Oh!
How time flies! Those days in secondary school, ‘Danfoe Driver’ by Mountain
Black and Mad Melon was my mega song. I really enjoyed the song. Fast forward to
today; I hardly hear their songs anymore, and I was thinking they are no longer
into music and entertainment.
So
I was surfing the internet yesterday, when I came across this interview granted
to these music duo Mountain Black & Mad Melon by Vanguard; where they
opened up to on the why they have been away for some time.
Read
the interview below…
Is
it true that two of you have parted ways?
No, we didn’t split, we only quarrelled, but we are still
together. And we are still alive, so, no shaking. What actually happened was that we went to
school to further our education because we believe education is the key to
ultimate success.
Also, we’ve been going round for musical tour; first one
was in Mali, followed by another one in Portharcourt. We also performed during
the Portharcourt carnival.
Presently, we are fully back to the music scene and very
soon we will be dropping our new album and that will be in two months’ time as
we are still working on it.
Fans have been worried over your absence on the music scene. What
has been happening to you two?
Yeah, what happened was that we had a contract with Cornerstone,
our record label and we agreed on a certain percentage as part of the deal. But
when we were away in Mali for a Peace concert and in Portharcourt for another
show during the last election, someone notified us that our marketter was
printing our songs and selling it. That’s piracy, and we weren’t happy about it
because we were not told and carried along.
So, when we got back to Lagos we confronted the marketer,
who explained to us that it was our record label who gave the go-ahead. We felt
cheated and angry, and we decided to break our contract with them. Now, we are
coming up with our own record label to be known as ‘Danfo Drivers records’ and
hopefully, it will be launched in the next two months or thereabout.
Concerning your misunderstanding with the marketer, what was your
conclusion with him?
Of course it was a breach of contract and piracy and we
took them to court but later we had to drop the case because we got tired of
the case being adjourned every time.
But could this misunderstanding with your record label be another
reason why you were away from the music scene?
Yes, it affected us a lot. We were supposed to be paid
our royalty but we weren’t getting paid. They were just cheating on us. Another
reason we decided to stop recording was because our record label, Cornerstone
Entertainment, which was supposed to be promoting us were not doing so at all.
They were not promoting our works and we were not getting any measurable
exposure. This made some of our songs not to be released. The only song we did
that made it was the ‘Danfo Driver’. Apart from ‘Danfo Driver’, none of our
other songs was promoted. This got our fans thinking we have quit music.
So now that you are on your own , what should fans expect from you
, aside from the usual ‘Danfo Drivers’ we know with Cornerstone Entertainment ?
Presently, we are working on a new song which is coming
out in two months’ time and we know we are going to give our fans the best as
we have always been doing. It wasn’t as if we purposely went away , if you can
remember in our song we said ‘I want to go to UNIBEN’, UNILAG for more
education and that was what we did . Our staying away was to acquire education-
nothing more. Now, we are back to give the best of what we know how to do.
When did you discover your musical talents?
Actually, our musical talent is from God and ever since
we were young we’ve always loved music , we knew that music was part of us, so
we decided to follow it up. Some people say that the sky is their limit but to
us the sky is not our limit, it is heaven that is our limit.
Which musician inspired you while growing up ?
The musician who inspired us is Don Carlos of Jamaica.
While we were growing up we fell in love with some of his songs and along the
line we felt the guy had stuff we could imitate. So, we started imitating and
infused some of our own style to have what you know as ‘Danfo Drivers’. It was
him that inspired us. His music is deep in sound and meaning. Not like the kind
being sung in the country today. Most of today’s musicians don’t have message
in their songs. The only thing artistes of today do is to sing about women ,
love and drink . So we are back to give our fans the best.
Base on your kind of music, a lot of people believe that you take
something before going on stage, how true is that?
People should understand that it is a different scenerio
when one is meditating from when one goes on stage. We don’t know what they
mean by we take something. Even if we do it is best known to us. Although we
take alcohol but other things we take or not is best known to us.
How do you make your music?
You know a lot of artistes write their songs before
singing them out, but Danfo Drivers don’t write out their songs, it’s what we
see that we play.
Your most embarrassing moment?
That must be our experience at the airport when we came
back from the Peace concept in Mali. Following the rumour that we were dead,
that we were shot by the police, we came back to the country to find people
running away when they saw us. It was really embarrassing at the airport,
because as people spotted us they started running, perhaps, thinking they were
seeing ghosts.
Then, a couple of robbers were caught by the police who
went with the name ‘Danfo Drivers’. One of them was even using a black head-tie
like us and so people confused them to be us. Those armed robbers were
eventually shot and people thought it was us.
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