Nigeria: The complex dynamic of music in a country under siege
A few days into protests, Toyin Abraham was on the wrong end of youthful wrath as she was tone-deaf enough to innocently promote her latest music, Fate of Alakada.
On October 8, 2020, legendary Nigerian rapper, Olamide released his 10th solo body of work, ‘Carpe Diem.’ Unknown to him and despite its immense quality, the album was going to criminally sail under the radar due to the impending highs of the #EndSARS protests which rightly brought Nigeria to a standstill - nigh its knees - for the better part of two weeks.
ALSO READ: Olamide - Carper Diem [Album Review]
Three days later, angry youths set a precedent by flooding the Lekki toll gate and shutting it down for the next couple of days. Protests followed across the country, as Nigerian youths chose strategic ways to cripple regular activities and make the erring government feel their pain.
The victimhood of music
Just as they grounded affairs on the ground and their numbers increased, they also sought to ground affairs in the virtual world. A few days into the protest, Toyin Abraham was on the wrong end of youthful wrath as she was tone-deaf enough to innocently promote her latest music, Fate of Alakada.
What happened to her sent a clear message across the entertainment world. It was, ‘Do not do anything else besides our primary common goal of protesting for our lives.’ Youths even backed it up with the oft-hilarious, part-realistic rhetoric, ‘Na person wey dey alive dey <insert fitting scenario>.”
Artists took the cue and stopped releasing music. Even Wizkid’s long-awaited album, Made In Lagos took a backseat to the greatest act of bravery and nationalism that Nigeria has seen in a really long time.
But in the thick of it all, the drama escalated as certain Nigerian youths took matters to the extreme and started harming their fellow Nigerians with petty theft and violence.
Members of the Nigerian police also erroneously sought to take some of their power back with ill-advised tactics as they battled the very people that were fighting for police interests.
Confrontation became violence and violence became death. Nigerian youths, in their unwavering nature heightened their protests and music became a needed ingredient.
Protest songs
DJs were hired and music soundtracked protest grounds. When DJs were tired of playing, Nigerians would sing “Nzogbu Nzogbu,” “All we are saying…” or any other popular protest songs a capella.
When the few popular protests songs became excessively repetitive, Nigerians resorted to regular songs like ‘Aye’ by Naira Marley and ‘FEM’ by Davido.
Veteran Nigerian culture journalist, Ayomide Tayo rightly pegged this down to a lack of sufficient and popular protest songs. This is evident in how we resorted to secular music, which then incited a party atmosphere when we should be protesting.
While that is not a problem because coming out and causing the nation to standstill is enough protest in itself, the ‘parties’ gave off wrong notion to people who simply wanted us to discontinue the fight.
The fact that Nigerians used the few resonant lines from Naira Marley’s ‘Aye’ and Davido’s ‘FEM’ to address fitting scenarios of telling people that ‘Life is not hard’ or to ‘Shut Up’ means that Nigerians were simply singing popularly known songs.
But the truth is that Nigeria doesn’t necessarily lack protest music. Nigerians are just ignorant to the fitting songs for these situations. Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti have tons of what could have served as ‘Protest Music.’ Femi Kuti’s One People, One World is filled with songs like ‘Evil People.’
On his other albums, you will find songs like ‘Se Were’ that would adequately get youths mad at these grounds. What we were doing is basically showing methodical madness for a good cause. Paybac’s music is filled with a lot of those songs.
‘Nigeria Suk My Dick’ is as ‘protest song’ as it gets. Burna Boy’s discography since Outside is filled with protest songs.
BANTU Crew just released an album titled, Everybody Get Agenda. It is literally a protest album in typical BANTU fashion. The problem is that people don’t know these songs and this is a problem across the world.
That’s why ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters in London stopped and jammed to Burna Boy’s ‘Ye’ in the middle of a protest.
Popular music isn’t exactly a bed for political content anymore. Even if you make political content, chances are it won’t be as big as your secular, random content except your brand is rooted in socio-political activism.
There’s a reason why Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti have gotten Grammy nominations and acclaim, yet don’t have commercial success in Nigeria.
The place of ‘protest songs’ will never be inconsequential, but the fact that the world is run by secular, commercial songs means they will be less popular. This means will always have to resort to secular music during protests because there will never be sufficient knowledge of the appropriate protest songs.
In the alternative, we can get professionals who will curate these songs going forward. At the grounds, we will then unleash and allow the songs to naturally catch up.
An ally for mental health
While the protests were ongoing and violence ensued, a lot of Nigerians struggled with their mental health. In fact, more than five friends called this writer to tell him that they were going off social media.
In those trying hours, music was their ally. While they didn’t have new music to fawn over, they reached back into the past to enjoy music.
But in the thick of it all, many people asked, ‘Will music releases have disrupted these protests when people are actually jamming to music at protests?’ This is not a simple question with a simple answer. To be honest, if any artist had released music, people would have listened.
Earlier this morning, Listen Africa! confirmed from Turntable Charts that despite looking overshadowed by the EndSARS protests, Olamide’s Carpe Diem enjoyed the second biggest opening week streams of 2020 after Burna Boy’s Twice As Tall.
The problem with releasing music during those sensitive hours was that posting those songs on social media could have diverted attention away from the primary objective - artists have stans. But look, the major reason why a lot of artists didn’t drop music was due to fear of call-out culture and fear of being overshadowed.
When the siege gives back…
In the middle of it all, the siege also gave back to the music. On the one part, it gave certain clout-chasers disguised as artists like Zlatan, Small Doctor, DJ YK, Candy Bleakz and more took from the situation and released their various ‘Soro Soke Werey’ songs which were both lazy and opportunistic.
There’s a difference between a random song titled ‘Soro Soke’ with little reflection of the times and Dremo releasing two songs about police brutality and bad governance respectively. There’s also a difference between those songs and Burna Boy’s bid to document the Lekki toll gate massacre.
While both scenarios are opportunistic, songs by Dremo and Burna Boy aim to document happenings in the moment as diary entries for future reference. Songs like ‘Soro Soke’ will not age as well as Burna Boy’s song about the Lekki toll gate massacre or Dremo’s songs about police brutality and bad governance - albeit to a lesser extent.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the litmus test.
#ListenAfricaExtra - Here are additional bits of content from the past week;
Watch new Facts Only with Motolani Alake as he discusses the role of celebrities in EndSARS protests;
Pulse Nigeria penned an article about the gradual disintegration of EndSARS protests.
Excel Joab of Boombuzz speaks with Anonymous 9ja on Buzz Discoveries;
You can catch up with Motolani Alake’s work this week HERE.
Fu’ad Lawal, Editor-In-Chief at Zikoko starts a newsletter, Vistanium.
Veteran Culture Journalist, Ayomide Tayo launched the first installment of his newsletter, Naija Times.You can also get his podcast, 234 Essential HERE.
Veteran Journalist and Tech professional, Chiagoziem Onyekwena also manages GetDotAfrica, a weekly newsletter on happenings in African Tech.
Davido Adeleke, Head of Communication at Eko Atlantic started Communique, a newsletter.
Veteran Nigerian Journalist and Director of Marketing at OPay, Osagie Alonge is back with a new podcast titled, A Music In Time.
You can catch up with veteran Nigerian Journalist, Jide Taiwo’s newsletter History Madefor some mind-blowing stories about Nigerian music.
You can get our playlist on all five streaming platforms HERE.
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Until next week, guys…