By most accounts, the Nigerian entertainment industry – music, film and arts – has, indeed, witnessed tremendous improvements, particularly in the last two decades.
Observers note that Nigerian artistes have made their mark on the African continent and, indeed, on the world stage.
With musicians like 2face, P-Square, 9ice, Olamide, Asa, Phyno and actors like Olu Jacobs, Joke Silva, Kate Henshaw, Ramsey Noah, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Hakim Kazim and Kunle Afolayan, just to mention a few, the entertainment industry has definitely witnessed a great transformation, they add.
Interestingly enough, a veteran artiste manager, Dili Biosah, has a dissenting opinion on the current state of the Nigerian entertainment industry.
He argues that the industry is actually regressing and not improving, even though there are perceptible improvements in scripting and storytelling in film, as well as in sound in music.
Biosah, a seasoned artiste and events manager, is PMAN’s Lifetime Artiste Manager. He was also the Artiste Consultant to G’ENNIE Entertainment, organisers of Havana Carnival in Ibadan, VUNON Wrestling Festival in Yola and the Gani Fawehinmi Memorial Lecture.
He recalls with nostalgia that in the 1970s and 1980s, Nigerian artistes dished out good music which won gold discs and was nominated for Grammy Awards in the U.S.
He notes that the Nigerian artistes then attracted huge crowds at international concerts, competing with other artistes from all over the world.
“Today, when you listen to Nigerian music, with the transition from analogue to digital recording, we have clearer sounds but there are still some missing links.
“Even in the past, we had a lot of music going on but the areas that we need to deal with relate to the management and organisation of artistes; their composition, equipment and production,” he said.
Biosah recalls that he toured South Africa in 1988 as the head of the largest-ever Nigerian contingent of professional musicians and dancers, which included artistes like the late Sonny Okosun, the late Christy Essien Igbokwe, Onyeka Onwenu, Chris Hanen and Mike Okri.
Biosah also managed Nigeria’s first hi-tech band, the Goldtrain Orkestra, while some of the renowned managers in Nigeria’s entertainment industry today cut their showbiz management tooth under him.
It was Biosah who got ExxonMobil to fund Nigeria’s first-ever full-length docu-musical shot on 15mm film, Christy Essien Igbokwe’s musical, Uduak, which he also produced.
On Nigerian music, Biosah comments: “You are going to be looking at Nigerian music today, you will say there has been a lot of progress but as I have earlier pointed out to you; we have been on Billboard number-one with Tee Mac and that is more than 30 years ago.
“So, where are the other number ones on the Billboard?
“Nigeria’s first Grammy Awards nomination was Sunny Ade, so where are the other nominations apart from Femi Anikulapo-Kuti?” he asks.
Biosah is obviously well-informed enough to assess the quality and state of Nigeria’s music industry, as he has often had issues with the quality of sound engineering in the industry and he always strives to ensure that the sound aspects are well taken care of.
According to him, this is because a lot of good music is usually lost during recording sessions due to poor sound engineering.
It is on record that Biosah introduced the fusion of the traditional bata drums into contemporary pop music in Nigeria.
“We were at Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos; setting up for a performance and these bata drums, being played some distance from the spot filtered through our speakers.
“I enquired and was told that it was an Apala (a traditional music genre) band playing the drums; I went there and I saw them; at a closer range, I felt the pulsations of the bata drum, hitherto coming from more than a hundred meters away.
“I said I want to have that instrument in the Soul Train orchestra, we when to Ile-Ife and found two bata drummers and we started using bata drums. Later, Afro juju maestro, Sir Shina Peters, started using bata drums,” he recollects.
However, Biosah says that nowadays, one of the main problems facing Nigerian music is that of the bandwagon effect, as every musician now toes the line of others before him or her.
He also bemoans a situation in which most Nigerian musicians can no longer sing without the use of some sound engineering software to improve on their output.
“You find that the world is still looking at well-arranged, well-structured music; the world has not dropped its standards. Even in the U.S., there is a realisation that from time to time, exceptional music is coming out from other parts of the world.
“So, they have created, even in the Grammys, the World Beat category; it is in that category that people like Femi Anikulapo-Kuti get nominated,” he says.
Biosah insists that the music industry is highly compartmentalised, having different people doing song writing, arrangement of lyrics and fitting the lyrics in a manner where the sound and beats will make sense.
He underscores the need to have a unit which will listen to songs and make inputs before the songs are approved.
“If that is done, there will be some quality control in the industry and the quality of our music will improve considerably.
“These days, you find on air someone playing guitar and the descant is flat; and somebody is sitting on the turntable, playing it to the public. It is sacrilege.
“For most of them who claim to be singers today, if you remove auto-tune, they can’t even sing in my village and the reason is that nowadays, you can run to any studio and get the stuff together and nobody audits your music.
“Nevertheless, the lucky thing in Nigerian music is the advent of conglomerates, big telecom firms; companies that are looking for faces to use for advertising, so, they are paying the artistes.
“So, you find that an artiste can buy a big car and all of those but I can confidently claim that in our days, all of that was the kind of money that Sunny Ade made playing one gig on a weekend,’’ he says.
All the same, Biosah rejects some claims that the arts are driven purely by financial gains, insisting that if the arts are money driven, many artistes would have “retired’’ after making ample money.
“How come artistes like Sunny Ade are still in existence? Sunny Ade’s music has been high for almost half a century,’’ he says.
On the perceptible progress or retrogression in the Nigerian music industry, Biosah makes some interesting observations.
His words: “People often say that in the past, you could have a party where no Nigerian music is played. I kick against such sentiments; it is falsehood because there has always been Nigerian music: the good ones got on.
“But there has been a paradigm shift in the industry; there was never a time when you could throw a party in Lagos without playing the tunes of Sunny Ade or Ebenezer Obey, as they were of the high grade.
“We had our musicians filling venues in every part of the world; they were real international artistes who could compete with any artiste from any other part of the world.
“Now, it is wishy-washy, everything goes. Therein lies the problem, it is not about the money which the telecom companies bring in, it is about the growth of the arts and how we are able to compete with the rest of the world.
“If a musician goes abroad to where there are Nigerians; he plays in a venue for 50 people and calls that an international tour. What does that mean?’’ he quips.
Although many awards won by Nigerian music and musicians seem to convey a contrary picture, Biosah insists that no artiste can win awards in a real musical competition via mere text-voting on phones.
While acknowledging the fact that Nigerian artistes have the capability to win good awards, he, nonetheless, insists that just like what obtains in the Grammys, the award winners should be determined by a panel of competent judges and not by a crowd of sentimental fans voting through a system that is susceptible to manipulation.
In a nutshell, Biosah observes that the rot in the music industry has also affected other categories of the arts, including films.
“As a professional, I cannot truthfully say that there is some progress in the film industry; every industry deserves some hype but in reality, as regards storytelling and presentation, there is a lot of progress.
“But if you are making films, some questions will definitely crop us. Such questions include: where in the world are you exhibiting your films?
“Our films are not exhibited at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the largest film festival in Africa, because they are not speaking the fundamental language of filmmakers. Honestly, we are not making films.
“American kids have been doing home videos for ages; so, if you are making home videos and you are calling them movies, you have questions to answer when facing your professional colleagues and submitting your works to them.
“You are going to be telling them on which format you shot the film; they are going to be looking at those technicalities which filmmakers look at.
“In Cannes, France, where will you exhibit? Exhibit what? This is a place where they bring a film that was shot on a 20-million-dollar (about N3.7 billion) budget,” he says.
Indeed, Dili Biosah has been on the entertainment scene for some decades but he has finally decided to retire and exclusively manage his 13-year-old daughter, Soaleze, who recently released a 14-track album titled “The 5th Horseman”.
For the veteran artiste manager, Soaleze’s mentorship and education are now his major preoccupation.
But there is a caveat: “The music stops once Soaleze’s grades drop’’.
A visibly determined Soaleze, who aspires to be a lawyer, however, vows that the music will continue because her grades will never plummet. NANFeatures
