They are a team of
six, including three rejects from other teams. The rejected three had
already lost motivation when they were edged out of their originally
desired band. Betrayed, rejected and told they were “not good enough,”
the contest appeared over for Beauty Aghedo, Eyube Enid and Justice
Adigho even before it began. However, in an unlikely twist, they picked
themselves up and joined forces with Samuel Tochux, Efetobor Ojarigho
and Adubi Charity to form the BEAT band. After four weeks of hard work,
they emerged as the winners of the 2011 installment of the annual Star
Lager beer-sponsored musical talent hunt, Star Quest.
A rough start
At the onset, the
band, which was later lauded for being the first and only
gender-balanced band to have graced Star Quest, appeared destined to
fail. Individually, they lacked what they believed they needed to stand
a chance in the competition.
“We had a drummer,
a keyboardist, a bass guitarist and three female vocalists. I believed
we needed at least a male vocalist and a soft guitarist to stand a
chance,” confessed Tochux, a Camerounian-based Nigerian sound engineer
who is also the leader of the band. He wasn’t the only pessimist in the
group: Adigho, a keyboardist who had been rejected by other bands, also
believed their band was made up of losers.
“When we got into
the house, I met some other contestants and we were already planning on
how to work together. Surprisingly, on the day we were to officially
constitute the band, they all went ahead with other plans and left me
out without prior warning. As other people started rejecting me, it
came to a point I was so frustrated that I decided to just join any
available band and just get evicted and get it over with. Then, I
believed the best have been chosen and I never believed the last band
to be constituted will eventually win,” the keyboardist said.
And so it turned
out that The BEAT was a band formed by mere availability, as opposed to
the coming together of talents who believed they could complement each
other and stand a chance at the competition. Aghedo and Eyube were also
let into the band when they were found helplessly crying after they
were rejected by different bands.
Under the circumstances, clicking as a band was expected to require more work, but the BEAT made it seem like a piece of cake.
“Coming together
as a band was a day’s job, but blending as one took us a while; as it
is, we are still working on blending together,” Tochux said. Ojarigho
believed he quickly settled in with his band mates because he is highly
tolerant, although he later confessed his band mates all turned out to
be good people.
A master plan
With their
“makeshift” band, the members of The BEAT knew they had to work extra
hard and get innovative with what they had and not bemoan what they
didn’t have. It was at this point that they employed the game plan
which they believe won them the contest: exhibiting great stage command.
“Our dancing and
stage presence – making the crowd notice we are on stage, moving from
different edge on stage to the other and always carrying the crowd
along – is one thing that definitely made us stand out from the rival
bands,” said Eyube, who is a student at the Lagos State University.
Adubi and Eyube
played the talking drum at some point during the competition. Even
though it was an instrument they had never played before entering the
competition, the band made them learn and play because they believed it
is a strategy that would help them get votes.
“We came up with
the idea of talking drums and konga to put emphasis on our name, The
BEAT; and we decided to have the ladies play them because we know in
Africa when a man does something it is not really [as] thrilling as
having a woman do it as nicely as a man would have,” said Adigho,
revealing another of the strategies they employed.
At a crossroad
Even though at the
beginning it appeared as though winning the contest wasn’t feasible,
they went ahead at full thrust, employing what they had, which
eventually paid off. With the ultimate prize in the bag, the sextet is
now faced with the reality of what lies ahead. They all have passion
for music and have been involved in musicmaking on an amateur level,
but many of them now appear to be in a form of dilemma on how to merge
their earlier lives with their newly-acquired, post-Star Quest status.
Even though Eyube
appeared to be a little more comfortable as she just concluded her
final exams at the university and has defended her project, she is yet
to complete the mandatory housemanship required to get her certificate;
she also has a dream of obtaining a master’s degree afterwards. For
Tochux, who was practicing as a sound engineer in Cameroun before the
show, he hopes to return to Cameroun as often as he can make time to.
Adubi and Adigho
walk an even tighter rope as they are both right in the middle of
earning their first degrees. Adubi is a 300 level mass communication
undergraduate from Delta State University, and Adigho attends the
Petroleum Training Institute in Effurun, Warri.
All six agree, however, that their fear of the unknown will not
dampen their spirits as they all believe there will always be a way,
once there is a will. Who can argue with that when they have just
proven they can do it?
