Jerusalema by Master KG ft. Nomcebo (Official Music Video) (2019)

Play Jerusalema {Video}

[S. Africa]

            Master KG and Nomcebo, both South African, deliver to us a blockbuster of a song, with an iconic title. The official music video was released on December 13^th, 2019. There was for a while, from the day after (that is, December 14th, 2019), a fine lyrics video of the song with a simultaneous English translation titled Jerusalema Lyrics Video[1]). But, as I came to realize months later (on October 22nd, 2020, in fact), it has since gone out of circulation. 

         Jerusalema is a powerful allegory for home, wherever that may be for the time being – for the mortal body and immortal soul. It is a religious rendition of the more existential 'connections' that we all have with our earthly home, such as Master KG and Zanda Zakuza explored in their 2018 song: Skeleton Move. The truth pushed in Jerusalema is that, for all humankind and through all our journeys and quests, the seemingly more ethereal home is the ultimate abode for the soul, which resides in our hearts until the unknown but inevitable then.

            Home is, as is so often sensed, where the heart is, or longs to be, or to go back to, wherever it may be. It is where Mama is – and Papa, too. It is, spiritually, where one was born and the umbilical cord buried. It is complicated, and continues to confound. The heart (the soul perhaps) it is that asks the body to guard it; and to walk with it; and to not leave it here where ever here is – but to take it home. The homing pigeon has such a heart, too; and takes it there “in the fullness.” Verily, the soul has the beat of the homing pigeon's heart.

            The lost heart, the heart that feels lost, wishes to get there as well; regardless of all things – all barriers and all hurts – that may stand in the way. This, I think, is the underlying and repeated message in the eight opening lines of this epic song:

“Jerusalema ikhaya lami [Jerusalem is my home]

Ngilondoloze [Guard me]

Uhambe nami [Walk with me]

Zungangishiyi lana [Do not leave me here] x2

O Guard – guard me; walk – walk with me (fly even, if you can); do not – do not leave me here! Do not leave me here like this!

            Popular songs that truly move nowadays quickly replicate themselves in dance-denominated "challenges”. These become a sort of meme for their resonance with the fans, and in turn give the dancers such visibility as the songs they latch on to can give them. It is an enticing symbiosis.

            Jerusalema has spawned a number of such “challenges”. I think that Master KG and Nomcebo find this to be a good and endearing thing. I think it must be truly lifting. It certainly raises their pedestal. 

             Watch: The Jerusalema Dance Version, 22 September. Here are several others: 

1) “Best Dance Cover”. 

2) Fenomenos do Semba. This is my favorite. It's really, really a thing. Regard the dizzying "shuffle" all over there. Hear the ringing instruments and tones. Catch the subliminal verve. What a beat-driven symphony of purposeful footwork and soul! But, wait, de sizzlin' twogal wigglin' will pop dem dudes' eyeballs! 

3) Vamo Mbora, 

4) FALLY van GENNIP| virtual dance (really lovely, too)

#Jerusalema

Updated: October 22, 2020

---

[1] Here are the Jerusalema lyrics in a more standard format: Jarusalema

MUSIC: Lumumba Heros National by Joseph Kabasele (c. 1960)

Play Lumumba Heros National {Audio + Still Pictures}

[DRC]

Joseph Kabasele Tshamala (1930-1983), Le Grand Kalle himself, was in many ways the founding father of modern Congolese music[1]; a brand of music which we, a good number of us, have come to know as #LingalaPop. Many keen observers will acknowledge that LingalaPop in many ways became the roots and trunk of Afropop, and now dominates all of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa – and even parts of West Africa. Its counterpart in North Africa is the even more recent phenomenon – ArabPop and/or MaghrebPop. Afrobeat is dominant in Nigeria, and has a huge influence among its neighbors – particularly Ghana, Togo and Cameroon. 

In Lumumba Heros National, Joseph Kabasele and his pioneering band, African Jazz, sing the praises of Patrice Emery Lumumba (1925-61) – a leading pro-independence politician and Republic of the Congo’s first Prime Minister[2].

The song is a finely fitting and absolutely spell-binding melody. Though the clip makes use of still pictures rather than ‘moving’, the visibility of the song’s hero and the events around him that it offers is co-equal with the sounds that the ear is ‘fed’ with. It is both memorable and historic in tenor, like the lyrics and the band’s instrumental rendition of moments in a young nation’s early life that are at once triumphant and tragic. It’s a forever song.

One noteworthy and perhaps most surprising feature of this song is that the lyrics were written and sung (in the early Sixties!) almost entirely in Swahili and not, as one would have expected, Lingala![3] Likewise noteworthy, too, is that Swahili was one of the four languages which Lumumba, a sapeur of sorts, spoke. How he learnt it, and what motivated him, one would love to know. Let me know when you do.

I vividly remember the song’s mournful and funerary sounds from long ago – not when it was released, but as the Sixties got going. The sounds came mostly over wired radio – and sometimes levitated over vinyl – in our pioneering ‘gated community’ of railway workers and, as I can say now, their young families – there in Nairobi’s Eastlands, some 2,415 kilometers (roughly 1,500 miles) far, far to the east of Kinshasa, DRC’s capital, as the pigeon – or the Osprey[4] – flies.

But I remember just as clearly conversations that I, playing with mates,  could hear going on among despondent grounds-workers in our ‘estate’ – nay, ‘lawn-mowers’ of sorts and such – when the news of Lumumba’s assassination arrived and churned in our midst at radio and ‘bush-telegraph’ speeds. It must have been January 1961. 

A song which had surely begun its unique life-course as an inspirational, celebratory, chante for an independence hero in circa June 1960, so soon and so tragically became, in effect and in the space of only seven months or so, a dirge! Those who encountered its distinct and entrancing tunes in the years after January 1961, and knew of the fate that had befallen their hero Lumumba, must have been, I imagine, hard put to believe that it had ever been anything but a mourning song. Not knowing exactly when the song was released, I, for one, had for the longest time, indeed until year 2020 came calling, assumed that it had been prompted, ‘inspired’, by Lumumba’s assassination. The lyrics, mostly in a quaint version of Swahili, included a few distinct words (such as ‘sikukuu’) and phrases with patently ‘broken’ meaning-strings and allusions which one could be forgiven for not taking too literally.

In 1967, Franco and L’O.K. Jazz also released a music audio by the same title. It was much more conducive to dancing than its introspective and soul-searching predecessor, and in it Mobutu’s name featured prominently. But that’s not the only reason I much prefer Kabasele’s. Comparisons will probably rage forever. Here it is: Lumumba Heros National. The lyrics, both in Lingala and in English translation, appear on the same YouTube page as the audio of the song.

LISTEN:  Tabu Ley Mourns Kabasele {Audio}

The lyrics of Franco’s version, which appear lower down the page to which the link just given takes you, don’t have the funerary bent of the earlier song. But it adds references to Mobutu which, given his reported complicity in the execution of Lumumba, will surely rub Lumumba’s admirers the wrong way. As Vientianegirl remarked in one of the public comments on the song’s YouTube page, “Franco is praising Mobutu as [an] heir [to] Lumumba’s legacy, while in reality Mobutu actively took part in Lumumba's assassination.”[5]

---

[1] See Chris May (2003) “Le Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music” www.allaboutjazz.com

[2] He was in office only from June 30^th, 1960 to September 1960, when he was deposed by a cold-war coalition of local political and military actors (spearheaded by Joseph Kasavubu and Joseph Mobutu) on the one hand and foreign state and multinational actors (Belgium, the US and the UN) on the other. He was then into custody in October and – after three months or so of byzantine machinations, prison-break, cat-and-mouse pursuits and final capture – executed by his captors on January 17^th, 1961. martyred national hero.

[3] Lumumba Heros National is not the only song he sung in Swahili. Another song, released in 1961-1962, is now titled simply and confoundingly as B.B 69. It is a truly funky piece, and was extremely popular on radio in Nairobi, back in the day. It remains super-hot, even now! But most of B.B 69’s visibility, I hazard to say, was in the clubs and at parties – and secondarily in the modest but aspirational homes of the lumpen proletariat, the nascent elite, and parents of future ones.

[4] See here’s how Ospreys fly and how they risk their lives when they fish.

[5] See Hidde (2019) “Appropriating the Legacy of Lumumba in “Lumumba Heros National” (1972)

MUSIC (Nigerian): KJV's voice in Common Sense

In my post on Patoranking's song titled Make Am, I made the remarks that I reiterate below about the distinctive Nigerianness in KJV's song titled "Common Sense". I revisited those arguments in a piece that I later wrote, and in which I sought to pin down with some examples the particular features of what I understood to be The Nigerian Voice --  which I see as such a hugely consequential component an even larger voice: "the African Voice". 

Critics may of course want to be persuaded that there is indeed a unified African Voice, as opposed to a rich montage of Voices. Some may indeed push that argument to what may seem, to them, its logical conclusion. That is, by querying the very notion of a 'single' Nigerian Voice. But I'll soldier on, remembering that in our student days in the US, it was fairly easy to tell a Nigerian's voice apart from other West African voices -- and certainly from East African "ones". 

Here is what I said about KJV's "Common Sense":

"...one of the most attention-grabbing songs out of Nigeria right now (certainly to me), and which I think is distinctly Nigerian and truly accomplished in its vocal heaves and turns -- the kind we other Africans will hear, perhaps in a supermarket or on radio, and quickly say "That's Nigerian" -- is KJV's Common Sense (forget the awkwardly hilarious 'bedroom' shenanigans which we may blame on the story-line, but which might in turn be blamed entirely on a portion of the lyrics). It's such a memorable song."

You can tell from the lyrics (see the link below) that there's a unified theme in the video and the lyrics, and that it is, unsurprisingly, rather frivolous. But that's beside the point I'm making here. I'm talking about form, not content. My attention is more particularly drawn to the vocal (the audio) 'identity' (or markers) of the song that makes it so copiously representative of a genre I've called the Nigerian Voice. 

It is not just the accent, but you can't take accent out of the broader context of the song. Moreover, there is a big and inseparable chunk of it here. It is not just the lyrics, either; but the words are writ and voiced in an indubitably Nigerian tone. All of this is a matter of degree, of course -- between KJV's piece and what we hear in any selection from Olamide, Phyno, Wizkid, Don Jazzy, Davido, Patoranking, Kiss Daniel, Sugarboy, Korede Bello, Timaya and the like. But KJV voice stands out, and it is wondrously heavy-duty and relatively/infectiously 'unvarnished'. Hey, it's neither Ghanaian nor Congolese, nor South African, nor Tanzanian. It's not Kenyan, for sure. Far from it, in fact. And it's not Angolan (if you're thinking of C4Pedro), or Ugandan, or Togolese. It's not Cameroonian, either. Just listen to the singer's vocal rendition of these already very Nigerian lines:

"Jeje I dey eyeh nile alayo

The boys are happy 

And the girls are joyful 

Before you know oya 

We dey my place aha 

She take a selfie 

On top my bently"


Click to watch the Common Sense video

Here are the Lyrics for KJV's Common Sense

As I conclude, I want to say this: I'm sure that Nigerians in London can quickly tell a Nigerian voice when they hear one. In music, KJV's voice is distinctively such a one -- for me at least. Incidentally, KJV is shorthand for King Jiggy Vokal.


READ (for content): Thomas Paine's Letter/Post to Revolutionary Americans about "Common Sense"

MUSIC (Kenya): Party Don't Stop by Camp Mulla ft. Collo

Kenya's hip-hop sensation, charismatic Camp Mulla feat. Collo Mfalme, give no quarters and take no prisoners in this 2011 super-hot dance floor banger -- Party Don't Stop. As connoisseurs have noticed, a tune from this iconic song has frequently featured  in the video rotation schedules of Trace Mziki TV, Eastern Africa's leading music channel. The tune has become an abbreviated anthem of sorts on that channel.

Click to watch the video

Here are the Party Don't Stop Lyrics

Dr. Nico Kassanda's "Mokili Ya Nzambe"

I have already said all I wanted to say for now about Dr. Nico Kassanda, and will not say any more for a while -- lest I overly repeat myself. Click here to read what I've said: Nico Kassanda's "Echantillon Ya Pamba". 

All that I should possibly add is this: Mokili Ya Nzambe's vibes set us on a journey of sorts -- a journey of the mind and of reflection. The instrumental intonations spike the more even-keeled melody to yield the sense of a long train-ride, such as those which many of us remember still. Rides up and down the Great Rift (the 'escarpment'), across vast plains and awesome trees in between them -- such as the all-enveloping night would allow one to see -- all for to see Mama and the siblings who had been terribly missed.

Click here for the audio of Mokili Ya Nzambe


So Mokili Ya Nzambe is for me, in a word, an anthem for homesickness. I'm thinking just now, also, that I did listen to it a lot when I was a student at Dar. But the link between the lyrics and the reflections must remain fiction, of course, in the absence of (until there is) a translation of the words.


PS: You may click here to find my earlier take on Mokili Ya Nzambe.

MUSIC (Uganda): Serena Bata's Yegwe Munange

Yegwe Munange (= It's you, Babe) is more than the usual music video offering. It has a distinctive visual-arts orientation, as if the product of a self-respecting School of (Visual) Art. The dance moves are not spins off your usual pop affair.

Click to watch the video

The music, too, has a measured and even cultured tune; as if aligned to a higher standard than the norm. Serena sings in a serene and assuring tone, with an angelic smile and a regal mien. Her love song is, well, of a pristine kind.

The video's ambience -- everything you see in it -- is just so beautifully in place or in deliberate and stylized motion. Routine interactions have become animated paintings. The children, who "shouldn't be there", caricature adult life -- and so, subtly, find an accepted place in all this creative mix. 

The lyrics, which anchor all that fine singing and motion, are pretty prosaic, however, when you do get to read them. An intriguing disconnect.

Find the Lyrics here

Oyi Remix ~ A Delightful Flavour-Savage Duet

Oyi Remix is a delightful duet involving two Pop Superstars from Nigeria -- Mr. Flavour and Tiwa Savage. Set in make-believe wintry diaspora, the music video has all the flavorful treatment that any moving love song's supposed to have -- and is energized by a 'savage' power of attraction boosted by long 'oversea' absence. It is, that is, all about raging, mutual desire stoked by 'far' distance and associated longing.

Click to watch the video
  

The song's lyrics fit right into the story -- and are indeed the story. The tune is just the thing for the emotions of this 'farland'-implicated affair.

Thus (excerpts from the lyrics):

He ~

"See I dey catch(e) cold, eh ah.

Baby I dey catch(e) cold..."

"My jollof rice oh

How you dey do today...

My tomato jos(e) oh"

"... now I'm dulling

Cause here is so so boring..."

She ~

"Wahala don come...

I think I've found the one...

My heart keeps racing

It just won't stop..."

"So just say the word...

I'll jump, jump, run, run

As far as I can get to you."


CLICK: The Oyi Remix Lyrics




NOTE: The Oyi Remix video was published on February 8th, 2012. As of today (February 5th, 2018), it has registered a total of 20,341,381 views (that number has risen by 175 views since I started taking notes and writing, and rewriting, this post some 50 minutes ago).

MUSIC: KO-C's Optimistic Theme in Bollo c'est Bollo

Bollo c'est Bollo is a motivational song with a wonderful beat, and a rousing harmony of tunes. It's a call to 'action' for anyone who might feel let down or left behind in life's inexorable march through time and geography. It uplifts the spirit.

Click here to watch the video

The tone is, well, earnest -- and with some urgency to it. The song is sung in French and partly in English. We do have below a full translation of the lyrics into English. A write-up on the song, at this 237Showbiz site, should also help to discern the song's deeper meaning. 

Any music, sans the lyrics, is never translated or even translatable, of course. Certainly, unless one wants to treat a critique of form as a form of processing implicit content into another kind of language -- a translation (better still, an interpretation), in short. Here, I'd rather simply talk about the music (the sounds in general) and interpret the lyrics. 


Watch: Cyndy Vox's fine rendition of "Bollo c'est Bollo"
Read: The "Bollo c'est Bollo" lyrics.
Read: A Comment on KO-C's "Bollo c'est Bollo"

Magasco's Bella

In Bella, Magasco (who was so impressive in Zamba) shows just how deep his vocal talent runs, and how pleasant it is -- even when the theme is not so 'Biblical'. Here, he pivots his singer's voice to a loving tone -- and to his one and only, his (proverbial) Bella.

Click to watch the video

His is a promise of constant love, which no self-respecting girl will take without a little salt-shake. And so, which Bella? "They know there is nothing there for two". 

Still, all pop music is make-believe, and on the face of it -- of the relationships which its purveyors have in real life -- all too often promiscuous and promise-breaking. And yet, what a captivating song! So so sunny the vibes! So so sunny a day!

Click here for the Bella lyrics

MUSIC (Uganda): Ykee Benda's Unforgettable "Byonkola"

"What a mysterious song!" This may be your reaction when you first hear only the audio of this music video. It was mine when I first heard the tunes coming out of a piece I didn't know, but which turned out to be Byonkola. I let my imagination fly free as I began to pay attention.

Click here to watch the video

The humming at the beginning was out of this world, suggesting that a chanting session might be in the works, and might lead in any unpredictable but intriguing direction. In which case all that "I don't like it" stuff was puzzling.

The tonality of the song, and the beat fused into it, suggested that a long, long trip was being had; and with it the opportunity to review life's personal and public troubles, and possibly make sense of it all. In fact, the humming tone follows/'haunts' us throughout the 'journey', and is no accident.

But the video, a reality-check of sorts, was inevitably turned to -- even before the song had run half its course -- and its images factored into a broader appreciation of Byonkola. 

In present tense, then: The dancing is creatively crafted, though somewhat reminiscent of P-Square's moves in the early days. Some tunes from Farmer Remix find their way into this do as well. And the fire-starter's outrageously deviant act in the house is unforgivable.

The lyrics, when at last read, reveal that all this narration is in reality about a couple in some serious kind of grounded 'trouble'. But the music is truly fine and thoroughly enjoyable. What a contradiction! In uncanny twists, moreover, different segments of the video enhance and dilute the aural richness of this music.

Click here to read the lyrics

Victoria Kimani's China Love

China Love is fine chinaware, so to speak, tastefully punctuated at eight cleverly timed points by a majestic command: GO! Still, the Great Question prompted by the song's title, before things clarify (some?), is: Is all this a "From China with Love" gig, or a protestation of love for China, the country? Or "Far From China Love"? Or all of the above? Or is all that asking too philosophical in the pop circumstances? The video and the lyrics provide some clarity.

Watch the China Love Video

READ the Lyrics for China Love

The song is really not about China the country, but for the superb optics. And while we're at that, let's just say that we see the Great Wall from the 'inside' in a way different from the usual sights. It's as though we've just bumped into The Hidden City. Forget the Forbidden City for now.

The lyrics reveal that China Love is not the kind of love the girl is looking for from her patently slippery beau. But we don't know yet what kind of love that is. Does he? If not, he will, soon enough. Hopefully. And so you will, too, as you decipher her not so cryptic words -- and the contradictory message in her face 'banner': "No one understands our love". Does she! 

Despite (and because of) everything, China Love is funky. Yes?

Gone Forever: Chidinma's Moving Dirge

Somber background music sets off this mournful send-off for Mama, who is never going to come back. No one, sadly, does.

Cries Chidinma:
"If tears could bring you back,
I [would] cry you a river!"

It is that anguished moment which no caring human can escape,  but for those occasions when it is the mother who has to bury her beloved child. And so Chidinma's personal dirge resonates widely, and is indeed universal. She sings for all of us, who have ever lost a loved one!

She musters a choice of vocal possibilities to reflect, and reflect on, this irreparable loss: 

"My first love has been taken away from me," Chidinma cries.

Both the singing and the play of instruments are finely pitched for this indescribable loss. The video scenes, too, minus the early images of violence, fit tastefully into the rendition of this common human condition. The ocean-front scenes, in particular, have an ethereal touch which accentuates the deep emotions freely emitted here.

Gone Forever will resonate with everyone on earth, who gets to hear it. 


Click to view the video of Gone Forever

Click for the lyrics for Gone Forever

Mafikizolo and Yemi Alade sing for Love in "Ofana Nawe" (Remastered)

The song Ofana Nawe (meaning "There's no one like you") is easily misunderstood in certain circles as gospel, as we try to explain below; but it is not. Still, it might as well be, with just a slant in the lyrics. But there is no such a slant here. Here, it is a reaffirmation of earthly and pure love between a man and a woman. A rule of thumb, then: Whenever you hear "baby", and not "baby Jesus", it's not gospel. Certainly not in our time.

Click to watch the Video of Ofana Nawe

Ofana Nawe is feel-goodness. And Nigerian Yemi Alade outperforms. She is the voice of love, Cupid's worthy personification: "What are you doing over there. Should be over here," she swoons, with hormone-gilded and still girlish enthusiasm. This is without doubt a South African song, all things considered. It is very pleasant and 'soul-searching', infused with pleasant tunes and fine melody. And everyone in the video looks just lovely.

Nevertheless, there are awkward phrases and constructions in the lyrics which will make a die hard for "pure" love cringe. 

Thus:

The Male Mafikizolo: 
"I've never seen a woman like you. 
Baby you are the best. 
You're the best above the rest."

The Female Mafikizolo: 
"There's no one who treats me better like you do.
My baby you treat me better o,
Treat me better o" 

Back to the beginning, as promised: The meaning of the song's title, Ofana Nawe, has the same root as the grand old gospel song Akekho Ofana no Jesu (which means "There is no one like Jesus"). 

Nawe abbreviates na wewe as a commonly used Bantu/Swahili "phrase" for "with you" or "and you." Ofana is a variant of the Swahili word fanana, both literally meaning "look(s) like", or simply "like". In the song, the word Akekho is bracketed and dispensed with. It is absent but taken to be present. It is, everyone knows, implicitly there. Hence (Akekho) Ofana Nawe, meaning "There is no one like you." 

Click here for Ofana Nawe lyrics

MUSIC (South Africa): Cassper Nyovest's "Tito Mboweni"

WATCH:  Video of  Cassper Nyovest's Tito Mboweni 

The Tito Mboweni lyrics are a nugget for those who seek to more clearly understand Cassper Nyovest, South Africa's musical icon. They are an astute and poetic blending of English and Nyovest's 'home' (or ethnic) language -- Setswana. 

But that means that less than half of his message avails itself to folks who speak only Setswana or English -- that universal language which so many millions of us across the world and away from England have appropriated. We have even, in effect, 'forcefully expropriated it (without compensation) as, now, our own.

Matters are made more complicated by the impression that Cassper Nyovest remains a master of cynicism, even as his revolutionary fervor seems to give way to other, not yet clearly articulated,  forms engagement, outside music, with the larger society. So you cannot fruitfully anchor your interpretation and understanding of his message in Tito Mboweni on a literal translation. 

It seems obvious enough that he is cheering a transformation that he has gone through -- that is, the fact that he "used to talk sh*t but now...talk six figures". However, one is not so sure that the cheer itself is not a 'front'. He hates the fake things with which those who look down on others surround themselves, but shows that he has begun being surrounded by the same fake items.

The six figures seem genuine enough, and he appears more at peace with himself, and perhaps the larger South African Society. You can detect it in his smiles on the video. His pigtail appears gone. But perhaps he is struggling to avoid being too pro-establishment, without being openly hostile to it. The title to the song happens to be the name of the first black governor of the South African Reserve Bank, who is still around. Intended or not, Tito Mboweni, which runs for 4:09 minutes, turns out to be a very autobiographical song.

READ MORE: About Cassper Nyovest

One must always insist on access to the video of a pop song. The reason for this is that pop singing, like many other music genres, is a performance. All performances occur on some stage, which must be set. What you see on it gives you a line, so to speak, into a part of the singer's creative soul -- and intent -- as projected through the song for which the stage is set. But performance includes the use of language. 

One should also, therefore, always seek access to the lyrics, since sung words, mediated and even 'altered' by the singer's pronunciation or accent, may be at some, or great, variance with their written versions. The ear may thus be misdirected. 

It is never fully understood how much a reading of the attendant lyrics can reveal about a song, until one has experience with that kind of reading. Still, a condition for effective engagement in this kind of venture is that one must know the language of the lyrics (or song).

Sugarboy's Kilamity, Featuring Kiss Daniel

Kilamity's powerful AfroBeats intention hits you as soon as the song begins. It is, indeed, how it starts. The beat lays the ground for the song's overriding tone (and its own particularity) right there -- and for all of the 4:04 minutes we're going to have, so to speak. 

If you know anything, already, about the duo of Sugar Boy and Kiss Daniel, you suspect that you're being set up for something out of this (musical) world; that you're entitled exactly to what you're beginning to get. Plus more. In unexpected twists and turns of "phrase". 

In that sense, the two are part of a small but growing class of super-talented musicians -- who are overturning things. And who are giving us so much hope for Africa's creative future.

Watch: Kilamity video

There's no cliche in this singing -- this throbbing multipresence. The vocal cords are deployed in harmonious synchronicity, and a wonderful range. The entire set, too, is sophistication itself -- cool and without rush. Great place for man-child, and for his female counterpart, to strut the "wares".

I'm loving the lyrics, rendered at the highest level of creative-poetic purpose: "Serious! Dangerous!". I'm loving the visuals too. The body-texts are fine, and even (re)fined. The ambience is art in motion.

I'd like to know the band behind the singing. All too often, bands remain anonymous and unappreciated. This one is truly accomplished, though out of sight, as we can all 'see'. It plays a great part, and even helps to make the difference that sets Kilamity so distinctly apart. There's no cliche in its instrumental renditions of this supple musicality, either. All of which goes to show just how important it is to have a great band in play. 

In another instance we will talk at some length about the roles played in such creative arts by Directors (Ani James here) and Camera Crews, both or whom are so obviously crucial in Kilamity. No matter how hard you try, you can't have great music video without either. In Kilamity, they interpret the 'impending' mood perfectly. To put it differently, the lyricists' mood helps to set their tone (and tome) exactly right. The point is, they obviously have the talent to do so, and do. It's all so wonderfully and even naughtily productive.










Update: October 20, 2018.

Kiss Daniel's Yeba

In Lingala language, the word Yeba means to know, or to become acquainted with. The music which those of my generation grew up with (and were nourished by) in Nairobi, and other parts of Kenya and the larger East Africa, was mostly Congolese, rendered in Lingala -- with a sprinkling of French and even 'broken' Swahili (nuggets of the latter which it was fun to rummage for). 

All too often, in the course of the lyrics, one would hear the intriguing word Yeba shoot out. We didn't quite pause to ask what it meant exactly. We took it as some kind of exclamation, signalling a moment of 'ecstasy' in the song -- such as was relayed by the 'possessed' vocalist, and such as was allowed in the dance hall and over the radio.

I don't yet know what Yeba means in Kiss Daniel's Nigerian language, but I have my suspicions -- which drew my attention to Yeba, one of his most recent songs, in the first place (so to speak). Having heard the song and viewed the video, what I know already, and all that matters for now, is that this tuneful song is a Looking Glass of sorts (nay, a telescope) by means of which he takes us on a smooth, decades-long journey through musical Time -- abridged though the journey clearly is. 

The video has a magic of its own. It is a montage, inside very confined space, of a galaxy of sped-up movements and slow-motion 'posturings' (a few of which may be a turnoff to a few). Numbered years come rushing at you in one bat-like stream of charged (of awakened) sub-consciousness, if, I'm thinking, you remember them as you were. Littler. Younger. And, all of this, seemingly without a choreography. Seemingly, yes, but in the end everything falls into place as part of a grand design and laid-back artistry.

What excels in the music itself is not so much the beat as the absolutely captivating tune. Still, the beat gladdens the heart and the two (beat and tune) mutually reinforce. And they deliver to us a tropical feast of sight, sound and (techni)color that's irresistible and nourishing and deeply moving. 

Kiss Daniel's signature voice -- lush and always disarming, and here laced with naughty 'phrases' -- is simultaneously at the heart and the outer layers of the song. It is, so to speak then, the icing on this generous and lavish cake.

Click here for Kiss Daniel's Yeba, the video

Here are the Yeba Lyrics

Read: Jasper Efe (September 20, 2017) "Kiss Daniel: Yeba [Music]"










Text in para 4 partially updated (w/ an insert starting at Numbered years and ending with Younger): Nov 26, 2018

Awilo Longomba's Cache Cache

Awilo Longomba's Cache Cache, translated as 'hide and seek', was uploaded as video to YouTube only on June 4th, 2011. But the audio version is really much older than the year suggests. As the chronology of his artistic journey indicates, the song features in his Kafou Kafou album/CD, which was released in 2001 (see also this source) -- though year 2000 has also been mentioned. 

Cache cache is a gem. Very French in the lyrics. Very Awilo in the vibes. It is (self)-teasing in spirit. And naughty. It is a whirlwind of mirth and tempo. And unforgettable. It is so very 'fun'!

The dancers' energy infects. Their verve conquers all who fall into its embrace, and who are game for an unbridled and mesmerizing swirl. The beat is show-stopping. 

Awilo, the quintessential "animateur", he who is the heart of the party (any party we find him in), is the centrifugal force for all the dancing we're witness to here -- as well as the song and the tunes it accompanies, and likewise spices. And the girls, both singing and dancing? Well, they are sirens.

Click here for the Cache Cache video

In "Say My Name", Upbeat Shilole and Barnaba Confoundingly Veer to the Dark Side of Life

More often than not, one doesn't quite clearly hear the words of a song, even when sung in a language one generally understands. Speakers of certain (perhaps all) languages do have a knack, or even penchant, for cryptic word-craft -- and a patience with all that. I think Swahili is certainly one such. 

And I think that no one engaged in creative writing, and no lover of texts of any kind, should complain when on the receiving end of someone else's artistic burst -- of creativity (and all the crypticism that goes with it) -- or when confronted with textual intricacies of form, content or meaning. I say all this after having drafted the second paragraph below (which remains as initially written) earlier this night (some four hours ago), but before I got a hold of the written lyrics (click on the link below for access) for the very first time. 

I sought the lyrics in the effort to make more concrete sense of my own draft in the light of the light emanating from the singers' written words, and in particular Shilole's; and of the singers' possible intent, in contrast to my own initial reactions (spanning a number of weeks and culminating in the draft), merely to the beauty of the un-examined sounds (vocal and instrumental) and of visual images spinning out of the 3:19-minute video.

So here is what I initially wrote: Say My Name was a stunner when it first appeared. It was a bolt from the blue, with its supremely optimistic beat and high-energy performance delivered by both Shilole and Barnaba. Neither of the artistes was a household name outside Tanzania, as far as I could tell. And here they were, doing it without an iota of bashfulness or self-doubt. The song is hot. Shilole is hotter -- her singing, mostly in Swahili, poesy itself. It's all a firestorm of sorts: enjoyable, uplifting. Above all, "inatuchochea".

The cryptic slant of the song reveals itself now, upon examining the written words at far less than the speed of sound. There is a 'bitterness' you don't quite pick in the singing, but which is self-evident, indeed explicit, in the stationary words. I'm surprised by not having caught it before. 

And yet one can imagine how someone in a "great escape" from existential or psychological danger or long "confinement" (from Igunga in this case) can display, at once, both exhilaration and a sarcasm of -- a thumbing of the nose by -- the finally free. That, I think now, is what the singers were trying to project. I think that Dar Society, steeped in Swahili culture, got it the very first time. No matter.

Here below are snippets of the lyrics which inform what I have just said, and which correct first impressions:

"Igunga mpaka Jo'burg
Kweli nime sota.
Shida nlizopata
Kamwe sitaki kukumbuka."
............................
"Say my name ni Shishi,
Mwanamke mbishi,
Nazijua dhiki
Vikaragosi hamnitishi."
............................
"Najua unaniombea mabayaaaaa
Si ulijua ntayumbaaaaa
Wa kuzuia ni molaaaa"
............................
"Kaka mbona husomeki.
Hush, hubebeki."
............................

NOTE: Sure, Shishi, whose name must be mentioned, is that very Shilole!

READ: Say My Name Lyrics (In Swahili)

Humblesmith and Mr. Flavour Strut Their Rooster Stuff in Jukwese

Jukwese is an Igbo word which, for present purposes, means "ask around about me," if you want to know just who I really am -- and why I'm more, so so much more, than I may seem. The song Jukwese, rooted in that connotation, has a genealogy which it will be futile for me to retrace, as you can see hints of it for yourself. Just click on the link to the lyrics given below to catch a drift of it in the short narrative provided at the beginning. Your quest can move on from there. 

Here: The Jukwese Video

I think that for the non-Nigerian, the first impressions that draw your attention (as they did for me) to this music video, 'shot' by Clarence Peters (a superstar in his own right), are: 
1. Irresistibly melodic tunes (with a touch of Congolese, I reckon)
2. Really lyrical lyrics
3. Colorful, super fine, optics
4. A delightful ambience.

Going beyond those four attractions, the song's vital punch lies almost entirely in the literal and interpretive import of the lyrics, which few people outside the language of the song have immediate access to. For the Nigerian, instant knowledge of what the lyrics really mean, or imply, perhaps detracts -- as the viewership numbers probably suggest. 

In the Jukwese lyrics, Humblesmith and Mr. Flavour essentially adopt the rooster's frame of mind. To twist a little bit the meaning of the title of one of Seyi Shay's signature songs, a rooster is essentially a jangilova. And a jangilova is a swinging, carpetbagging, rooster -- here today, gone (at sunrise?) tomorrow. In a comment under the Jukwese video, one Eke N wryly observes along these lines as follows: "Flavour gets reunited with the girl in Ada Ada video, hope he doesn't get her..." [Or, someone tell me, is it the girl in Gollibe?]

The two gifted singers, the gift of the gab in hand, are sly salesmen for love -- in a campaign in which they are the very same products they're pushing. All things considered, though, they don't sound as sincere as Kiss Daniel and Sugarboy in Upon Me. Just read the Jukwese lyrics to sense the unbridled self-adulation in the words. 

Here, as I conclude, is a sample:

"A baby boo, imalu mma.
Anu'm eme na tau tau.
Anu'm eme na mili mili.
Anu'm emekwa ofuma.
Baby, Jekwa jukwe ese.
.......
Jukwaesa na Alaba Lagos O".

HERE: The Jukwese Lyrics

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS: Here below is my original take on Jukwese. I have today (April 2, 2018) deleted the post (of June 17, 2016) in which it appeared. It survives!

JUKWESE is, as, "Too much lov"; as too tru a do! Humblesmith and Mr. Flavour do a super melodic thing here. It's thus: there's magic from the very start. It soars, and is higher than life as we're wont to know it on a purely material plane. So we're on another -- much, much more elevated. Transcendent, even.

The visuals are happy and refined. Refined and finely blended with the music and the body language, and the superbly tuned voices of the superstars..

What an altogether happy act!

MUSIC: Fun with Mi Casa and Eddy Kenzo in Movie Star

Movie Star is a very cheerful and humorous music video. I guess the two, good cheer and humor, will usually go hand-in-hand. Here they do, to a hilarious degree. And the fun is had by all: the movie star herself; and each of the four musician types, all seemingly veterans of a secret vaudeville, tripping themselves and over each other to woo her -- with flowers, gifts, ice cream (lots of it) and jogoo (rooster) strutting. And she leading them on, and on, kind of.

But all that vanilla ice cream, with extravagant streaks of chocolate and strawberry cream, they're offering will surely bloat her to double her gorgeous size and waistline in no time. If she'll let their zeal get into her belly, that is. I'm not talking about kupata ball either. 

Yet you sense that she knows all the risks. Look at the corner of her eyes. In any case, the way to a lady's heart is not -- is never -- through her stomach; even if romance seems more and more pegged on finance these days. She's cheerful all the way. And how she carries herself through this ring of testosterone rings of good upbringing -- in real life -- I dare say. Art mirroring life? 

Upbeat tunes flavor this fun story-line (so where is Mr. Flavour?). And our movie star flirts in that sunny, melody-filled air: on the street, at the salon, in the cinema hall (popcorn in all hands). She flirts through all the boyish pranks. No one seems to tire of anyone. Ain't that a thing! 

One thing is certain: the movie of which she is the star is the very same music video we see them all in. Yet she's the subliminal Sza Sza, and her presumptive reincarnation at this 21st Century Zaza's Studio. 

Kudos to South Africa's Mi Casa group and Uganda's Eddy Kenzo for this wonderful summer (and fall and winter and spring) do.

HERE: The Movie Star Lyrics
READ: Chime Ndubuisi's "Mi Casa ft. Eddy Kenzo - Movie Star Lyrics"

READ: "Conversation ~ J'Something of Micasa"