Muyiwa Adeyemo writes about the lack of will among present-day Nigerian musicians who would rather sing about easy lifestyles, drugs and women, rather than comment on social ills in the country.
If conscious music heavily draws themes from prevailing situations in the society, then the definition of the unconscious would be the Nigerian secular music today, which largely portrays a fetish obsession for quick money, untrammeled s3xual lifestyle and hedonism with lyrics and graphics depicting a faux reality and artistes that ignore the daily travails and misery of many of their fans and fellow country people. It is not undisputable to aver that the heydays of socially relevant music are behind us – songs that are now relics, people and legacies that are assuming a mythico-legend quality. This is the same Nigeria where Fela Kuti held considerable sway with his music and where for the same reason he has been deified in the imaginary museum of Nigerian arts. So why is our music where it is today? How did we get here?
Nigerian musicians have claimed to revere Fela, his oeuvre and resistance of military-sponsored oppression but that is where it stops. It can be really confusing when contemporary singers say they draw inspiration from Fela because there isn’t even any common ground for comparison between the former and the latter in the first place. In death, the late pan-Africanist Afrobeat singer and activist has come to be honoured by the ilk of powers that he stood against, most notable among them being Emmanuel Macron, the French president. The irony in this is well summed in a snippet from a recent Al-Jazeera article by Demola Olarewaju: “the man who was despised by the authorities is now recognised and celebrated by them in his death, but artistes who claim to be inspired by him continue to sing songs about an illusory reality.”
Although Fela Kuti takes sheer glory in the annals of critical music in Nigeria, he was not a loner therein. There was Sunny Okosun, a contemporary of Fela, who questioned the status quo with works like “Which way Nigeria” and “Fire in Soweto”, an anti-apartheid piece that made international hit. While the late Ras Kimono directly named erring political power brokers, repelled colonialism and raised other significant issues, Majek Fashek preached love and criticised the unholy frolic between religion and politics. Eedris Abdulkareem of more recent times made Mr. Lecturer where he satirised the moral bankruptcy in the ivory towers of Nigerian higher institution where students and lecturers barter grades for s3x and money. This same issue has worsened but silence is the best we get from musicians. Eedris also took swipes at former president, Olusegun Obasanjo and decried the calamitous state of the nation in the albums Letter to Mr. President and Jaga Jaga, relevant enough to have been banned by the government. African China is also worthy of mention for his plebian themes.
Fela didn’t just make records in studios and performed to audiences, he was demonstrative and dramatic about it. On and off stage, with or without his upwardly erect right arm, he gave off the air of a dauntless fighter. With just the weapon of his music with which he relentlessly stung the military despots, he earned himself the status of government’s arch rival and the voice of the masses. But he was more. He was also a virtuoso musician who proved that music can be fun and still serious. The rich quality of Fela’s musical production can be entertaining but at once the calculated diction provokes deep interrogations of social problems and quickens the collective consciousness. His songs served – and still do – as anthems to sustain protests, resistance and anti-establishment activism.
Because literature habitually courts the social framework that churns it, the quest to understand the dearth of protest music in Nigeria becomes a guided one. The kind of power that musicians spoke to in the past was the brute and ruthlessly tyrannical type. Thanks to technology and social media, the quality of suffering has improved immensely. Entertainment is now a means of escape. But was this entirely untrue of the past? People also sought solace in whatever made them forget about their immediate realities, whatever punctuated the constant flow of state-inflicted anguish and depression. In fact, songs by Fela and the likes didn’t get enough airplay as those of a star artiste of today will. He was not everyone’s hero and favourite. That said, people also find refuge in religion, praying away their problems and banking confidently on the divine.
The socio-political background against which genuine protest music has been set in Nigeria should be considered across epochs. The voice of Fela and other rebel musicians were so amplified because they yelled the truth at times when even mere indignant whispers were treasonable, when speaking truth to power was to wish for death, when critics were smothered to silence as scapegoats. Ironically, there has never been a better, safer time when Nigeria music should be most scathingly political, unequivocally critical and revolutionary as this democratic 21st century. Protest musicians dared the powers that be at times when doing so was most costly. What if apart from the weapons of music and a radical soul, Fela had social media and flew on the wings of fundamental human rights, especially that of free speech?
Music that protests is one that characteristically speaks in unequivocal terms and unapologetically. Some of the musicians who presently parade themselves as contributing to social criticism are very far from it because their songs lack content and depth and whatever is left is swallowed by vulgarisms and obscenity. With wordings that don’t appeal, in any way, to the political sensibility of the audience, these songs are socially irrelevant to say the least. Consistency and candour of message – which most singers now lack – were the major attributes that asterisked the Felas and Ras Kimonos of this nation. It is why artistes like Falz and Tekno, who have somehow touched on common issues do not qualify as protest musicians or producers of conscious music, for now. One is reminded of what Ife Nihinlola says of This is Nigeria: “Falz is a woke preacher who is still asleep”. (For the sake this essay, Falz is used as an archetype).
Serious music cannot thrive when political apathy in the country, courtesy of technological distractions and other distractions, is arguably at an all-time peak. There are many countries where such music still has preponderant significance. In America, the likes of Eminem, Travis Scott, J. Cole and others dedicate a good part of their music to racism, injustice, crime, among other topics relevant to the American clime. This is not to say that there are no contemporary Nigerian songs that have social relevance but that they exist but in microscopic numbers. But again, music as literature is a reflection of times. The problems that have beleaguered this nation have worn out the collective spirit of country people that entertainment and religion seem to offer perhaps the best succour. The audience of critical music has become very scanty partly because the criticism hitherto hasn’t stopped things from getting as worse as they are today. The contemporary Nigerians feel we have had enough of the protest. We are tired of complaining and lamenting.
According to a social critic, Mishelia Adams, “A people that don’t see social problems as real problems cannot relate to or appreciate critical literature. In this generation where booty-shaking has been crowned king, people, especially the youth prefer songs that make life appear juicier than it actually is than those that are “too serious”.
A generation that is not politically conscious cannot make politically conscious songs. Even Fela’s music didn’t acquire a political tone until after his exposure to the activism of Malcolm X, Black Panthers Party, and Black Power credited to his 1969 tour in the states.
In today’s Nigeria, the career of the artiste is assessed by the number of awards, international collaborations, material wealth rather than the relevance of songs and the dimensions of impact by the artistes and their arts. Apparently, fame and wealth are the prime motivators for those increasingly populating the music industry. Musicians are fast drifting away from addressing very evident manifestations of social malfunctioning. Once upon a long time ago, musicians were seen as freedom fighters, advocates and activists. Not anymore. Those who attempt to make commentaries on social problems and criticise the government of the day are less incurring the wrath of the government than asking for an audience of few as well as zero financial success. But then protest music has never been inspired by profiteering but rather by a fervid impulse to rise up to a social cause and inspire positive change. History is a testament to the fact that if any creator of protest music has ever been wealthy in the conventional sense of it, it was mostly accidental.
Until Nigerian music once again consistently assumes the posture of a wailing mosquito that keeps the government and people awake and alert, it cannot be taken serious. By that time, the consciousness level, especially of the youth, must have reached the level whereby people have come to not only recognise but also value music as a potent tool of social reformation, reorientation and disillusionment. But as at the last checked, the artistes, their arts and audience are still soundly asleep. As long as the benumbing distance from topical issues that beg for attention is maintained, critical music will continue its respite in the limbo of history.
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