About PEACOCK GUITAR BAND

The Peacocks Guitar Band Raphael Amarabem, a former sideman in Rex Lawson's Mayors Band of Nigeria, founded the popular Peacocks International Band in the early seventies. Amarabem had played for some years in Ghana and the Peacocks epitomized the Nigerian trend toward guitar-based highlife in the seventies, heavily influenced by Ghanaian music. In fact, the liner notes of their 1978 LP "Smash Hits" state: "..yet only very few of the millions of fans within 150,000 family units in Nigeria and Ghana really know who the Peacocks are. Some call them Ghanaians and are ready to stake anything to argue their claims, but call them what you like, the boys are Nigerians." The Peacocks' cosmopolitan appeal was enhanced by their recording in various languages - English, Efik and Ewe as well as Igbo. Their biggest hit was undoubtedly the mid-seventies tune "Sambola Mama," which spawned at least one cover version by a splinter group, the Skylarks International Band! The Peacocks dissolved in the late seventies, to be reformed in 1981 by Amarabem, who recorded at least one LP under the "Revived Peacocks" name.