Random Thoughts on Music

It is a Friday (well, was a Friday when I was typing this part of the article) and it is that day of the week that I have to stress about what people will read about on the blog. It is always an interesting struggle especially when it is my turn to scribble something. Life in the hospital seems to be taking me away from the real world and as such I tend not to know when people are trespassing against humanity and thus I cannot take swipes at them. One day I will put down my stethoscope and join front line politics. The content of this blog will change drastically in those moments.

In my struggle for finding what to write today I found myself wondering why I have not written a piece on something that I love so much; music. Those who know Richie beyond the blog’s link know that he is a bit of fanatic when it comes to music. I am everything from a dancer through wannabe producer to critic. I like to call myself “someone who has an ear for music” and that is why I decided to share a bit about Lucifer’s brainchild with you.

Talking of the Malawian music industry, it has evolved from the times when we had very few musicians selling analogue tapes on the market to the present day when people are just in it for the fame; a few songs and a Malawi music profile. One would easily notice that the increase in the number of so called artists in the country has affected the quality of music to some extent as people do not sit down to conceptualize and produce good music. What we have nowadays are artists who try to copy everything about Nigerian, South African or American music including art work and photo shoot styles for the artists in the mentioned industries. It is not bad, but it is not good either. The interesting thing is that this has created a listenership that easily gets satisfied with poor quality music without objective analysis of the pieces on their decks.

While it is a fact that not many would agree that the quality of music is going down, the few who understand the value of good quality pieces pick up a few artists from Malawi while their playlists are dominated by exotic artists. If you are to ask me, that has its own pros and cons. There are two sides to the same coin. If you look at the scenario in which someone has to choose between a South African banger and a Malawian song, it is mostly an issue of choosing between enjoying while promoting a foreign artists or being bored while promoting a local one. That is at least in most cases. I am not saying that our music is totally trash, but if you think of it, we have more Nigerian music playing in our clubs and homes that we have at home. We have more American gospel songs in our playlists than we have Malawian. One Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo once wondered if we had Malawian musicians having heard only a combination of Nigerian music and the Malawian versions of it. Our artists are losing it and so are the listeners. Evidence? People do not appreciate the originality effort that is put into good music.

Our gospel music industry, though good is not without flaws. To be honest, there is a lot of talent in the gospel music industry. We have people with good voices and the one gospel show I patronized tells me we also have a lot of good stage performers. The one thing we do have? Lyricists. We have a good music industry of people who sing songs focusing on how God sets a table for them in the midst of their enemies and rather interestingly on how their enemies will feel the heat when God delivers them from their current sufferings. While there is nothing wrong an artist or two doing a song around these concepts, I find the dominance of these themes wrong. I once happened to meet Hamilton Jucha Chapomba at a show, and he talked of how artists nowadays struggle to write songs worth of God because they are not close to the one they write about.  That could be another explanation and while refraining from putting a direct comment to that, I like to think that there are other themes of gospel music that we overlook in thanksgiving, praise, salvation and many others you can think. And then there are these misaligned lyrics and song arrangements that come from ma artist obona kumene. I won’t say much on this one.

The issue of substandard lyrics and poor concepts has not only hit the Gospel music industry. There are very few secular artists who write some on point lyrics nowadays. I am just wondering whether it is a thing with new music from all over the globe. Being a guy who listens to all the weird music from most corners of the globe, I can generally say that the quality of lyrics is generally going down as people seem to be concentrating their energy (if there is any energy at all) on party music. One friend of mine once posted of how one famous American artist uses the same three words; party, Miami, dance (might have been a different word here) on every song but still gets awards. Comedian Chris Rock once lamented on how the lyrical quality of hip hop music has gone down to an extent that one has to defend himself when listening to such music. Back home, any new school random song’s lyrical quality is hardly comparable to Billy Kaunda’s Mphinjika or Saleta Phiri’s Ili mu Ufa.

The one thing I loved to follow when I was into music videos was this whole thing of conspiracy theories surrounding the link between western music (and musicians) and Satanism. People have produced a lot of documentaries on that, some more convincing than others. Looking at the issues and evidence raised in such documentaries, one would wonder whether some of our local artists have joined their western counterparts in Satanism as there has been some questionable content in a couple of Malawian music videos I have seen. At the end of the day, these issues may not be anything beyond theories, anyway. Let them not give us headaches.

Having written all of this, even I am wondering why everyone should read this. Having given it a thought, I think there is a little lesson from this. Music is good for the soul, but not every piece is. Good music is good for the soul. People who studied psychology say that music has an influence on one’s thought processes and with that in mind, there is got to be a good thought given when choosing a song for addition into the playlist. Izi zomangomvera nyimbo zodandaula umphawi and the like will not take us anywhere. We also never know if we are slowly descending into Satanism by listening to songs by these artists labeled as Satanists so we got to be careful there.

That being said, I am not saying all the music industry is bad. We still have some Malawian artists killing it. To the rest of you, we can do better. We can’t just be singing old childhood songs, party music and poverty laments. Tidzitolere