By IYABO AINA

Call him the  undisputed king of event packaging, and you’ll be absolutely right , as Ayoola Shadare  the CEO of Inspiro production , a company that’s into Media ,Entertainment and Marketing has for many years been working round the clock to perfect a standard jazz festival for Nigeria.

Inspired by the ever-vibrant Cape Town International Jazz Festival in South Africa, which attracts thousands of tourists from around the world  on a yearly basis, Inspiro had in the past staged different jazz concerts in Lagos, including the recent Bayelsa International jazz festival , Lagos International Jazz Festival, Nigeria International Jazz Festival and also packaged the yearly Muson Jazz Festival, which was conceived as part of the Muson Festival.

Recently , Ayoola Shadare  talks to Saturday Vanguard  about his life and career. Enjoy

My career

I’m a music and show promoter, I’m a background manager of integrated marketing and communication media event and also the CEO Inspiro production, a company that’s into Entertainment, P.R., Media and Marketing.

My experience in the field

Well, the vision is to promote jazz artistes  and their music here in Nigeria and throughout the globe. But, I do give  helping hand to the secular artistes too, as long as the music makes ‘sense’ to me and is from a Nigerian artiste. Inspiro Production is the sole organisers of the live jazz festivals held severally in Lagos and one was recently held in Bayelse called Bayelsa International jazz festival and it was very successful .

Platforms, events  for artistes

I have a yearly event to promote jazz acts regardless of their  denomination or ethnic background. I have a new project which I am working on and it’s called Naijazz project , its about bringing jazz artistes together because if you look at other genre of music industry, you will see that they are making it. For  instance, the likes of 2face, D’banj, P-Square and others who are commanding millions. So,  we are trying to identify Nigerian talented jazz artistes and package them internationally .

So in a nut shell , our goal is to get all these artistes and promote them globally.

Challenges of starting  up

Well,  apart from having to provide almost the basic infrastructure needed in production by myself, the toughest challenge was getting people to accept you .

I have thrown in the towel several times.  It’s been tough  because entrepreneurship in Nigeria is not easy and not supported .

Meanwhile,  small and medium scale enterprises in other countries  contribute much to the development in those countries. But in Nigeria, it is not encouraging though Nigerians are very enterprising. I find out that people come out of town and find one quality that they want to  take back .

And Nigerians provide everything for themselves unlike in other countries where you find out that all the infrastructures and amenities are provided by government. It hasn’t been easy in this environment but it has been fulfilling. I am doing what I have been gifted  to do and I haven’t compromised on that. Any body who is doing entrepreneurship in Nigeria successfully and is not doing any illegal thing should be given medals and awards because it is not easy as an entrepreneur.

So generally, I will say that the journey has been up hills. Things might be looking beautiful now but in the beginning, you wouldn’t want to associate with me because of the stress .

Being there  yet

I can’t say but I think I am fulfilled and over the years, people have seen that these guys are consistent . But are we where we want to be ? No, because our bench mark is not in Nigeria alone but global. Jazz  to me still needs to be among the best globally.

This profession is about jazz promotion and event promotion. From the beginning, we learnt to buy books and travel to different countries to see what they are doing that is different from what we are doing in Nigeria and we have been able to discover that and we are working on becoming the best in jazz music.

So, it is when you travel to other countries and listen that you know we  need to adjust. Another thing is that we succeed late in Africa. For example, I  am over  forty and stillstruggling, unlike other young jazz promoters outside the country who  are in their 20s and have made it. So we still have a lot to do because we are not there yet .