There’s a hand painted wooden raft atop the stage, but even that is not the most unique thing there. A tree stump sits gently in the middle of the stage, while the entire floor is covered in raffia, a brownish Jute-like material made from palm tree fibers and is commonly found and used as decor or even construction in tropical Africa. Around the stage, there’s a choir robed in hoodie jackets, with the Town Criers band positioned beside them.
Onstage, a trio of elderly women robed in brilliant white stands next to Wizard Chan, whose black masquerade regalia and cowrie jewellery further brighten his spotlight on indigenous culture. Clutching a bell, a symbol of prayer to him, he’s performing a track dubbed, “Higher Powers”, at a live show in Port Harcourt, a coastal city in Rivers State, Nigeria. The performance begins with some chanting, bells, and highlife riffs that colour Chan’s gyrations and chorus. “Tamuno be, sikima se (apart from the God that the three brothers worshipped), oro oloko chuame ojin tamuno tekema (He decreed that we should not worship other gods),” the women’s chants ring loudly throughout the song.
Born Fuayefika Maxwell, Wizard Chan makes gyration music with his distinct sound fused with highlife, reggae, folk, hip-hop, soul, and African pop. His sound is shaped by his traditional roots as an Ijaw native – a riverine tribe settled across the Niger Delta – with rich use of local percussive instruments like bottles, gongs and bells. His lyrics are looped around philosophies, proverbs and inspirational messages and is a frequent collaborator with the Boma Nime trio who are traditional healers that use indigenous music, chants, and prayer choruses, in their medical therapies.
Before Maxwell became the Wizard called Chan (a funny story involving a freestyle in a studio downtown Accra, in 2015, which was the first time he blurted the word Chan and “felt it had a very nice tone and everyone started calling me Chan”), he’s always seen himself as a gifted and different type of bard. His versatility stood out for him first. “I can make all types of music, except classical music but I might even look at that someday too. So, I am more like a musical wizard.”
But his distinct musical interest haunted him even more, while growing up in Rivers State. “My first song I wrote was for a schoolmate who died from sickle cell anaemia,” his voice softened. “In 2011, after secondary school, I stepped into a music studio for the first time to record a song. I had already started to dislike how a lot of African music projects sounded; they felt less cohesive. I wanted to create something unique and undeniable.”
Across his nine-tracker debut, The Messenger, which dropped in April, and its follow-up eight-tracker Time Traveler, released in November 2024, Wizard Chan curates a discography that’s charged with a strong sense of cultural identity and humanist ideology. His track, “Earth Song”, which won a Headies award for the Best Alternative Song of 2022, was one of his most successful attempts in selling the beauty of his native Ijaw culture and his core messaging which is reminding people what it means to be human. Other viral Chan songs, like the ballad with the mask-wearing Nigerian folk fusionist Thousand Voice “Miss You” and the hiplife fusion, “Highlife”, Chan also showcased his versatility and expanded his fanbase across the country.
Wizard Chan’s music is also largely dotted by his faith and beliefs. On songs like “Mr Sailor Man”, he yearns for stability and guidance from the Creator as he sings, “‘Oh Mr Sailor Man, Pray to Jah to guard your hands/ Sail that boat to the promised land/ Father’s love is all we have”’. Despite once being part of a Church choir, Chan admits that he does not “believe in religion” and he wants his music not to be seen as religious. He argues that “religion is a concept, because it is man made” and this spiritual deism, marked with influences from African traditional culture, continues to unfurl in Chan’s messaging.
On songs like “Demons and Angels”, he still evokes Christian imagery when he mentions being in “talk with my angels/ But them demons they are fighting over me”’, on the chorus, but the rest of the song alludes to either a duel of cheer and sour emotions, or a battle between actual demons and angels.
Tucked with proverbs and witty sayings both in English and in his local dialect called Izon, which is spoken by most of his tribe, a lot of Wizard Chan’s songs also largely comment on navigating human emotions, showcasing his vulnerability and didacticism. On “Loner” with Joeboy off The Messenger, he talks about the danger of alcoholism as a coping mechanism as he sings, “Someone save me, Lord, from myself, because I think a lot when I mix my rum”, and on “Demons and Angels”, he talks about dealing with anger, “anger management is me locking up myself/ In my room, making it a cell to avoid some disrespect”.
He also often ruminates on the concept of time, especially on cherishing and optimizing it despite the odds. On “Stages of Life” off The Messenger, he talks about “all of the pains and the demons you fight/ In all of the stages you climb/ (and) as you go through these times/ It’s best to live your life”. And on a song like “Time Traveler”, off his latest project, he whelms the record with more introspection on time, infusing it in diverse narratives. First, he reflects further on time as a gift that’s finite and fleeting, “Somebody pray for me/ My dad’s looking old to me/Mama not as young you see/Life looking straight at me”, coming to terms with the countdown nature of life and death. He also explores the idea of life as a pilgrimage to heaven, “Son, a good name is better than silver or gold/ But still look for the gold/ ‘Cuz this time you want to travel in/ This fee is paid in gold”, reflecting on the struggles with bootstrapping a career as an indie act. Ultimately, his treatises on the song ultimately offer some hope, with strong melancholic chords and his yearning for a light at the tunnel’s end, which he argues on the song to be the afterlife: ‘This home is home, until heaven is your home.”
For Chan, his messages and Africanism are important to bring “togetherness, peace, and achieve true love in the world”, and it’s why he hopes his “music can be taught in schools, and kids can listen to them and learn something from them”.
Chan also believes that his spontaneous, traditional and hyper-melodic compositions stem from his spirituality.
“I call my music Afro Teme [pronounced “afro teh-meh”)], which means African spiritual music in my native language. I am an Ijaw man, from the South, in Nigeria, although I never used to be this traditional person; I stumbled on it as an adult. I also never used to sound like this; I had to listen to a lot more local sounds. Africans focus more on feelings than music theory; when an African sings, it’s from the heart, with instinct. We’re more spiritual than we think. That’s why I consciously avoid learning too much about music theory and technicalities. It’s not about the perfect pitches or notes. If you have been around Ijaw people, you would notice that we sing in unison. We sing like it is our last breath and everyone is about to die together. The voices are cracked and the sounds are stressed. When you listen, you feel like it’s a trance, like there’s some sort of spiritual connection.”
And he prefers to create his music mostly “alone and in dark rooms”, revealing that his ideas are better expressed “after or when I am going through something significant”, a trait that stuck with him since he wrote his first song in high school. Chan’s creative process and artistry generally represent his lifelong quest for originality, a journey that has also seen its fair share of anxiety over making music and finding fortunes.
“At some point, I began making music for myself and my unborn children; because I didn’t even think I could make it any more. The people that were blowing up were young and I was pushing 30 already. And then I became unapologetic about my approach and even my manager told me that it’s more me than anything I had done to fit in.”
Now, with a niche sound, Chan is confident in his radical style, ignoring advice from onlookers to further tune his sound towards contemporary African pop. “I have conversations where people say I should adopt Afrobeats sounds, but my education on these genres helps me stay true to myself. Now, I don’t fancy fame. It’s not my primary motivation. It’s easier to focus on my craft. I want to last forever, not just for a minute or a few months.”
To the rest of the world, spirituals represent the traditional music made by Africans in captivity across the colonial empires, especially as protests or lamentations. However, to native Africans like Wizard Chan, it’s a euphony of minority and largely uncategorized sounds, lush with gyration, African percussion, freestyle compositions, emotionally-charged vocalisation, and thematic lyricism.
As Boma Nime weave a white handkerchief in short hand dances, their chorus punctuates the powerful trumpets that charge “Higher Powers” with adrenaline. Wizard Chan rings his bell, signalling a sanctimony of his art, he says, while his love for black clothing is exactly like one of his favourite author James Baldwin describes: “It doesn’t have to be evil, because it’s black; it’s beautiful.”
He’s daring enough to integrate Boma Nime, whom he’s known “since I was born; as one of them is my mother’s good friend” and would “sing with prophets in healing houses”, because he sees the “untapped resources” when turning the focus to his culture. Chan has also promised to produce an EP with them next year.
Chan’s strong cultural imagery is often mistaken for occultism, sometimes, amongst his fans, he says, explaining that the guttural gyration and other traditional elements were only made popular by criminal cults but did not actually originate with them.
“I understand why they call it occultic music, because many cult groups have used these types of sound, but they need to understand that those sounds belong to certain people from where they’re from. That’s about our villages.” And in a recent X post, he wrote, “my music has nothing to do with cultism. It’s a morale boosting song. Gyration is our thing. This is how my people chant and sing. Whoever brought up the idea that our songs are cultist music [sic] is actually just messing up someone else’s culture.”
Having concluded his last show in his hometown for the year, his eyes are set to take on Lagos, Abuja and Enugu cities, for a sturdy warm-up to a global tour in coming years. He believes the key to promoting his music lies in his eclectic fusions. He’s already worked with popstar Joeboy, street pop act Ayo Maff and pop-soul debutant Llona, among others, in his canopy walk to the mainstream Afrobeats radar. And he believes in keeping his catalogue rooted in his story and the spirited African sonics that cosplay as both esoteric harmonies and African lo-fi and complex percussion ensembles.
“I’ve noticed that following strict musical rules can limit creativity. I believe that if you’re able to gather sounds from different places, different regions, or whatever it is, and you try to bring them to your world with a good message, it’s really going to be a sound that’s timeless. So, for me, it’s not only about going international, next; the sound has to remain the same.”