- SEUN BANKOLE Reveals His Success Story
City People Event Centre in Lagos came alive a few weeks back when Seun Bankole, the guy behind SB Live music band and friends stormed the venue for a grand reception in his honour. For 5 hours non stop SB Live wowed his guests, as he treated them to scintillating music.
Seun Bankole is the Band Leader of the popular band, S.B Live, a band that is quite known to music lovers on the Mainland and Island axis of Lagos. Seun is a Mushin-born talented keyboardist and an Afro Pop artiste whose performance style has carved a niche for him in the entertainment circle, and has gradually won over many to the extent that he performs at some multinational company’s end of year parties with the effects that today a lot of Big Boys listen to him a lot and invite him for their event.
From the days of playing at Troy, a popular lounge at Ogba in Lagos, to becoming the toast of music lovers on mainland, and the leading band at major lounges.
 In 2017, this talented Crossover artist Seun Bankole and his S.B Live band signed a year musical tour of the United State of America with a LIS based music tour took the full band to performed live on stage in different shows and concert as already prearranged in some states, like New York, New Jersey,   Maryland, Washington DC. Houston Texas Dallas Texas Florida, Atlanta Georgia Pennsylvanian, Chicago, North Carolina and others.
You will also remember that Seun Bankole has just been honoured by the City People with a Special recognition award in music for on his versatility and creative ways of making good music.
He sings all sorts of music from Hip Hop, Juju, Jazz, R & B, Highlife, Old School, Church music, name it a interview with this charming, cool and calm talented artist with City People Assistant Editor, Sunday Adigun, he speaks exclusively on how he started singing at Age of 12.Â
What defines Seun Bankole Uniqueness?
I would call it versatility, the fact that you can do too many styles of music at the same time, that’s our Uniqueness and that’s what we sell.
How did the journey start for you?
Just like every other person, it all started in 1997, I joined my church choir and after a couple of years I develop interest in play Piano, So I combined the playing and singing together and the rest is history, though I’ve been singing from my tender age, my full name is Bankole David Oluwaseun, I think probably because of the David in my name inspire my passion (laugh), but I think my love for music started fully when I got into secondary school.
I knew I was going to make it a profession at that age 12 thereabout. J.S.S. 1 to be precise, it became so part of me at that age that If I don’t sing I may fall sick.
Do you have any traces of singer in your family, or who would you say you took after in your family?
My Great grandpa used to sing as I was been told but not for commercial purpose, he just sings for fun, you know in the 60’s the business is not as lucrative as it is now. Then they go to work, return back in the evening and started singing, jubilating and all that.
What has stardom done to you?
I’m an easy going person, I don’t live my life like a celebrity, I lives my life just like every other person. Though sometimes been restricted from doing certain things, I can’t eat on the road.
I can’t just enter any buka to eat and patronize them like I would have love to do, somehow restricted.
Tell me about your marriage or are you still single?
No! I’m married to beautiful woman with a son.
Let’s talk about the challenges you’ve faced so far while building your brand?
A lot, as we all known, the first and mayor challenge of an upcoming artiste is fund, even if you have anyone that wants to invest in you, he would still be skeptical to invest his/her money just because you are not known, and that has been the major challenge of upcoming artistes. Also as a band, we’ve been through a lot, for example there was a club in Ogba, where I started building S.B Band. It’s called Troy lounged, we have to play till around 12:30 in the night, and I was living in Egbeda, we would go to the house to relax and God has actually saved us from death, I drove Mazda 626 then, I drove into a scene whereby Police and robbers were shooting at each other. It was God that saved us that night.
You talked about the fund that time, are you saying upcoming artistes must have money first?
Not really, but I mention fund because if my dad is as rich as Davido’s dad, I would be bigger than him right now, I wouldn’t need to start my life at Troy to get my recognition, that means I’ll have funds to go to the Studio, I’ll have funds shoot good video have fund to push my video, I can shoot as many videos I want to get the kind of recognition that I’m looking for but when you don’t have fund you still have to find a way around, but there has been no regret. So far and we thank God for that.
So what message do you have for the upcoming artistes?
I’m still part of the upcoming artistes, but I always say this. “Make sure you don’t have a better yesterday. Once you make up your mind that! Okay I have done this yesterday! This is good, even if it by 1% I want to surpass it today then I think you will be fine for a long as you want to keep practicing as a musical artistes, but it is so unfortunate that when some people get 2-5 hits it gets into their head and they can’t push further, for me I just don’t want to do anything yesterday that would be better than today.
You are just been recognized by City People, how does that award for recognition makes your feel?
It’s a privileged beyond description for me, I say to everyone who cares to listen that for a strong force in the media as such as City People Magazine to single me out, out of so many bands. I think it’s a privileged beyond description, I have been getting different awards from lounges different organization e.t.c I have couples of award before City People award but the City People award for me is the biggest right now.
So what do we expect from you soon, interms of Album?
Over the years many people know us for doing other people’s covers though playing it on our own ways and grooves to make people dance but this year there will be an EP album, 14 Original songs, i.e an album that will carry my original song, usually it should be more than 10 songs but I have about 30 songs right now and I intend put a 14 track album out before December for my people to enjoy and have a feel of what we can also create out of music, beautiful music, 14 tracks original songs before the end of the year.
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