In "Decoding Dorobucci", this is all I said about Di'Ja's memorable role in that iconic song: "Flirtatious n shy playfulness be the code here, too". Awww, recorded in the same year as Dorobucci, remains her own signature song -- like first real (first true) love. Life's subsequent ad(misad)ventures struggle hard to dislodge such love off its own pedestal. In Awww, we find what must be the/a virgin's expression of first Love, first pure Love. It's intense and full of dreams. And innocence. It's not to be distracted. It's everything. It's what she needs, deep in her soul, now and forever. Click to watch Di'Ja's Awww video She, the character Di'ja mimics here, isn't flirting. She loves. Perhaps partly loving Love. But flirting would be an outrage. She has doubts. But she loves: in the day, and in the night. Her own imprimatur, her own passionate and self-administered mark of approval, seals it all. In a time of intense dreams. A time, free of care, surrounded and "fenced off" with such fine melody and palpable grace as we come upon in the video. Read more about Di'Ja the artiste here
Renaissance:Music must surely be a/the ramrod by means of which Africa will gain/regain its glorious place in the cultural world. And if not the world, the universe.
Spetxa One by C4Pedro
Kelele za Chura by Chege ft. Nandy
Leg Over by Mr. Eazi
King Kong Remix by Vector ft, Phyno x Reminisce x Classiq x Uzi
To the singer's lyrical and desperate declaration of love at the very outset: "I feel it in my soul Let them know now." The more confident Guardian Angel replies, presumably on behalf of the one who is loved: "You know eh."
And so the story goes: Do Like That must be the kind of song all of Korede Bello's fans and well-wishers have been waiting for, perhaps with some frustration, since his part in Dorobucci. Now he's gone and done it. The song brings out the best in him -- and in Mavins Records. Both of them have exceeded expectations in a massive and emphatic way, and they thus show what they are now ready to do to meet the competition toe-to-toe, head-to-head. This song, with its tantalizing lyrics and a superb fusion of voice and sound -- and shorn of all of lovers' platitudes that we're all familiar with -- meets one's expectations of an earnestly and finely crafted love song which, for all we know, reveals a charmingly awkward adolescence. And Korede is just the right choice for the vocalist's part. He's here a singing suitor with complicated (some, more parental, may say naughty) but seemingly unintended humor, and a rough-edged respect for his lover's hesitations which casual passers-by will not discern. There may be a jogoo's (a rooster's) intent behind all that 'accidentally' cerebral phraseology -- clumsy muttering if you like -- with which he is seeding the air all around her, this way and that. But it is not by design. He is only being a truly not-yet-fully-done him; true to what he feels is becoming him, truly. His pleadings are earnest and truthful and consistent with his love, and his hope is that she will in the end understand this -- this "hopelessness" that drives him to say these things that he says: "Why you gon' do like that. Why you gon' keep that thing from me." ............. "Girl come feed me don't be stingy" A foggy place somewhere is where the story begins. Like an autumn rendezvous with the 'chick' of KB's fondest dreams. Like an obscure train station, the engine puffing as much steam as love can bear, without fudging the fonder feelings. This improbable meeting place: it might as well have been a smoke-filled subway cavern, chilled with an eerie avant design. In which case how on earth did they get there, and feel the way they do so unscripted? Above all, what lingers in the memory about the beginning is the eerie hiss we hear, as of a purposeful iron snake (at 0:05-0:08); joined soon enough by voices seemingly hidden in an unmistakable but likewise hidden echo-chamber. KB's charm-offensive is reinforced with echoes of his own words bouncing back from these hidden voices, led by a kind of guardian angel and his troops (heard particularly at 0:15-0:16, 1:21-1:38, 2:18-2:25, 2:58-3:12). The angels of love are in that love-starved place doing their darnedest to get this thing really, really going; to help along this seemingly hapless prince. Watch Do Like That here I think the best segments of this clip, which outperforms in melody and creativity, are at 0:05-0:10, 0:16-0:18, 1:05-1:08 and 1:56-3:12. The musical instruments are all played with accomplished hands, and the result is entrancing.
Published on November 22, 2016, the clip (directed by Konstantin and produced by Altims) already had 5,873,059 YouTube views in the early hours of November 30, 2016. On May 2, 2019 (9:30 PM, EAT), it had 82,167,856.
Tiwa Savage is a leading African Diva from Nigeria. Most of those who have come to know her, I'd like to believe, admire her exceedingly for her talent and her charm, and, certainly at first glance (which is how most of us know most of those we get to know), her uncomplicated persona. With her, I mean to say, what you see is what (you believe) you get. Like all public figures, alas, she must as a matter of course live in and across a multiplicity of milieux.
While we remember her most fondly in songs such as Dorobucci and Gbemileke, things have lately changed so drastically in her personal life that she's been reduced literally to tears. Her marital troubles now overshadow her art -- but, one suspects, not for long. Here, take a look:
Some find all this this unsurprising, in the light of the publicly detected tensions that simmered below the surface even before her lavish wedding in both Nigeria and Dubai to her manager -- Tunji Balogun, aka Tee-Billz -- a couple of years ago. Some saucy, or nasty, epithets have been flung his way!
So what is it? There's all sorts of chatter on social media about all of this. Some think that the answer is in the wind, as blown in this intriguing and artistic song -- "If I start to talk":
But even before that, Tee-Billz was probably seething already, faced with Tiwa's no-holds-barred "Wanted":
I'll not be the judge. You be! Still, it's unfortunate that things have degenerated so drastically as they have, for Tiwa. She's not the cheery self ardent fans across the continent have come to know and invariably expect. She's miserable. May she (she must) return to her earlier self, soonest!
In October 1939, Winston Churchill famously described Russia as "...a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key..." While Dorobucci is in no way Russia (which is no piece of music), attempting to decode it here and now makes that quote fairly apt, it seems to me
What I am trying to do here is think aloud why Dorobucci is as consequential a musical creation as many, including yours truly, think it is, certainly for Africa, in these times, and why it is something of an enigma encasing a mystery inside of which there lies a riddle. And why I have personally come to like it as much as I do, and likewise why I (already) rate it so highly among its peers. The key, the reasons, may be hard to pin down, even for a Churchill, but the liking is real -- and symptomatic, in some undeniable way, I think, of how I approach and size up other songs and singers -- and not simply or crudely subjective.
Dorobucci, the song, is a veritable tropical storm. It is a tropical storm and more: a modern-day symphony of a kind, a non-stop stream of musicality, and a promise of the reign of cheer and good times over despondency and bland existence. It is, I want to add, a work of art depicting seven magic voices painted on a huge virtual canvas framed with the invisible hardware play of a nonchalant band.
It is an epic with a narrative, such as is revealed here, that's relayed through a galaxy of earthly stars, whose twinkles chart its singular course, and milestones along the way. Each of them, tributaries so to speak, offers their respective 'tributes' -- to Dorobucci, the master, he of mythical power. Tributaries and tributes joined as one, in a burst of lyrical energy.
And yet, taking (or not taking) the whole thing as one indivisible 1, it quickly dawns on one, in an aha! moment, that there is a subtle imbalance here, a certain synchronized mismatch, between voice and musical instrumentation, deliberately inserted for an incipient, an insurgent, choral supremacism, alongside and integral to all that stream-of-vivacity that's Dorobucci, the song.
That is to say, the human voice turns out to be more versatile and more venturesome and more in command here than all of the musical hardware in play. This is no accident. The hardware is intended quite deliberately to 'give' some, rather muffled, 'necessary noise' to the whole production -- and nothing more. It is, for all practical purposes, otherwise left to its own devices. This is quite a sleight of hand which I hadn't taken note of when I first found that I liked the song. We are resigned, without truly realizing it, to the same droning ruffle and beat of the instruments, as voice dominates, and shines, frontally and in the background. And it works, animated a capella of a kind with refined sensibilities. Still, the lyrics rock and truly rock, but without soaring. They're wonderful to 'behold' with the ear -- which, I dare say, is more charitable that the eye -- but essentially stick to prosaic praises of Dorobucci, the man of mystery. No matter. The choral ambience, the only thing that somehow, emphatically, matters here, wins. Like a bright but fragile flower with, nonetheless, a sturdy impact on the visual sensation on a sunny day, I think. The song starts with a boom, befitting a boombox; with a powerful line and an explosion of voice (led by Don Jazzy's, no less) which lays bare The Mavin crew's intentions and seven-as-one frame of mind: "Dorooo Dorobucci Oyebe O." Don Jazzy's baritone conquers all the terrain, and all therein. The tone, right there, for those with long memories, seems (if you don't quite know the language in which it is sung) straight out of the many Congolese lines one has heard throughout one's musical life; so to speak, of course. Oyebe has the ring of (be, 'be like') Oyembe.
Let's briefly track the stars, one by one, and get to c the megapixel image of Dorobucci that emerges from their collective art:
Don Jazzy:Certain signifiers of power and influence are arrayed here, for all to draw the mot obvious conclusions from: the boardroom presentation, the White House, luxury golf, the New York skyline. For him, Dorobucci is, unabashedly, him: Doro Don. Doro Jazzy. Doro Big. Not just big but double extra large. Large as the implicit notion in the XXL icon that's quickly flashed in the video as though it were some naughty thing. Some sort of 'inverted' -- coded, subliminal -- 007 which Di'Ja later picks up and kids about, even. Yet why does "Doro frosh pass anybody wey Doro meet" sound like an allusion to something else: "Five % body weight"? OK: "You know say Doro heavy". It is not the images we focus on. The ear insists on voice. Voice makes a persistent and unchallenged beeline for the ear.
Reekado Banks: Out there in the park with young apprentice dancers. Earnest dancing the aft away for one and only Dorobucci. Soap-bubble blowing into the sunny h/air -- they're into a thing: "Dorobucci mama n mo O," Asserts RB. A big-baton thing. Except for the English, RB sounds quite Lingala-easy: "e bu onye ebe o". It is good, with a sort of raw goodness. Tiwa Savage: Doro is with the Diva, of course; and Diva with Doro: "Doro na Diva". Diva in her John Lennon eye-ware. Sophisticated Mama of the Enterprise. Composer composed enough to tease n 'play' with her help, who loves 2 play. To shoo her up the re-imagined ladder. Word juggler. Doro Hot! Don't have to "trow" her weight around. "Doro you, Doro me!" Here's to Dorobucci "with the baddest crew". "Do Do Dorobucci" -- cheekily playful, without looking it. The Diva is class. Dr. Sid: "Doro Suru. Doro Lere." Delightful piggy-back push-ups. Idyllic setting. All 'em social media devices and ideas. DoRonaldo. Doro Messi. Slow boat-ride into a Luxor-like sunset, toward some sort of island hideout and mo push-ups, p'raps. Dr. Sid just wants to make you envious -- for/of Doro. Di'Ja: Flirtatious n shy playfulness be the code here, too: "Doro Bad". "Double 07". "Doro like for do anything wey Doro like for do". Korede Bello: Suave, winking African Prince. "Doro catchi anybody wey Doro fish Doro." WinKing. Winkpin. Winkler. (T)winkling Star. "Doro Mega, Doro Super, Doro Star, Doro Mega Super Star O." D'Prince: Truly in his element. The most animated of the lot, 'preachifying', inside of a casino too: "Doro is a cheerful giver" Money spender. Doro Money. Doro Bola. The kind of man...
Then the outdoor summation scene -- with everyone gathered, smiling and accomplished and so relieved -- is happy Ness itself. The eye darts hither and thither, too, to round up the stars, as Reekado B, singing, suggests that it's alright to let the Doro, and the magic, go now. Let it go. What we have in the end are the vocals and the visuals, which both conquer and linger.
I conclude with these remarks about Dorobucci (which, incidentally, runs for all of 4:41 minutes): It is, for me, a refreshing manifestation, a proud flagship, of Africa's cultural renaissance and self-confident assertiveness. It is many things in one, and one thing in many forms; a bunch, all at once, of interlocking similes and metaphors. It is, and is like, an endlessly flowing super river too, self-renewed by its own cycle of water. And just like Dorobucci's ever-present presence all through the song, so is Don Jazzy's distinctive voice always there, somewhere, in the background, always helping the song along.
REFERENCES
Here are some links to different views on the import of the Dorobucci meme:
"O Happiness! What's one to make of ya!" ~ MY I. INTRODUCTION:
Happiness is a state of mind, a feeling - with feelers to the 'outside'. Outside becomes what things we allow it to become, and what things we have no control over and so impose themselves.
Happiness and Love? They are twins. Twins, which, sometimes, alas, we find in mortal combat.
Good music!
In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Duke Orsino utters these immortal words: "If music be the food of life, play on; / Give me excess of it ..." I just want to endorse that here. If good music be, let it be. Give me more, is all!
Good music is at once a convergence of happiness - happy feelings - and its source. Happy songs make people happy, happy people arguably happier, and less sad sad people - and even, perhaps, happy; if they're not too deep into their own sadness. They breed happiness through the joyfulness of the words in the song and the soulfulness of the song in the words, the melody in the tunes, the liveliness of the body-language and suppleness of the assembled 'bodies', the harmony of the charged instruments, the pulsating visuals of the video, and the warmth of the stage upon which everything, and everything else, is set.
There is magic in the happy song, then. The song that makes people happy has magical power over 'em. So, oh my goodness, does the song that makes people truly sad.
There are times, if I may digress, that I have thought (sensed would be too strong a word) that truly throbbing drumbeat among the prayerful carries within it the voice of God in its surreal, surround beat, as it's heard among the gathered, and as it cascades across the land - and even among the landless and the faithless.
So good music, howsoever it is delivered, has the powers -- howsoever we c these powers. But, I ask:
Why is it that music videos that elicit the most happiness seem generally to have a street motif?
II. MEASURING HAPPINESS:
Can happiness be measured? That's a question for another day.
[For the selection and ranking criteria used in creating this list, go to the bottom of this post]
1. Dorobucci by Mavin Don Jazzy, Reekado Banks, Dr. Sid, Korede Bello, Tiwa Savage ... (2014):
Dorobucci was voted Africa's best single of the year (2014) earlier this year at the MTVMAMA2015. This is a verdict that I, having myself already arrived at it before MTVMAMA2015, fully endorse. All of Africa does. It is for me also the happiest song of 2014.
2 Tchelete by Davido and Mafikizolo ft. Uhuru and Oskido (2014):
Davido and Mafikizolo? A super-charged duo delivers a song made in musical heaven. davido also scored big at the MTVMAMA2015.
3. Ole Themba by Linah (2014):
Linah delivers a wonderfully, delightfully charming bouquet of colors and sound. And beauty. And verve. The dancing girls are a feast for the eye. The lyrics, in Kiswahili, are superbly, artfully, put together. The melody -- the whole ambience -- transports us, all of us, to a place no one wants to come back from in a hurry.
Linah is a pleasantly surprising 'discovery', and a full member of the superstar group that populates this Yambo Selection 2014. She brings along with her everyone, everyone bar none, in the video.
4. Skelemba by Olamide ft Don Jazzy (2014):
Skelemba represents a winning combination of two greats. It's a song full of melody and enigmatic charm. Self-assured. True harmony of sound and color.
5. Double Wahala Part 2 by Oristefemi ft. D'banj (2014):
Truly animated duo. Electric performance. Happiness itself. D'Banj needs no help to stay on top. Among our musical elite, Oritse Femi is to me the greatest purveyor of happiness across Africa. He certainly was in 2014. Due rewards will surely come.
6. Fiko Fiko Fion by Claudia Bakisa ft. Koffi Olomide (2014):
All laid back, two great sophisticates join to drop a lovely track: Fiki Fiko Fion. Koffi Olomide reigns still, an unobtrusive monarch. Claudia Bakisa patiently waits, with pent-up energy, for Africa's playing field to level.
7. Taste The Money by PSquare (2014):
PSquare are the crown princes of African entertainment
8. Chop Am by Reekado Banks (2014):
Reekado Banks can always be counted upon to deliver quality and refinement
9. Awelewa Most Beautiful, Gabriel Afolayan (2014):
Wraps you up in good feelings
10. Oshe by Praiz and Awilo Longomba (2014):
Truly happy to have Longomba here
11. All Eyes on Me by AKA, Bourna .... Boy (2014):
Lovely ambience. AKA and Bourna Boy outperform here. What a great voice BB has!
12. Be Happy By Eddy Kenzo (2014):
Eddy Kenzo fully merits inclusion here
13. Johnny by Yemi Alade (2014):
Johnny has a throbbing sort of magic on all who hear it. Yemi Alade is Africa's Queen Diva.
14. Sura Yako by Sauti Sol (2014): Sura Yako has become the 'anthem' song at weddings these days, certainly in Nairobi. Sauti Sol are Kenya's leading artiste group today.
15. Caracara by KO Kid ft X (2014):
Youthful charm is what I see here. Calm and collected.
16. Prokoto by Victoria Kimani ft Ommy Dimploz and Diamond Platnumz (2014):
VK's a Kenyan gal who's already going places, as you can see from her two friends, OD & DP
17. KooKoo by Elani (2014):
Happy to have Elani's wonderful voice featured here, singing KooKoo for all to hear.
18. Ungowami by Uhuru ft Wizkid, Donald and Speedy (2014): Ungowami is a lovely song, sung passionately by two of Africa's greats (Uhuru and Wizkid), and their two friends (Donald and Speedy). It fully belongs in this list
19. Lemi Lere by Moelogo ft. Oritse Femi (2014):
A cheeky performance that I like a lot, except for one uncalled-for moment of foolishness.
20. Koze Kuse by DJ Merlon ft Mondli Ngcobo (2014):
A refreshing urban walk-about, this. This example of the street motif tweaks the fun out of day-to-day life.
21. Wale Wale by Jose Chameleone (2014):
Jose Chameleone is a sun-shiny sort of guy. Solar-powered.
22. Dabby Gololi by Emma Jalamo (2014):
Emma Jalamo is a snake-charmer, for sure. Be careful he doesn't snatch your gal for the Show.
23. Face a Face by Mani Brlla (2014):
Mani Brila is irrepressible, resourceful.
24. Bakule by Cabo Snoop (2014):
Remember Cabo Snoop from Big Brother? Still tantalizing, after these several years.
Nikikutazama, a Kiswahili phrase for "when I look at you", has an undeniable happiness-inducing beat about it. The artistes, likewise, have a happy, calm and collected, comedic mien. Truly infectious.
A few months ago I was at a wedding in Nairobi where the chorus of this anthem of a song was cheerfully and naughtily 'misread' by the MC, a well-known comedian, as "O Aoko O, O Aokoo..." Aoko, it so happens, is a girl's name. It means, as I reckon, "Girl from the Outside". And on that fine (sunny, sunny) Saturday aft it was promptly added to the bride's name -- a Samburu beauty (with a name that seems to trace back to the era of the pyramids) getting married to a fine Luo boy.
To Qualify for inclusion in this list, a song Was required to meet The Following criteria:
1. Released as music video in 2014. Broadly in any of these genres: Pop, RnB, Hip-Hop, Reggae
2 Available via YouTube or Otherwise available online
3. Predominantly sung by an artiste or artistes from Africa, PARTICULARLY Sub-Saharan Africa
4. Regularly played on one or more of Africa's leading music channels: Afro Pop and HipTV Music, in particular (they pay sustained attention to their African audience); Sound City, MTV Base and Trace Urban (all three of whose fare is significantly more diffuse).
5. Have a discernible "happiness" (or sunny) content/slant in terms of the following mix of considerations: beat, language (verbal or body), lyrics, melody, visuals (dance routines, 'stage sets' and video quality), voice (and audio quality) and use of vocal and technical instruments
6. Broad sensitivity to sub-regional tastes and artists' bases of operation (East, West, Central or Southern)
7. Gender: Minimum of 1/3Rule, if short-listed songs make this possible.
V. RANKING CRITERION FOR INDIVIDUAL SELECTIONS:
1. How does Yambo rate the song relative to the other 24?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A call for comments: Your comments on individual selections and ranking criterion will be highly appreciated.
Note: I can imagine a future in which all I have tried to do here is open to public participation.
This is what I wrote in a tweet last July: Dorobucci, #MTVMAMA2015 Winner of the #BestSong award, and my fav music video of 2014.
Dorobucciis indeed a monumental artistic work. Being Africa's Song of the Year (in 2014) in itself says something. Click on Decoding Dorobuccito see what I think that something just might be.
