She married herself | Featured Artiste: Josh

She married herself | Featured Artiste: Josh

What happens when a woman pays her own bride price? Okay, let me clarify the context.  I am referring to cultures in Nigeria where the man pays the bride price to the bride's family as part of the traditional wedding rites.  But what if the man cannot afford the bride price and the woman actually provides the money for the bride price? The man's "paying" is therefore a mere formality and all goes as planned, I am guessing.  But, here's my concern:  if a man cannot pay the bride price, is he ready to marry? Plus, since the money technically came from her own pocket (and is going to her family for the purpose of marrying her), can we say that she has married herself?

[Eru Iyawo]

I know it sounds absurd, but here's why I raised the issue: if a woman takes on the role of a man before the marriage, she can expect to keep playing that role for the duration of the marriage.  So when the man in question allows her to keep playing the role of the man in the marriage, can she still legitimately complain seeing the "informal" agreement they had prior to marriage?

Of course, the scenario I just described assumes that the status quo is that the man is the bread-winner and should provide for the family, especially since he is expected to make more money that the woman.  We all know though that in reality, there are many homes where the woman is the bread-winner for various reasons ranging from the husband's unemployment to his choice of profession to other miscellaneous and assorted activities e.g. No-Future-Ambition Chairman, 3-time President of the "Couch Potatoes Club", etc. So who do the children in that marriage take their cue from? Mum or dad?  This really goes to the heart of what type of values such children will have, depending on whether or not the woman chooses to respect her husband in spite of the fact that he is financially less buoyant than she is.  Just wondering sha ...

Featured Artiste: Josh

Josh is today's featured artiste.  You can listen to his song, "Nago" below:

[Josh / ReverbNation]

THE REVIEW 

The Good: I LOVE LOVE LOVE the intro (including the beats that build anticipation) where the male voices chant / sing in acapella in another language, and the solo male voice punctuates that part with "Eleeeee!" (That's what he says, right?) That, to me, was the best part of the song. Abeg, if you sabi the language, share it with me.  God bless you in advance.  I also like the beat.  It is pretty simple and for some reason reminds me of the 1990s.  The violin (or similar string instrument) that plays consistently in the background adds a nice touch.  But hands down, my favorite parts of the song are those little pockets where the music is reduced to a minimum and the male voices sing in another language in acapella.  I wish that could have been repeated more often in the song.  I also like the repitition of "Nago" which is the title of the song throughout the length and breath of the song.  The lead male vocal was okay and the background vocals were also fine.  The song comes across as a "no-frills" type praise song and for that purpose alone, the combination of instrumentation and vocals worked well.

The Bad: The intro where the male voice is announcing who the people featured on the track are was unnecessary in my opinion.  It just came across as wasting precious time on the track and seemed like it was just "filling empty space" before getting to the verses.  That whole section could have been eliminated.  The acapella part ALONE should have been the intro and that to me, would have been way better.  In fact, the song itself seemed filled with "space fillers" (that's the way I can describe it), i.e. beats playing with the soloist just adlibbing rather than singing a verse.  That could have been reduced to improve the quality of the song.  The rap was just okay.  I am not sure what else could have replaced the rap, but it could have been A LOT better.  It came across as an amateur attempt at combining rap with reggae.  I am not too sure about the outro.  I like the concept, i.e. let the instruments fade out and let the violin play by itself till the end.  The concept is fine, but the delivery was shaky.  It could have been executed more properly. At 4 minutes and 25 seconds, the song was a bit too long.  It could have been shortened and still achieved the desired result.  The songwriting could have been better, but it was okay.

Finally, some more information on today's featured artiste:

Artiste's Stage Name:  Josh

Artiste's Real Name: #Idontknow

ReverbNation Page: http://www.reverbnation.com/joshblayze

... And that's all folks! Have a lovely "rest-of-the-week!"