Living life: When Old is Gold

If you are lately in the habit of shrieking in sheer delight when that old childhood song that should excite more people of your father’s age is played, then there is something wrong with you. That is just about the bad news. The good news is that you are not alone. Young people, who should be going crazy about the music of today, the type that is heavily rotated on morning show radio and the toast of night clubs, are to be found nodding to twenty year old songs like Tabuley’s Mario or MJ’s Thriller. Kigali joints are keeping young people coming in with the coarse old CD’s clearly copied or dubbed from weather-beaten cassettes or the round flat magnetic things that those magical vinyl records were, and that is just the best part of it. Mention Pineapple Jam, Voulevous Dance or Peacock and people begin to light up. If you don’t know, these are not names of birds, dances or jam. They are golden oldies.But who cares? Today’s music is the feel-good, too much sex-me, sex-me, crazy dance strokes and I-loved-him/her-but-she/he-left-me kind of soapy scripts (not that we don’t enjoy it, its just fact). It is not entirely bad. I believe all music has its time, place and musical worth. For example if you think rap is crap, try listening to Eminem’s lyrics and the lyrical genius in him will show. OK, P-Square’s No One Is Like You makes some crossover sense for music of our generation. Perhaps it takes a different kind of creativity to do a song like Sensitivity. Don’t be fooled, in old music there was also lots of love and sex but they used do it in a way a father and a daughter dancing in public wouldn’t be embarrassed about it at all. Perhaps it was the “soul” embedded deeply in the music. When we were younger and ragga music - Shabba Ranks is a bedroom bully - kind of stuff was the rage, there was only one dancing style, now from an adult vantage point, it was sex with clothes on. It simply tempted you to touch. Before you chop my head off, I was in my early teens. Then, usually the hormones do the bigger job than the brain. We all know how bittersweet teenage wrecked your ordinary life but made you into who you are. Memories are sometimes the reason why we stick to the good old music. Old music is also the key that will unlock nice little memories, long forgotten. Once at party, I caught some old folks doing twist, the very golden old type, to some old sixties-seventies Swahili hits and they were literally waltzing around their old bones in a way that made me jealous. Then the “epileptic” break-dance was the in thing. It was a bit like slow Salsa. Now I wish I could try. Back to the golden oldies, I recently fell for this French-Lingala hit called Africa music, which I obviously do not understand, plus this one other song I used to think belonged to another of the Salif Keitas from West Africa. I just found out it was Christopher Matata’s Amaso Akunda and now that I can even understand the words and you begin to understand why today, am all praises for old music or good music for that matter. Otherwise, have a musical Sunday. Contact: kelviod@yahoo.com