Some veteran reggae artists in Nigeria have lent their voices to President Buhari’s fight against corruption, promising to produce quality lyrics with enduring messages to support him.
The artists Ras Kimono, Orits Wiliki and Mandator Victor Eshiet were at the Lagos office of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN on Friday to express their support for Buhari.
According to Ras Kimono,
“We were the only voices and the governments were our enemies. We don’t take government as our enemies but we take them as people who take us for a ride.
“In fact, when I see these people gather themselves in Abuja and give themselves awards, they don’t remember that they are the people that we’ve been fighting for years?
“And they embrace themselves, they are happy saying I have served the nation,in what way? What we’ve done, we, Fela, what we’ve done in this country, and Majek, is a huge thing.
“But today, who are the people that are benefiting? We pounded South Africa with music, with everything, but today who are going to South Africa to shoot videos now?
“We are the foundation that started to preach and talk about corruption and take on the authorities, apart from Fela.’’
Kimono also lamented the poor quality of music currently dominating the nation's airwaves.
“Some of them are playing Dancehall, when you play Dancehall and DJ, you talk about anything; profanity goes, drink goes, you can sing any jargon, it goes.
“But when you are playing Reggae music, Reggae carries consciousness and the youth are afraid to even speak about consciousness.
“Because they are afraid when you’re speaking consciousness you don’t make money, you are enemy to the authorities.
“The youth of nowadays don’t wanna go through that, the youth of nowadays want money; they want all the good things of life.
“If we follow that suit, yeah we will be making money. Reggae musicians we don’t make money, but we are not complaining, we still are content, whatever God gives us, we give thanks.
“They want the good things; they want the fame, they want the drink, they want the women, everything on top gear,they want to live in highbrow places.
“We live in the ghetto; we live in the neighbourhood where we see things happening every day.
“Where you see that next door neighbour who doesn’t have N50 to buy a loaf of bread, so we can talk about it.
“Not that we don’t want to live in Ajah or Lekki, but we want to live and see what people are going through and sing about it.”
Orits Wiliki stressed the need to improve the quality of music in Nigeria and restore showmanship to performances.
His words ;
“And so we want to come out and say, now that things are going down, we want to take charge as the founding members to say no, children, this is the right way to go to mentor them in the art of showmanship.
“Rather than calling DJ track one, track two, you must get a band; you must at least practice to play one or two instruments to be able to call yourself a musician because that is the only reason why you can last long.
“If you are just a DJ track one, in one or two albums you are out and so we want to be able to teach them that when you come to live concert, people who come to live concert are looking for one thing, showmanship.”
Victor Eshiet asserted that reggae musicians started the fight against corruption. He called on Buhari's new ministers to justify their appointments.
The three reggae music icons are currently promoting their upcoming event tagged “Africa Meets Reggae International World Music Festival’’, which will hold in Lagos from Nov. 27 - 28.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, over 30 artists from across the world will perform at the event.
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