Stella Monye's a singer who hit the scene in the mid-1980s, just as my once-voracious appetite for Nigerian pop music was fast waning. So yeah, I wasn't really into this song when it came out... Why then has it suddenly taken occupation of my headspace 20 years later and doggedly refused to vacate?
It's actually a pretty good song, I think... It's just that as a record, it's emblematic of the malaise that gnawed through the Naija music scene after 1984 or so. The recording industry--like the rest of the Nigerian economy--had shrunken drastically; the (relatively) rich and buoyant production values that characterized much Nigerian pop in the post-Oil Boom era dissipated as records began to sound increasingly cheap, threadbare and slapdash.
I mean, can you believe that this rinky-dink production is credited to Lemmy Freakin' Jackson? The Quincy Jones of Nigeria? In '83 this record would have been furnished with lush strings, a punchy horn section and glossy choral overdubs and Jake Sollo seasoning the sauce with some spicy guitar licks. Come '85 and it sounds like it was recorded on a Casiotone in someone's kitchen, with the houseboy chanking away on an old guitar (whose strings he had to scrape with pumice to get the rust off) and Jake Sollo is listed as "Drum programmer."* (The bass work is decent, though.)
Stella Monye is a highly idiosyncratic and somewhat dramatic vocalist, given to fits of frenzy that often cause her to forget to sing directly into the microphone. (Or did Jackson just mike her distantly because of her tendency to shout a la Berry Gordy's treatment of Florence Ballard?) She's much more interesting live than she's ever been on record, though.
But yeah... I digs this record. I think. All week I've been just jamming it in my head, and it's starting to ("...got my rules... and conditions...") drive me crazy so I figured ("I've got everything... all the tools...") that if I posted it here, I might be able to ("...I! promise! you! SAAAA-TEES-FAC-TION!") exorcise myself of it.
What you think? Does it bring you satisfaction? Or something else?
*I think this might have been one of the last records he worked on before his death, too. Shame.
Edit 10/3/08: I think this record was released in 1985, not '86... I fixed that.
11 comments:
You've been busy! Man, you got a full jukebox going on right here, so I'll spend the weekend catching up on it. Looks like great stuff as always. Big up! Stay warm!
yes... yes, i HAVE been busy, Al!
have YOU? (lol)
Been busy with a certain Ned Sublette book on Cuba! Thing has taken over my life. A good blog would just be to post that thing chapter by chapter...
for real... that book really changed the way i think about a LOT of things re: music...
when you're ready, let's talk about it!
Interesting! I've not heard a lot of Nigerian pop music before the nineties but I love all sorts of plinky-plonky eighties pop and this fits right in, I'd definitely want to hear more... :)
thy will be done, birdseed... i'm surely gonna be posting more stuff like this once i get my bearings back!
(your blog is blowing my mind, btw)
im a big fan of all this naija jams and i hav quite a few jams myself..i dont know how u got some of these songs..i trully applaud you..but sometimes i wish i hadnt found some of them because mostly teh singing is terrible..you hear them diffrently in your head..i mean take this Stella Monye song for example..shes off ket throughout..truly bad..but who i have enjoyed immensely is Oby Onyioha..i wanna feel your love sounds fantastic..vocals amazing and can truly hold its own with all these R&B SUPERSTARS...I found Chris Nba the other day-Baby dont cry..wondeful...
Mister Toks
Mister Toks -
yeah, i know what you mean... sometimes a lot of these songs do sound different in my head and then when i actually hear them (some of them for the first time in 20-some years) i'm alarmed at how... local some of them sound.
i know the singing might be out of tune and stuff, but for some reason i'm not offended by it. if anything, i actually find it oddly endearing.
(i've gotten into many an argument over my passionate defenses of off-key singing in general; maybe it's because i grew up in the 80s during the ascendancy of genres such as New York freestyle and Jamaican dancehall, in which off-key singing was almost a given?)
oh yeah... speaking of Chris Mba, i'll probably be posting some tunes from him soon. his first, Jake Sollo-produced LP in particular is a great favorite of mine!
Excellent work here. I stumbled across your website during my recent google search for older Naija artists and it's been great so far. Your wealth of information and LP covers are exceptional. I'd like to get Stella Monye's "Arigo Samba" from the Samba Sound LP. That's been one of my favorite songs from her.
Anonymous -
Thanks for checking out the blog... Glad you're enjoying it!
I'll post that song later this week.
U.
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