Omo Eko Pataki - August Agbola O’Brown (1895-1976)
August Agboola Browne, or August Agbola O’Brown (1895-1976), Nigerian pioneer of Jazz Music and a member of the Polish resistance movement during World War 2
August Agboola Browne is, unknown to most, probably the first West African to record a Jazz album, which was released in Poland in 1928.
This landmark has its origins in the story of a man who was born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1895 and who, it is said, stowed away on a ship and travelled to Poland in 1922. He eked out a basic living as a labourer in the Warsaw docks, until the mid-1920’s. By that time, he began to frequent the various cafes and night-spots of 1920’s Warsaw, which had quite a vibrant entertainment scene at the time, with jazz and burlesque clubs, providing a modern adjunct to its old world cultural charm. Warsaw was in fact described as ‘the Paris of the north’ for these reasons.
Browne taught himself to play the drums and shortly after became one of Warsaw’s most popular jazz drummers. He went on to record an album in 1928, making him the first Nigerian to achieve this, and arguably the first West African. Browne gained fame playing as part of a quartet in Warsaw’s famous Ziemańska club, where his imposing height (6 feet plus), good looks and African origins set him apart.
He married a Polish woman named Zofia in 1927, and they had two kids, Ryszard and Aleksandra in 1928 and 1929 respectively. The marriage was not without drama. A notable incident happened in 1931, when Browne left home after an argument with his wife, and stayed away, playing gigs for a few days. His wife not to be outdone, placed a missing persons ad in the Warsaw newspapers, to which poor Browne had to respond a few days later, sheepishly explaining that he had merely been out earning a living and pleading with his wife not to wash their dirty linen in public. This incident aside, Browne was widely acknowledged by friends and neighbours as a courteous, well-mannered gentleman, who was much loved and respected by most who knew him.
His life was to change radically, when the Second World War started in 1939. Poland was one of the first targets of the Nazi war machine and, as was to be expected, a major exodus of its dwellers - especially its small African minority, who rather wisely decided not to test Hitler’s tolerance. Warsaw was thus emptied of its African population, except one - August Agboola Browne.
Browne joined the Polish underground resistance movement and participated in the futile defence of Warsaw, where he was sighted by witnesses, fighting in the defence of the Ochota district alongside other members of the resistance. After the fall of Warsaw, Browne went virtually underground, but was on a number of occasions seen around Warsaw, distributing newsheets of the Polish resistance. To underscore the quantum of courage involved in this would be beyond the realm of a short online article, suffice to say that if he had been caught by the Nazis, his fate would not have been pleasant.
This was not to be the end of his activities in this war. In the Polish uprising of 1944, in which the resistance came out from the underground, Browne fought actively as part of the Polish Battalion led by Major Aleksander Marciński. This was confirmed by a resistance veteran Jan Radecki, who saw him at the headquarters of the “Iwo” Battalion in the ?ródmie?cie Po?udniowe district. The uprising lasted 63 days, till October 1944, of which Browne was an active participant.
After the war, Browne submitted his claims to the new communist-controlled Polish government for recognition of his war-time service, which was to be fully verified and he was accorded his full honours as a hero of the Polish resistance [see: Society of Fighters for Freedom and Democracy, in Polish: Zwi?zek Bojowników o Wolno?? i Demokracj?]. In 1949 he was employed as a Cultural Officer in the Department of Culture and Art of the City of Warsaw. However, just as hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens disappointed and scared of the new communist rule, he eventually decided to escape the new closed and colourless society, so much different from its interwar vibrancy. He moved to England in 1958, where he lived till his death in 1976.
Courtesy of Dr Omololu Adesioye (Old Student of Ibadan Grammar School)