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| Davido |
Sometimes I am hasty in my condemnation of some artists that
I review. P-Square and Waconzy are some victims of my swift judgment. Eventually
however, they proved me wrong. My latest victim is Nigeria’s reining music act,
Davido. Right now, he is about to prove me wrong too, especially with his
bandwagon, Skelewu.
In every business anywhere around the world and, perhaps,
beyond, what adds value to the practice are new inventions. Just imagine the change
and rise that has been brought about by information and communication technology.
Music is, perhaps, as
necessary as bread is to life. Furthermore, it is a generator of amazing
prosperity that sustains millions directly and indirectly. The ability of music
to continue to play this role in life is reliant on the capability of the
artists to remain creative enough to keep the fans hooked. New styles must be born
so as to hound away boredom in the music and keep the fans. It takes an artist
with a big heart that knows the significance of a new style and sees its attraction
to be able to make out a potential for a new variety and then work towards ensuring
it does not fizzle out. Along this line, Davido has proven that he’s got a big
heart and is not a run-off-the-mill opportunist that I thought he was.
The music assortment which I will like to call the Sexy
Swing is currently called Iyanya Dance after another Nigerian singer, Iyanya
who invented it. The style manifested in his song, Your Waist, a song that found rave reviews across Africa and
beyond. I never really loved the music that instigates dancers to swing their
waists and hips seductively thereby making onlookers to suddenly move on to a
heat session. Seeing the popularity of the song however, I was compelled to
join the bandwagon. This finally happened after a radio presenter I hold in
high esteemed played the song on air. I asked her what she thinks is the
attraction in the song and she replied that she saw relevance in the song as a
result of the widespread acceptance the song has received among music lovers.
Besides Your Waist, the
flair of the Sexy Swing did not reflect in any of the other songs by Iyanya.
Thus it is difficult to say that Iyanya invented the style consciously. If he
had made a complete album of songs with that flavor, it would have been easy
for one to conclude that he knowingly invented the style.
After I listened to Wande Cole’s Ten-Ten I perceived the potential for a distinct music color and
wrote to say that if the artist can carry on with that discrete music type, he
would have invented a new one. He never sustained it and everything just
vamoosed. Not only that, the artist also disappeared from the scene, again
confirming and re-instating the fact that Nigeria is a country of wastages.
What Davido has shown, by doing a song along that line, is
that he is aware that if other artists can continue to do songs with that flamboyance,
then a music invention would have been recorded.
One thing about the Nigerian music industry is that it has
the capacity to drag creativity to the latches since music marketers insist on
what elements should and should not be in music if they must market it. By that
they take away music democracy and frustrate the possibility of new inventions.
If Davido and the others to follow are aware of the dangers of the demands of
the marketers and work consistently to ensure they maintain the flair, then
Iyanya Swing would have established itself as
new music style that was made in Nigeria.
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