‘Success is a thing of the mind’

The Pulse

Dubem Ochokwu, Obianuju Udeh a.k.a Switch da Lyrical Witch, Babatunde Omomeji, Moses Philips, Charles Nkamiang and Asuquo Okon are all part of the clan that formed the amaizing band The Pulse, which won the 2009 edition of the annual musical contest, Star Quest, organised by beer giant, Nigerian Beweries Plc. These young artistes, who have made commendable progress in their chosen career in less than a year, spoke to The Source about their success story and what they believe the future holds for them. Excerpts
By Osamudiamen Ogbonmwan
Your reign as winners of the annual Star Quest musical talent hunt show would come to a glorious end in a few weeks time. How would you describe the last one year?
In one word, we’ll like to say: learning. If we have to go any further, we’ll say it has been a very interesting and challenging experience.
Challenging in what sense?
We are a band and bands are not really supported in Nigeria. Most organisers of shows would rather invite an artiste, who would come with only his CD. Because we are a band, they seldom invite us and if they do, they ask us to perform with CD which is very discouraging. They want to clip your wings. It’s been tasking, but in the long run we have learnt a lot and now we are stronger.
But most people have been of the opinion that as winners of a major event, organisers of shows would be falling over themselves to have you?
Well, in this industry you hear people talking about ‘paying of dues.’ Our understanding of dues isn’t just the time you have invested, but also the efforts you make. Yes, people do want The Pulse to perform at events, but we guess that when they think about the expense, like we are six and we have a manager, they’ll rather want to take an artiste who is only going to come with his manager and, of course, play a CD. We are still learning. Right now, we are trying to satisfy certain organisers. We go to a show, bring our instruments and give a good performance.
After this one year, are we to expect seeing you guys together because it is no secret that many groups easily separate?
Our foundation is built on God. We share love and unity. We can tell you for sure that we don’t know what can separate us. We have come really far and we are so diverse in different genres of music. We play all kinds of music, that’s why we are a live band. We still see ourselves as a group after our one year. Right now, we are searching for our own place because we have to move out of the place we are now. We still want to live together. We want to stay in the kind of house which Star gave us. It was fantastic. We are currently building a rehearsal studio and our album would be coming out very soon. We are going to do what will make Nigeria proud and it is going to be of international standard. We don’t see ourselves breaking up. We encourage ourselves to do other stuff, so that money comes in from other avenues. And most of all, we respect our boundaries.
You guys come from different parts of the country and have been living together for a while now. How do you tolerate each other?
It has been challenging living with people you’ve never known before. But it has helped us all to be better people. We know our strength and weaknesses and we cover up for each other. We have come to learn how to speak with one voice and stick together no matter what comes our way– not only on stage, but also in our everyday lives.
Many people who have followed the success story of your band say that Switch (the only female member of the group), due to her amazing lyrical abilities, make the group stand out. What’s your reaction to this?
As a band, we must state here that we are very proud of Switch da Lyrical Witch. Then again, we must understand that the audience would definitely love one or two acts in a band. Some people come to us and say they love the saxophonist, guitarist, pianist, drummer or the soloists. We all have our roles. The lyricists are nothing without the instrumentalists. People have the right to choose their favourite in the band, but don’t forget that each of us have a big role to play in the group. It’s a group thing. As the saying goes, in the word TEAM, there is no I.
Switch, how do you feel about this?
The first day we met at the Federal Palace Hotel for the competition, no one wanted to talk to me. But these guys spoke to me from that place. I want to say that these guys made me. I never knew anything about a band, but these guys taught me, they chose and accepted me and now the band has made me, I didn’t make it. If I had gotten into another band in the house which was not as crazy as these guys, I wouldn’t be here. The band brought everything out in me.
Your single entitled Sote has been enjoying quality air play from different quarters, and you guys further surprised fans when you featured award-winning American Artiste, Busta Rhymes in the remix of the song. How were you able to get him?
The truth is that we owe it all to star. We learnt that he heard the song and he loved it. We found it hard to believe, that a whole Busta Rhymes would like us. It was too good to be true, because this was someone we grew up listening to and looking up to. When he arrived Nigeria, he really wanted to meet with us and we were also eager. We are still very much overwhelmed and very grateful. He is a big brother to us now. We owe it to Star and the help of Kennis Music.
Who wrote the Sote song and why did you write it?
The Pulse wrote it. We had to write it based on our experiences. So one day, we started laughing at ourselves based on the experiences we had before coming for the competition. Dubem actually brought the hook Sote. Someone would say something, then we will say Sote. We then sat down and wrote it down. The original version is very long, but we had to reduce it.
You guys must have become richer during your reign as Star Quest winners. How rich are you now?
We just give all glory to God. Success is not judged by how much you have. We are very happy and we feel fulfilled. We are currently doing what we love doing. We dreamt of being this way and we are living it. Success is a thing of the mind.