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Nine Months In Nigeria, One Brilliant, Difficult Funk Musician hide captionSince recording in the 1970s and '80s, Nigerian William Onyeabor has dropped off the music map. Courtesy of the artist Yale Evelev, head of world music label Luaka Bop, digs up information about great-but-forgotten musicians for a living. His quest to compile and release the work of Nigerian funk legend William Onyeabor, though, was a unique challenge. "I was going to call the record This Is William Onyeabor, up until the point we realized we didn't know anything about him," Evelev tells NPR's Arun Rath. In the 1970s and '80s, Onyeabor put out eight albums of layered, wildly imaginative synth-funk. Naturally, rumors rushed in to fill the vacuum: Onyeabor had gone on to run a flour mill; he went to film school in Soviet Russia; he went to study law in London. "And he said to me, 'Why would I want to talk about that? Most artists are thrilled when Luaka Bop comes calling. The Plan Was Simple "And somehow, I ended up staying there for over nine months," Ikonne says.