According to The Guardian’s October 28 report, Seyifunmi Michael is arranging Adekunle Gold’s “Many People” and Teni’s “Uyo Meyo” for the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) concert on November 1. He helped make the original records. Now he is arranging them for an orchestra. The shift puts a Nigerian producer’s craft, rather than only the singer’s name, at the centre of a live performance.
The festival is a useful window into a job that Nigerian pop credits often compress into one word: producer. Recording, arranging and directing a performance are related skills, but the choices change when a song moves from the studio to a hall full of players. The Guardian reports that Michael has production credits on both songs in the programme. Independent festival reporting confirms that the November 1 concert closes with two popular Nigerian songs in new orchestrations.
The record is the starting point
In a July interview with WeTalkSound, Michael described composing as creating the music, producing as shaping the recording, arranging as deciding how instruments and vocals work together, and music direction as making those decisions function on stage. That division matters here. A recorded vocal can sit above a carefully built instrumental with every part placed in the mix. An orchestra brings many people and acoustic instruments into the same room, with the arrangement determining who plays, when they enter and how much space remains for the song’s most familiar features.
Michael told WeTalkSound that his task in orchestral Afrobeats is to protect the core identity of a song while giving the ensemble room to contribute. He used Adekunle Gold’s “Sade” as an example: its acoustic guitar was the sound he felt he could not lose, even if he changed other parts of the arrangement. That is his account of a past project, not a description of what audiences will hear at MUSON. The November programme has not yet been performed.
His reported role on “Many People” and “Uyo Meyo” gives this concert a particular shape. An arranger joining a song years later may first have to reconstruct what made it work. Michael is returning to recordings on which he already has production credits. The question for the stage is what should remain recognisable and what can acquire a new scale. The answer will be heard in the performance, not settled by a press announcement.
A different kind of live credit
Michael’s work with Adekunle Gold offers a view of how much sits behind that decision. In the same interview, he said he had directed performances across several international stops and had to coordinate sound checks, the band, the artist and sometimes the production team. He described adapting a set list to the room and changing arrangements when guest performers were available. Those are operational choices as well as musical ones. They affect rehearsal time, personnel and the version of the show an audience actually receives.
He also recounted a past show when a playback system failed and the musicians continued live. The incident is his account in the WeTalkSound interview; no independent record of that particular failure was available for this piece. Its value is in explaining the responsibility he says a music director carries: a stage plan has to work even when the recorded elements do not.
At MUSON, the conductor is Walter-Michael Vollhardt, according to the society’s own event listing and reporting by The Lagos Review. That distinction matters. Michael’s reported orchestral arrangements and production history are the focus of this feature, while Vollhardt is billed to conduct the orchestra. The public event listing gives the concert time as 6 pm at the Agip Recital Hall in Onikan, Lagos.
What the festival adds
The November 1 performance sits inside MUSON’s 30th festival. At the society’s October 23 briefing, reported separately by The Lagos Review, Naija Times and ThisDay, its leaders described a programme spanning orchestra, jazz, opera, choral work and a music-and-technology symposium. The range gives popular songs a place in an institution known for formal music training without turning the entire festival into a pop showcase.
There is an industry point beneath the programming. A record can be a finished product on streaming services and also a score for a live ensemble. Those uses create different jobs for musicians, arrangers, directors and venues. This concert shows that path in concrete terms: two existing Nigerian songs, a producer with a hand in their recordings, an orchestra and a ticketed Lagos hall. It does not, on the evidence available, establish that orchestral shows are now a large or profitable market. Ticket prices on MUSON’s listing are offers to attend, not sales figures.
MUSON’s own funding model also gives the setting context. At its festival briefing, chairman Louis Mbanefo said the society has relied on venue hire and private donations. The Lagos Review carried his account, and ThisDay independently reported his emphasis on sponsors and private donors. That makes the concert part of an institution that must sustain its space and training programme as well as stage performances. No public budget for this arrangement or fee for its musicians was found, so it would be wrong to claim what this particular show pays.
The most interesting result may be musical rather than numerical. Michael told WeTalkSound that he can change a song’s structure, instrumentation or tempo, but only after identifying the sound that makes it itself. For “Many People” and “Uyo Meyo”, the test arrives when the orchestra plays them on November 1. Listeners will be able to hear whether the arrangements make the producer’s earlier decisions legible at a new scale, and whether the ensemble adds something a recording could not.
