Chance introduced Nigerian singer Babatunde Akinboboye to opera. He mixes arias and hip hop and goes viral on social media with short videos.
Wants to dust off the opera world: singer Babatunde Akinboboye Photo: J. Demetrie Photography
Babatunde Akinboboye fights the boredom of social media Opera world. Do opera singers use cannabis? How much does the job cost? And how racist? Babatunde Akinboboye answers these questions in a nutshell.
In his one-minute videos, he often wears a tuxedo and holds an ornate Art Nouveau cup of black tea in his hands. Every now and then he takes a small sip, but mostly he stirs it meaningfully. About 980,000 fans watch his videos on Tiktok. But the Nigerian didn’t really want to become an internet star: “I just posted it to entertain people. But then some videos went viral, and that wasn’t my intention at all.”
Actually, opera singer Babatunde Akinboboye just wanted to keep his followers involved – until he released his debut album ‘Della Citta’ in 2019. To shorten the waiting time, he posted videos on Tiktok and Instagram. In them, he pokes fun at the opera world – critically – and always with a touch of humor.
This is what sets his videos apart: Akinboboye, for example, comments with a knowing smile on the question of whether opera singers consume cannabis. For him, “The best humor always comes from a surprising truth.”
That is why Akinboboye lists all the costs that opera singers incur for singing lessons, application procedures and grades or explains why he does not accept invitations from sponsors: ‘Every time I am used to: either being asked how I did it. to Africa to become an opera singer, or being hugged and touched far too often by the same person.
He prefers to listen to hip hop
Babatunde Akinboboye was born in the US and raised in Nigeria. His path to opera was as serendipitous as his rise to internet stardom: when his voice teacher suggested he sing opera arias, Babatunde didn’t know any. He prefers to listen to hip-hop. “At one point I was singing an opera in rehearsal, and shortly after that I was listening to hip-hop in the car. But I still had the opera in my head, and I just sang the aria to the hip-hop beat.”
Babatunde Akinboboye says: Mozart’s “Largo” “The Marriage of Figaro” goes surprisingly well with a beat of Rapper Kendrick Lamar. He calls this concoction “HipHopera.” He simply films the accompanying video of himself in the car. It immediately goes viral. “It was like almost accidentally discovering a superpower of yours.” It now has over 1 million views on YouTube.
Akinboboye’s current video series builds on this – a collaboration with tenor Jonas Kaufmann. Even a superstar businessman knows he needs the internet on his side, and so does Babatunde Akinboboye the Internet phenomenon par excellence.
In the video ‘Jonas Kaufmann Karaoke’, the celebrated tenor takes Akinboboye on a drive through Berlin in his car. Together they sing the hits from Kaufmann’s latest album ‘The Sound of Movies’ and tell each other funny anecdotes along the way. In another video, the two are seen doing their favourite warm-up exercise: putting a towel in your mouth while singing. Jonas and Babatunde swear by it!
Attention as a means of payment
Reach is his ammunition. And currency is attention. Akinboboye is getting a lot of backlash, not just from Gen Z, but also from fellow opera singers and managers: they find the company just as backward, but don’t dare to criticize it, like Akinboboye.
He criticizes racism, sexism and hierarchies in the opera world – and always with a wink. Akinboboye offers an insider’s perspective on the closed world of opera – and makes fun of all the little things that are strange about it.
In this way, the baritone makes opera accessible and understandable again for a new, young audience: “Because I didn’t grow up with opera, I have a different view of its culture and I still see opera in the same way as those who did. I have no connection with opera.”
People often comment on his videos that they went to the opera because of Akinboboye and that they have not missed it since. On his channel, they learned that you can go to the opera without a suit, which roles mezzo-sopranos often play, and what the current canon consists of.
Babatunde also shows what is often frowned upon in the classical music world: big, emotional reactions to music. What many people feel, but only a few show.