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Ola Onabule's amazing vocals with Nicolas Meier's powerful guitar is more than impressive on 'Proof of Life' / Jazz Quad

Don't rush to look for a woman among the participants of the Proof of Life project, having heard the vocal part in the first track of the album, which is called Rio De Janeiro. You will not find her. It's just that the native of Islington, London, British singer and composer of Nigerian origin Ola Onabule with his vocal range of three and a half octaves can sing like this. And maybe differently - and in other tracks you will hear both a soft baritone and a beautiful scat (for example, in the title composition of Proof of Life or in Centauri), and many other diverse vocal techniques. Onabule enjoys wide international fame, collaborating with many European big bands and symphony orchestras, and his latest album Point Less (2019), which our site also wrote about, received high marks in the press.
 

But after the success of Point Less, the pandemic hit, making drastic changes to the lives and plans of many artists. Ola began to conduct live streams from his Casa Del Funk studio. It was during this period that he met another great musician, the Swiss guitarist Nicolas Meier, who has long lived in London. The latter is well known for his participation in the Jeff Beck group, and to our readers - for his releases on MoonJune Records, duets with Tony Oxley and recordings by his group Nicolas Meier World Group. Nicolas works very fruitfully in the field of world music, especially highlighting the music of the Middle East.
 

The musicians felt a “common chemistry” almost immediately, and already in late 2021 and early 2022, they began working on a joint project. They wrote the music together, and Ola Onabule wrote the lyrics. This is how the album Proof of Life was born, which will be released on June 30 via Onabule’s label Rugged Ram Records. As Ola recalls their joint writing work, “The writing sessions were casually enjoyable and immediately very productive. We easily sketched out ideas and put together 10 songs that formed the basis of the album in four or so half-day meetings. Once we decided that a sketched idea was a viable option, things usually went one of two ways. "I would hum ideas that Nicholas had into a recorder while he played them back to me, in order to capture the most organic and instinctive melodic and lyrical responses to the music. In turn, Nicholas would create guitar accompaniments and arrangements around the melodies that I had. We seemed to find our way to this modus operandi without any prior discussion or contrivance."
 

The result is more than impressive. We have already mentioned the wide palette of Ola's amazing vocal techniques, but the powerful guitar sound, for example, in Sorry in the Morning, leaves a sea of ??emotions. The album also features the influence of Onabule's African roots and the Eastern motifs close to Meyer, for example, in the title track Proof of Life. I think both great musicians can be proud of this work.
 

© & (p) 2025 Rugged Ram Records

10 tks / 54 mins

(Ola Onabulé – voc, keyb; Nicolas Meier – g, glissentar; Jakub Cywinski – b; Chris Nickolls – dr; Will Fry – perc;)

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