Sometimes, one feels like reaching out and giving some people a knock, a hard konk on their coconut heads.
That’s how I have felt these past few days as I listened to hare-brained and asinine comments about the planned protests scheduled for February 6, which 2face, the award-winning music superstar is planning to lead.
According to a post on Instagram, 2face laid out a catalogue of complaints and said we are tired:
“A call for good governance.
“A call for urgent explanation into the reckless economic downturn nationwide. A call for nationwide protests as we say No to the Executive, No to legislatures, No to judiciary… You have all failed us.
“We the people are tired. We can no longer continue with all of you. All your excuses and mistakes are not funny. We do not wish to continue with a system and government that is not working but afflicting the people. We the people of this country not living under the privileges of government allowances and remuneration have now accepted to take the bull by the horn to come out and protest this obnoxious and baseless policies and excuses of the government of the day.”
2face, known for mellifluous ballads and his lover boy good looks has been harangued and traduced for speaking out about the poor economic situation. He has had epithets flung at him. People, including a so-called professor, have called him illiterate and a philanderer not fit to lead a protest against the federal government.
But what these people do not understand is that 2face’s celebrity cachet makes him a good candidate for leading and advocating social change. People know him and love him and he has a strong social media following. All of them potent ingredients for reaching a critical mass of people all at once using music as weapon.
Music, movies, the arts have always gone hand in hand with activism. This is a fact most people haranguing 2face have no idea about. The Scorpions hit song, ‘Winds of Change’, is credited with helping fast track the fall of the Berlin wall.
The biggest attack on the Nazis and the Third Reich was not a scathing newspaper article or well researched book. Many believe it was a simple painting by Picasso called Guernica depicting, in abstract style, of course, a scene of carnage.
There is a story about a German officer who after looking at the painting and noting its dark subject matter asked for the artist. When Picasso was brought to him, the officer looked at the painting then turned to Picasso and asked “Did you do this?”
Picasso had looked him straight in the eye and said “No, you did.”
Over millennia, books and those who write them have been banned, burnt and banished. Their works have been considered seditious enough to cause dissensions and uprisings. Since Donald Trump spoke about “alternative facts” sales of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece have spiked as people buy and read in order to make sense of Trump’s madness.
Those who watched the SAG-AFTRA awards could not have missed the subtle and not so subtle digs at Donald Trump by actor after actor as they poked fun at his “alternative facts” and sundry shenanigans.
Bob Marley, Bob Dylan and John Lennon all of them spoke truth to power from the studio and stage using music as weapon.
Fela Kuti achieved god status in Nigeria not just on the strength of his musical prowess but by virtue of the alchemy he wrought via the message in his music. He was a thorn in the flesh of successive military regimes and paid dearly for it, suffering the loss of his mother and frequent incarcerations.
Sonny Okosuns did not wield a gun but his music was a potent weapon against apartheid.
These days, our musical artistes are focusing less on “conscious music” but more on music that titillates and seduces. Our songs celebrate cassava and cognac, booties and boobs so it is gratifying to see one of the leading lights of our jaiye-jaiye generation display some social consciousness.
2face should be supported not denounced. In using the power of celebrity to fight for the masses, we owe him a debt of gratitude and not insults because like him, we the people are tired too.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…Ps.16:6
