What is Nigerian Music?

Their lyrics have been variously described as empty, reckless and dangerous. Still I had not paid much attention to the new explosion of Nigerian music until one clear morning some months ago. I was listening to a programme on a local radio station in Abuja when, out of the clear blue airwaves, the air was fouled by the outrageous lyrics of a song by one of Nigeria's myriads of musicians.
No, it was nothing like Akon's I wanna f--k you, f--k you... which should shame the singer more than the listener. It was something worse, in my judgement: I go smoke igbo if I like oooh! The song was brazenly glamorising drug-taking in a manner which, in a properly regulated broadcast environment would have been promptly labelled NTBB - Not To Broadcast.
The song and its singer must be familiar to many Nigerians as it has continued to be played both on air and public occasions. First I wondered how a song like that can be allowed to be on sale, let alone be broadcast, within earshot of impressionable youngsters who see musicians, however talentless and bizarre, as role models worthy of imitation. Then I found myself confronted with the question: what exactly qualifies as Nigerian music? And, isn't there a danger that it may be headed the way of Nollywood, where quantity passes for quality?
I know that, as happened the last time I did a critique of Nollywood, some vested interest will almost certainly crawl out of the woodwork, completely ignore the core issues, and resort to personal insult and abuse as an alternative to logical argument. But, as Ndigbo say, you do not avoid a war simply because people get killed.
Our nation cannot achieve the change we desperately crave for if we defer to the logic of mediocrity, sold as patriotism. It cannot be true that everything indigenous is necessarily the best, merely because it is our own. Nor can we all see every issue from the same standpoint. As Lyndon Baines Johnson once said, where three people are discussing and two are nodding in agreement, only one person is thinking.
My position on any public issue that I engage in is underpinned by my belief that we must always strive to be the best that we possibly can. That is the route to greatness. We cannot continue to judge ourselves by our own standards, rather than universally acceptable standards of best practice and performance. That has to be the case in a world made smaller by the wonders of modern multi-media and instant communication.
This is more so in the business of arts and entertainment, an enterprise that has demolished the barriers of language, race, religion and cultural xenophobia. For instance while Mr Biggs can serve up a how-for-do hamburger in Ikeja, without McDonalds to compete with it in quality, music, movies, broadcasting and other forms of entertainment can neither run nor hide from a critical international audience lurking in the bullrushes of the internet and satellite.
Indeed Nigerian music and other art forms must be able to appeal to a wider international audience in order to positively impact both on our country's image and on the artiste, else he or she will remain a local champion. And such international audience shall judge us not by our Naija standards but by immutable criteria of quality and excellence. If Achebe, Soyinka, Okri and Adichie had been content to write Onitsha Market standard of literature, they would not have been acclaimed by the world as they are today.
And so I have serious issues with what passes today as Nigerian music.
Admittedly, I have what some might call an old fashioned understanding of Nigerian music that dates back to Israel Nwoba, the legendary minstrel, Joe Neze, right down to Celestine Ukwu, the philosopher, and up to Ebenezer Obey, Victor Uwaifo, Sunny Ade, Dan Maraya Jos, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Rex Jim Lawson, et al. Theirs was music whose roots, lyrics and rhythm were anchored in the life of the Nigerian peoples. Their authentic indigeneity was beyond question because you felt it, knew where the artistes were coming from, what they were saying, and in the case of Fela, where he was going. More importantly this generation of Nigerian musicians imitated no one and aped no foreign artiste. Indeed Fela, as did some of his peers, put an indigenous stamp on his music by tagging it Afro-beat. It is heartening to know that he left a legacy in the person of his son Femi to continue the tradition.
I am also acquainted with the 60s and 70's rock and soul culture as represented by Elvis Presley and James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Picket, etc. Indeed their influence spread to Nigeria and produced groups whose music was almost entirely Western but accepted by Nigerian audience because the singers did not pretend that what they played was Nigerian in content or origin.
To be clear, I am not advocating a return to reprising Western pop music. On the contrary I believe that Nigerian music should have long come of age. Ghana, the home of High-life, has since re-invented its music in the form of what they now call Hip-life. The Francophone Africans have already exported their Makosa to the dance stages of America.
But I strongly disagree that what we now have as Nigerian music qualifies as Nigerian.
It is my view that the current out-pouring of travesty of American Rap, Hip-hop and R & B cannot be uncritically accepted as Nigerian music merely because it is sung by Nigerian artistes.
The most obvious of the many deserved criticisms of today's Nigerian music is that it suffers from the worst form of imitation, namely a mockery of the Nigerian attempting to be an American. Without exception they all wear drooping baggy jeans, outlandish sunglasses, even in pitch darkness, and speak with ridiculous pseudo-American accent. They repeatedly grab their crotch as the pinnacle of their stagecraft.
On their music videos, Nigerian element and ambiance are conspicuously absent. Nearly all of them are shot in South Africa or the UK. Equally they all feature half-naked, half-caste girls who appear bored and seem as if they are in it for the money, which they probably are. The only thing vaguely Nigerian in this new kind of music is that most of them are sung in pidgin English, the Wazobia lingua franca of Nigeria, but rendered in pathetic American accent that can wake up even the dead.
In terms of artistic content and merit today's Nigerian music fares no better. Their lyrics are largely banal, lacking in the poetic symmetry that can sometimes lift popular music to the height of serious art. Lyrics, we must bear in mind, is such an important element of popular music that it is categorised separately in awards. Indeed lyricists like John Lennon and Paul McCartney made more money from royalties as songwriters for their fellow Beatles than they made from actual record sales.
The one saving grace that has enabled Nigerian popular music to be accepted at least by the younger generation of Nigerians at home and abroad is that it has rhythm.
It sounds good to the ear, although quite monotonous and lacking in character and content. But the exaggerated gestures and gesticulations, the ridiculous get-ups and antics, all have more to do with whacky foreign pop culture than Nigerian.
It is sad that often Nigerian achievements and ingenuity tend to result in failure because they lack a finishing touch. The tendency to mass-produce and proliferate, simply because of a pioneering success by one talented individual, inevitably attracts a motley crew of the less suitable and ill-qualified. I recall that Tu-Face Idibia's African Queen, which won him the MOBO and many other awards, opened the floodgates for the current deluge of Nigerian music. But few of the mushrooms that followed in his wake can claim to have matched his pioneer achievement. Should African Queen, a truly Nigerian music, not have been a fore-runner for a new kind of authentic Nigeriana, rather than a barrage of bastardisation of Americana?
I know there are some who would argue that our boys and girls should rather be producing bad music than join the reprehensible band of kidnappers and armed robbers. Fair enough. But I am a firm believer that whatever we do, we should do to the best possible standard.
For a start, those who control the industry should consider the criterion of talent, not just money to be made from artistes. Scouts, agents and talent shows Like Naija Sings should be a regular means of identifying and promoting true talents, not just anybody who can hold a microphone and grab his crotch. Above all, Nigerians should learn to demand more than quantity. For too long we have made do with how-for-do!

WRITTEN BY Dr Iroh, OON, is a former Director General of FRCN(Culled from Thisday Newspaper)