Tag Archive for: Highlife

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgORfR-3OUc

On D’banj’s Bother You.

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Something different from D’banj. Maybe not entirely different but substantially different from his oeuvres in recent times. And it is easy to seewhy. It is the Original Sound Track of Biyi Bandele-directed Half of Yellow Sun, the film adaptation of the Adichie’s second novel. They needed something exotic, African-sounding, suitably rhythmic to carry the thrust of the plot, a love story with the Biafran war as a backdrop.

I would have preferred a song that would be more true to that era. Highlife was the popular genre then and Highlife, in itself, is quite important to the civil war as a discourse. Adichie’s novel did pay due obeisance to Highlife by reference but in film perhaps it might be difficult to make this work. Really, how difficult is it to assemble a band to play Celestine Ukwu’s Biafran song, “Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice, we are all free.” Mind you, I am yet to see the movie.

Bother You will have to do. Snatches of the film interspersed with the beach scene with D’banj, his love interest and a horse will just have to do.

Paddling my Canoe

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  1. ImageFirst, a caveat. This blog post is out of a need to have a post this week. I grappled with several concerns that shape my thoughts and design for this blog, chief of which, is a consistent desire to interrogate contemporary African tunes and, sort of, unearth their lineage with older and perhaps extinct musical forms, if there is any such thing, as they say art is incestuous.
  2. I wanted to address contemporary Nigerian tunes and Dance, if there is any such thing. And I started out by picking a title called Dance in Nigeria, halfheartedly modeled after  a Lorrie Moore story called Dance in America. This is how my brain works. In very baffling and discordant ways.
  3. I am listening to my personal compilation of Rex Lawson’s songs which I intend to pack into a personal CD souvenir the moment I clear out copyright issues. I am a lover of Highlife even though I am on the wrong side of my twenties. I have been accused of using my writing as a propaganda to legislate nostalgia for Rex Lawson’s sake. I think there might be some truth therein. See here. Another explanation is that I may have re-incarnated but facts from the family tree negates this as well. So let’s just say I love good times and Highlife music portends an exemplary mood of good times. 
  4. I should add that listening to Highlife acutely distracts my thoughts on contemporary dance. See I wrote a story called Situation Highlife which almost became but for my laziness. It was an attempt at making life imitate Art. The opposite of mimesis, if you like. Trust that Highlife was part of the scenario. A painter caught a woman dancing to Highlife to catch a man’s attention in one of his works. The work is shortlisted in a painting prize. A journalist who was to write about the painting experience the painting at the banquet organised for the painting prize. 
  5. So instead of writing about Etighi, Yahooze and Galala, I have written about something else, in fact, nothing, perhaps I might have succeeded in projecting a state of my mind, but I really wanted to write about songs that were self-help dance manuals. Think Artquake’s Alanta. Then recently, Davido’s Skelewu, Olamide’s Position Yourself, etc. But I guess I will write that later
  6. In Rex Lawson’s words, I dey go paddle my canoe.

Highlife and New School Nigerian Pop

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Eliot’s argument in his evergreen essay, Tradition and Individual Talent, does not hold true for only literature. Music is also a likely accomplice too. This is evidenced by the latest trend amongst contemporary Nigerian pop musicians who have begun to crystallize their native sound and identity out of the broth of western influence.

The haste with which the Nigerian Pop music scene grew from the beginning of our fourth republic is quite alarming. There was no ideological stance to the music that was being made; it was essentially a guttural response to a rash of influences, it was at best mimicry to the American rap and Hip-pop culture. And it was a lot of copious tunes that have drowned in oceans of irrelevance.

Fast forward twelve years and there is a marked change. Nigerian music has moved beyond the childish babble of Americana to something more stylishly indigenous. I am not certain that we have gotten to where we are going as regards the signature sound, but I am convinced that it has become trendy again to unearth the wealth of our indigenous sounds.

D’Banj’s Entertainer album seats at the pinnacle of that tendency for me. With songs like Igwe and Fall in Love, D’Banj explored some African tunes which he wrapped up with ingenious aplomb into the genre of contemporary hip-pop. Although it is decorous to split the accolade between him and his estranged producer, but that is another story. It is the success of his foray that has been duplicated in the sounds of Flavour, Whizkid, Omawunmi, Sean Tizzle, Olamide and Davido.

Aye, Davido’s latest single, has a jarring jaunty rhythm seems like the unlikely ménage a trios between Soukous, Soul and Palmwine Highlife. Whizkid’s On Top Your Matter is pure contemporary Highlife, the guitar riffs are unmistakable. Likewise Omawunmi’s Bottom Belle. I look forward to hearing a street Juju version of Sean Tizzle’s Komole. And, of course, Flavour has been crowned in many places as the new king of Highlife.

Not enough said.

Three Songs: Rex Lawson

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Think James Moody or The Temptations or even Frank Sinatra. Legends with towering names and achievements, yes? Yes, now think Cardinal Rex Lawson, the General Overseer of Nigerian Highlife.

 Although he met his untimely death in car crash, younger than say Albert Camus, he was known to have said that he would die as a musician. Indeed, he died en route a concert at Warri. But even death at a young age, an eerie trend amongst Highlife musicians (see Israel Nwoba, Crosdale Juba, Celestine Ukwu), did not truncate his genius. He was a prolific musician with a substantial body of work in record pressings and his soul-rendering performances were deemed unforgettable.

 I have chosen to write about three songs by the late Highlife maestro, a mish-mash of varying quality, language and ethos. A Kalabari man born by an Igbo mother, he was known to sing in many languages of the West Africa including Efik, Igbo, Kalabari and Twi. Add to this the English language and the more accessible creole, English pidgin. A former band member with Bobby Benson, Rex Lawson, in singing in various indigenous languages, was operating in the zeitgeist of his era.

 Nigerian short story writer, Igoni Barrett says this about So Ala Temen, “I learned how to laugh and cry at the same time. And this without even understanding what the words of the song meant.”

His words are rather apt. There is something transcendental about music that even when you don’t have an insight as to the lyrical content, the mood, pulse, energy trapped within the organized sound reveals itself to you. Little wonder, Rex Lawson was notorious for being overly emotional to the brink of tears when he performs So Ala Temen.

 “Hannah I Don Tire”, done in both pidgin and Kalabari, is a different kind of song. There is something incessantly gnawing about the bass guitar that leads the tune with such reckless aplomb. The possibilities of the lyrical content are also of interest: a sated man implores his virtuous kept woman to let him go home. Highlife has that mimetic quality. Adultery is a recurring theme that continues to intrigue humanity.Women always reveal themselves in Highlife tunes.

 “Angelina Pay My Money” has always cut the picture of a colonial Lagos for me. Jaunty rhythms with a teasing percussion, Rex Lawson assume the role of a petty trader hoping to redeem his credit facility from Angelina, unarguably a debtor and arguably a prostitute.