Heheehe! If you are a sarcastic
writer and don’t know the guy sorry man called Etcetera, you are on a very long
thing. Lol! Anyway, let me save you the embarrassment. I heard Etcetera is a musician,
but am yet to come across his hits (if any). Much I know about him is that he
dominates a column in Saturday Punch. So I always watch out for him because I know
he must drop it as it’s hot! Lol!
He has so many controversial
articles already to his credit… topics like “Nigeria’s female celebrities &
Second Hand Husband” “Fuji Music is dangerous” “We entertainers are prostitutes
to telecoms giants” (I can’t remember the exact words he used) and stuffs like
that.
Now, last weekend, he came up
with another controversial topic, where he ‘dissed’ some OAPs whom he said do
nothing but glorify celebrities & chase stardom.
Find His article after the
cut…
Radio is in a
period where only the ‘blings’ and ‘blingers’ are getting all the attention.
This must be the worst time to listen to radio in Nigeria. Consider some of the
on-air-personalities, all they do is talk about what their favourite
celebrities are wearing.
How easily manipulated and distracted can
they be? A fake accent has never been more glorified than today.
With on-air-personalities chasing celebrity
status themselves, radio listeners are never going to get any unbiased
assessment of issues. Continue...
The
few independent thinkers amongst them who provide this unbiased assessment are
being mocked and called boring people. How do you listen to an OAP on radio who
only talks about cars, money and women for hours?
It is becoming a
consensus on the streets that naija radio stations are becoming more boring
with each passing day.
And I find it
really sickening hearing the cry from radio station owners about how more and
more people are turning to Alaba mix and blogs for their music these days. Even
the local tea sellers on the street prefer their MP3 compilation of songs than
listening to any FM station. Most songs played on the radio today do not excite
listeners.
No one turns on
the radio anymore hoping to hear great songs he heard some days before.
People love moods,
melodies and lyrics that mean something and you can’t get those on radio
anymore.
Nigerian
on-air-personalities have become so lazy for their own good. They don’t go in
search of new sound anymore. All they do now is sit and wait for songs to be
brought to them, subjecting their listeners to the same old songs played over
and over.
Yes we know that
the radio industry is run by corporate sponsors who play it safe so as not to
offend the listeners. However, what they have ended up doing is offending
tasteful listeners.
Most artistes on
the radio have better songs on their album but radio stations decide what is
“radio friendly” and keep serving the same song over and over because it works
for them.
Few days ago,
while returning to the mainland with a friend, we heard one of the new naija
dance songs playing on the radio.
My friend turned
and said to me, “The music just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it?”
I totally agreed.
I understand enough about music to know that if a song receives a lot of spins
on the radio, it becomes boring.
This makes me
wonder most times why a lot of great naija songs we hear on the streets on a
daily basis are not getting played on the radio. Listeners are really getting
fed up with the repetitive songs played on the radio these days.
The playlist of
most OAPs has become so predictable that someone told me the sequence of songs
to expect on the drive on one of our popular radio stations. The songs were
played exactly as predicted.
Though, radio has
always played crappy songs, the problem is today’s songs smell the same across
the stations. What we are mostly fed with are mostly noisy songs with
over-processed vocals. Greed has permeated every aspect of radio. Now, it is
just about looking to latch on to mega bucks and in turn promote the same
tried-and-trusted mediocrity.
And the more
mediocre the song, the better and the more guaranteed return for the OAP.
Some music
stakeholders I spoke with are of the opinion that the lack of musical
imagination in Nigeria is solely the fault of the homogenised mainstream radio
stations.
I feel sad for the
so many gifted unknown artistes out there who are writing and making great
music, but our radio stations are too busy to care about them. It’s like the
radio stations are bent on moulding us all into some kind of morphed audio
mind, jammed into an external cycle of repetition. I am also an OAP and I truly
don’t know how to talk about this with being perceived as sounding biased.
It saddens my
heart seeing that the talented young artistes put so much effort into making
quality songs only to struggle through all the crap we are fed with everyday on
the radio. I guess they just have to look for other ways of channelling their
good stuff to those who appreciate it. It is really becoming more difficult to
find a radio station that won’t bend to popular demand, money or play the music
for any other reason than what it truly is. I used to enjoy listening to the
radio so much a few years back but can’t tell now whether I am just growing
older or today’s music is sounding worse. The problem is that most OAPs hold
themselves in one single genre. To be honest, some on-air-personalities need to
stop forcing everyone to live in their own world.
Get off your weird
accent swing and give other songs a chance and stop repeating the same songs
all the time. In conclusion, if today’s Nigerian music is a mess, artistes are
not totally to blame.
The radio stations
and OAPs are equally culpable. We may not necessarily need to demand more from
the popular artistes.
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