Opinion: God won't listen to Nigerian songs | By: Etcetera

“Shoki hey hey Shoki!” cries a voice from the radio to the beat of a nerve-wracking pandemonium that seems designed to drive you insane.
A quick flick of the dial and “Shakiti bobo” is playing. The worse thing is that the raucous noise emitted by the artiste is no match for the loud, odious din coming from the beat. The lyrics are completely lost – which may not be regrettable to some – but the whole tumult sounds more like bad static than music. I tuned the dial again. This time it was Olamide screaming “VANESSA VANESSA.”
As the last strains of the song died away, the OAP cheerfully and enthusiastically breaks in, “Yes, that’s for all you listeners out there. That’s the way we do it right here at your cool station. We personalise our playlist to make you feel cool.”
Cool kor, cooler ni…. I felt like telling the OAP that his choice of songs made me feel SICK. 
This is simply today’s Nigerian music! Something is terribly WRONG with it! Yet millions around the country – especially the young people – listen to it by the hour. WHY?
What is there about this music that is so gripping? How can something so meaningless hold millions under its spell? Why does it serve as a common denominator – as “the tie that binds” – for so many youths?
Judging from how and what they’re saying and singing, it is easy to conclude that some of these artistes should be taken for mental evaluation! Music mirrors our emotions; it reflects our thoughts; it echoes our activities – it shows us the way we really ARE!
Most Nigerian artistes are confused and bewildered – or they wouldn’t sing songs about not being able to tell right from wrong, or songs which purposely don’t say or mean anything, or which try only to “embody an emotional state that points indirectly to marijuana and crazy sex positions.”
Music – just like other forms of art – is like a social barometer. A strong and healthy society produces dynamic and stimulating music; a diseased and decaying society produces sick and decadent music.
It’s a simple matter of cause and effect!
This is now a SICK SOCIETY and, therefore, it produces SICK MUSIC. It’s just that simple! Both parents and the young people are to blame. My point is, we all don’t have to be a part of this sick society – or its sick music.
Even talking about today’s gospel songs, many are lacking in purpose and quality. The gospel singers are forgetting that God believes in QUALITY. Look at the universe He created! He also believes in human improvement and GROWTH. “Become ye therefore perfect” (Matt. 5:48) and “Grow in grace and knowledge” (II Pet. 3:18), He commands.
God wants His people to grow in the right kind of culture – the right kind of appreciation for the finer things in life. He says that mature Christians are “those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to DISCERN both good and evil” (Heb. 5:14).
God wants us to EXERCISE our five physical senses. He wants us to learn what the true values for the enjoyment of the senses are. One of these senses is hearing. And one of the ways we need to exercise our hearing sense is in the appreciation of quality music. Quality in music involves, first of all, the way it is composed or arranged. Secondly, it involves how the music is performed. And thirdly, the setting (the place and occasion) in which the music is heard.
You attend a concert only to see artistes with a hodgepodge of idiotic noise played from a CD and the audience seated at round tables like they are in a canteen, screaming with mouthful of small chops and ‘samosas’ as every new song is introduced by the performer. What utter nonsense! What is WRONG with us? How did we completely lose our sense of value regarding music? Do we even know the purpose of music?
A mother justifies her daughter who’s listening to an obscene song by saying,  
“If you listen to the words of that one, it’s pretty rough. But it has a real good beat. My daughter says she doesn’t pay any attention to the words anyway.” Are we really that naïve? 
What erroneous reasoning! Go along with the crowd – even if the crowd is on the way to suffering, misery, pain, extinction? Do we think that these songs have no part in the tidal wave of promiscuity, venereal disease, illegitimate babies that are all over the country today? If you are one of those who like today’s Naija music, you ought to honestly and truthfully ask yourself WHY.

THE MISUNDERSTOOD BUSINESS OF NIGERIAN MUSIC: THE WANDE COAL CASESTUDY

Wande Coal
 
  Written by : Temi Babatunde.
 
There is no gainsaying that the Nigerian music industry is nowhere close to having structures like its counterparts in the US, UK or other developed countries. However, one could argue that the ‘haphazard’ structures record labels have here have produced some of the most successful artistes Africa, and indeed the world, has seen in recent times. Despite that, there seems to be a common trend of artistes being raised from obscurity by record labels, groomed to success, and then same turning around to desert those labels under the most unamicable circumstances. Alliances are key in any business, especially in one as harsh as the entertainment industry where who you know often determines how far you go, regardless of your talent (or lack of it). There is quite a lengthy list of musicians that have broken away from producers or labels and whose musical careers are yet to recover – artistes who have been unable to score follow up hits since breaking away from a winning relationship. 

One of such that keeps coming to mind is 9ice. Regardless of the factors that might have played a part in fracturing his relationship with ID Cabasa, his career is yet to recover from the break with the producer who helped birth the debut album that shot him to limelight. There are others like Chuddy K and GT tha Guitarman, to mention a few.  This leads to two trains of thought, the first of which is: Why kill a working chemistry? Is it because of greed? A lost sense of progress? What exactly is responsible for the prevailing trend of artistes dishonouring contracts or wanting out of arrangements that have spurned hits upon hits for reasons fuelled by a desire to earn more money? The second train of thought is: Should an artiste not ‘move forward’? To this, I say, everyone should take steps necessary for their progress. However, things must be done the right way. None of those aforementioned artistes have really moved forward.
 
Wizkid, on the other hand, has laid the ground on how to ‘move forward.’ Bad blood would haunt any career, so Wizkid achieved a new paradigm in his relationship with EME. He wanted more, but he or his advisers understood that there’s a time, place for everything, and things, if done properly, will achieve the best results. The artiste is honouring his contract with EME, while building his own record label by the side. The biggest problem facing artistes who want to break away from their hitherto winning formulae is that they take their inexperienced selves into the business of music – not just creating music, as they are gifted at, but becoming their own record executives, and producers amongst other things.

A recent example of this is Wande Coal, who is on a quest to be his own label executive. An artiste, in the course of his career, could get to that point but the question is: Is Wande ready? His debut album, which was entirely produced and largely co-written by Don Jazzy, comfortably sits as one of the top Nigerian albums of the decade. Wande is an artiste who, as he says himself, got signed from Mushin. He moved into an apartment in a high brow area of Lagos, drives a choice car and released over a dozen hits during what he now chooses to describe as a 10-year servitude to Don Jazzy. If that’s the definition of serving Don Jazzy, I bet a lot of artistes would choose to serve him for life! Yes, some of the blame lies with the record labels. And here is where I fault them primarily – on the issue of contracts. A press statement released by Mavin Records hinted at the fact that there wasn’t a signed contract between Wande Coal and the label.

This is certainly a recipe for disaster. But then again, not that contracts have ever stopped Nigerian artists from displaying a culture of impunity – case in point: Brymo, who recently released an album in violation of his contract with Chocolate City Record Label. Wande Coal, however, one upped Brymo by allegedly releasing without permission or credit, a song originally written and arranged by Don Jazzy. Unlike the rest of the world where grave career consequences follow walking out of a binding contract or intellectual property theft, such is not the case here. Nigerian acts do these things at free will and earn sentiments from fans, public.

No artiste, not even a Wande Coal or Brymo, should be able to carry on with a music career if he/she decides to walk out of his/her recording contract or ‘steal’ a song over flimsy excuses like “I served you for 10 years”.  If there is to be true progress, there must be an overhaul of the Nigerian music industry, both in terms of structure and mind set. Standard contracts must be signed and artistes and record labels must be held accountable for any breaches of such contracts.

(Temi Babatunde is a music producer turned trained entertainment lawyer of Nigerian descent but based in South Africa)
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