Abi Babalola Shares Her Experiences as Afrobeats’ Top Touring Manager On Martell’s ‘Swift Conversations’
Babalola recalls working with multiple A-list Afrobeats artists over the years and her pedigree as someone who always delivers.
Abi Babalola shares her journey as a self-taught tour manager and reliving major career stories.
by Martell and OkayAfrica
Abi Babalola has been working in Afrobeats before it became an umbrella term used to push Nigerian and west African pop music in the UK and across the world. Babalola has worn many hats in the 15-plus years she’s been around, but she’s most popular these days as one of the foremost tour managers for popular Nigerian artists, ensuring immaculate execution across the broad subsects that make up live show infrastructure.
On the second episode of Martell’s Swift Conversations, the video interview series with artists and industry insiders, co-presented by OkayAfrica, Aunty Abi – as she’s fondly referred to – walks viewers through her career growth, sharing tidbits about navigating her way as a self-taught tour manager and reliving stories from some of her marquee achievements. Hosted by Martell cultural ambassador Sheniece Charway, the conversation is revelatory both for its behind-the-scenes focus and the straightforward but upbeat perspective Bablola shares when discussing the trajectory of Afrobeats.
At the beginning of the episode, Babalola shares how she got into the music business through being around and working with JJC, the iconic British Nigerian artist who proudly bore the Nigerian flag in the UK music scene years before it was cool. From that early training ground, she explains her pivotal role in putting together the first Afrobeats festival in the UK back in 2011, leveraging street marketing tactics years before digital marketing became a big deal. She also talks about being in charge of Wizkid’s first UK tour in 2012, and bringing the Nigerian superstar to high schools.
In those years, she was also a video producer, working on Wizkid’s “Azonto” and Davido’s “Skelewu,” the latter while she was heavily pregnant. With all these years of experience, Babalola shares advice that are organic, nuggets informed by real life problem-solving. “I would love to see more cohesiveness,” she says, explaining that many of the pitfalls Afrobeats artists fall into could be avoided if more people shared information, rather than working in silos.
She also rejects the idea that Afrobeats could be headed for a decline, instead seeing the present as a recalibration. “If we allow it to be a phase, it will be a phase,” she says. “If we’re stubborn and we stick to our guns and know our values, it will never be a phase.”
Much later in the episode, she uses the importance of collaboration between artist management teams and tour companies as an example of realigning, explaining the importance of adjusting prices to reflect the current global economic situation, in order to ensure artists are reaching the core audience that loves their work.
In between her well thought out proselytizing, Bablola shares her experience managing Asake’s Lungu Boy Tour, representative of her process when she’s working on a tour with an artist. She explains the importance of speaking with artists and taking notes, curating stages that enhance the live show experience for both performers and audiences. She also discusses adaptability in the face of demands from artists and their creative directors, exhausting options, dealing with venues and other important nuances that have made her a successful executive so far.
“I want my lesson, as Aunty Abi, to be someone that delivered,” she says at the end of an illuminating, breezy interview. It’s an aspiration already cast in stone.
Watch episode two of Martell’s Swift Conversations here.
