ABOUT AFRICAN CHINA:"African China has something to do with my original name, Chinagoro," he muted, adding, "from Chinagoro comes China. When I was in the secondary school, my friends used to pronounce my name, China-Goro. So, each time I entered the classroom, my classmates would start laughing at me and my class teacher then, would mute, O da-bi omo China (meaning, he looks like a Chinese boy).""From there onwards, I was nicknamed African-China. Though, while in secondary school, I used to get annoyed quickly and sometimes, react negatively but when I discovered that I could not help it, I became used to the name and consequently accepted it as a part of me."He also recalled that the need to identify with his root, especially when he wanted to go into music properly, altogether necessitated his deliberate desire to attach "African" to his name. He reminisced: "When I decided to go into music, I did not want to be identified with the name, China alone, because I did not come from any of the Asian countries, I rather had the desire to make my name sound more African than Asian, because of the fact that I am a black man. That was how the name, African China came about."Notwithstanding, positing that Chinagoro's songs remain not only a product of the environment in which he grew up as a child, but also, that of his years of suffering as a son-of-a man-of- no-means and someone who never knew who his biological mother was, is not to imagine the absurd. Chinagoro, from childhood was a product of society and one who was equally meant to learn to survive in a hard way. At less than two months of birth, his mother died to usher him into the world without a guide, governed by misadventure, greed, wickedness, materialism and oppression of the have-nots by the haves.Emotionally, he recalls, "my mother died when I was two months old. I did not enjoy the cares of my mother. When I eventually finished my secondary school in 1996, there was nobody to assist me in furthering my education. My father then was retired from the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing and his pension was not enough to cater for seven of us in our family. So, I found myself working at the Nigeria Ports Authority as a laborer, carrying bags of rice and ice fish after my SSCE examinations.""I also hawked on the streets, worked as a cleaner and had to quit my menial job just to build a solid foundation for my future. The government, I must say, has no vision for the youths of this country. That is why crime is still on the increase in the country today," he asserted. Chinagoro recalled how his experience after the release of his maiden album with track, "If I say O.P and you say C, na you sa bi..' brought him in direct confrontation with the deadly group and the area boys known as Agberos, in Lagos who wanted him either dead or alive, helped to fire his imagination and his musical idiom.African China is a Blue Pie artist. African China is available digitally throughout the world on Blue Pie Productions and at all leading digital retailers on the planet. See www.bluepie.com.au and African China's My Space site www.myspace.com/africanchinang

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