Biography
Gerald Eze: Ogbu-Oja | Musicologist | Story Teller | Cultural Ambassador | Educator | Multi-instrumentalist
Meet Gerald Eze
Gerald Eze is a music educator, academic researcher, social entrepreneur, and performing artist from the Igbo-speaking ethnic nationality, Southeast Nigeria. He holds a BA in Music and an MA in Ethnomusicology from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. For ten years, he dutifully studied under indigenous Igbo musical maestros and has mastered lots of traditional Igbo musical instruments, most of which are under threat of extinction. Eze is a phenomenal musician and cultural ambassador universalizing the Igbo Oja (air-blown musical instrument) and other traditional musical instruments of the Igbo. He is known as OgbuOja-Eze; a master performer of the Oja. He is also a master performer of the Igbo Uboaka (lamellophone), which he utilizes in story-telling.
Past & Present
In 2013, Eze founded the Ichoku Academy, which provides music education to Nigerian youth grounded in Igbo-African cultural systems. With the Ichoku Academy, Eze has produced many young performers and instrument technologists of Igbo music and musical instruments across different age grades and professions, ensuring that some endangered Igbo musical resources are not only preserved but returned back to use as functional cultural heritage. Eze’s work with Ichoku Academy has earned him the prestigious award of Social Impact Investor of The Year, 2025, by Anambra Man of The Year (AMTY) Award.
He won the Christopher Kolade prize for music excellence in 2015, at MUSON Center, Lagos. He has featured in BBC Africa and BBC Igbo and has since maintained excellence both locally and globally. Eze’s global presence started in 2016, when he was the only Nigerian music ambassador at the Asian-African festival, in Beijing, China, upon the recommendation of Professor Joseph Ahaneku (the former Vice Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka).
His London Debut will be on the 19th of July, 2025, when he will headline a concert, performing the Igbo Oja during the African Concert Series at Wigmore Hall in London, being the first musician to play Oja in such a prestigious Western Classical Music setting. Eze did the opening performance of the U.S. embassy celebration of the American Independence in July 2024.
In October 2024, Eze was the visiting Igbo cultural ambassador, musician and educator during the Unuchi Tour of Jamaica entitled, “Njem Jamaica”. In this tour, he donated Igbo musical instruments to school children in Jamaica and also delivered free performance workshops to school children and cultural enthusiasts in various cultural and educational institutions.
Eze has performed and lectured around the world, including an invited lecture where he discussed the “Oja Speech Surrogacy” at the Department of Linguistics, Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA. He was a resident at the prestigious Art Omi music residency in 2022. His recent solo performances and musical art exhibitions include Music That Talks: Oja Eulogy to Christopher Okigbo, an art music feature in the “Embodying The Sacred” exhibition of Unit London. He has performed at the David Zwirner Art Gallery, New York; British Council, Lagos; GOETHE Institut, Lagos; and Alliance Francaise, Lagos, to mention a few.
OgbuOja-Eze, a master performer of the Oja is about to drop his debut album entitled “Igbo Rising”.