AFRICAN POP: Oritse Femi's Igbeyawo

Oritse Femi is the undisputed King of Happiness in Africa's music industry. If I have said something akin to that before, without reservation -- as I have -- I happily say it again.

Here, I said this before:
1. Concerning the track Tomorrow, a piece featuring Reminisce
2. In my commentary on Double Wahala Part 2, a truly inspired piece sung -- with joyous mountaintop fervor -- with the irrepressible D'Banj.

And now, this is why we're really here, like this. And now, I wanted to say, Oritse Femi gives us Igbeyawo, a great song, which, I believe, draws one's attention like a magnet from the very first time one hears it. Igbeyawo is a Yoruba word for a wedding (or marriage). Good to know. Take a listen:


Click here to watch the video


READ: The lyrics of Igbeyawo


Igbeyawo is a high-spirited celebration of Love and the (shall I say related?) 'institution' of marriage, as it is lived in real life, which has innumerable versions and various ideal types. This, it so happens, is as apt as the next, or the last.

"Love is a beautiful tin", declares he, in a disarming and sincerest of voices.

Of course, like poets, singers, who are themselves poets and sometimes troubadours too, do have a licence to sing soaring songs without perhaps having to account for the higher truths which their songs urge us all to (up)hold and honor; without, that is, having to live their songs. It'd be nice, 'dough', if dey lived dem truts -- at least some of de time; some of de time dat deir songs continue to be sung, and heard, and such.

That doesn't matter here, though. We're just, we're easily, we're hopelessly caught up in this whirlwind of a tune. This sunny interlude in life's long and episodic journey -- and even magical.

There's a storyline. It's patchy, OK. Yet it allows for a moving wedding-day raga. There are flash-forwards. Some. And so, we hear the voice of The Master sing: "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." Asonder, too! And there is much joy. Much dancing. Early-days love. Lots of smiles all around. Things to eat. Everyone's in hi heaven, long as all the 'choy' lasts, and tru livin intrudes, as it's bound to. A mini-montage of images here. Territorial/cultural tussles with the Queen Mama. Hey, that's my wife's sufuria, there, Oritse! Inexorable forward motion.

Things go up, and they go down, and up again, but it's never, no never, quite a roller-coaster. Luv conquers all in the end -- just so that it can be said, without a doubt, that "Patience is a virtue".

What's never in doubt is Oritse Femi's passionate and finely crafted (tho with a touch of rasp) and entrancing and (oya) bewitching voice. He delivers his lyrics at the highest level of musicality. All that deeply earnest charm and pleading! There is no one, right now, quite like him on this planet.

My ears plainly like the mix of tones and beats and instruments, in full flights of fancy, that they're served by the very one. I like this song because my ears do. And because my eyes savor the colors and the nuances of all the body language implicated here.