Kehinde Hammed’s Drum Remembers “Seun Rere”

By Tomide Marv

Growing up, many Nigerian kids loved Christy Essien-Igbokwe’s “Seun Rere” song, originally released in 1981. When most of us heard it, we were receiving a moral instruction to do good. From the boomers to millennials and Gen Z, the song encourages discipline, kindness, and good values. It speaks directly to children and, through them, to everyone else.

Over four decades later, “Seun Rere” still resonates, and younger musicians continue to carry it forward. For drummer and percussionist Kehinde Komolafe Hammed, AKA K-The Beats, he carries it forward through beats and rhythms.

Towards the end of a music show event in 2025, Kehinde hopped on his drum kit and took the audience on a short, evergreen trip with his mini-drum interpretation of “Seun Rere.” It’s not a cover in the conventional sense — no attempt to recreate Christy Essien-Igbokwe’s vocals or tweak the original recording. Kehinde just strips it down to sound and feeling.

The original song conveys its message through lyrics, and listeners get its meaning and carry it forward. But a drum performance works differently. The lyrics of “Seun Rere”, while still audible, take the backseat. The experience instead focuses on beats and rhythms. This performance takes the song from one about positive behaviour into a show of expression and cultural connection.

Kehinde’s strikes are calculated, though he keeps the performance loose. The use of rims and tom-toms creates a time that mimics the bass depth in the original song. His right hand rides the cymbal without losing rhythm, while his left hand works the snare. He maintains the original groove of “Seun Rere.” But he also infuses polyrhythm, an African percussion style that simultaneously uses two or more conflicting rhythms, into his Western drum kit. While the backing track moves in a straightforward four-four time signature, his accents pull and push against the grid to create tension and release that gives the mini-cover its zinger.

Drumming has always occupied a unique place within Yorùbá culture and Nigeria at large. Long before the use of modern recording technologies and instruments, drums served as instruments of communication, ceremony and storytelling. Drums marked celebrations, announced important events and carried moments of communal significance. Drums carried information, indemnity and meaning as much as they did for entertainment. These traditions remain alive today, though they now exist within a different cultural landscape and time. Kehinde is one of those preserving this heritage and its ability to connect people to history and tradition. His artistic journey reflects this continuity.

In 2019, after bagging a degree in Business Administration and Management, he professionally kick-started his music career. Since then, he has built a reputation as a drummer and percussionist committed to African cultural expression. His performances have taken him from cultural and religious events in Nigeria to stages in the United Kingdom, where he now lives after relocating for postgraduate studies at Sheffield Hallam University.

Many artists in the African diaspora face a balancing act between adaptation and preservation. The challenge here isn’t only about remaining connected to home but also about finding meaningful ways to present culture and traditions to audiences who may not share the same background. For drummers especially, the task is more demanding. Rhythm often communicates through familiarity, and it depends on people recognising its patterns and feeling its cultural context. Also, rhythm is one of Africa’s most influential cultural exports. Across jazz, funk, samba, hip-hop, house music and countless other genres, African rhythmic traditions continue to shape global music. What audiences hear in modern popular music often has roots that stretch back through generations of drumming practices across the continent.

A generation of African musicians in the diaspora is carrying traditional practices into environments not designed for them and finding that these practices hold on their own terms. It’s now at the centre of the most globally consumed music. The current reach of African pop music in the international market further establishes that African cultural knowledge moves through the world by attaching itself to memory, the body or things that cannot be conveniently stripped out.

Whether performing at the Ilorin Emirate Durbar Festival, where he received recognition for his contribution, or participating in events such as Afro Night, and other cultural gatherings in the United Kingdom, his work consistently spotlights African rhythm as both performance and cultural statement. His interpretation of “Seun Rere” is right within this mission.

Kehinde uses his performance to acknowledge the importance of Christy Essien-Igbokwe’s original work. His performance also shows that cultural preservation and replication aren’t the same. Culture and traditions survive because they’re revisited or introduced to new audiences in new forms. We can see this happening across African music and culture today. Increasingly, musicians are looking backwards as a way of moving forward. Old sounds get sampled, traditional instruments find their way in contemporary performances, folk stories are being adapted for digital audiences and artist(e)s are finding new ways to engage with inherited cultural knowledge.

Kehinde’s drumming is compelling. Though technical skills are clearly essential for any professional percussionist, his focus is on communication. Through drums and rhythms, he introduces listeners to cultural gems, keeps familiar sounds in circulation and creates a connection between generations.

In fact, beyond being a performer, his role is becoming more valuable. Old songs disappear, traditions lose viability, and younger audiences become disconnected from the art forms that shaped earlier generations. Performances such as Kehinde’s help bridge that gap. In that sense, Kehinde’s interpretation of “Seun Rere” — not only about a beloved Nigerian song — is about being a steward of the culture he was born into. His performance also demonstrates how drums can preserve and carry ideas across decades and into new environments. It also does what good drumming has always done: move something in the people listening.

Christy Essien-Igbokwe, who died in 2011, used her voice to teach the importance of doing good. Kehinde revisits her legacy through percussion to draw attention to another enduring truth that culture survives because people keep the conversation going.