Fuji music is very dangerous by ETCETERA

Fuji music and I got divorced at a street carnival on October 1st, 2010. I just couldn’t take it anymore and thought it best that we went our separate ways. I guess the feeling was mutual because that was the same day I recovered my sanity and my personal cool.

What would I become if I wasn’t aware of myself anymore? Unlike many adults, I have no stomach for music that makes me want to vandalize my home and for some crazy reasons; I have discovered that some fuji songs that are popular right now make you want to assess your mental state. The simple truth is one can’t remember any of such songs getting posted daily on blogs. I can only recognise a handful of artistes mentioned by some die-hard and unrepentant fanatics in my hood.

There was a period in time when it was actually important to know who was who, and who was better than the other lyrically or vocally. Then, having fuji songs on your playlist was like having a cool smile on your face. The stranger your fuji references, the more you would have boys believe in your supernatural powers. And you even believe that the gods must be happy with you.

What is really going on? Fuji music is now all about autotune, carrot jeans and mohawk? Doesn’t this combo spell any danger? Maybe not yet. Now I see a bunch of fuji artistes who are of the opinion that carrot jeans, mohawk and autotune are the essentials of modern fuji music.

Just like hiphop, fuji was a religion. Fuji was original. It was a culture. Fuji made it possible that for a time in our history, parents and their kids were actually enjoying the same music at the same time. Now the temple of fuji has been desecrated with today’s fuji artistes lifting choruses from popular hiphop songs.

I miss the good old days when touts would converge around the motor parks and people would blame it on fuji music. Whatever happened to the utter disgust that your neighbors would have for the fuji songs blasting through your bedroom door? That was In the days when fuji music was a movement and a rallying point for boys in the hood. Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?

Why would I wander into a club of today’s music when I know I might bump into that same tasteless whining banshee called autotune? And I might actually be forced to listen and dance azonto. I might as well listen to a whining South African Kwaito music and see the blood rolling down my chin. Good God, now that is a genre that I am glad to put behind me.

Just because I don’t have the ear for today’s fuji music doesn’t mean that I don’t love Pasuma. I have every album he has ever made, every new release and every new single.

With fuji music, sometimes the general intro sounds really good and make you feel alive. And at that point when you start nodding your head to just what music should feel like, and thinking you have discovered a sound from another planet or maybe from an alien music colony, the vocalist decides to introduce himself with a terrifying and dangerous shriek that leaves you looking for pain killers.

I am glad to finally get away from today’s fuji. The music scares the hell out of me, but in a very intriguing way. Naturally as music, some folks consider fuji as noise in the actual sense. What is even more dangerous is the fact that the singers are never on key. But yet again, don’t people also say that highlife is scary and dangerous too?

Please Lord; don’t let me listen to another song from a Naija blog ever again. It is fast emerging as the perfect way to listen to music and forget it immediately. Wait a minute, he sounds a lot like er..er..er, that’s what you always get. So why don’t I just punch up the original?

I am in dying need of some highlife in my veins right now. The good thing is that most times I travel to Ibadan on visits, I often stay at Premier Hotel where some of our old musicians go to for relaxation. And I love it. On a given weekend, I’ll run into an old favorite like Kwam 1 at the bar or bump into Adewale Ayuba during breakfast. They say the last stage of grief is acceptance. And I have accepted my grief. I have been a man in love with music, and the music that I love is mostly gone, long since tamed by today’s sound.

But all the same, let me put on my shoes, pour myself a glass of soft drink and relax with Osondi Owendi by Chief Osita Osadebe or the (puke in your face) remix by late Mc Loph, and be happy knowing that music is music, just as sex is sex, and these two things will always find a way to go together like a nice cold soft drink and an evening at Elegushi Beach.

So please keep your carrot jeans, unusual eyeglasses and that Mohawk while I am loving it here chilling with my Oriental Brothers.

ETCETERA LIVE is a column on SATURDAY PUNCH Newspaper and also on TOP RADIO 90.9 FM every thursdays 7PM to 9PM.