Original Photocopy | Featured Artiste: Vivien Stephen

Original Photocopy | Featured Artiste: Vivien Stephen

[Picture from HERE]

First off, Congratulations to 9jaFoodie on moving to what I call “the next level.” She has moved to www.9jaFoodie.com so please check out her new website and support her as she starts out on this new phase.  And now off to today’s business. *clears throat*

For the last couple of years, Nigerian music in general has been going through some sort of renaissance, and since gospel music no dey carry last, it has also been part of that process.  Parties, weddings and other social functions have noticeably reflected this trend as there are considerably a lot more Nigerian songs played at these events than used to be the case in the past.  I can’t really pin-point what series of events led to this, but I am definitely loving it.  Nowadays, it is so common to hear songs sang completely in pidgin and/or another Nigerian language.  In fact, that seems to be the winning recipe for the more popular love songs.  It is like all of sudden we woke up and discovered that our culture (which inevitably includes language) is something worth exporting, so to speak.  I can’t really explain what happened to me too, but I know that all of a sudden I pretty much lost interest in music that did not have that Naija flavor and have even come to see it as the standard.

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She sings this way [Featured Artiste: Ogecha]

She sings this way [Featured Artiste: Ogecha]

Picture from HERE

Although I support the advancement of women’s rights, etcetera all over the world, I would not describe myself as a feminist at all.  I said all that because I get very excited when I come across female gospel artistes in Nigeria.  Now, it is not like their male counterparts do not matter or are irrelevant, but the female artistes are outnumbered by the male artistes.  Furthermore, finding a female artiste who is actually talented (yes now, not all of them are talented … abi na lie I talk?!) is more difficult than finding fresh agbalumo in a regular grocery store in Yankee.  Well, okay it is not THAT bad, but you get my drift, i.e. they are a rare breed indeed. 

What I have observed is that female gospel artistes tend to be pigeon-holed into particular genres or types of songs, i.e. praise and worship type songs (I guess you can tell by now that I am not a real fan of praise and worship type songs.  I just feel that gospel music is so much more than that traditional “form” of music).  Frankly, I can make this argument for just about any artiste, but the focus is on female artistes today.

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