43. The Gospel According to Seyi Vibez II

On griots singing about contemporary life in Nigeria.

I believe there is a direct connection between Afrobeats’ Street Hop subgenre and all the music that came before it. By this, I mean modern Juju and its precursor Juju Roots, the pluripotential Fuji and its distant cousins Were, Apala and Sakara. The use of Yoruba as a main language requires that we welcome religious music of both Abrahamic persuasions (Christianity and Islam) into this fold, particularly those towing the lines of syncretism. Tope Alabi, necessarily, earns VIP invitations for her work making soundtracks of Yoruba Nollywood films.

Asake’s ‘Lonely at the Top’ shares more than its blemished melancholia with Ambrose Campbell’s (read West African Rhythm Brothers) ‘Sing The Blues’. Early folksy Adekunle Gold directly salutes the love songs of powerhouse vocalist, Blackman Akeeb Kareem. I would wager that Terry Apala’s uncertainty as a legitimate Apala royalty is partly due to his facility, or lack thereof, of the Yoruba language. His material is thin and hedonistic. There is a core from which Street Hop pours which eludes him.

If that core eludes Terry Apala, it sits on QDot’s lap and strokes his scraggly beard. QDot’s  ‘Alomo Meta’ opened vistas of possibility for me. It clarified the possibility of incarnating one’s grim biography of lack into fine praise poetry of living. Think again about the song’s opening. The rhythmic clang of a metal bolt on an empty bottle. The song begins as a commentary on the music itself. When Qudus cues in the metronomic shekere, he warns his drummer against slumber, and the music loop— an Anthrax production—goes full circle with a boom!

QDot’s achievement in his realised songs are masterpieces (but when he fails, he also fails spectacularly). ‘Alomo Meta’ is a provocative tune about drug-addled orgiastic pleasures set up to the liturgy of a Christ Apostolic Church worship session. It is about getting high, about cramming one’s seemingly spacious youth with dangerous and reckless pleasures. It is not a new theme in Afrobeats but Qdot’s approach is somewhat unique. Unlike Olamide’s ‘Jale’, his handling of the material is somewhat distant, humorous, and self-deprecatory in a manner reminiscent of Prof Linkin’s ‘Jogodo’. You may wonder how I have derailed into the Ajegunle/Raga/Konto circuit but there is a relationship here. QDot’s praise singing on ‘Alomo Meta’ may be muted but they are all griots singing about contemporary life in Nigeria.

Closer ancestors are present in QDot’s genealogy: Agege’s Small Doctor and Klever Jay sing in Yoruba and are heavily influenced by Fuji and its tendency for dance-demanding fast tempo. Early QDot was more plaintive.

‘Alomo Meta’ eschewed the stark realism of Olamide’s episodic storytelling ‘Anifowoshe’, opted for an elliptical truth-telling blitzed with understated humour. It was a clear representation of working-class Lagos mainland, where low-rent tenement-styled housing set stage for communal living seasoned with aspiration, gossip, adultery, and hoopla provided by colourful characters waiting to premiere off Broadway.

Still from the music video, Lagos.

It is also from this ferment that Afrobeats derives its most original impulse, lingo, slang and flair. Egbon Adugbo, for instance, is an endearment for an avuncular presence on a Lagos street. Olosho is a derogatory update of Ashewo, a the sex worker. These vibrant slangs are colourful ways of portraying contemporary society and its maladies. The Egbon Adugbo might be a victim of chronic employment; ditto for the olosho who might insist you call her Baddie, a more aspirational and trendy sobriquet, her exercise in reclaiming agency as is her body-altering BBL.

It is this universe that Seyi Vibez’s latest record, ‘Lagos’, distils into a tragic vignette. Seyi Vibez holds a memorial for Abobi, missing for three days. Unlike Seyi,who has been who minds his business and does not ask for favours, Abobi is an understudy of avarice and covetousness. He starts an affair with a soldier’s wife while the soldier is on a tour of duty. Abobi impregnates soldier’s wife, doubling his trouble.

Those who lived through Nigeria’s military regime expect the extrajudicial consequences of Abobi’s actions. Abobi’s disappearance suggests one thing: death by execution, which sharply contrasts TG Omori’s music video, which holds a military tribunal for the cuckold soldier.

It is fascinating that Seyi Vibez’s Lagos retells Abobi’s story. Indeed there is another Abobi, Patoranking’s, which came earlier. It is also a grim story but of a killing, not a disappearance. The soldier’s wife is neither a new character in Afrobeats or Lagos. Adekunle Gold’s character in ‘Temptation’ exercised more restraint than Abobi in Seyi Vibez’s Lagos. And rather than chastise Abobi like Asa did in ‘Awe’, Seyi Vibez stuck to the hard facts.

There is no room for sensationalism or sentimentality. This happened in Lagos, to Abobi.

I hope you enjoy this playlist.