Tunji Oyelana Listenⓘ (born 4 October 1939) is a multi-award-winning Nigerian musician,[1] actor, folk singer, composer[2] and once a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
In the early 1980s, he teamed up with Nigeria's first and only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka, to record a musical album that satirized the corruption of the Nigerian political elite.
He was one of the original Soyinka actors travelling all over the world to interpret roles in such plays as Kongi's Harvest, The Road, Madmen and Specialists and Opera Wonyosi, to the delight of audiences.
Many of his albums would qualify as classics in their genre, deploying native wisdom, folklore and wit, mixed with sparse syncopation and antiphony, relying heavily on the human voice and its inflections to lift the spirit.
Many would recall the theme song of that programme which soon caught on with viewers: "Sura de tailor, oko Adunni, the friend of Major, expert in Toro, danshiki, and buba, also English coat and trouser o.... Sura de Tailor is your frie-n-d."[6] University of Ibadan In the 80s at the University of Ibadan, he was an artist in residence in music at the Department of Theatre Arts.