The Endless Life of Onyeka Onwenu

Central to the image Onwenu cultivated early in her career was that close-cropped hair and its middle patch of grey which filled out as she aged. By her fifties, this was just how she looked—grand; as much a national symbol as Ladi Kwali on Kwali’s immortalizing currency, the 20 naira note. Approximating something of the regional allure of Cape Verde’s Cesáire Évora, the familial advocations of South Africa’s Miriam Makeba, and the appeal of, say, America’s Tina Turner doing the ‘What’s Love Gotta Do With It’ strut, Onwenu marshalled these disparate qualities into something that metaphorically amounted to the grace of a stallion. From the moment she debuted to the very last moments of her life—she died just after her final performance in July 2024—she inhabited stardom with this grace. A knowledge that her chosen audience would wait for her to arrive at a sound or an idea.