You know when you go abroad those days as a Nigerian. The question you are asked is “are you from Fela's country?” If we create more exportable music we have much more to talk about Nigeria. The key is to infuse jazz with our music. I always emphasize that Jazz music is a vehicle for creating global appeal, its not enough to play Juju or Fuji, when our musicians travel abroad, they play to Nigeria audiences, but when they infuse jazz they can play to a much wider audience. Take a look at countries where you have superstars, the artistes infuse jazz. Take a look at Mariam Makeba, Hugh Masakela, Youssef Ndour, Salif keita and even Angelique kidjo, they all play jazz. Angelique Kidjo is a Grammy awardwining artiste, the last time I watched her tour performance, she did a re-ash of Curtis May?eld piece putting African instrumental embellishment but she was playing jazz. The way for us to move is to infuse jazz and elements of rock to create a cross appeal and that was how Fela did it. I will advise that our musicians look beyond every day bubble gum music and use jazz as a vehicle for crossing over and that is what Femi is riding on, that's why he is getting the nominations, he is deemed the best artiste from Nigeria. Our musicians should also endeavor to study music (read and write)
this generation except the electronic media designs programmes, which feeds Nigerians with indigenous music forms. What you hear on radio and see on television is your culture. Even if these historical information were preserved as documentaries, it still wont appeal to a large cross section of Nigerian youths. You will mostly ?nd foreigners attracted to them. The key is playing these indigenous music forms. Radio Lagos is trying with local content programming but the youths wont listen to it, but if all the FM stations all had time slots for playing local music forms, the populace will de?nitely hear it and appreciate it Broadcast ethics We enjoyed playing Nigerian music, in fact it was an honor to be the ?rst to play a new album of a Nigerian artiste on air. Nowadays, what we have is artistes paying to get airplay that wasn't the case those days. i recall there was a case in the sixties, of a presenter at radio Nigeria who was having a woman tussle with Ebenezer Obey who eventually won the lady. The presenter went to meet Obey at
Mushin to threaten him that if the lady moves on with Obey, he will ensure that his music wasn't played on air. When Obey informed us about the matter we called the presenter and he was going to be sacked, Obey started begging for him. That was the level of discipline there was in those days. Now musicians pay to be heard and that in turn brings about tons of good music lying on shelves in musicians home because they cant afford to pay the on-air personality to air them. There is a lot of good music, Saxtee's work is one, Segun Sofowote has a beautiful album that hasn't been aired, what about Yinka Davies album. The non-support for Musiliu Haruna Ishola's music almost killed him. The electronic media needs to change its attitude to local works. We need a change like was done in Congo Zaire, like Nkurumah did in Ghana to institutionalize highlife is the way forward Building Exportable Nigerian Music Brands