Tunde Kuboye has been described in the Wall Street Journal, New York as “being more inventive than most musicians anywhere in the world”. The article “Jamming with the dentist” was authored by Lee Lescaze of the Wall Street journal when he visited Jazz 38 Awolowo road in 1991 and observed the creative combination of business entrepreneurship, artistic excellence and social entrepreneurship situated under one roof of a compound, surrounded by 16 shipping containers located on one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Nigeria.

 

Tunde Kuboye, musician and his late wife, dentist and Jazz singer Fran Kuboye founded Jazz 38 in 1985. He is the CEO of Jazz 38 Ltd- a service provider organization that creates ideas with unusual concepts and eventually, the products of these ideas. The company uses multimedia as a vehicle for the actualization of dreams and ideas and works with individuals and local and international corporate organizations.

Tunde Kuboye, a cultural rights, human rights and environmental rights activist is also the president of Jazz 38 International Centre for the Arts-an NGO; activist also the president of Jazz 38 International Centre for the Arts. This description is synonymous with his Extended Family Band, which was established in the Museum Kitchen, Lagos, Nigeria in 1979. 

Tunde and the Extended Family band have established a reputation in Nigeria for performance of quality music and among the band’s clients and fans are members of the diplomatic corps, multinational corporate organizations, leading Nigerian corporate bodies, international organizations and agencies, individuals of high net worth and Nigerian youths. He has won a number of local and international awards in Nigeria for the promotion of music, culture and the Arts internationalism. He is currently working on the development of an International Center for the Arts.

 
Tunde Kuboye’s Children. 

Tunde Kuboye’s early musical ventures and interest in debating started in secondary school days in the mid sixties when he played guitar and sang jazz songs with his school band, Igbobi College Swingstars, in Lagos, Nigeria. There was a healthy rivalry among secondary schools bands in the sixties, which accounted for top young musicians jamming regularly with each school producing a top musical group. The best school’s bands were in Igbobi College, St Gregory’s College and King’s College. 

Some of the secondary school students from these schools moonlighted as songwriters and performers with the leading professional musical bands of the sixties. Meanwhile Tunde Kuboye jammed regularly with other musicians in his locality in the Brazilian quarters of Lagos in CAMPOS Square, Bamgbose street, Tokunbo street, Odunfa Street… just a stone throw from the Isale Eko area of Lagos in the heart of Lagos local music scene. There were bands such as the CYCLOPS, Shina Bakare’s band, Teddy Oscar, Pat Finn, Yinka and the SPIDERS. 

Tunde Kuboye formed his first band the GOLDFINGERS in 1965 when he was an undergraduate of Electrical Engineering at the University of Lagos where he spent one year before proceeding on a scholarship program to the University  of Salford , Manchester, UK  where he obtained a B. Sc. first class degree in Electronics Engineering in 1970  and did  a 1-year post graduate studies in TV broadcasting at the BBC training centers in Evesham Middlesex, Cardiff, Wales, and London  before proceeding to Nigeria in 1971. In Lagos in 1971, Tunde teamed up as bass player and song writer with the top local Nigerian band known as AFRO COLLECTION which comprised of gifted musicians such as  Laolu Akintobi (trap drums and percussion), Berkeley Ike Jones (lead guitar), Johnny Haastrup (keyboards/ vocals), Steve Black (vocals) and T-Mac (flute). The band, which had a large youth following, was based at the famous BATAKOTO Nightclub on Broad Street, Lagos and toured various University towns and other parts of Nigeria managed by Terry Eze. Meanwhile Tunde who also taught Applied Mathematics, English Language and Physics at a secondary school in Lagos became a TV personality and Radio producer.

In 1972, Tunde Kuboye song writer and bass player teamed up with Ginger Baker and Salt band to embark on an international music concert tour which kicked off with the Olympics Jazz festival in Munich, Germany in 1972 and took the band through several German cities and then across the US and Canada. The band was managed by London, New York and Australia based Robert Stigwood Organization.

In 1973-4, Tunde worked with Spangel and Haze and Tunde - band in Holland and from 1974 jammed regularly with Fela Anikulapo’s Africa 70 band and later with the Egypt 80 band and recorded “E No Possible ” with Fela.

Meanwhile Tunde Kuboye took up a post as Head of the Audio- Visual Department of the Nigerian Museums- a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Information. He conducted research into the production of the film ORIGINS OF IFE ART in 2000 years of Nigerian Art which made its international début at the FESTAC ‘77 and has become a valuable document in the libraries of African Studies departments in Universities all over the world as part of the contribution to the study of Nigeria’s rich cultural heritage spanning 2000 years.  

Tunde, who did extensive photographic features of Fela and the scene around KALAKUTA Republic between 1975-1983, did the cover photos for some of Fela’s albums including ZOMBIE, UPSIDE DOWN, YELLOW FEVER, and AUTHORITY STEALING, which also featured the paintings of Fran Kuboye. 

Fran and Tunde Kuboye took their Extended Family band on an Australian tour in 1993 and a tour of UK, Ireland, Scotland and Switzerland in 1995.