Blurred Lines: Robin Thicke

Robin Thicke, right, with one of his Video Characters

As somebody once said, music is organized ‘noise’. Noise is sound that irritates people rather than soothes their minds. If one must rank music on a scale of noise that stretches from zero to hundred, nearly all music will find a place on the scale. It is just that some will rank, closely, towards the zero end. Some might even score zero. When I was younger, I used to love music with a reasonable degree of noise or madness. As I got older however, I started getting attracted to music towards the zero end of the scale. I discovered that Thicke’s Blurred Lines gets me enchanted as it falls at the point on the noise scale that I like. It is the reason why I often jump each time it comes on Trace Urban television channel.

At one point it was Jazz, then Blues, Gospel, Soul and now Hip Hop. Hip Hop dominates the popular music landscape across the planet. It has, however, grown to become extremely complex with people like Wiz Kalifa and his friends as architects. This current derivative of Hip Hop that finds a place in the hearts of, mostly, adolescents is said to be financially more rewarding. It is the reason why it is most favored. However, there are people who love doing certain things for the sake of it and money will not sway their direction as a result. The song, Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke, to me, seems to reflect the mind of a guy that has chosen to defy the rule. It moves far away from Hip Hop barring the contribution from TI Pharrell.

The lyric is also at variance with what obtains from the mostly abstract or illogical lyrical tradition of mainstream Hip Hop and related genres of music. The lyric represents the words of a man who is trying to persuade a woman to leave her boyfriend because he is a better man than the boyfriend. The role of rapper, TI Pharrell, is an extension of the same message albeit in rap format.

Robin Thicke was born 1977, meaning that the genre of Disco was about to fade away at the time he was becoming conscious of his surroundings. By the time he became a man, Hip Hop has dominated all the space there was for any music style. But passion is strong and overcomes just anything. His passion created the space for his genre of music. To me, Blurred Lines’ tends towards Disco. What I don’t know is whether it was by design or coincidence. One hears heavy baseline, seemingly from a bass guitar and some percussion and drumming.

Above all, the music reflects the mind of a guy who wants something unique, something that he alone has. You feel and see this in the pace of the song, the feeling it evokes, the video characters and their dress code. The video appears to have been short in just a single location, obviously to avoid any complex and potentially rowdy outcome, enabling the man to come out with exactly what he intended to present to music fans.

Music is the foundation of showbiz. Where it becomes boring, the opposite happens. Robin Thicke knows this and wouldn’t want to give the slightest room for such to happen.

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X-Raying Ice Prince’s Aboki

Hip Hop in Nigeria has gradually grown from something that was largely alien in the 90s to a big mainstream show today. At every stage in the journey towards acceptability, there were individuals who worked hard to push the music genre to a wider audience. Today, it is the turn of the Choc Boys drawn largely of J-Town in heart of the nation. One of them is Ice Prince whose latest project is a single titled aboki.

When Ice Prince released aboki, I just waved it aside because of the title which is a local Hausa vernacular that means a ‘friend’ I have that tendency for one to feel that local vocabulary doesn’t fit well in Hip Hop. The audio and video of aboki reminded me, once again, that a guy with the right talent will always find a way to get it right. That is what talent is – an unusual ability to do something. Just a word cannot create an impression that music should in the mind of a fan. It takes the song with the usual modules such as the lyrics and the poetry, the flow, the beats, melody and the feel. Currently the Choc Boys rule the nation and the continent when all these are taken into consideration.

Ice Prince has given another piece of entertaining material to engage fans but has also shown he has a sense of maturity and responsibility. Hip hop has always been viewed as the business of adolescents who don’t know the pains of society. This is a misconception for people outside the periphery of the art. Ice Prince has shown this with his new single. Nigerian has always been, sadly, two nations in one. The northern and the southern halves have always reflected that remarkable cultural contrast. It explains why Nigerian music artistes from the South always consider it necessary to do a song that the northern fans can relate to. Style Plus, Dare ‘Art’ Alade, Onyeka Owenu, Tuface, Faze and many others all have  songs made primarily to appeal to the northern fans. Aboki is the latest of such songs. In the song, Ice Prince is heard calling the names of prominent northerners and referring to them as ‘his guys’ or friends. To get the northern fans to really appreciate the song, the video shows him wearing a white Arabic type of wear and works bare foot in a beautiful and sprawling desert landscape. As usual, the magic in the song is Ice Prince’s extraordinary fervor, poetry, flow and flamboyant flair, compelling one to hold his head between his hands.

The authorities since the military era have often spent money to air documentaries in foreign media organizations to get the world to understand the Nigerian nation better but to no avail. Even during the era of Dora Akunyili as Nigeria’s Minister of Information, there was the ‘Re-brand Nigeria’ thing aimed at changing the attitudes of Nigerians with the sole purpose of correcting the modest appeal of the nation abroad. One thing that contemporary music has done to the Nigerian nation is getting the world to understand, better, the kind of nation Nigeria is. Ice Prince, from previous projects, has already made his contribution towards presenting the right face of Nigeria abroad. His popularity in Africa, Europe, North America and Asia measures the remote perimeters of his role in rebranding the nation. Growing political differences between the North and the South of Nigeria with remarkably bitter outcomes has, unfortunately, tended to push the two regions further apart. Thus well meaning Nigerians consider it a duty to work towards healing the cancerous situation. The song, aboki, is, without a shadow of doubt, an effort to mend the social division created by political repulsion of the two regions.

While hosting the victorious Super Eagles at African Cup of Nations of 2013 on Tuesday 11^th, 2013, Mr. President, Goodluck Jonathan, acknowledged the fact that Nigerian youths have, through music, created a good image for the country abroad. The victory of the Super Eagles, according to him, was another demonstration of what the youths can do for the nation, this time, through football. The Super Eagles members were given financial rewards and national honors. The truth however is that music, more than football, is silently chasing away the darkness around the nation. It is time the authorities begin to give national honors to music artistes and not just footballers. When this begins, Ice Prince should surely not be forgotten. Aboki deserves to win an award.

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P-Square’s Invasion Album

I came across P-Square’s Invasion album from a friend of mine who bought it to please the comparatively younger girls he usually carry in his car. I decided to carry the album to review it and post it on this blog. My attentions drifted to other things before I could play the album enough to enable me have a good grasp which is imperative for a good review. About seven months later, I heard another version of the song, Chop My Money featuring American’s superstar, Akon. At about the same time, I watched a video of Beautiful Onyinye,another joint from the same album, featuring the sturdy and heavily bearded American rapper, Rick Ross. Collaborating with the Americans called my attention to the fact that Nigerian artistes are, indeed, travelling. My interest in Invasion was again reawakened.

Invasion is a fourteen-track album that includes Beautiful Onyinye, Chop My Money, Asamkokoto, Do as I Do, Forever, Me and My Brother, Jeje, Buneha Enu, Ole Buruku, Player, She’s Hot, Fire, Anything and Shake it Down. Jeje is a Tecno song while Me and My Brother is Reggae.

The singing language is the traditional vernacular, pidgin and Standard English language mixes that is common to Nigerian artistes.

From Invasion, one could see that the twins from Busa Buji Street, Jos, have become remarkably professional in their mastery of music instrumentation.

The successes of P-Square over the years have, in part, been an outcome of their realization that the youths in Africa love danceable music more than anything else. It is however not new that the older one gets, the more his interest in party music diminishes. Invasion demonstrated that P-Square has found a way of defying the rule in order to remain in business. Going by the astronomical airplay the album has received and which is still receiving, one understands that the album like the others before it has sold as high. The popularity of P-Square’s songs is usually seen from the way school children mime the songs along the streets. Invasion is not different, revealing how wealthy the duo must be. The album has worked to, again, confirm the leading position of P-Square among contemporary African artistes and perhaps beyond, going by the prominence of the artistes with whom they collaborated.

The number of artistes featured in the original versions of the songs includes Naeto-C, Waje, Muna and Eva. Muna and Eva where featured in the song Shake it Down. The instrumentation of the song is reserved. I figure out that it was deliberately made so to enable fans to appreciate the lyrical wizardry of the two girls.  Despite their lyrical elegance, Muna and Eva were previously unknown to me. The duo rapped in Jamaican Patois such that one is tempted to think they are Jamaicans until he listens to Nigerian vocabularies in between. The depth of poetry of the girls left me wondering which schools they attended. I could only compare them to M-I and Fresh Prince, as far as Nigeria is concerned. If I were Peter and Paul, I would not have featured the two girls as they only worked to play up the poetic diffidence of the twins despite many years in the industry. The message in P-Square’s music are, at times weak,  just to enable rhymes to be made. Also there are times P-Square makes wide of the mark choices of words, making a song to appear unprofessional. For instance, referring to a woman that has stolen your heart as Ole buruku, meaning a thief sounds too harsh for a love song. A love song is supposed to be mellow and soothing. The contrary only makes the song funny, making everything to appear unserious. Some lines read thus: you are just like a thief in the middle of the night; you broke into my heart just like a dagger knife, etc.

Nigerian music has no doubt grown remarkably in the last decade. It is however not the best on the planet. There is thus room for more progress. As said above, the language is usually a mix of Nigerian languages, pidgin and conventional English. My opinion is that rather than use two or three languages in one verse, it is more professional to use a single language in the verses and use the second in the chorus. A verse conveys a particular message. If one starts a verse in English and ends it in Ibo, Yoruba or Hausa, the person listening will be lost if it happens that he lacks an understanding of any of the languages. One can also sing verses in English and perform the chorus in Pidgin English or vice versa.

By-and-large however, the album is marvelous and again confirms that P-Square is not just a big name but one of Nigeria’s biggest of all times.  Peter and Paul have made a lot of Nigerians very proud but we in Jos consider ourselves the proudest. 

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Jeremiah Gyang: Gospel or Secular

On the Sunday of October 14th  the unmistakable Nigerian music artiste from Jos, Jeremiah Gyang, launched his latest music album at Crest Hotel in Jos. The album titled “The Love Album”, represents his third album.

With the renaissance of the Nigerian Music Industry, Jeremiah was the first artiste from Jos to make a representation for the city at the national phase. Some will say that he made a representation not only for Jos but for the whole of Northern Nigeria, more so that his style embraced northern languages in addition to English. P-Square and the bunch of rappers to have come from Jos to make an impression at the national level, as well, merely followed the path he paved. His song “Na Ba Ka” which means “I give it to you” went to the top of MTN Top 10 Music Chart that was anchored by famous DJ Olisah in Lagos and broadcast across the nation. The song featured a cameo role by the tall rapper, Six Foot Plus. “Na Ba Ka” did not only top the charts but is the single most important song that made him popular. Jeremiah’s successes included a jingle for Nigeria Television Authority sub-station, Abuja and the use of one of his songs by the BBC Hausa Service to call attention to upcoming events.

 “Na Ba Na” when translated in English means “I give it to you” as said before. “You” here refers to God. Hence the song is talking about a surrender of one’s heart and life to God. Since the song is his most popular song, it created an impression of Jeremiah as a gospel artiste. A proof of this impression of Jeremiah as a gospel singer is the fact that he became a friend of the church in Nigeria especially in the north. He is always a guest singer in any major church event or a gospel crusade.

One day I was compelled to ask a question as to whether Jeremiah Gyang was actually a gospel singer or not.  This was because I noticed that each time he performed at a church or a gospel crusade, he performs just that song such that the song has become so boring. After the “Love Album” was released, I decided to listen to it to confirm my suspicion. A mere 25% of the sixteen tracks in the album were on the Gospel side while the remaining 75% were on the secular side.

Traditionally, a gospel song is one of worship and adoration to God with a strong solemn flair. Today however, many so-called gospel artistes simply add spiritual messages to any of pop music such as Rap, Reggae or R&B and call it gospel. Others invent their own genre of pop music and add the spiritual messages. That is the category that Jeremiah’s music belongs to. The artiste fulfilled the demand of bringing something new into your music in order to succeed by inventing his style that involves combining the sounds of local music instruments with a few Western instruments, mainly the guitar and the piano and singing in English, Hausa and Berom, his native language.

The announcement of the lunch of ”The Love Album” to me, was unexpected. This is because Jeremiah had relocated to Jos from Abuja where he used to be based. My impression was that the relocation was an indication that his music career was grinding to a halt. The release of t he “love Album” however seemed to have proven me wrong. Now that I have listened to the album, I must say that the album has fallen below my expectation. It takes an invention for an artiste to have a style that distinguishes his music from all others. He worked hard and found it. Now it appears he is throwing it to the garbage bin and drifting back to the background. 

Most artistes often do this. It is like” I have found what I want. The whole world can go to hell.”   Most people who go into music are motivated by money, stardom and success. These successes once they come can make an artiste lazy. The artiste prefers to relax and enjoy his wealth. Talking about wealth, one cannot say how much wealth Jeremiah has been able to make from his music career. Gospel artistes are motivated by need to spread the word and glorify God. This should be a life-long commitment or should last for as long as the artiste remains strong enough to carry on. Jeremiah is still young. If the artiste sees himself as a secular artiste however, the career can end at anytime he chooses. Jeremiah’s music suggests he may not be a gospel artiste. If he chooses to end his career then it is only normal. The point however is that he has not said he is retiring. Discarding his music distinction however means that he will not be able to stand competition and will inevitably be forced into retirement whether he likes it or not.

Tuface Idibia: Away and Beyond

M-I, Nigerian rapper from J-Town once referred to Tuface Idibia, Nigerian singer also with J-Town connection, as “The Great Tuface.” Before this, I have never thought of Tuface as great not because he isn’t but because the need to rank him using one of such words never occurred to me. Of all the music artistes of his time, Tuface is the single one of them that can truly be described as being great, in my opinion.

I was surprised however, to find out that Tuface actually released a new album in mid-2012 and I never got to know about it until I stumbled on the info online and by chance in December of that year. The only reason would definitely be the fact that the radio never gave it the right attention and why?

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Today I decided to buy the album to listen to it. The album sold at a modest N100 despite the status of the artiste. I couldn’t wait to listen to the album that has fifteen songs. I played the first two songs with moderate bliss and kept hoping for the best to come as I played the subsequent songs. I was disappointed. I had to skip some of the songs if, from the start, I could tell how it is going to end. From the fact that there are just two songs that I enjoyed out of the fifteen tracks I rate the album 2/15 or one out of five stars. This isn’t good.

Tuface’s music has evolved from Nigerian Hip Hop/R&B to something that is largely the R&B and then something more Nigeria with a tinge of humor. The current album, to me, is more on the later side. This is in addition to little consideration for vocal excellence, instrumentation without any distinction and the raw use of Nigerian street English...  the message is clear: “I got nothing to worry about.”

The album is an indication that Tuface has already conquered what there is to conquer in terms of the cash, the fame and the optimal use of his strength and feels there is nothing more to explore. At this stage, most artistes begin to think more of businesses they should engage in to sustain the wealth they have made. With a wife, children and his Hypertek music recording business, I think that the path of the rest of his life is already set. We must begin to look for new artistes to take his place and continue to make us proud.

  

Highlife Music Never Died ­-Toni Omeoga

Toni Omeoga

Toni Omoega, the host of Highlife Time on Peace FM Jos is an exciting man. He has an extensive knowledge of the things he cherishes and has an extraordinary ability to retain minute details with pin-point accuracy. Recently he got me excited on a Sunday afternoon while on air, when he made a reference to his meeting with Sir Warrior, the leader of the Nigerian Highlife music band, the Oriental Brothers, at Warrior’s house in Owerri Imo State. I then decided to meet with Toni. Through mobile phone communication, I was able to meet him two hours later. 

Toni welcome me to his family house in the neighborhood of Old Bukuru Park in Jos. He wore an ash-colored mini kaftan with the top ending just above the knee. He had a sprouting hair shave, tall, moderately fair and remarkably slim. His eyes peered from behind strong lenses. The layered voice appeared controlled.

Toni’s ancestral home is a place called Usukwato in Abia State in the Southeast of Nigeria. He, however, was born and raised in the tin city and grew up seeing the era of Disco, Night Clubs and break dance that added color to the culture in the city. In the end he still held on to what was truly Nigerian, Highlife Music.

 He went to St. Theresa Primary School, St.  John’s College, the University of Jos and the Institute of Journalism, all in the city of Jos.  He became popular with the launch of the FM band of Plateau Radio and Television (PRTV) Jos, when he became one of its pioneer presenters in 1988. His romance with the corporation however stretches back into the early eighties when he wrote scripts for a show that was known as the Theatre of the Air. If Nollywood were to be a drum of water, then Toni must have added a few drops. This is because he acted out some of the scripts he wrote, which were aired both on radio and television. Remember, Jos laid the foundation for Nollywood in the eighties and the first movie in Nigeria, Palaver, was short in Jos in 1904.

Until the last decade, radio air time in Nigeria has always been dominated by Western music. Hence persons presenting Highlife and Juju music were major exponents of Nigerian music before the last decade. Consequently, Toni’s status as the leading presenter of Nigerian music on air served as a bridge that linked him to Nigerian music artistes most of whom resided in the South of the country. The circumstance led him to become a music promoter not only in Jos but in the whole of central Nigeria as a whole. Thus he has been responsible for the live performances of about a score of shows in Jos that brought in artistes that included Sir Warrior, Bright Chimezie, Oliver De Coque, Maxwell Udo, Ras Kimono down to later generation of artistes that included Daddy Showcase, Tony Tetuila, Paul Play, The Remedies, Shotgun, Aladin, etcetera. Some of these shows where organized in collaboration with one of the biggest names in the industry, Edi Lawani, whom Toni considers his mentor.

The opinion of Toni regarding the status of Highlife is that it never died, contrary to what a lot of people believe. Toni says that Highlife has always been there because we cannot run away from it. This is because it is the reflection of the culture of the people and as long as the culture remains, it will always define the music. The worst that can happen is for the music to evolve to reflect the culture which is gradually evolving with modernity. The veteran presenter did not forget to mention the fact that the home of Highlife was actually in the Lagos in the Southwest of the country but moved to the East with the eruption of the war in the mid sixties. Highlife moved with the eastern population at a time when another genre of music, Juju, was on the rise to engage fellow musicians that were left behind in the West.

 The corporation that has made Toni popular, the PRTV, has been a source of pride to music fans in Jos from the seventies down to the mid nineties due to the role it played towards giving the city and the state a brilliant reputation in the eyes of visitors. At the peak of its rise, the corporation was a leading tourist attraction that even the authorities were not aware of. Eventually, the extraordinary presenters were stolen by other media organization across the country. A lot of music fans in Plateau State now believe that the corporation is a mare relic of its status at its peak in the late eighties. Toni insists that the corporation has been able to retain that reputation till today. Back then, according him, there was room for improvement despite the superlative performance. Today, it is still the same, he maintained.

Entertainment, whether it came from radio, television, the night clubs or concert halls in Jos, was meant to add value to life in the city as it is elsewhere. I asked Toni how he saw the city today compared to how it was in the past. His impression is that, when everything is taken into consideration, Jos, back in the days, was miles ahead of what it is today. You don’t know the worth of what you have until it is gone. That confidence of walking without looking over your shoulders is gone. The brotherhood is gone and the feeling of security is gone with it. You cannot move freely and cannot have the shows. The men in uniform have also compounded the situation. Whenever there is a show, they come around to use force to introduce fans and put the money into their own pockets, making the promoter to incur financial losses.

Toni who comes from a family of eight siblings, all born and raised in Jos, appears very proud of the city and has refused to leave despite bids from several radio stations across the country.

China’s Search of a Global Music Hit

Chinese Flag

After installing a DSTV decoder I was told by a friend that should my subscription expire and I cannot pay immediately, I should remember that the Chinese are very generous. The implication is that I will find Chinese channels for free until I am able to pay my subscription. That is how I came to discover Chinese Central Television, CCTV and fell in love with the English Channel. One show that I watched only two times and fell in love with is the show, Crossover.  In addition to other issues, they also discuss issues that are close to my heart and happened to be my niche, music. On crossover edition of October 30th, the host discussed “Gangnam Style craze.” Gangnam Style is a song by a Korean Pop musician by the name of PSY who shot to global fame after the song was let loose to global music fans, July 15^th this year. While I watched the show, I waited for a question I knew will definitely come. The question of “why hasn’t China got such a global hit?” The same question was asked on Dialogue, another program on CCTV English.

One thing that we all know is that the soul of the world is in the West. Whatever you do must be endorsed by the West before it can be said to have truly found global success. This means that a lot of endeavors have found hidden success in the sense that they succeeded elsewhere except in the West and just passed out without the ovation. The originator may have found money or whatever he set out to find but, still, his effort was not successful by Western standard. There is a good chance such a person will, within himself, have only partial fulfillment as a result.

The question is why is it so? I think that the West has a lot of pride in their culture and values. It would not endorse anything that failed to meet its standard. The rest of the world, on the other hand, has accepted this principle of appraisal. You see this by the universal appeal of Western Culture. Bright Chimezie, a Nigerian Highlife musician sang in one of his songs that he went to a Disco party and requested for an African song. The result was that people laughed and called him Okoro Junior, another way of referring to him as uncivilized. If you want to produce a music record that will be a global hit, then you must make compromises by knocking off certain elements of your own culture and replacing them with Western equivalents. This is what PSY did. His song, Gangnam Style is a fusion of Techno, Rap, humor, exotic dance and Korean elements. The song may not have made the kind of success it made without the internet, however. For the music to be heard in the West, radio and TV presenters must agree to play it in their shows. It is the only way their fans can hear it. The internet effectively cuts out the presenters from the equation. The implication now is that a song can make it whether or not presenters give their support. Canadian Justin Bieber, for instance, was discovered not by radio play but through YouTube.

In-as- much as the West places a lot of pride in their values, the East also does. The difference however, it that Chinese culture has not travelled far and wide like Western culture. The Chinese Government knows that getting people around the world to understand their culture is a sin qua non for the overall progress of China and not just in the arts. The Chinese Government is already doing this in many ways that I have seen. Ordinary Chinese understand that their nation is growing faster than other nations in many areas but wonder why they cannot have a global hit like Gangnam Style.

Some people don’t support throwing away all of their cultural elements in desperation for success. Even PSY would not support that. It is the reason why there are still elements of his native country, Korea, in Gangnam Style. The truth is that there are Chinese pop artistes that have made moderate infusion of Western elements in their records, making hits that are better than Gangnam Style but have not found its level of success. With that kind of population, that is just possible in some corners of the vast nation.  On the other hand, there are Western hits that are better than Gangnam Style that have not received the kind of views it has enjoyed. To a large extent, the success of Gangnam Style has also been influenced by the luck factor. It was drawn to my attention because many people are talking about it. Radio stations are however not even playing it in my own corner of the world in Africa compared to many American songs that have not found the kind of hits it has enjoyed online.

Juju and Highlife genres of music originated in the Southwestern and Southeastern parts of Nigeria respectively and found popularity around the world in the seventies down to the eighties. They were conservative mixes of Western elements into Nigerian folk music of the regions they originated from. The popularity they found cannot however be compared with the popularity of today’s pop music from Nigeria as played by artistes like Tuface, D’banj, P-Square, brackets and the others. These Nigerian contemporary music acts are so popular that they collaborate with big names like Snoop Dogg, Akon, Rick Ross and many others from the US. The difference between their works and those of their grandparents that played Highlife and Juju is that, to a larger extent, they have compromised the Nigerian elements, replacing them with American equivalents. The music is done purely for economic gains and getting closer to a culture they cherish rather than for promoting domestic culture.

To a remarkable degree, I feel that politics has also played a decisive responsibility towards the making of Gangnam Style. You may not find support in the West if governments over there don’t buy your political trajectory. Endorsing you could amount to endorsing a political ideology they don’t buy. The fans in the West are, of course, allegiant to their governments who are the custodian of their values. As a result, your government must be in the good books of the West for your music to make it in the West. One way out is to sing songs of condemnation against your authorities, just like the Pussy Cats.

Fundamentally however, music should be very original and within the cultural perspective that majority of music fans can relate to. Furthermore, the music should find good publicity. With the internet, it could be said that the barrier of publicity has become easier to overcome. It means that we should be able to see more hits like Gangnam Style in the months and years to come.

Yiro Abari is the author of HOW TO BECOME A MUSIC MAESTRO