Why musicians in Nigeria will keep hustling - Onyeka Nwelue

I will reiterate that there are about 7.9 million ‘singers’ in Nigeria. Having had the great times of my life travelling on the same tour bus with Seun Kuti, attending several concerts of Asa and Nneka in different cities and in different countries, there is a pattern through which they have been able to restructure the capacity of their music business. There is a structure; maybe because they work in countries with structure, but this is mainly because they have been able to structure it themselves. These three artistes have road managers, tour managers, personal managers and booking agents.

They are not greedy enough to keep performance or appearance fees to themselves.

It is like a conglomerate. They have found it quite intriguing to create jobs, cascading the ambience of a society where everyone has a role to play.

What we have in the Nigerian music industry is different. A Nigerian artiste is everything. He is his own manager, booking agent and art director. This is why a Nigerian artiste can decide to do whatever he wants at your concert. They have never had to rehearse. Maybe, this is generalization, but a higher percentage of Nigerian artistes will

definitely lack patience and also the zeal to delve into the world they have created for themselves. Where you have a concert in Nigeria, there is a DJ to spin the CDs so that these guys will come and mime.

There are all kinds of artistes and musicians in Nigeria. There are the ones who know how to mime. There are the ones who know how to play instruments; the ones who have sonorous voices and the ones who serve us with delicious music. I don’t scorn any particular kind of genre. I have the utmost respect for WizKid for his music, the fact that he knows what he wants: money. I genuinely admire Davido, whose song, _Aye_ happens to be seductive music. Very seductive. That is where their#talent ends.

Get a CD, play on a computer and they sing on their voices. Then, you have these ‘children’ throng to these shows featuring certain ‘artistes’ and they get drunk and sing along with them, because that is what makes children happy. How these guys go to the concerts and leave happy is what I don’t understand.

Lyrical content and delivery have remarkably improved over the subsequent years, owing to a lot of artistes continuing to immerse themselves in the culture of performance, even though this is to be taken literally. The artistes copied what was already done by their predecessors, improved it, and added their own spin to it all – just

like Phyno tries so hard to do.

The scene has become populated. Even though I have argued that sometimes, team work is not really important, but I personally think that an artist needs a huge team to break through. There are no concert venues in Nigeria, there are not sufficient platforms for the artistes to showcase their talents – except for weddings and funerals, but creating these platforms by venture capitalists and investors will be a way to make these things work, but how do you achieve them? It is by inculcating the attitudinal tendency to understanding the aesthetics of music business.

Once we have a system that works, which we can create by ourselves, Nigerian artistes will stop using the word ‘hustle’ and start saying, ‘I’m busy. I have a sold out concert to play at tomorrow.’