New video: Gloria Ibru ft O' Franklin - Suga Mama

Gloria started singing at age seven as a member of the All Saints Anglican Church choir, Yaba. She was a member of the church choir until she was 27 years old. Even when she traveled to the US for her university education, she still found time to sing in the church choir whenever she was home on holiday. However, singing socially did not start for her until she returned home finally in 1987.

"I did it as a hobby," she says, "and because I love to sing, I sang everywhere. Professionally, when I started making money from it was 16 years ago when I opened the bar. I have been doing this for basically all my life. I sang in the school choir, church choir, but the band has been doing this together professionally for 17 years."
Her love for music made her open a bar called Mama G's at Apapa. She had a band that used to come in to perform every night. But the band's inconsistency in putting up appearances at Mama G's forced her to put a band together and begin a new career in music.
Ibru has done three bars and each of them failed due to rent challenges. This may sound ridiculous considering her father's wealth. Owning a property shouldn't be a problem. But Ibru will have none of that at all. She is too independent-minded to be clouded by her father's business empire and wealth. "Is it my father that wants to open a bar?" she asks unashamedly. "I am the one that wants to open a bar so I should work hard towards acquiring my own. My father is still alive. He has not divided his property."
Ibru's passion lies with highlife, jazz and calypso. Often her beat could be a mixture of the three genres. Little wonder she says: "My album will be a fusion of highlife and jazz, highlife and calypso. Those are my genres. I use my songs to fight for all kinds of issues. There are jazz artistes, there are highlife artistes, but I call mine jazz life. It is a fusion of highlife and jazz."
With jazz life, Ibru's own creation, one is not surprised that she may be towing the line of great musicians like Fela Anikulapo, Sunny Ade, etc who created and popularised their own kind of music that have become legendary. Hence she defines good music as "music that is constructed".
"What I understand as a good song has verse, chorus, verse, chorus bridge, chorus end. There is construction to music. I don't understand how you will go into a studio, cook a beat down in 10 minutes and just sing la-la-la-l-ala and say you have done music. That is not music, that is a beat on your computer," she says.