Here’s Lagbaja’s latest video. One thing that is peculiar to Lagbaja is the way he weaves cultures into each other seemingly flawlessly. Talk of hybridity. This one is done in Spanish and Yoruba, and the music is nice.
I like what I’ve seen so far.
While seated at the back of the Merridian Ballroom on campus yesterday where I had gone to see the legendary big band jazz of the Count Bassie Orchestra, I could not stop thinking about the power of collaboration. The event was the Arts and Issues series of the University as part of the Annual SIUE Jazz Festival. The Merridian Ballroom has played host to very many special events in the life of the University. There it was on March 29, 2005 where the then newly elected Senator Barack Obama first announced that he was going to introduce his first piece of legislation in Washington, D.C. It was in the same venue that the last Arts and Issues event at SIUE took place that I attended. That was the visit by writer and poet Maya Angelou in October 2009.
It wasn’t my first Orchestra attendance, but it was the first that I was attending without much knowledge of the players. Only a late change of mind by my adorable head of department gave me access to the tickets in the first place. And because I didn’t get there on time, I sat at the back, too far to take good pictures but not too far to enjoy the beautiful work of the orchestra. My first orchestra very many years ago at the University of Ibadan featured mostly Yoruba tunes and foreign musical instruments; a stimulating mix which was also easy to follow. The Count Basie Orchestra performance featured tunes mostly famous to Americans, and perhaps more sophisticated Jazz audience to which I obviously didn’t belong. I didn’t know exactly when to clap and when not to. I depended on the crowd which however didn’t disappoint. What the performance lacked in appeal to my expectations in familiarity to its tunes, it more than made up for in satisfaction of my appetite for good music, brilliant compositions, amazing vocals, laughter, a few theatrics, and general geniality expected of a world class orchestra of its reputation. I have now begun to look for their songs on iTunes.
William “Count” Basie is widely regarded as one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his day. He came out of the Kansas City Swing scene in the mid-1930s and assembled a sound that became an anthem for a generation. The group has won every musical award imaginable, including 17 Grammys, and has been named to every respected jazz poll in the world at least once. Some members of the orchestra are new, as could be found on the youth of their faces. But, according to the literature inviting us to the event, “the majority of sound still swings from musicians handpicked by Count Basie himself.” He died in April 1984 after having led the band for nearly fifty years.
The SIUE Jazz Festival, presented by the SIUE Jazz Studies program in the Department of Music, is a non-competitive, educational event that celebrates jazz innovators. This season’s festival features the music of Count Basie. In addition to jam sessions and clinics, performances will include high school and middle school bands plus an appearance by the SIUE Concert Jazz Band.
Here’s what happened. I got bored again while working on a linguistics translation assignment so I closed the boring pages and set up my recording equipments. This is the result. And with this, I think there might be a future for me in music someday. Maybe a Grammy.
Here then is a result of my sleepless night yesterday. Note: It is a different version from the one I sent around to my friends’ unsuspecting email addresses earlier today.
If I would make a musical album, the cover jacket might look somewhat like this picture ;). It will also include the following songs which I have now also recorded: Bob Marley’s Waiting in Vain, Frank Sinatra’s The Way You Look Tonight and Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time. Haha. Boredom rocks.
Enjoy.
PS: Congrats to Clarissa’s One Year Blogging Anniversary!
It was inevitable that I would eventually blog about (my love for) this song. As at the last count on my iTunes, I have listened to it for a total 293 number of times in less than three days, after songs by Chris de burgh, Fela Kuti and Michael Jackson. That is no mean feat. I usually begin playing it in the morning, and keep it on reply throughout my work on the laptop till evening when I sleep, and then leave it on to lull me to sleep as well. This is only surprising if you take into account that I did not like the song at all the first time I heard it. I thought it was too slow. In hindsight, I now think that I it was who was too slow.
The song by two unique Nigerian singers 9ice and Asa is a classic. It is a solemn lamentation of the state of things. But where the song derives its greatness is not even in its political preoccupation but in its artistic triumph. Poetry of words and the rhythm of proverbs in the Yoruba culture is already a given. But merging it with the art of rhyming, which I believe is a fairly Western art concept, and coming out with a tune which is both melodious and deep is a great endeavour indeed. I will not even try to play this in class to my students because the poetry it contains is above them. (Heck, it’s above many of the people I know.) The real beauty of the track however is in the words, the message, the proverbs, and not in the perhaps equally moving rhythm of the instruments. For non-Yoruba speakers, I give you only the music. 🙂 Enjoy.
NOTE: The title pete-pete is taken from a Yoruba proverb that says that “As soon as pete-pete (a muddy water/liquid dirt) is beaten deliberately with a rod, you can never control whose clothes it soils.”
Away from the first two depressing posts of this year, here’s really how this decade will begin on ktravula.com: fun.
Hat tip to Bukola O, a regular commenter on this blog from Aberdeen, Scotland, who sent me this lovely song, along with a mail of appreciation, and who called me her favourite blogger of 2009. What can I say? It has been good for me as well. Thank you so very much.
I have downloaded the song from iTunes and is now on constant replay on my laptop.