Meet The Cavemen, Nigeria's New Highlife Sensations

As their name might suggest, there’s a sense of evolutionary determinism to The Cavemen. Watching them at Cross The Tracks festival in May, I am struck by how the brothers own the stage, moving across it as though born to be there. Even the more unexpected moments, like Kingsley Okorie pouring beer on Benjamin James’ drum kit during their soulful rendition of ‘Me and You’, seem almost like divine intervention, the crowd singing ‘baby it will be alright’ in unison, while James’ drum solo ricochets liquid across the stage. The weather also seems to be under their command, with a brief shower prompting the duo to play ‘Beautiful Rain’ as Kingsley tells the audience, “it’s important to acknowledge the universe.”

This theme of destiny permeates the conversation I have with the two brothers just a few weeks earlier. “The first time we ever played together, we knew it was going to be big,” explains Kingsley.

Okorie at Cross The Tracks, London, May 25 (photo: Garry Jones)

This is unsurprising when you consider how the duo have altered Nigeria’s musical landscape by reintroducing highlife to a new generation. So much so that it’s becoming difficult to imagine it without them. “Our driver played highlife to us every day,” says Kingsley, explaining how the duo were introduced to the genre they’ve become inseparable from. Travelling to and from school, they were immersed in the likes of Oliver de Coque, Osita Osadebe and Bright Chimezie, with the driver always translating the lyrics, which Kingsley especially appreciated.

“He was a diehard fan of Oliver de Coque,” says Kingsley. “He always wanted to make sure we saw him in the flesh… He never got to take us to a show [but] we did see him lying in state,” he laughs.

Their driver wasn’t the only influence on their early exposure to music, however. The pair’s mother, Bishop Loyce, played a lot of Igbo folk music and gospel in the house, two genres which feature heavily in highlife. “We always played together in her church,” says Kingsley, “I am truly a pastor’s kid.” And a proud one it seems, with their mum featuring on their first studio album ROOTS on the track ‘Obiageri (with Mama)’, an up-tempo offering whose use of vocals and birdsong almost becomes a call and response.

Despite this upbringing and a brief stint playing in the band The Movement, The Cavemen as we know them didn’t emerge until later when Kingsley was at law school. “I’ve always connected to music,” says Kingsley, “same for my brother. But, I feel like the more you go out of it, the more it calls to you.”

While Benjamin had gone to Peter King College of Music in Badagry, Kingsley was left feeling disenfranchised at Nigeria Law School in distant Bagauda, Kano. “It was really out of the happening places and walking to class one day it hit me. I felt like I was in a cave, and that’s where the idea of The Cavemen came in.”

Benjamin James at Cross The Tracks, London, May 25 (photo: Garry Jones)

After a quick call to his brother, The Cavemen started with a DIY approach, producing and recording everything themselves. They even started singing out of necessity, not being able to afford a vocalist – hard to believe after witnessing their vocal range live. Kingsley now works with a vocal trainer, but he reflects fondly on his singing journey. “People want to be good instantly,” he explains poetically, “but real beauty is born from chaos.”

ROOTS came out in 2020. It’s a beautiful introduction, featuring all the up-tempo and synth-driven trappings of the highlife genre with each track offering something different. Opener ‘Welcome to the Cave’ begins: ‘a cave is the heart of a man, and it will change Nigeria.’ The album was a massive success, particularly considering the environment in which it was born, amid COVID-19 and the End SARS protests which swept Nigeria.

Their second album Love and Highlife kept the stylings of their first while bucking trends in Nigerian music and talking about love more philosophically. “Love can be transferred in a way that feels spiritual and whole,” says Kingsley, “we need that right now, at a time when healing is more important than ever.”

While DIY has been a constant through their releases, this doesn’t mean they’ve gone it completely alone. Their contributions to Davido’s ‘Na Money’, a track also featuring Beninese-French singer Angélique Kidjo, made particular waves. Kingsley laughs when I ask him about the groove-laden tune, “as soon as the beat dropped, I knew it was going to be a classic. I didn’t know the release date – but the day my phone started going crazy, I knew it had hit.”

Just as The Cavemen are credited with repopularising highlife, Davido, alongside Burna Boy and Wizkid are credited with globalising Afrobeats. I ask Kingsley what he thinks of the genre. “Afrobeats is the world,” he says, “Our ancestors invested wisely, and right now, these are the rewards. Africa is inventing every day, and this creativity comes from the land… [it] will never run dry.”

It’s interesting to hear this perspective from a highlife group, as I would have assumed some strive for differentiation. “The media is always trying to make us categorise ourselves,” he says dismissively when I raise this. “We should all be united.”

And ultimately he’s right – it’s impossible to differentiate between genres which are so interconnected. As Kingsley says, “highlife gave birth to Afrobeats, it has always been there.” Emerging in the 1930s and 40s in Ghana, the genre took on political significance during the Nigerian civil war. This is something the duo believe can happen again.

“There is currently a generation of people embracing a different kind of culture,” says Benjamin, bounding into the room and bringing with him a fiery energy that contrasts with Kingsley’s more meditative vibe. “Nigeria’s youth want to know about their past. As a colonised country, it’s really hard to do that. We can’t ask our parents about it, as they’re traumatised. So, there are a lot of questions. If you don’t know your history, you don’t know where you’ve come from, so how do you know where you’re going to go?”

As a genre with such a rich history, highlife can help Nigeria’s youth investigate their past, and as such can help heal this intergenerational trauma. As Kingsley summarises: “highlife gives Nigeria’s youth therapy and love.” And with this, the complete belief in The Cavemen’s destiny, closely held by the brothers, washes over me. For the sake of Nigeria’s future generations, The Cavemen’s success seems fated and entirely necessary.

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today