the singer had disappeared while driving through New Mexico in 1975, leaving behind his car, motel room and all his possessions. Months of painstaking amateur detective work led nowhere.
"At the end of the day we had so many unanswered questions," says Sullivan. "As a fan, I want to know everything but one reason so many of those old records are so captivating is because there wasn't an iPhone in the room, there wasn't a Twitter feed. I'm not going to know all the answers and that's what makes it so beautiful and pure and genuine. Not knowing makes me want to keep listening and digging deeper. But the music should be shared. That's what it's about."
Who Is William Onyeabor? is out on 15 Oct on Luaka Bop. Now-Again's latest release, Song of a Gypsy by Damon, is out on 22 Oct. Walk In Africa by National Wake is out now on Light In The Attic
