Chief Sunday Adeniyi Adegeye MFR (born 22 September 1946), known professionally as King Sunny Adé, is a Nigerian jùjú singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist.
[4] Sunny Adé was born in Osogbo to a Nigerian royal family from Ondo and Akure, making him an Omoba of the Yoruba people.
He founded the King Sunny Ade Foundation, an organization that includes a performing arts center, a state-of-the-art recording studio, and housing for young musicians.
[6] After over a decade of resounding success in his native Nigeria, Sunny Adé received great acclaim in Europe and North America in 1982.
[7] Sunny Adé‘s stage show was characterized by top musicianship, highlighted by his guitar mastery, and dexterous dancing.
His next album, Syncro System (1983), was equally successful,[11] earned him his first Grammy Award nomination in the ethnic/traditional folk recording category, hence making him the first Nigerian Grammy award nominee ever[12] On 16 July 2017, King Sunny Ade announced that he would be returning to the stage in London alongside his rival act Ebenezer Obey for a musical comeback themed A Night 2 Remember with the Legends [13] In 2017, he was appointed ambassador for the "Change Begins With Me" campaign by the Nigerian Minister of Information Lai Mohammed.
Producer Martin Meissonnier introduced King Sunny Adé to Chris Blackwell, leading to the release of Juju Music in 1982.
King Sunny Ade parted ways with Island records after the production of 1983's Synchro System and 1984's Aura.
[19] In 1987, Sunny Adé returned to the international spotlight when Rykodisc released a recording of a live concert he did in Seattle.
[citation needed] In recent times, hip-hop music appears to be holding sway with the electronic media in Nigeria with massive airplay.
At the beginning of another round of tours in the United States and Canada, Sunny Adé, now known as The Chairman in his home country, was appointed a visiting professor of music at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife.
[22] In July of that same year, King Sunny Adé was inducted into the Afropop Hall of Fame, at the Brooklyn African Festival in the United States.