On the 30th edition of the MUSON Festival, producer and orchestrator Seyifunmi Michael presented full orchestral versions of Adekunle Gold’s “Many People” and Teni’s “Uyo Meyo” with the MUSON Symphony Orchestra.
The Agip Recital Hall was packed to the top. The show started some minutes past 6:00 PM, and the room settled into a soothing, serene calm, a world away from the chaotic, bubbling energy that usually defines an Afrobeats concert. It suited the occasion. The audience was a mix of generations, though older listeners outnumbered the young.
The MUSON Centre in Onikan, Lagos, is home to the Musical Society of Nigeria, one of the country’s leading institutions for classical and orchestral music. Its annual MUSON Festival is among the most established events on Lagos’s classical calendar, and this year marked its 30th edition under the theme “Music Sustained.”
The 2026 edition also marked 43 years of MUSON and two decades of its Diploma School of Music, which has produced more than 500 graduates. The institution celebrated with a slew of events, from a gala night to concerts to a symposium showcasing opera, jazz, orchestral music, drama and the intersection of music and technology. The orchestra concert was one of the festival’s chief events. The MUSON Symphony Orchestra, conducted by visiting German maestro Walter-Michael Vollhardt, took over the Agip Recital Hall on Sunday, November 1, 2026.
What made this edition unique is that contemporary Nigerian pop music (Afrobeats) was part of the setlist, placed within a programme of classical works already suited to an orchestra. The concert, titled Symphonic Humanity (Love, Fights, Legends), opened with Prokofiev, Rossini and two Nigerian concert works, then closed its first half with the Afrobeats segment, the fifth and sixth items on the programme, right before the intermission. It was arranged by Nigerian producer and composer Seyifunmi Michael and featured orchestral versions of Teni’s “Uyo Meyo” and Adekunle Gold’s “Many People.”
It was also the first time in roughly a decade that Nigerian popular music has featured in the orchestra concert, by Vollhardt’s recollection.”The orchestra last did Fela Kuti’s “Water No Get Enemy”, he said, “about 8-10 years ago, and that was very much fun to do.” (Fela pioneered Afrobeat in the 1970s, the sound today’s Afrobeats draws on but a distinct genre.) So when Seyifunmi’s idea arrived, Vollhardt thought it was a wonderful idea. The moment is timely and, for the institution, a watershed.
Seyifunmi Michael is best known as a music producer, but his work has increasingly moved into orchestral arrangement and live music direction. Born Bakare Michael and formerly known professionally as Seyikeyz, he has been active since 2015 and, according to the festival programme, produced the majority of Adekunle Gold’s debut album Gold, a creative partnership that continues to this day. His catalogue also includes Adekunle Gold’s “Ire”, Teni’s “Uyo Meyo” and Davido’s “1 Milli”. His work has earned Best Recording of the Year at The Headies 2019 (for “Uyo Meyo”), Best Afro Soul Producer at The Beatz Awards 2018 and Best Afro Highlife Producer at The Beatz Awards 2017.
He has served as Music Director and Orchestra Arranger for Adekunle Gold’s orchestral performances in London, Lagos, New Jersey and Toronto, working with ensembles including the Guildhall Session Orchestra and the MUSON Orchestra.
What makes this performance different is that he revisited his own work. Seyifunmi holds original production credits on both “Many People” and “Uyo Meyo”, so the concert was less a cover than a producer rewriting his own records for a symphonic ensemble.
The idea began on a flight. On a recent trip to Houston, Texas, his phone started playing “Uyo Meyo” through his earphones. “I started crying and cried for a very long time,” Seyifunmi said. “It was at that moment I started hearing the song in another dimension. An orchestra version was playing in my head. That was when I decided to do this.”
When he landed, he reached out to MUSON with the idea. “I proposed infusing Afrobeats into the set and they accepted my proposal,” he said. “I submitted two song titles, they approved it and that’s what led to tonight.”
“Many People” comes from Adekunle Gold’s sixth album Fuji (2025), a nod to Nigeria’s Fuji tradition featuring gospel star Yinka Ayefele and Fuji legend Adewale Ayuba. Its hook borrows from Ayefele’s 2003 song “Mi O Mo J’orin Lo”. “Uyo Meyo” is Teni’s song, and it won Best Recording of the Year at The Headies 2019.
Translating the songs for an orchestra was quite the challenge. “They were created in the studio, not for orchestra,” Seyifunmi said, so he had to “keep the essence of the song so it’s not so far from what people are used to.” In his words, “I had to make sure it didn’t sound alien while also making sure the richness of classical music is infused.” For attendee Wunmi Omobaloye, it worked. The arrangements, Omobaloye said, were “true to the standard of music that we expect at an orchestra.”
Zooming out, there seems to be a brewing synergy between modern Afrobeats and the orchestra. Afrobeats stars have been taking orchestras into major halls since mid-2025, and the MUSON concert sits in that lineage. In June 2025, Wizkid performed at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the Color of Noize Orchestra, conducted by Derrick Hodge. It was the first time an Afrobeats artist performed there with a full US orchestra. In the same year, Asake headlined Red Bull Symphonic at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre on November 8, 2025, backed by a 33-piece orchestra under conductor Glenn Alexander II.
Seyifunmi’s longtime collaborator, Adekunle Gold, has not been left out of this wave, and Seyifunmi has been at the heart of it. Adekunle Gold became the first Nigerian artist to headline an orchestral concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall on November 23, 2025, with the Guildhall Session Orchestra. Seyifunmi is credited among the orchestrators on the live album recorded at that show, and he went on to serve as Music Director and Orchestra Arranger for the performances that followed. Those included a sold-out night at Lagos’s National Theatre on December 26, 2025, with the MUSON Orchestra and Adekunle Gold’s band, the 79th Element, and a tour stop with a 51-piece orchestra in Toronto in July 2026.
That run is not over. Adekunle Gold has announced a return to the National Theatre, now the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts, on December 26, 2026, a year after he became the first artist to sell out the renovated venue. Billed as The Greatest Show, it brings the 79th Element and the MUSON Orchestra back together, with a similar idea and feel to last year, at the same venue.
Those were star-led concerts built around one artist’s catalogue, and most of them happened abroad. MUSON is different. A classical institution in Lagos opened its own orchestral programme to Afrobeats, and the man who shaped the orchestral sound for one of Africa’s biggest artists, Seyifunmi, was the vessel for the moment.
For MUSON’s leadership, that is the point. Chairman Louis Mbanefo said MUSON was formed for serious music, with emphasis on classical music, but its schools aim to produce musicians who, having acquired the skills, can now adapt them to any kind of music. “What the audience heard with Afrobeats,” Mbanefo said, is “all part of improving on what we have inherited from the classical world and advancing the frontiers of music performance to embrace a more African interest.”
Festival chairman Shade Doherty said it will not be a one-off. “As chairman of the festival for this year, I will say yes this will continue,” Doherty said. “We always try to have a very diverse festival which caters to all needs.” The hope, Doherty added, is that young listeners will go away feeling uplifted and unified that classical music can apply to Afrobeats as well.
The audience wants more. Attendee Ada Olisah said the performance showed that Nigerian music can be infused into the orchestra and be played and heard all over the world. Another Attendee David Adeyemi said “Yes, absolutely, the festival should do more, ” and suggested taking it “maybe outside the MUSON Centre so a lot more people get to know about it.”
In the end, it was the MUSON chairman who asked for more. “Many People” was played again as an encore at Louis Mbanefo’s request, and a classical institution closed its night with an Afrobeats song.
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