tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1259678905729324935.post3707051247323121536..comments2009-01-14T09:16:36.241-05:00SOLOMONSYDELLEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17564768670896215900noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1259678905729324935.post-42765070170800521912009-01-14T09:16:00.000-05:002009-01-14T09:16:00.000-05:00@ H20-works: lol! Actually, this <I>is</I> more than 2 years late, but I will forgive you. Thank you, nonetheless for the serious breakdown. It made for a good read and yes you should put it up at your blog.<BR/><BR/>By the way, I have committed time to the discovery of excellent Nigerian musical talent. My journey to rediscovering contemporary Nigerian music. Don't believe me? Take a good look around for the Nigerian Music collection that I feature on this site So much so, that I now have musicians kindly sharing their music with me for review.<BR/><BR/>Nigeria has some incredible music, it just required that I focus to find it. And since then, I have never turned back.<BR/><BR/>So thank you so much for the breakdown, I love learning from others. And, please make sure you come back because in 2009 I will have the great fortune to feature incredible talent form genres such as jazz, afrofunk, rap and of course Nigerian pop music. I'm getting excited just thinking about the talent and hope you will come along for the ride.<BR/><BR/>Thanks again!SOLOMONSYDELLEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17564768670896215900noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1259678905729324935.post-71302007691523723382009-01-14T05:27:00.000-05:002009-01-14T05:27:00.000-05:00This response is coming almost about 2 years (short 4 days) late, you view on this issue might have changed, but nonetheless, I still feel the need to express my sentiments. <BR/><BR/>First off I see your point as to why you might think that our music lacks identity, but what you must realize is that of all the African artists you mentioned, few of them have English as their Lingua Franca. Language plays a great role in what you hear from these artists (Salif Keita for example). I love his music but if you take a close listen you will see that the music is constructed to support the language, that is to say that if you remove his voice, it is not too far from something that Hans Zimmer, Klaus Badelt or even any renowned jazz artist could put together should they choose to use the instruments. <BR/><BR/>Language and message is the same reason King Sunny Ade, Sir Shina Peters and the likes could go on singing to the repeating sounds from their bands and we would love it. If you even listen to Onyeka Onwenu (take Bia Nulu for instance, the "Nigerianess" of that song comes from the language, besides that the music behind is jazz). The next thing would be to ask why our artists did not continue singing in this fashion (with their various languages and instrumentation). Well Nigeria is very diverse (probably the most diverse African Nation) and we communicate across the board in English, if you even look at our most popular artist export (Fela) in Africa and the western world, you will notice that he sang most of his songs in English, well its derivative 'pidgin', and his pioneered Afro-beat has a big jazz influence hence his worldwide appeal. Needless to say we still have artists singing in our various languages. <BR/><BR/>As you might have noticed, Africa's greats have some element of jazz in their music, mixed with our wonderful sounding African drums and accompanying instruments, and where this is lacking, language takes over. That "jazzified" sound also comes with the age/maturity factor.<BR/><BR/>So moving along to the younger generation. In this category, I believe we own the show (we don't just steal it). Our musicality comes out clean, and yes it is somewhat hip-hop/R 'n' B oriented, that comes with the category, but still you can differentiate it from it's Western counterparts. Take a listen to the instrumentals of P-Square's "No One Like You" we own that, I don't think I can fathom it coming from anywhere else, and I have Non-Nigerian African friends who can identity a tune as Nigerian just by the instrumentals. Initially I used to get taken aback by this, but now I realize that it is because we have a uniqueness to our sound and that gives us presence. Even in our rap/hip-hop/Afro-pop we rule (no offense to my non-Nigerians). Take for example the hottest hip-hop album of 2008 in my opinion - M.I's "Talk About It" If you haven't heard it already you should try to get a copy, even if you did not enjoy rap, he still gets to you, and not with a Western flavor, but one that is uniquely Nigerian, in beat and delivery, the lyrics are just sweet like bananas. If only the Western world (mainly America) can listen to and accept something that is different and not from them. They always wanna recycle you before they accept you, it is still the reason why they only wanna recognize our music as African only when it is not sang in English, and when/if they eventually recognize it, they would dub the artist as either American...sorry African-American, British or European, as if to say the person is African is a crime. If at all they even take notice of an artist, they classified it as world music, not Jazz, Hip-hop or R 'n' B. Anyways we are making ourselves heard, and one day the world would be forced to listen.<BR/><BR/>PS: I'm gonna have to add this to my blog so others can read it too. This actually took me about 2 hours to write..lol. I had to listen to almost all the artists mentioned. I'll probably clean it up because it is 4.20am and I have a feeling I was rambling and missing out on some train of thought I would like to include.H2O-workshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14520211736002007066noreply@blogger.com