My Thoughts on African ( South African, Nigerian) Music & My Origin With Music
If you look closely at the music scene in Africa, South Africa is the original music powerhouse of Africa. South Africans have steadily been creating their sound without copying sound from other African countries, unlike Nigerians.
For example, look at their Ampiano sound that Nigerians are going crazy for, Mayorkun used it in Geng and it made massive waves in Nigeria.
Nigerians know how to use other people's stuff properly to make profits, this is totally my opinion. Nigerians are skilled at making profits from anything, we are great and very creative business people at heart.
Now, one of the main reasons why we can't have a unique sound in Nigeria is that Nigeria is an extremely ethnically diverse multinational country. There are a lot of ethnic groups in Nigeria, we don't have a uniform look in Nigeria like other african countries.
Regarding music, there can't be a Nigerian sound because every person in Nigeria, at least back in those days were totally different.
I can tell who is a South African from instant but with Nigerians it's not so obvious, We even sound differently most times.
The Shaku Shaku sound musicians like Olamide, Naira Marley, etc. made popular is one of the very few times Nigerians have been original with music, forget the Fela sound we are known for. We've sampled that enough especially Wizkid and Burna, those guys have sampled Fela a whole lot.
I'm not much of a fan of Davido but he has been one of the most creative in the Nigerian music industry, he has experimented with different unique sounds. He even went as far as South African Rap on the song with Nasty C.
Somebody I'll always commend for the originality of his sound is Santi. Santi is just too good.
Santi's music is like a genre of his own. The booming Alte sound we know today originated from the streets of Lagos, Nigeria. Santi, Odunsi and Drb Lasgidi are most likely the originators and maybe Show Dem Camp, I'm open to corrections though.
I have so many opinions on music in general, one of these days I'll start a newsletter to share my opinions and thoughts.
Onto my origin with music…
I've always loved music right from when I was a child, my mum listened to a whole lot of music that made me get used to it. She listened to Indian songs, Hip-Hop, RnB, etc. At some point, she decided to become a chorister in church and she made us listen to gospel music in different local and foreign languages, these languages include:
Yoruba,
Hausa,
Tiv,
Igbo,
Igala,
Swahili.
My mom loves music so much and I think it's something all of her children have had to love too at some point in our lives.
Currently, my mum is still a chorister, she was a choir mistress at some point last year. These days she is focused more on writing music in Hausa for the church ( MFM ), which still fascinates me till today even though I don't tell her.
She listens to most types of music till date which is most likely why I don't have a specific genre of music I listen to, I listen to as much as i can get my hands on.
Music has affected my mum as a person because she speaks about 4 different local languages.
She speaks Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Tiv (originating from Benue state), and her native language originating from Nassarawa state.
Yup! She's Hausa by tribe 😅
If you want to see me give my strongest opinions on music, bring rap music.
I'm a very stubborn critique, growing up my friends made rap music ( most of them still do ) and I had to spend a whole lot of time understanding rap as a genre of music because I couldn't even sing properly and I felt had to have something to bring to the table, so I would not feel left out.
I would listen to their songs and tell them how I feel about it and also provide feedback on how it could be better, I also had a great hearing at the time unlike now where I'm finding it difficult to hear stuff at a close range quickly.
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