Dr. Dammy & The Pilgrims is a prominent gospel music band in the United Kindgdom and today, a band popular known for its creative style of melodious African music. The group was formed in November 2005 and officially commissioned in April 2006. The UK based band, led by Dr. Adedamola Olayanju (a.k.a Dr. Dammy Pilgrims) has a minimum line up of eight members during performance and currently performs in the UK and other parts of the world

The band leader, Dr. Dammy Pilgrims often quoted saying “My vision is to bring happiness into people’s lives and homes, more importantly, to remind many fellow Africans about their own heritage, and also to expose African culture/values to the Western World at large”. 

Dr. Dammy is presently a Senior Research Fellow with expertise in Tissue and Stem cells engineering and Cancer Pharmacology. Born into a Nigerian family in Oyo state, Dr. Dammy’s grandfather was a musician and a Pastor, likewise many others in his family. For the band leader, music was a genetic predisposition, and the band has made a heat wave in the music industry among the African community and other cultures in the UK.

The Pilgrims have largely attributed its successful fusion of Afro-jazz and Western rhythms to a new trend in contemporary African music. The band started with the intention of playing African music only but currently plays other kinds of music including Contemporary gospel, Neo-soul, Jazz, Reggae, Calypso, R&B to name a few.

 

Since established, the band have performed for great occasions and entertained many people from all walks of life. The eight member band plays groovy African melodies characterised by tight vocal harmonies, intricate guitar work with other musical backings from the traditional talking drums, percussion instruments and stylistic keyboard arrangement.  

The most amazing thing about the Pilgrims band is that all members are academically oriented and professionally qualified in different fields. This attribute makes its style of music more unique with a vision of reaching out to the world at large. Above all, this genre brings Africans back to their heritage by singing in different African languages to suit its audience at different occasions. 

The Pilgrims successful stories include ministrations at big church events, the yearly ceremonial event of the Yoruba’s (one of the three main tribes in Nigeria) titled ‘The Yoruba Day’, The Nigerian Independence Day celebration with lots of dignities, The BUACK celebration day and its annual end of the year concert featuring notable musicians in the industry.