By Udo Silas
Music speaks. Some, a lot say its language is universal. But it is also personal. In simple terms, music is rhythm and lyrics. While the rhythm sways, the lyrics stay. The sway is for the moment. The lyric lingers like forever.
So is rhythm ephemeral? More than a few would disagree. “Rhythm is what makes music move and flow. Rhythm is made up of sounds and silences. These sounds and silences are put together to form patterns of sound, which are repeated to create rhythm. A rhythm has a steady beat, but it may also have many different kinds of beats”
So even when you hum the lyrics of your favorite song under the sting of the early morning shower, the rhythm remains in the unconscious while the lyrics express our voice in the now. This may be so because the RYHTHM is what makes music move and flow.
Truly, music moves and flows. When I hear Luciano, real name Jepther McClymont, sing ‘Have faith’ I feel a calmness understood only by the initiated.
When I hear my friend Buchi sing in that famed episcopal greeting, ‘It is well’, hope ejaculates into the spirit-man like an alert of wellbeing. Please pardon the sexual imagery. I saw it as momentarily appropriate word to describe the force of mind comprehension occasioned by the music.
Lets stretch it further; “Rhythm is music’s pattern in time. Whatever other elements a given piece of music may have (e.g., patterns in pitch or timbre), rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music. Rhythm can exist without melody, as in the drumbeats of so-called primitive music, but melody cannot exist without rhythm”
The great Jamaican reggae icon, Burning Spear, real names, Winston Rodney, born March 1, 1945, says ‘the message is in the music and the music is the message’. I used to believe he was talking about the lyrics in the music.
But I pondered over Spear’s statement. And then I understood. The message of music cannot be compartmentalized in the strings or poetry of rhythm and rhyme. Not all rhythm sways to the feet or medulla. Classical music sways. It soothes the inner soul and caresses the mind horizon in a way that stimulates the pallets of its connoisseurs. Yet some rhythm can evoke the melancholic.
There is a sense in which the instrumental rhythm of Fela’s oeuvre can trigger the protest spirit. I understood immediately that rhythm is a message as much as lyrics. I bowed to Spear’s insight that the message is in the music and the music is in the message.
The sonorous voice of Pink Sweat just wants you to cuddle. So the message in music could cause a feeling. When music speaks sometimes, most times, the message may very well be in the feeling that engulfs.
There is so much music playing in the musicsphere. There is music playing everywhere. From Lagos to Abuja. From Enugu to Kano. From the Greenwhich Meridian to the Tropical Savannah. From the creeks of the delta to the shores of Katrina.
My friend Fela, I speak of him in the present. (Did I ever tell you I followed his coffin from Ikeja to the TBS as a reporter for Thisday newspapers?), messaged about suffering and smiling.
The great one, Majek Fashek, messaged that religion na politics. Victor Essiet( Remember Mandators?) messaged that all is Rat Race.
There is so much music playing in the musicsphere. In every music there is a message. In my state Akwa Ibom, there is music that positions the ‘chosen’ on a chorus of pretentious wits disguised as tributes to an inconsequential service.
There is music of recant from beings imbued with the ‘boom’ spirit of cant.
There is music of eulogies spread in worldwide web of palliatives ensconced in compromise. There is music of angst, juxtaposed with failed expectations from a populace pummeled with ecclesiastical attitudes.
Lest I forget, there is music that attempts to add tar to the macadam of Essien Udim, the roads already painted white by the cosmic guiles of the unseen.
Everything is music and nothing is without music.
Keep listening to your music folks. But don’t forget to decipher the message. The music is playing. It would play till a time in 2023 and beyond. It is the music that sways the feet, the head, the soul and the purple fingers.
Do not forget what Plato said; “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything”
May we all choose the message of life that music gives. Just my lockdown blues.
