No doubt about it, this guy just interest me! After his very controversial Article last week- ''Female Celebs Prefer Second-Hand Husbands'', that caused a real big commotion on Social Media.Then a few days later, Newly weds, Tiwa Savage and Husband, Mr Balogun, threw worded stones at Etcetera, Springing from the impression that the Article was referring to them. Surprisingly, the artiste and writer did not respond. As some immature artistes will find pleasure in trading words on social media but, this guy is just one of the best musicians of our time and see professionalism is the key. Many then felt that he will in his next Article Which he now writes weekly, with the Punch! He sure didn't! But with this Title, it gets one thinking. Lets not insinuate anything... But it sure gets one thinking...! Enjoy the read. We all love Live Music that can not be ''Ti-- Savage''... Sorry... Savaged!
We live in a time when almost everybody wants to make their own music. But you can always tell the difference between a musician who is in it for the money and someone who is in it for the music.
The dedicated musicians can play music every chance they get. Money-focused musicians whine about the fact that they cannot get gigs that pay anything. Think about it, almost every legendary, gifted musician who has made a mark has been a musician who struggled long and hard at their craft and never gave up.
To play live music in Nigeria, you must ‘eat determination for breakfast.’
Now…let us play along.
They say live music is dead, but live music is bigger and better than ever.
They say it is on the verge of disaster. But each time, those words have been premature. Those comments sound like something someone could have said in 1980 or the early 1990s, or even last weekend.
People have predicted the death of live music since its inception. And it has been true every time. Live music consistently demonstrates resilience so strong that you can crush, reshape, twist, but somehow it always manages to survive, largely due to a known truism: “Live music is not going away”.
People will always want live music, and they will get it, whether it involves commerce or not.
People made money with live music thousands of years before Edison conceived storing sound, and they will continue to make money with it thousands of years to come. Hence, until the concept of money itself becomes extinct, live music would still remain.
And considerably more people will play live music just for the sheer pleasure of it as they have done pretty much since humankind could call itself that. ‘Live sound’ is the hallmark of humanity as we can also attribute the chirping of birds and the sound of waterfalls to it.
I suspect, however, that until the revolution comes and money becomes irrelevant, people will continue earning money by making and marketing live music, one way or the other. In the short term, this will require making the music better or marketing oneself better or just for whatever reason, being more appealing to a wider audience.
The good news for live musicians and audiences is that the potential for more people to make a living appealing to their niche is greater now than at any time before. Thanks largely to the rise of communications technologies that allow instant access to information from anywhere on the planet even as we grow closer and closer to the said “global village” with every passing day.
Live musicians and marketers can begin to use these resources to reach their audiences, thinking locally, but also thinking globally.
With over six billion people on the planet, finding 30,000 or 300,000 or even three million people who like a particular sound should not be that hard. However, as the technologies exist today, audiences still have to meet them halfway.
This is a problem as the Nigerian audience has become spoiled. In this era of fast food and instant noodles, instant internet access and media on demand, Nigerians have got used to having music dropped into their lap by radio, TV, friends’ recommendations, etc.
Live musicians and marketers need to figure out ways to painlessly bring the music to this audience that do not involve the traditional mass method of dissemination that have simply stopped working efficiently.
The process has already begun, and I expect it to snowball as more and more people invent newer and better methods for getting live music to those who need to hear it. Just last weekend, someone insinuated that my genre of music (live music) is dead.
But if you look closely, the focus and the music may have improved, but maybe the artists creating it have limited their audiences. You cannot generally consider it a mass media anymore because there is no monolithic audience anymore.
It is part of the process of the music developing, of feeling itself as an art rather than a product. Being better than everything else on the charts does not matter when it comes to art. The charts deal with commerce, not quality.
They don’t measure what sounds the best (as if such a thing were possible), but what sells the best. So, as I stated in the introduction, probably more great music (music that you will like) is available today than at any other time.
Surely something released among the hundreds of albums that came out before I wrote this article will appeal to you, even if you are just one of 100 or 1,000 people who appreciate it. It is just that today the audience has to find the scent, hunt for it, and perhaps even dig a bit to find it.
Finally, in support of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, I am appealing to all Nigerian musicians to reject the call to entertain at the World Economic Forum in Abuja until those girls are found and brought home safely to their families.
Yes, it is a hard call to make. But think of those girls as your sisters and nieces and the sufferings they are going through in the hands of those monsters. Let us all speak with one voice until they #BringBackOurGirls.