- A ‘thank-you’ and birthday tale
By Yinka Fabowale
Yes, Love is a song! … Delightful, soothing, scintillating, exhilarating, moving. It’s a force that enlivens and lifts up the souls of men not only with the harmony of the melody but also the cadences of light it beams on the one who hearkens to and absorbs the sublime lessons its lyrics and rhythms teach. With its power, the spirit awakens and is inspired to swap positions and roles, the gallery for the stage, an applauding bystander-audience to world class impresario!
Love’s song births, sustains and regenerates life. Indeed, it’s Life itself! So, the Fugees obviously hadn’t the foggiest clue when they implied in their 1996 hit, “Killing me softly”, that song (Love) could kill.
I have had Love play its songs to me since I was but a child – first, as sweet lullabies and nursery rhymes which I greeted with shiny infant eyes and delightful spurts and bubbles of a babbling tot. But as I grew older, music became more than pastime. It became a compulsive passion with a longing to be an aficionado, or more still, a musician myself, with the goal of using its incredible power to thrill, heal and set men’s souls free from the captivity and torments of foul moods and bestial thoughts that prey on their joy and peace.
So, I got articled as an apprentice in Love’s music studio. My course of training involves listening with devotion to a non-stopping vinyl which continuously belts out diverse tunes of remarkable contrasts with regard to strains, pace, pitch and tempo – Sometimes fast and ecstatic, on other occasions, slow and solemn, verging almost on the melancholic. Often, the pitch rises to a crescendo only to enact a gradual fall or even a sudden crash!
There are instances the songs come softly serenading, to be chased off the turntable by the harsh, jarring eruptions as of a rock ‘n roll band beats! But I listen and tend to appreciate them all with an equinanimity, nay, delight that confounds friends and neighbours who expect me to be depressed or skip the tracks when perceived unpleasant vibes fill the air. But these people only betray their poverty of taste and incapacity to judge rightly which demands a holistic and eclectic exploration and apprehension of a universe of realities, when they insist that just certain genres they find appealing to their senses or agreeable within the narrow confines of their experiences are of value and worth engaging. Awon ti won o gbo’lu!
Even a vain master of classical music would be quickly purged of disdain he may possibly nurse for Sakara or Apala, for instance, if only he could hear the language the African talking drum speaks and decode its rich idioms and proverbs. What superficiality, what ignorance they exhibit, these frivolous fans of alien music forms who, with foolish pride and impudence deride indigenous music that still retain the remarkable flavour and quaintness of their cultural origins!
How false the audacity of these otherwise ‘well-meaning’ albeit opinionated fellows to think they could pronounce on preferences of others that are clearly beyond the range of their survey and comprehension! For adepts know very well that when the beat mounts to the crescendo, it is cue that it’s about to end and give way to a new one!
The 57th track of the vinyl, a mishmash of sweet and galling tunes, rolled to a slow end and gradually faded at 00.00 hrs on June 23rd and a new song burst forth to a gradual swelling! Reaching that point was a reminder that there were only few more left to play and learn from of the repertoire of songs in this phase of my training. It serves notice that a test of my aptitude impends to determine if I can graduate from the music institute! But the imminent examination, for which I’m required to produce a masterpiece to be showcased at the grandest musical concert of all time in the universe, fills me with some dread and self-doubt.
You see, although I have so far tried to apply myself to the study of Love’s music, I cannot, for the life of me, swear that I have done enough to perfect my craft to pass the screening just yet. Not with sloppy handling of assignments, so many flip flops during rehearsals. Often I’d hit the wrong keys, scored the music wrongly, or incorrectly read and applied them, even when perfect, at mini concert performances meant to prepare me for this time!
There had also been moments I’d squandered or allowed things of little or no value distract me and thus deplete my stock of already awarded marks and credits, sentencing me to more arduous toil in the bid to escape the dungeon of shame and bankruptcy. Then, there is the issue of colleagues and teachers (guild leaders in this trade actually) ill-disposed to the possibility of my succeeding.
While I try simply to play my part and support their own endeavours and whatever roles they may be assigned in the band, knowing well that in their achievements mine is definitely assured, many rather paid back with mean attitude and base acts of betrayal, envy, malice, pretence and sabotage. Sadly, they are the ones I dine and laugh with, who show the worst forms of this perfidy, stealing behind my back to snap the violin and guitar’s strings, tear the drums or give a falsetto to a refrain when it’s their turn to play backup and I, lead vocalist on the eve of a soiree!
I often agonise and can’t understand how people would wantonly abuse the privilege and chance to be freely educated and so utterly cared for in order to be the best they can be by their utter indifference or wilful disrespect of the instructions of the Great Muse Himself from Whom flow the provision of the wherewithal, on the need to keep the harmony of the beats and hallow the sanctity of the magnificent ambience of the institution in order to make the experience exciting, fulfilling and beneficial in every way to all concerned. But I have learnt to cope, aware that being imperfect myself, I too must bear certain traits that irritate their angels or provoke their demons.Perhaps none of these challenges compares to the opposition I have confronted with the music genre I have adopted to write for my thesis.
Cynical tutors and studio hands disapprove of it, while my peers jeer and taunt, avowing that I’m unlikely to amount to anything or get anywhere in the industry with the piece they have pejoratively dubbed “old school.” Even though it’s unique in art and form with pristine flavour and pedigree, they hold that it simply won’t fly and have advised I drop it for rap, hip hop or some other sultry, swanky types in vogue, unless, of course, I prefer to die poor and obscure rather than live in fame and a mansion of gold, tones of which I can send on errands to buy me mundane pleasure and niceties.
But I’m not persuaded by their views which, mark, is unpretentiously contemptuous of the pursuit of Love music’s primary goal and its noble end- edifying the life of men, as well as the joy and fulfilment that are its rewards!
In the (un)informed opinion of these men of sophistication and intellection (that they pride themselves to be), the focus and drive must be towards selfish, temporal earthly gains, ease and comfort. It is of little concern that one can be dispossessed of these mundane things in one sudden instance and must leave them all behind when he dies and has to leave this world. No, the goal must be to crave lucre and men’s acceptance and validation which, for me, implies denying the discovery of a GREAT REALITY, and abandoning a TRUTH of which one has become absolutely convinced even though it has yet to be evident to others!
To be continued
- Fabowale is the Editorial Board Chairman of The Radiance
