MUSIC: Vanessa Mdee Sings Niroge

Diva Vanessa Mdee, from Tanzania, has released a bewitching music video in Swahili titled Niroge -- which literally means "Bewitch Me". Niroge represents a continuation in 2016 of the great burst of pop musicality we've witnessed across sub-Sahara, particularly since 2014. 

This video has stunning, swirling, non-stop visuals. It's a real treat for the eyes. The dancing girls, low in body fat and high in spirit, populate an ecosystem of playfulness, and dazzling vignettes of liberated color. And all that color seemingly coordinates -- with itself, and with the mirth which becomes it. 

click to watch the video

The song moves seamlessly and naughtily, unperturbed, through a raft of judgments which (one suspects) the girls know is out there in the packed and invisible audience -- sprinkled, so to speak, with curious a(u)nts and baffled 'ankles', with pastors perhaps, with old neighbors and schoolmates. And it moves through Time, which, alas, is too short for present purposes -- for this funky collage of fabric and motion and seductive pose, and ad hoc decor, which, while it lasts, no one, I think, no one really wants to cease.

Niroge is an allegory of liberation, too, by virtue of which no girl should be afraid to strut her stuff and share her deep feelings -- of love, and about anything else besides. To mix love and life and business.

It is likewise a refined statement of artistic presence, however limited the space available for dreams. It is a tribute to a rapidly evolving milieu in which a girl should feel perfectly comfortable and, subtly, in control -- of how she feels. What, ever, she wants to do. 

Through the lyrics, Vanessa wants to tell us she's not afraid to express, for herself and for all the sisters, this feeling of love that she harbors for her man -- whoever her/his competitors think he/she is. She's a grown girl. As one metric has it: Osepong'. The song is, in the end, an ode to the man. Not everman, but her man. The man, and pillar, of the house. Of her home.

So she sings, unabashed:

"Naomba uniroge,
Naomba uniroge,
Kwani mapenzi matamu!"

Upon hearing all this, there are people who will still want to roga Vanessa, regardless of everything. That's how trouble begins in the pot, I tell you.

Here below are the lyrics in full, sung, as you'll hear, in soft, tender tones. She's the bewitching one, in fact: