What It's Like To... Run an Indie Records Store and Keep Vinyl Alive

Yinka Bernie explores art in several forms. He’s done just about everything you’d expect from an artist — making music, scoring films and exhibitions. There seems to be no boundaries to what he can achieve. The Lagos-based creative keeps an open mind about the work he does, and his indie ‘record label’ is evidence of this perspective. 

Egwu Records — co-founded in 2021 by Bernie — is a vinyl shop, offering music lovers a deeper connection to their favorite music. Last year, they put together the country’s first-ever vinyl festival. It was an extension of the collective’s mission of presenting vinyl records in a more interesting light, as an art form that still had a lot to offer the present generation. The night featured a performance from the legendary Sir Shina Peters, whose generation of 1980s-minted stars were some of the first to have their music distributed in that format. 

Bernie is a visionary, and all his many exploits connect back to sound. You’d have felt the assured grasp of a master if you walked into the halls of his sound exhibition, Moving Parts, which was held for three days earlier this November. Under the light of what he’s doing with Egwu Records, these achievements form an interesting portrait of one of Africa’s most exciting creators.

He shares his story with OkayAfrica, reflecting on his love for vinyls, the recent sound exhibition which was also his first solo, and what moves him to bend art the way he does.

Yinka Bernie: Egwu Records was born out of my love for music and collecting records. I’ve been collecting records for a while, so I was just creating a community to find more people that collect records. It started as a community of people I exchange records with, then turned into this whole vinyl collective and independent music enterprise, where we press records now, host parties, curate vinyl sets for events, and do partnerships. 

I have two partners, Kayotunde Animashaun and Orry Shenjobi. We run everything together. It’s set-up like a company ‘cos we have staff, there’s day-to-day running, we have projects we work on. We have events frequently. We sell records, players, and we source records for people as well. It’s a whole company on its own; it’s not a record label, but a vinyl collective and independent music enterprise. But we don’t sign artists right now. 

I’m a lover of music and I go every length to experience music. For instance when an artist I like drops an album, I’m the kind of person that would watch the interviews to find back stories, just to connect to the album and the artist well. That’s also the idea for me in collecting vinyls. Having the record of an album I really like creates a different connection to the album, like owning a physical piece of a thing I like. 

I’ve done a lot over the years. I’ve worked with galleries, visual artists, different people, and exhibited in galleries, but it hasn’t been my own thing. It has been me contributing to solos or group exhibitions. This is the first time it’s just me, showing my work. 

Moving Parts has been a work in progress for two years, ‘cos I’ve been making these videos, and collecting sounds from different bridges in Lagos. There are so many bridges on the mainland. And where I live, there’s a particular bridge I use when I’m taking a walk. When I’m walking, I notice everything around me. I’m very fascinated by people around me, I’m a big people watcher. I collect my observations and find different patterns in the way people do things.

There’s this weird thing that happens in my brain where I notice a pattern, how somebody walks, or how somebody looks, and another day or few months later, I see another [similar] scenario. It’s not like deja vu, but I observe patterns very frequently. That whole concept is how Moving Parts came to be; going to these different bridges, making videos, collecting sounds, eavesdropping on conversations, speaking to people. I just put everything together. 

The bridge is one place that is not still; Lagos itself is not still at all, but the bridge… there’s always movement, there’s always people using this bridge to do different things. The common goal is they’re always moving. So I thought ‘what name would fit this idea?’ Moving Parts is something that stuck and I just concluded to say we’re all moving parts of society and this exhibition captures Lagos in this time. 

I do creative consulting from time to time for friends, and brands that want to bring visions to life. My mind is very visual. I see things visually and sonically. It’s something I’ve always done, not even professionally. For instance, if my friends are trying to start a brand; I’m the guy they always call, just to sort through ideas, to see if the logo makes sense, or this image makes sense. It’s something I’ve always done and enjoy doing for myself and other people. 

Also, I want to make hardware. Right now, I’m exploring the other side, which is audio. I really wanna explore hardware like making earphones, making speakers, just more creative ways to listen to or experience music. There’s something I’ve been working on, a physical product for audio. I want to work with different brands to extend the sound experience and the way we consume music.