Hello Thrivers,

You know we never miss our weekly Influencer Spotlight, where we bring you conversations with some of the most interesting people shaping their industries. Today, however, we are stepping into slightly different territory as our spotlight turns to Lady Donli, the self-described Pan-African rockstar, and the live band she formed, The Lagos Panic.

At THRIVE, we enjoy telling the stories of people breaking new ground in their fields, and for the first time, we are spotlighting an African musician whose work is deeply connected to the desire to place African music on the global stage while protecting the communal experience that makes live performance special.

Lady Donli began singing at the age of six and, as she told us, “I’ve always wanted to do music all my life.” Yet every phase of that life has also involved a rediscovery of her art, from the music she creates to the people she creates it with and the kinds of spaces she wants listeners to experience it in.

Now, through The Lagos Panic, she is exploring what it means to build a band that does more than stand behind a solo artist, while creating new possibilities for live music, collaboration and community in Nigeria.

Let’s hear from Lady Donli herself.

I have always loved live music, and I used to perform with different house bands before I started working with The Cavemen in Abuja at Tamerri Festival. After that, we began working very closely together.

If you watch the video for Cash, they are in it. We worked together a lot; they did a great deal of co-production for me, and I A&R’d their first album, ROOTS. For my first live shows in Lagos and Abuja for my debut album, Enjoy Your Life, they were the band that backed me, which meant that we were performing and creating together quite often during that period.

The following year, they released their album, but it was also during COVID. I had gone on tour and became stuck in Canada after the borders closed, so I ended up spending about seven months in Toronto that I had not planned for.

When I eventually returned to Nigeria, I attended one of their shows and told them, “This is the last time we’re going to perform together. I don’t think we’re going to perform together again after this.”

I had seen the direction in which they were moving, and I told them, “You guys are not going to be anybody’s backing band anymore.”

That was when I decided I needed to form a band of my own. This was about five years ago, which means it has now been five years since I formed the band. When I first created Lady Donli and The Lagos Panic, I formed it as a backing band because I needed a consistent group of musicians to perform the music I had already made, and I wanted to have more control over that live experience.

They help me bring ideas and chords that I might not ordinarily have thought of during rehearsals, and they also challenge me in ways that I may not experience if I were always creating and performing alone.

When I get onstage and do not bring the right amount of energy, they will tell me after the show, “Donli, how far? You’re tired. Go and get some rest.”

We challenge one another in that way.

After almost every show, we sit down and rate the performance. Someone may say, “That show was excellent,” and I might ask, “Why was it excellent?” because perhaps I do not believe it was excellent. 

I think that gives me something many solo artists may not always have because, as a solo artist, it can become very easy to big yourself up. 

They can look at me and say, “Donli, that wasn’t good,” and I can also be honest with them.

Lagos inspired the name because we all met in Lagos. The city became our meeting point, but Lagos is also a very important part of my story.

I come from Abuja and grew up there, but Lagos was where I came and began receiving wider recognition. It is where I made Cash, and it is where I created many of the songs that helped move my career forward.

We called the band The Lagos Panic because we wanted to cause a disruption. We wanted to reinterpret what people think a Nigerian live band should be.

When people hear “live band,” they often imagine a group that will come and perform at somebody’s birthday party or family event. They do not always think that a live band can have its own identity or be aesthetically pleasing, intentional, and creatively ambitious.

We wanted to challenge that idea and show that a Nigerian live band could be much more.

It definitely emerged more clearly through my interactions with The Cavemen, although I had always wanted to be part of a band or a group.

One thing about me is that, throughout my career and my life, I have always loved the concept of community. My family in Abuja is very close-knit, and I love the togetherness that comes from being part of something.

That was also one of the reasons I was drawn to the alternative community because I genuinely felt that I belonged to something, and that sense of belonging has always been important to me.

As I have grown in my career, I have built a very strong community. Since my breakout, I have been able to hold a show almost every year. It may be 400 people, 300 people or 200 people, but I am able to put on shows, and I am also able to tour.

Two years ago, I toured about ten cities across the world, performing in venues ranging from around 500 to 2,000 people. That experience showed me that I have a strong community, and I believe younger artists should also be able to benefit from it.

The music industry is changing rapidly, and now so much depends on virality, but not everybody is going to go viral. Some people are not even naturally good at social media, so I am trying to think of ways to create communities for other people like me.

We also recently concluded a live-sound engineering workshop for women who were interested in working in that area. We plan to provide mentorship to some of the participants and give them opportunities to intern within different live-show setups.

That came from recognising the lack of women working in live-music roles, from sound engineering and lighting to design and show running.

I am also a musical director, so when I direct performances for other artists and attend their shows, most of the people working behind the stage are men. It can sometimes feel like 90 or even 95 per cent of the team is male, and perhaps you will see only one woman.

We need to create more pathways for women to enter those spaces.

Honestly, the energy.

I do not think you can ever replicate the feeling of a live show. I love live performances and attend concerts all the time; in fact, one of the reasons I travel is to experience shows.

You cannot recreate the energy you feel inside a room during a genuinely good live performance. There are even people who meet their partners at live shows because of the kind of connections that can happen within that space.

The energy in the room is something you cannot get back in exactly the same way, and when you perform live, the compositions can also change. A song may move slightly differently, an arrangement may expand, or the musicians may respond to the audience in a way that could never happen while someone is simply streaming the recorded version through a phone.

Right now, what we are trying to build more than anything is a consistent flow of music.

For The Lagos Panic, I want to create an environment without pressure. I want us to be happy with what we are doing while continuing to move forward, and that is one of the reasons we started with FFG.

The chorus says, “We’re never going backwards,” and I wanted that to become something we could manifest as a group, that we would never go backwards and that every step we take would count towards how we measure our success.

If we rehearse today, then today was successful. If we release a song tomorrow, that is another success.

I want people to expect solid live music, solid solos, and strong compositions. When the time is right, perhaps an album will be released, but for now, we are simply focused on releasing really good singles and continuing to develop the band.

I pray that we get to tour together. That is really my dream for the band because I have been privileged to tour as an individual artist, and it is easier for one person because it is less expensive.

When you are travelling alone, you are thinking about immigration and logistics for one person. When you are travelling as a group, you may be thinking about those things for five people.

Even with those challenges, my prayer is that we get the opportunity to tour the world together and experience what it means to take this music and this band into different rooms across different countries.

Yes, definitely. We have a couple of things planned over the next few months, and we will probably do something special around October.

The Lagos Panic may have begun because Lady Donli needed a band capable of bringing her existing music to life, but the story she tells now suggests that it has gradually become something more than a practical arrangement between a solo artist and the musicians behind her.

For Lady Donli, live music is not simply the recorded song performed in front of an audience. It is the energy that develops between musicians, the changes that happen inside a composition, and the feeling of being present for something that cannot be recreated in quite the same way 

To connect with The Lagos Panic and follow the band’s journey, click here.

Till next time,

Team Thrive

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