This intriguing video, One Source, was published on October 5th, 2016. It runs for roughly 3:47 minutes, and starts with fire burning itself, and with the proclamation that "Africa is on fire". That's the first of two main themes that course through this inspired piece of music.
The second is that "This is a revolution". But it's not clear what kind of revolution it is, or for whom the revolution is all about. A revolutionary motif, yes, but the video's images suggest that, if anything, this less political than cultural. The latter is the more self-evident in the video's motions and colors.
As it starts, we see a heroic figure rising from under the sea, unaided, each hand carrying an Olympics-inspired (?) burning flame, which is miraculously impervious to the extinguishing power of sea-water -- any water. A simple beat picks up, and a refrain joins in -- something like, "Di di di di di di koko" -- carried by none other than Victoria Kimani's voice, tailor-made for the role. The refrain threads through the whole video.
And it is, indeed, practically the whole song that One Source is. Victoria Kimani is unmistakably the seductive siren calling. But there is a manufactured one as well, which is really a warning of something just as manufactured but with a potentially deathly effect. A Molotov cocktail that's thrown by a visible but anonymous 'combatant' target's a windshield that's already cracked, but still "intact". It survives the throw, too.
Two other artistes of continental and even global repute feature in this production as well: South Africa's Khuli Chana and Ghana's Sarkodie. The Ghanaian flag is there for all to take note, but is that Sarkodie asking if we know what time it is? And is that Khuli Chana cleverly touting a product we'll talk about in a moment, amid all that revolutionizing? I have not come across Kay Gizm till here, can't tell who it is in the video (the one struggling to walk on water, perhaps?) and have little with which to rate him.
On the face of it all, the music we hear is an excuse for all the imagery that fills the 3:47-minute-size space (or real-estate); but the reality of the matter is the other way round: it is the imagery, reinforced with certain phrases, that gives the cover essential to executing the real purpose of the entire musical production. And it, the visual dimension, is truly powerful, in just the way the montage of motion and shapes itself dances in our line of sight and dominates our gaze with non-stop surprises and theatricality.
So how shall we rate this entire thing? As an artistic creation, it is clearly not in the class of King Kong Remix, which for me the best pop video out of Africa in 2015. But it's worth listening to, and, even more productively, watching -- as the visual memes than keep coming at you. You be the judge. Ultimately, however, One Source cannot escape the charge that it is essentially advertising for Absolut Vodka -- advertising sugar-coated with 'first-draft' ideas of revolutionary fervor, and perhaps angst; as well as a raft of charming images we can all relate to apolitically. Hope the artistes got a good deal for it from the vodka makers, but I find it hard to consider it for Africa's best pop videos of 2016.
Much luv to the artistes, regardless.
