UK-based don and biographer of the late thespian, Jimi Solanke, Prof. Oluwatoyin Sutton has revealed how the Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka inspired the title of her book.
Sutton said the title “Jimi Solanke: The Indestructible” was inspired by the foreword of a Solanke’s children’s book written by Soyinka. The 353-page biography chronicles the life and times of Jimi Solanke, most especially his troubadour and trajectory as a multifaceted and multitalented artiste.
Speaking at a media unveil held recently in Lagos, in company of another eminent scholar, Dr Oluseyi Ogunjobi, the author said, “This was not the work title. This title happened upon us. I don’t know if people are aware that Uncle Jimi published a book of children’s stories and what he included were his visual paintings in the stories, and I was looking through the ‘foreword’, Prof. Wole Soyinka wrote it, but he had signed somewhere in one of the copies – ‘To Jimi Solanke, The Indestructible’.
“So, this is actually something that came directly from that wonderful literary icon who knows and knew Jimi more than anybody else. I only wish I had the chance, when I interviewed Prof. Wole Soyinka, to delve into why he used that phrase, but I thought it’s enough for me that he did.
“So, I thought I would use it because I knew that it was loaded, and for me, I could kind of glean a little bit because Uncle Jimi was resilient. He had lots of downs, especially in the latter years, but he always kept getting up and kept going.
“There was something indestructible, dare I say, about Uncle Jimi and if it’s a spirit, because it’s not the body. Honestly, one of the things I would take away from this is his spirit. If I had half his resilience, I would be more than thankful.”
On what prompted her to pen the biography, Sutton, who described Solanke as a father figure, disclosed: “The best way to describe Uncle Jimi is to say he was like a father figure, because he was actually a part of my childhood growing up in Ile-Ife. So, the year I was born was when he came to Ife, and obviously, he was in Ife for the first 10 years, and then he came back in the 1980s and then again towards the end of his life. My father had a club, The Beacon and Uncle Jimi used to play ‘Sunday Jam’ there when I was a teenager, and we used to go and watch him perform. Uncle Jimi was a friend of my parents, so he was in my childhood and my early adulthood before I left the country.”
The author added, “I had lost track of Uncle Jimi. I felt a thud in my heart. He was over 70 and he was still able to recount all those stories vividly. How much longer would he be able to recall them so vividly? I said to myself, ‘This is the time.’ I am not a writer in that professional sense, but my instinct was that I could at least take notes and preserve them, and that was my approach. I felt it would be a wonderful thing to capture what he had to say about his life.”
Solanke, who died on February 5, 2024 and had since been buried, was an actor, musician, storyteller, TV producer, presenter and author in his lifetime. A Wole Soyinka’s protégé, Solanke’s career path spanned several universities in Nigeria and abroad.