Rap issues
During the last few days I have done some extensive online searching - on out of all the people - Lil Wayne, financially one of the most successful American rappers at the moment. Yet recently, as Wikipedia tells me, he has changed into rock with less enthusiastic reactions from the critics.
Why Lil Wayne?
Last Saturday was the World Environment Day, and I participated in the activities organized by the scout project workers in the town of Kolda in Casamance. The last activity was a film screening, and as we are still missing proper videos on environmental education, we showed one film obtained from Kolda's Water and Forest management service (Eaux et Forets) on sustainable forest management in the region, beekeeping and income-generating activities for the local women.
To attract more audience and keep people entertained while waiting for the actual screening to begin, we normally show music videos, images of nature or just play music with the loudspeakers.
As it happened, one of the videos saved on the desktop of the computer that we used for the projection was Lil Wayne's & Birdman's "Leather so soft" - now watching it actually made me laugh, as it has all the possible rap clichés and almost seems like a parody. But a parody it ain't, and besides lyrics which call women as "bitches" or "hoes", the video itself shows women in very denigrating positions (as is usual in the mainstream rap or r'n b videos).
During the screening I already remarked to the responsable person that it is not quite the type of music video that is proper for showing to a very varied public (by age, ethnic background and religion) that we tend to have in the film projections - or just to show it anyway in connection with the project. In some projections in Mboro they would only play religious music, depending on the quartier or village, as "modern" music is taken as improper by the older generation.
In order to explain why exactly I, or any reasonable person should dislike Lil Wayne for his lyrics, I ended up surfing on various sites and watching way too many YouTube videos on the topic. Let's just say that it might have been even worse (Snoop Doggy Dogg was very popular in the cyber cafes of Burkina Faso three years ago...), just check some other lyrics by these gentlemen in a brilliant service Rapgenius, explaining the deeper meaning of rap song lyrics. Of course in Senegal most people do not understand anything of the American English lyrics anyway, but just showing the images was already enough to make me want to scream...
However, during my web searching I discovered something very disturbing from Lil Wayne's life: he was abused / raped when 11 years old, by a 14-year-old girl who was encouraged to do it by Lil Wayne's surrogate father. A blog article on the Washington City Paper site describes the events and has a clip on a talk show where he talks about the events, clearly not amused by the topic. While not excusing the lamentable attitude towards women altogether in the world of hip hop, it makes one think where all the misogyny comes from at least in his case.
The day after the film screening my judgment on this particular music video were something like "perhaps showing music videos where the rappers sing about drugs, money and whores does not fit very well the local (mostly Muslim) values, and it is neither something that I personally want to see linked to environmental education, or this project specifically".
And what happened to the video in the end?
For now it has been deleted from the desktop of the computer in the scouts' center in Kolda, at least. I also downloaded some Senegalese videos to show instead - I'll take the local version of machismo anyday over American mainstream hiphop, and have men singing sugar-coated songs about love, and women dancing fervently (or vice versa, there are plenty songs with reversed action roles as well in Senegal!).
So, let me present one Senegalese sweet song by last year's hit artist here, Abou Thiobalo in YouTube: the lyrics tell about a young man who has a desperate crush on his neighbour, but he does not know how to tell about it.
This year's biggest hit song would, however, be Viviane Ndour's wrestling-themed song "Champion", which is a cover from Whitney Houston's "I have nothing" theme song from the movie Bodyguard, as probably all over 25-year-old people in the Western world would know. The name of Whitney Houston in Kolda was neverheard...I told that her singing style resembles to that of Celine Dion, another artist here who had her videos on the computer desktop together with Lil Wayne (what a pair!) :)
I was given two interpretations on Viviane Ndour's huge hit song: yes, she sings about the Senegalese wrestling - very nicely depicted in the video - but she might also be singing about her being the champion. She was married to Youssou Ndour's brother, they got divorced a few years ago, but are now back together again - making her the champion for winning over the man's heart again. Sweet.
In any case the Champion video is a beautiful example of the way in which many foreign songs are covered here with a complete makeover into a fully-fledged mbalax song (another example that I have heard was a Senegalised "Gangsta's Paradise" - see an article on mbalax at the National Geographic site). Note especially the change of rhythm and melody in the end - also very typical for mbalax pop songs according to my observations. More music in the following posts, hopefully accompanied with happier topics than this one!
Why Lil Wayne?
Last Saturday was the World Environment Day, and I participated in the activities organized by the scout project workers in the town of Kolda in Casamance. The last activity was a film screening, and as we are still missing proper videos on environmental education, we showed one film obtained from Kolda's Water and Forest management service (Eaux et Forets) on sustainable forest management in the region, beekeeping and income-generating activities for the local women.
To attract more audience and keep people entertained while waiting for the actual screening to begin, we normally show music videos, images of nature or just play music with the loudspeakers.
As it happened, one of the videos saved on the desktop of the computer that we used for the projection was Lil Wayne's & Birdman's "Leather so soft" - now watching it actually made me laugh, as it has all the possible rap clichés and almost seems like a parody. But a parody it ain't, and besides lyrics which call women as "bitches" or "hoes", the video itself shows women in very denigrating positions (as is usual in the mainstream rap or r'n b videos).
During the screening I already remarked to the responsable person that it is not quite the type of music video that is proper for showing to a very varied public (by age, ethnic background and religion) that we tend to have in the film projections - or just to show it anyway in connection with the project. In some projections in Mboro they would only play religious music, depending on the quartier or village, as "modern" music is taken as improper by the older generation.
In order to explain why exactly I, or any reasonable person should dislike Lil Wayne for his lyrics, I ended up surfing on various sites and watching way too many YouTube videos on the topic. Let's just say that it might have been even worse (Snoop Doggy Dogg was very popular in the cyber cafes of Burkina Faso three years ago...), just check some other lyrics by these gentlemen in a brilliant service Rapgenius, explaining the deeper meaning of rap song lyrics. Of course in Senegal most people do not understand anything of the American English lyrics anyway, but just showing the images was already enough to make me want to scream...
However, during my web searching I discovered something very disturbing from Lil Wayne's life: he was abused / raped when 11 years old, by a 14-year-old girl who was encouraged to do it by Lil Wayne's surrogate father. A blog article on the Washington City Paper site describes the events and has a clip on a talk show where he talks about the events, clearly not amused by the topic. While not excusing the lamentable attitude towards women altogether in the world of hip hop, it makes one think where all the misogyny comes from at least in his case.
The day after the film screening my judgment on this particular music video were something like "perhaps showing music videos where the rappers sing about drugs, money and whores does not fit very well the local (mostly Muslim) values, and it is neither something that I personally want to see linked to environmental education, or this project specifically".
And what happened to the video in the end?
For now it has been deleted from the desktop of the computer in the scouts' center in Kolda, at least. I also downloaded some Senegalese videos to show instead - I'll take the local version of machismo anyday over American mainstream hiphop, and have men singing sugar-coated songs about love, and women dancing fervently (or vice versa, there are plenty songs with reversed action roles as well in Senegal!).
So, let me present one Senegalese sweet song by last year's hit artist here, Abou Thiobalo in YouTube: the lyrics tell about a young man who has a desperate crush on his neighbour, but he does not know how to tell about it.
This year's biggest hit song would, however, be Viviane Ndour's wrestling-themed song "Champion", which is a cover from Whitney Houston's "I have nothing" theme song from the movie Bodyguard, as probably all over 25-year-old people in the Western world would know. The name of Whitney Houston in Kolda was neverheard...I told that her singing style resembles to that of Celine Dion, another artist here who had her videos on the computer desktop together with Lil Wayne (what a pair!) :)
I was given two interpretations on Viviane Ndour's huge hit song: yes, she sings about the Senegalese wrestling - very nicely depicted in the video - but she might also be singing about her being the champion. She was married to Youssou Ndour's brother, they got divorced a few years ago, but are now back together again - making her the champion for winning over the man's heart again. Sweet.
In any case the Champion video is a beautiful example of the way in which many foreign songs are covered here with a complete makeover into a fully-fledged mbalax song (another example that I have heard was a Senegalised "Gangsta's Paradise" - see an article on mbalax at the National Geographic site). Note especially the change of rhythm and melody in the end - also very typical for mbalax pop songs according to my observations. More music in the following posts, hopefully accompanied with happier topics than this one!
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