Blessing, by Nigeria's Stormrex, is a marvelously crafted and
artistically balanced music video, creatively produced by youthful Clarence
Peters. It is a cleverly addictive song. You can listen to it over and over
again. Here’s my take on it, and its own imprint -- in turn -- on my present sensibilities:
First, the sounds and the vocals:
No sooner does the song begin than the assembled musical
instruments – the versatile guitar, the jarring percussion, less forward ones –
impose a stamp of dominance on all things aural. They are plainly more audible than
the singing. Save for the percussion, the background music consistently
delivers heavenly tunes. The percussion itself, assigned a contra role, abstractly
mulls a stormy day.
Stormrex is the great mumbling Diva in this improbable and in the end benign vortex; the
irrepressible whisperer of all that there is to whisper. She sings here as
though this is a funerary moment, and so a dirge; as though it is a
supplication in the name of all the lost ones, whose souls would otherwise endlessly wander: "Tell me what you
want", I think I'm hearing. "Halleluyah!" These sonorous pleadings
of The Storm, stir silent, kindred spirits all over the occupied stage, and in
the captive audience before it. Mercy is to be had on all souls, which shall by
that token be, in the fullness, blessed.
I don't understand the language in which Blessing is
sung, and in which The Storm presents herself, but who cares if I don't? I know
I hear halleluyah; so it's a language God understands. Do I hear wallahi, too, there -- somewhere?
On to the visuals:
The video starts with a motley of black and white images drifting,
anti-clockwise, from right to left, like the sun; as though heading toward some
mysterious place, westward, on an imaginary, indescribable, conveyor-belt. It
is a fog-filled form of life. The Storm arrives in person 0:07 seconds into the
game -- heralded by a tentative beat and then a crisply rousing and angelic tune -- and almost never leaves the
'force-field', nor the audience's line of sight draped in uncertain light. The lady gets us going, and keeps us thus
– till the ballerina’s final act. She, The Storm, has fine dance postures,
though she never allows them full swing. The musicality of her body, of her
body language, is as smooth and as strung with possibility as her voice is. All
through, she appears and reappears in several artistic costumes and 'guises', too, befitting the
Diva that she is, truly. It’s all bewitching and all transporting, all norms observed.
Thanks to Clarence Peters, the visuals of the whole show are quaintly
spectacular – with a choreographed, slow-motion release of the energies and the
passions – in this enchanted, black and white, e-wasted ecosystem further marred by an intermittent
power-surge, or else sheet lighting, and front-lined by silently crackling and
still-working TV screens, all in a jagged pile that no one's there to explain. This is an unbelievable mix of concepts
and metaphors and intentions -- a hermeneutic puzzle and extended lease on life that, improbably, works.
The saying that a picture is worth a thousand words – ten
thousand, even – correctly reflects the nuances of this many-layered clip. Words, they cannot adequately capture the magic of the thing: the
seamless weaving of a whisperer's silky voice with instrumental tunes strummed
and plucked and beat and 'shook' with feeling fingers and hands; and richly
varied art-in-motion images for the eyes, entranced eyes, to see. Incredulous
eyes.
The calmness with which the video's cast projects its artistry is
inspired and infecting. And it is right from the start likewise measured in the
fusion of vocal cords and made strings, enchanting in surprising ways, compared
to the musical 'fashion' that's trending across Sub-Sahara today.
The image of an elderly couple, in the midst of everything and
each other's presence there before everyone, is in itself a classical painting,
dark and understated, with motion slipped in as a concession to the living moment. Rembrandt's, perhaps? O regard all the fine tangles, all that ebb and flow. Amazing
that a video, barely 3:45 minutes, can have so much effect on the audience's
gaze, if mine is any guide.
There is, in the visual text, much to-and-fro darting, gazelle-like,
from the 39th second; in a foggy and unrelenting context. Thus, in this complex
script, a dancer emerges from the left, leaps and, catlike, lands in the middle
of the show -- which is, already, deep in the heart. A ballet dancer, with sporadic reign over center-stage, makes the
most of it – with a lovely body narrative. Only The Storm has more time than
she there, and for a good reason. And, lest we forget, there's that adorned youth
– with a virtual, leonine mask – who waves his fly-whisk as if it were a
magic wand for distracted and weary eyes. Likewise, cameo appearances of smiley
faces as added 'layers' of visual embellishment.
The heap of analog TV sets (here BnW, there colored) -- perhaps rescued on their way to an E-graveyard -- through which The Storm periodically blows, and
behind which the dancers dance, is a thoughtful, ingenious, make-shift touch; and, as well, a
part of the deep art, and the artistry, of the director. It’s a virtual and
shifting pedestal. A paradigm-shift with no airs, then. The Storm lives a chunk
of her life here and in the neighborhood, and lives by choice, behind a veil
of semi-discarded screens. The images of her that show here are, appropriately, at once electrically charged and challenged. There is a storm, which The Storm is, indubitably. She is the eye of the storm, a study in calmNESS itself.
End:
The video ends in a controlled frenzy of sound and dance, centered on the supple images of an adorable, spot-lit ballerina – adolescent and
all that – in black undertone and white.UPDATES: September 19, 2016: Edited the first sentence in the paragraph just before END. Likewise, added three sentences at the end of that paragraph. October 16, 2018: Did rather more polishing, here and there. Still, the bulk of the piece remains as it was when first published in October 2015.
