Our Music Is Dying Slowly, And Still Smiling 1

King Sunny Ade is a legendary Nigerian musician of the Juju music genre.

LIFE-LINES

~ By Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Our Music Is Dying Slowly, And Still Smiling

Music is now so pervasive and in-your face that we dare not imagine a life without it, irrespective of your status or location. It’s that “bad”! But just as we are often propelled by inspiring musical presentations; so are we sometime dismayed at the irreverent hollowness of some “hip” music. And we are told the producers of these music types are profiting from their sweat, or more precisely, from their prodigious talents. I corrected myself about the level of “sweat” our music makers put into their music from reports I got while making enquiries on the state of the Nigerian music business; but more on that later.



Asa, a world class Nigerian musician

Now, that technology has made access to music more flippant, it is quite trendy to see foreign and local rave music downloaded from entertainment search engines, YouTube, Napster…free of charge…. Go to the campuses, and see students clamping MP3’s, 4’s into their earlobes, as they grind out body moves in tune with those sound blasters. As the sounds of the 21st century flies in the face of monumental deprivations, especially in developing and under-developed countries, the promoters and producers of today’s music tend to flow with the tide and stench of their climate, and make a living along the way. So, we are happy that Nigerian artistes, especially singers and wannabe musicians appear to be making tidy lump of money, as they spew out strings of musical presentations that their contemporaries, fans and well-wishers love to buy, dance and queue to watch when live shows come to town. It is good. But that is not my worry.


I know from recent bric-a-bracs in the media, following an article by my friend, Reuben Abati that tended to rile the tender underbelly of the hip-hop motley crew…the singers went on and on about the sacrilege of a grumpy old newspaper intellectual with a giant-sized ego, big enough to attempt ridiculing their hard-earned reputation and well-oiled fiefdom. You would think Abati was a snooty frustrated 60-year old pensioner moon-lighting as a journalist. I laughed at the indignation of the latter-day counter-critics, and their feverish protestations. Many people were stunned at the remarkable adroitness of the leader-writer, Banky W and the extensive disputations with Abati’s profiling of a misdirected youth in the prism of confused commercialization of an art form. He lampooned the historical mishaps in Abati’s intervention, elaborating ceaselessly on the embellishments, rather that the substance of the journalist’s clarion call.


Banky W


Now, I have come to remind the young Turks that the consequence of what Abati was warning against is coming pretty close to its cataclysmic eruptions. The decadence in the Nigerian music “industry” is bellowing near rupture; and the scattering, unfortunately, will engulf the good and the bad. Sadly, people like Abati will have no choice but smirk “Didn’t we tell them” at the remnants that will remain after the storm. Of course, noisemakers and warriors of the current raving nonsense would have fled to whence they came from…leaving the larger body of the follow-follow singing peperempe to froth in the mouth, and grovel for unavailable visas.
Why am I worried? Because the way the business of music is set up today, catastrophe is merely around the corner. Sometime last year, I sat down with a long-time friend and a foremost song-writer, instrumentalist and musician. We analyzed the trends in music production, promotion and dissemination; and came to a unanimous conclusion: the Nigerian music industry is dying; and frankly, it will, or probably have to die patapata, before it can truly rise, and take its due position, in the light of things. Incidentally, the best hands to give it life are the same starving it of the elixir for irreversible success – the young Nigerian artistes. How? Stay with me next week. Katchya.


fajswhatnots@yahoo.com or faj-alive.blogspot.com


(First published in Guardian on Sunday, February 07, 2010)