Interview with Beautiful Nubia
Q: How does it feel having had a great success with your last album Jangbalajugbu, which sold over 250,000 copies in Nigeria. And how important is it for you that this happened in your home country?
Beautiful Nubia: It fills me with a remarkable sense of achievement especially since our music is not really what you'd describe as popular music. Early on in my career, some self-styled experts in the Nigerian music industry told me I needed to soften and reduce my words if I wanted to make headway in the industry since Nigerians don't want to hear too many serious words. Well, I am glad they have been proved wrong now. Nigerians are loving this music more and more and the quantity of copies sold per month hasn't slowed down at all (it sells at an average of 25,000 per month). Since January this year, we have sold another 60,000 copies and I believe that is how it will continue to sell for many years to come because the message is timeless, new and younger generations will discover it as they grow up, it's going to become part of the rites of passage to adulthood for generations to come. What more can a creative artist ask for? There's a lot to celebrate in these modest numbers because most albums produced in Nigeria do not reach such sales marks, either as a result of poor distribution or piracy. But then when you look at the huge market (140 million people!), well, this is just a tip of the iceberg.
More importantly, though, is the fact that we are getting across to large numbers of people in a land where our message of individual and group rebirth is urgently needed to inspire change, hope, and courage. Every day I receive, on the average, fifty e-mails from people around the world, especially from Nigeria, thanking us for the uplifting words and the pride with which we project our culture in the music. This is worth more than a million sales.
Q: Please describe where do you see your development as an artist with the release of Awilele compared to its predecessors.
Beautiful Nubia: Every new album is a platform of celebration for me. Awilele, my fourth album, represents another level in the evolution of the music of Beautiful Nubia. With the acceptance of each album, our voice gets stronger, bolder and more focused. In the unprecedented success of Jangbalajugbu we found greater strength to remain on our chosen course and with Awilele, we hope to prove to everyone that we are here to stay, we are for real, and we actually believe in all the strong, positive messages we have been churning out over the years.
Q: I really appreciate that Awilele again features songs that voice an opinion and criticise current political conditions, e.g. in your song Awilele you say "This is a call to people to awake from their lethargy and speak out against bad leadership and the ills in their society". Where do you see the involvement of the individual to make a change in their society?
Beautiful Nubia: Many people do not realise the power in words, that guns and violence are not the only means to socio-political, that our words, spoken, sung, written with the purest of intentions can change the most stony-hearted leadership and bring the reformation we so badly desire. Many have been cowed into silence by threats or fear, but then what is the essence of living if you can't live free and happy? So in our songs, we try to embolden people to see that change begins with them; that they must not give in to lethargy, fear, intimidation or coercion. We must speak out against injustice and falsity wherever they occur. I know that these words are not wasted; people are listening to us and taking our songs serious. The other angle is, of course, individual responsibility for the failure of society. In many societies, and Nigeria is not an exception, people tend to blame most of the problems on their leaders. Our take is that corrupt and inept leadership is a product of the society, our leaders reflect who we are and the values we hold or don't. Corrupt leadership reflects a need for change at the individual level - in the family, the community, etc. Once people can start to see that they need to make a change in their own individual outlook on life and relationships, once they acknowledge their individual failures and weaknesses, once they resolve to correct these anomalies at the individual level, then societal change is possible. Long lasting change and growth are built from the ground up, from the smallest unit to the collective. When I look around me, I see a lot of selfishness and greed, constantly fuelled by this rampaging culture of consumption promoted around the world by the capitalist ideal of the so-called "free democratic world".
Our challenge is that, at the individual level, we must all learn to resist these negative influences.
Q: Most of your songs are sung in Yoruba. Although you offer an English translation in the CD booklet this still requires more activities from the listener who doesn't speak Yoruba than songs recorded in English. Would it be an option to release an album sung in English only, to attract more listeners?
Beautiful Nubia: My first two albums, which are out of circulation at the moment, were mainly in English so I'm not a stranger to this proposition. There are several options - we might decide to compile all the English songs in Awilele and Jangbalajugbu into one album or we could record a full album with songs in English. The question is not whether singing in English reduces my authenticity as a Nigerian musician but rather why I have chosen to sing in Yoruba with the subsequent possibility of reducing my audience appeal. I like to be true to my songs, and they are often recorded as they came to me. Some songs come to me fully in English - "Seven Lifes" from Jangbalajugbu is a good example - I think adding any lines in Yoruba would have destroyed the beauty of that song. On the other hand, a song like "Matters Arising" from Awilele, has no single word in English. These are just two cases of where one language is used throughout. Most of my songs are a mix of the two and the English part embedded in the Yoruba or vice versa, often gives the non-speaker a window of insight into the meaning of the song. Nigeria is a country of about 300 diverse groups with different languages yet we are reaching everyone, I think, because they can sense the soul, purpose and honesty in the music. Some people have written to us saying that some of the songs have made them cry just listening to the voice or the way the instruments work together. It just proves that, if music is from the heart, with a pure purpose, it will transcend language, political or cultural barriers.
Q: In E Ko'mo L'ede you talk about how important it is to teach children their roots. Which observations had inspired you to talk about the importance of knowing one's history and where do you see the perils if one forgets his roots?
Beautiful Nubia: In my travels across Nigeria, Africa, and the world, it has disappointed me to see people so easily give up their own culture and language for what is considered the majority's. For example, many of my friends and peers in Nigeria have chosen to educate their children solely in English, speaking to them even in the home in English, rather than share with them the beauty in their own language and specific history. The way I was brought up in the 70's was very different. A great emphasis was placed on learning English in school but we spoke Yoruba everywhere else. The people around me, especially my grandmother, made sure that we learned the oral traditions of our people, including the songs and stories that impart the values of the culture. Local languages were also taught in public schools. Nowadays, public schools are in disarray and everybody is struggling to send their children to private schools where all they learn is English and western culture. And, of course, the more western they are, the more everyone seems to applaud this as a mark of progress. For me, this points to a common tragedy soon to befall Nigeria as it has already affected many societies where you find confused young adults constantly in search of identity. I see this a lot in Canada where the children of immigrants are lost because the parents chose to educate their children in the ways of the majority group rather than preserving a sense of pride in their heritage. So these children grow up and they start asking "Who am I?" and "What is my place in this society?" Very soon the children of the middle class in countries like Nigeria are going to start asking the same questions. I wrote this song to warn people and remind them of their responsibility in passing on the culture, the history, the language, the stories, the values, etc. to the next generation. Every culture has its negative and positive sides. Most non-Europeans/North Americans have been taught that what they have is inferior, negative, and non-progressive. What we say in this song is that we must carefully pick the things that are positive in our culture (and there are lots!), embellish them, mythologize them, make our children proud of them so that they will honour them for their lifetime and the next generation will be rewarded. In this emerging global village, everyone must come to the table fully equipped with a knowledge of who he is, where he is from, and where he is going, without any feeling of inferiority to another person at that table.
Q: Will you promote you recent album outside Nigeria and Canada with tours in Europe for example?
Beautiful Nubia: We'd definitely love to tour Europe. In fact this year we made a decision to turn our searchlight towards Europe after several years of trying to break into the North American festival circuit. Every indication points to this as the way to go now. Slowly our music is seeping into the consciousness of people around the world and, as many more people discover us, there will definitely be a desire to see us play live. We've been in touch with a couple of booking agents and hopefully something will work out. It's pretty difficult being an artist not distributed on a major label to get people to take you serious but we look forward to the promise of the future.
For more infos visit beautifulnubia.com, read my review of Awilele, and here's also an interview accompanying Beautiful Nubia's album Jangbalajugbu.