IIn the Violet Still of A Late Night Writing, I stumbled across her: a woman who was dressed with painted leather and glittering chains, legs in straps. She stood in the middle of the middle and held the microphone as if she wanted to reduce it, her silhouette, which was framed with the name of the artist from a red LED screen with the inscription “Rock Nights”: Clayrocksu.
A sparse amount of silver macles in trance was shot under the stage of the pop arithmetic in Lagos, Nigeria. The performance provoked a small moral panic in the comments: screams of “demonic” and feared that Clayrocksu “slipped into the dark”.
The darkness Clayrocksu and others do not move occult – it is dark. In the west, the subcultures of Goth and Emo offer the outsiders a name, a trunk, but they hardly exist in Nigeria. The industry forgets every few decades here, and since AfroBeat and later Afrobeats have been climbed, rock has been sealed or paved. But it is preserved by DIY shows such as Clayrocksus Rock Nights series, WhatsApp -chats, Shared Gear and today and today's little scene -bands such as Lovesick, Asingermustdie and The Recurrence -are raw and defiant.
Long before Clayrocksu et al. Ever screamed at a microphone, the Nigerians shape rock in their own rhythm. Between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria fought a brutal civil war after the southeastern region declared itself the Republic of Biafra. As a result, the Hygrades, which in the 1970s illuminated the 1970s in the 1970s, came together with the Funkees and Tauben – Post -Biafran with guitars and tried to transform trauma into sound. These early bands still leaned towards the boast of Hendrix and the growling of Jagger, but only as Fela Kuti-Helltig, lyrical, unmistakable our language Afro-Rock in a Nigerian voice.
But immediately tasty pop, dance and gospel came to fill the air waves, while rock no radio, no label thrust, had no hype. Nevertheless, it continued to live in the edges, and more recently, fan-guided WhatsApp groups such as Rockaz World and Rock Republic have kept the flame running together with the now dissolved Naija School of Rock blog. Clayrocksu is not just a musician and now a member of the record academy in the United States, whose members vote for the Grammys. She is also an ambassador for the scene that the collective Afrorockstars set up in 2024. It is a kind of Justice League for Lagos' Indie -Rock scene in which artists are combined, host shows and the flame kept alive.
With her monthly Rocknights series on the queue due to a lack of funds, Clayrocksu has teamed up with Lagos venue Kevwe and CAM for a band called Lagos Misfits Takeover. I go there to find out what is left of the Nigerian rock.
“I don't remember a time when I wasn't in rocks,” says Clayrocksu before going on stage. As a child, she played on her Walkman Bootleg-Pop Rock CDs. Her father was also a rock head – less angular metal, more Bon Jovi and Michael Bolton – but when Clayrocksu started to cover his favorites, she finally got it. “I can't explain it,” she says of her love for rock. “The music called me and I want others to feel it too.”
It is unimpressed by the moral panic that unleashed it. “I honestly don't pay it,” she says. For the AfrorockStars community “Rock is only part of life, just like your belief”. She takes a break, fingers graze the crucifix around her neck. “Some of them also carry crosses.”
She introduces me in Lovesick's front man Korny, a 31-year-old, quietly spoken man with a bald head and a Jason Voorhees hockey mask, who was cut to his pants, his happy charm. “I bought it the night when we won the Battle of the bands,” he says, referring to a Lagos event at the end of last year that Lovesces was the first live performance. “I used my last money to buy it from a seller who said everything she sold is blessed. I wore it, we played and we won triple what I paid.”
It also looks from the nerded IT solution type, but that changes when he takes the microphone and growls through guidelines, a track whose texts -“I have 5k [Naira, about £2.50] Leaved on my bank account ” – it is about surviving Nigeria as a bankruptcy youth.
The sound at the venue is rough, but “we can't wait for perfect sound like AfroBeats”, Korny armpits. “The show has to go on.” His voice – guttural, sharp, sometimes screeching – feels common. “I brought back in 2011,” he says. “Only imitate my favorites.” You were Korn's Jonathan Davis, Chester Bennington by Linkin Park, and asked Alexandrias Danny Worsnop. Now he drives through screams, growls and swear squealers. “It's not noise,” he says. “It's a voice. A message.”
Brother Duo also plays Asingermustdie at Kevwe and Cam. “I hope you are ready to die tonight”, one of them fatal to the microphone. The walls of the event location are lined with portraits of legends such as Oliver de Coque and Fela Kuti to observe the rising acts of the night, and Asingerustdies set feels significantly Nigerian as a ship, but with a message that is rooted in alive experience. “It's all about feelings, experiences, social problems,” the brothers tell me. Her song Córazon, for example, was born from a poisonous love story, and the fear that leaving would hurt more than stay.
Telefons shine during the Lovesick set and again for Clayrocksu, because the fans want to prove that they were here. Xavier, a fan of Lovesick, says he has been in rock for about 13 years: he heard it for the first time at the need for speed and FIFA, and it hit him like nothing else. “Academies of power and riffs break from traditional music patterns – they are chaotic, but nice,” he says. “In a place like Nigeria, Rock helped me to understand everything.”
For this amount it is not only music, but also space to feel in a country that does not reward the difference. “Even if you don't sing rock,” says Clayrocksu, “you can still be one of the cool children with us.”