I love Nigerian music. Have done as long as I can remember...I loved it before I realised how much I did. That's it.... simple fact.
I wonder why though..I mean, I have throughout my life been exposed to a wide range of genres. I have myself gone through phases, I remember my older sister teaching me the "steps" to go with every song that came out when she was in secondary school, I remember listening to my brother's hip-hop blaring out of the "dec" after school, those afternoons I would come back from playing ten-ten with my girlfriends and talking about "cooties", hop into the house and immediately be welcomed by the melodies of Bone-thugs, the poetry of 'Pac, the smug boasts of BIG or the angry growls of DMX. I remember the ooooold cable we had, the one before DSTV, before Multichoice even... the one that had no dish, just plain cable. The one we watched the real, original MTV on and BBCgold, the one that showed Nirvana songs before Kurt was dead, that showed REM when I thought it was some weird guy singing interesting songs, that reeeeally old one with mostly British channels and fuzzy signal.
So I guess I've always known about music, how every song is (well, was) different in the way it sounded (not anymore) and whatever issue it addressed, whether it was unrequited love, self loathing, the devil, the hustle to be rich, sex, whatever (since the emergence of the term "swagger", DEFINITELY not anymore!)
Music always was a marvel to me, I always envied the people who had the gift, not so much the people who had the voices, but the people who knew how to intricately weave their thoughts and emotions together so well that even with the hard task of expressing everything in such a way that would be melodic and would rhyme and be easily understandable to even a little black, African girl all the way in Nigeria so clearly, those were the ones I saw as superhuman. I mean it is difficult enough to express what you are feeling in words in a way that fits the purpose (not all the time) well to make each sentence sound somewhat like it leads on to the next naturally without any effort is.... well to me, a great thing.
The thing is, with me, I do still like a very wide range of music.... but....I only like the stuff that sounds like the person who's made it cared about the music and its message as opposed to the money or fame its going to bring to them. Well..... that should tell a lot about the sort of person I am. SILLY!! I mean, who makes music and doesn't think of how they will feel if everyone in the world could hear their song and love it? No one, that's who. But in my own world I like to believe people do things for the love of the thing they are doing and not for the material rewards or other sorts of rewards we would generally think of as "surface" e.g. money, free and speedy entry to clubs, groupie love, freebies lol...the more I type the more I consider going into the music industry myself.
Well, Back to the love of my music. Thats exactly why.....it feels like my music.... not some strange territory I am sampling or just some sound. I haven't forced my senses to become accustomed to it, or tuned my ears to pick up every nuance in what is said in the songs I am listening to.... it feels natural. It tells of things I want to know about.... things that sound familiar, yet sometimes, distant to me... things that evoke feelings within me, whether they are of joy, of amusement, hope, despair, sadness or just.... you know.... emotion. I actually feel something in me when I listen to this music.
Now lets not get this twisted and make it sound like its allll the songs that are churned out of Nigeria and "Nigerians in diaspora" that I immediately fall for and claim "I heart". No no no no no and no again. Such is NOT the case. I recognise that the people with this gift of expressing their true feelings through music do not only come for my country, and also that not all "musicians" or "artistes" from my beloved country are doing so.
However (yaaaay this is the point that I narrow it down), that quality is what differentiates to me what I would (off the top of my head) describe as melodic jargon and authentic music. That word itself conveys the gravity of the meaning of the word.
Need I say more??? well....I'd like to, I guess I shouldn't have asked then..... oh well.
The stuff you remember afterwards, the stuff from people who think like you, the people who make you think like them, make you see through their eyes and feel through their.....erm feelings(???) I guess. Aren't those the ones you want to listen to time and time again, to see if there is anything you missed in what they said 5 minutes ago when you listened and promised yourself you would move on to the next song as soon as this one ended. That feeling like when you are not listening to it, even though it is on a relentless repeat in your mind, it still isn't loud or real enough to satisfy your desire to hear it again?
That feeling. That's what I feel. Is that or is that not how music should feel??
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