Demola The Violinist mixes classical music with Afrobeat and more

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Demola The Violinist has gone viral on Tik Tok and now is on tour, including a stop in Atlanta, to bring his version of classical music combined with Afrobeat, hip hop and pop songs.

Credit: DemolaTheViolinist.com

The violin has played a significant role in classical music.  It’s often the lead instrument in orchestral performances, such as  Tchaikovsky's "Violin Concerto in D Major." Well, now the violin has met Afrobeat music and has gone all modern and sexy.

Afrobeat, by the way, is urban popular music originating in Nigeria in the late 1960s. It emphasizes percussion, rhythms and features elements of jazz and funk. That is the sound being heard in Georgia and all around the country this summer as international award-winning pop artist Demola The Violinist is on tour. He was in Georgia recently to perform before a sold out crowd at the Atlanta City Winery.

Demola was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and he moved to Texas to pursue a music career. GPB’s Leah Fleming got a chance to speak to him before his performance in Atlanta. Here is a piece of their conversation.

Demola: I started playing the violin in church, actually. I was a teenager and my brother was playing piano, but I wanted to play something cool, you know? So from the first time I picked up the violin, I just felt like, "You know what? I want to play what I hear on radio, other than just doing classical and church music and hymns and all of that.  I want to play songs that my friends can dance to." You know, in the hood, like we have, like our music. We had Afrobeat. ...  My friends always made fun of me. They would say, you know, "you cannot play anything that we can dance to."

Leah Fleming: Ah, OK, because, you know, when you think about the violin, you do not think that this is a cool instrument, like, you know, the drums or the sax, you know?

Demola: Yeah, a lot of times growing up in the hood you want to be cool, you know? And if you've been seen as a cool guy before and all of a sudden you start doing some stuff that they don't feel like is cool, then you lose your — I'll call it "street cred."

Leah Fleming: What I am noticing is that you are seeing on social media, artists that play instruments that were classically not the coolest instruments, actually start to transition into more popular music, like the famous cellist, classically trained Yo-Yo Ma. I saw a video of him when he was doing an interview and he was playing DMX’s "Ruff Ryders Anthem." And I'm like, "What in the world? Yo-Yo Ma? What do you know about that?" But he knew something about it, and it sounded so cool!

Demola: Yeah. Yeah, true. You know, I think what is happening is that we do not want classical music to go extinct, especially with this new generation. ... Music is one language as far as I'm concerned. And that brings me to why I do this. I fuse every style of music, every genre of music that I know together to create what I call the global music fusion.

Demola The Violinist’s new album is called One in a Million.