There is no doubt about the major breakthroughs that music has had in the past three decades. I may not have been born in the 8os but I have seen and read about the 808 machines, samplers, computers which helped the growth of music. But one thing that is ever evident is that just like the birds wisper in their beautiful voices so also good music has to be made by natural flow of ideas from human minds and voice. I am a great lover of Jazz music especially the ones made the legendary Yanni and his band. The uniqueness of the music of Yanni is that the making of his songs are all analog which limits the influence of the instrument on the musician. Technology has helped music but the sad but true story of music in modern times is that the influence of the computer on our God given sound is becoming the doom of one of the best assets that God has given us. If the computer has not been brought into the music industry, we would have seen reduced number of music produced but we would have had more quality songs at our disposal when compared to the crap we have been forced to consume in recent years. Tekno’s Choko is one of those low quality songs.
A good song is a song that has good message in it. A good song is a song that has harmony no matter how abstract the music maker tries to make it sound. I have listened to songs that mean two different things when you listen to it in two different mood because that is the characteristics of good music. I believe the number of good music is been brought down by the presence of technology. The reason behind this is that while the beat is getting better, the lyrics is getting worse. That is why we find that the evergreen songs of this age are song made in the 60s, 70s, 80, and 90s. There has been an uphill trouble for modern music because the fight between naturally inspired music and beat inspired music which sadly has become raging fight.
You might be reading and wondering what I mean by naturally inspired music, I will explain myself below. I once listened to Yanni Describe what made him write and compose the sounds used in the making of the song titled “tribute”. He said that the sounds was inspired by the environment he was that time, the birds, wind and feel of nature. In his selection of instruments, he went for instruments synonymous with the location which he was then and that was China. From the small story I just shared with you, you will understand that music is something that is supposed to come from more of what we feel and not what some zero and one programming intelligent machine makes. That is why you will hear few good songs from Tekno and a whole lot of disjointed crap from him as well; I will explain.
Tekno is a one of the Nigeria’s biggest Musician who are between twenty-one year old and tewenty-five years old. Signed to the Made Men Music Group, Tekno has taken his sound to the global scene. I could attribute the popularizing the ponpon sound to him because of his song “Pana”. However in the last two years this man has reduced the quality of his writing in favor of good beats. I used to love every sound he dropped but all his recent songs are all about getting the best rhymes that suits the beat which is made. This has led to gross monopoly in sound of the music he has been making. Now to really buttress my point on this. Let us take a case study of the song “Pana” and “Choko”.
Pana was a sound that blew the world away in 2016. It was a sound which was number one on the Indian and Nigerian ITunes chart in 2016 with everywhere in the world dancing to the song which could be adapted to any kind of dance step. What made this song so good was the fusion and arrangement of the lyrics to the nice sounds made by KrisBeats. This song was on everybody’s lips because of the lyrical and engineering balance. Tekno had what to say about a beautiful lady in every verse but listening to “choko” I can argue with anybody in the world that Tekno has lost his pen. “Choko” lacks everything that made “Pana” a hit apart from a fairly good beat. The song lacks good lyrical content. It sounded so disjointed and lacked dept. There are songs which are easy to assimilate without much effort put in them. But with Choko; even Tekno was trying so hard to join the lyrics which he chose for himself. This paints a picture of a man who is not inspired by his environment or emotion but is inspired by the zero and one machine called computer. He sings to suit the beat and not about what he feels in him. He sings to satisfy the beat and not himself as a musician. Through research we will understand that the greatest of music stars that every lived sang and made music having their influence from their environment, emotions and things happening in the world at large. Tekno is one of Nigerian’s biggest export in terms of music and with that comes with a lot of pressure that he might have to turn out songs which may vary from time to time. However what he has to understand is that his best music will always come from songs which he sings first before producing the beat and not vice versa.
