For as long as i can remember, i have spent all my life listening and enjoying music. Music of all languages rhythm's and genres. Without a doubt, i think Man's ability to capture life's experiences, ambitions and hopes in the form of lyrics and sound is one of his defining factors.
I live in Lagos which is definitely one of the busiest cities you can come by in the world, and daily i get replenished and assaulted in due measure by various sounds recognised by its inhabitants as music. But i always ask the question which has defined a unanimous answer; 'what passes as good music?'.
In some fashion, i have followed the music industry in Nigeria and have noticed what appears to be a growth in the last 5 years. We now have the multi-millionaire artistes with the bling, expensive vehicles, beautiful chicks and all the other trappings, but the musical content in itself has remained a mixed bag, In the early to mid 90's and before we generally had poor videos, poor studio quality but good/ great lyrics and good artistry, now we largely have good videos (lots of soft/hard porn), better studio quality, poorer lyrics and poorer artistry.
While this is not a comment on the entire industry, it is what prevails as how can you defend a song like 'fokasibe','konga', 'enter the place' and the likes in comparison to 'rat race', send down the rain','one love', 'ozigizaga' etc. While some of these songs were made by the artistes who defined the era the comparisons with some of the present day chart busters is just to highlight that indeed it is not so much that the music of today is bad, but songs of that type would not have made airplay then as they do today. Which begs the question is it us the listeners or them the artistes who have declined in quality. Do we prefer the lewd/empty and non-artistic 'fokasibes' or do we want to be transported to a level close to perfection when we search and listen to artistes who will attempt that journey too.
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