Something fresh, Please

Is it not absurd how some of our gospel artistes take us for granted? All they care about is to just do the old songs we know, mess them up in the name of repackaging, and spew them into our ears. Even if you want to record a cover of an old tune, why don’t you just make it new in terms of arrangements, without messing them up? Skuulfo and Nacy did a good job on ‘M’aye Yie’. Vinepraise so far has done well in its covers of songs in terms of arrangements and selection of songs to go into a Long Play (LP). Other gospel artistes, the least said about them….

 It’s true, the Holy Bible is the main reference for gospel songs, but when an artiste creates a song from it, he or she becomes the rights owner of the song, unless such rights are relinquished to another individual or group. You can’t just pick up someone’s work and mess it up.

And come to think of it, do gospel artistes realize gospel songs are in categories as far as theme is concerned? The fact that a song is in a slow tempo does not necessarily mean it is worship. It could be thanksgiving, prayer, inspirational…. And a fast tempo song could also be praise, inspirational, prayer… If you think there is no prayer song in fast tempo, then listen again to Christiana Love’s (now Obaapa Christy) ‘Ahokyere ny3 d3’.

But on a more serious not, if you feel lazy to write a new song, how difficult should it be for you to research carefully old songs you wish to record cover on before hitting the studios to work on them?

Gospel Music; Not a Genre of Music

Reggae, Blues, Soul, Highlife, Hiplife, RnB, Afro-pop, Pop, Hip-hop, Country, Traditional folk, Crunk,… these are genres of music; Gospel music isn’t. When you talk about gospel music, you are precisely referring to the text accompanying the music. And when you mention gospel music, then you may be expected to mention secular music.

I believe the confusion stems from the fact that we keep referring to this as ‘Gospel Music’ instead of ‘Gospel Songs’. But tell me, should R. Kelly change the lyrics to his ‘You Saved Me’ to secular, does the genre of his songs change? Or should Kirk Franklin change the lyrics of his ‘Revolution’ from Gospel to secular, does the genre of the music change to Hip-hop? No. ‘Revolution’ has always been Hip-hop. Changing the lyrics from gospel to secular only makes it a secular Hip-hop, and not gospel Hip-hop.

Gospel songs are religious songs. Under the category of religious songs we have sacred music which is on its own a genre of music, since without the texts the music form is still identified. We also have ‘Black gospel’ or ‘Negro gospel’ which actually acts as the foundation of our gospel music today. The difference between ‘sacred music’ and ‘gospel music’ is that whereas ‘Sacred music’ is purely about God and his relationship with man, Gospel music is about man, his relationship with God, with his fellow men, and the society.

The issue is that Gospel music is adaptive; so unlike secular artistes who may stick to particular genres of music, gospel artistes are not bound by such rules. In Ghana, we’ve had Daughters of Glorious Jesus doing mostly funk, highlife –mostly fused with western culture-, Jazz and reggae; Christiana Love doing mostly Highlife and reggae; Cindy Thompson doing mid-tempo highlife; Soul Winners swinging on the wings of Highlife with Jama flavour; Tagoe Sisters with Highlife, and Funk…

The main purpose of Gospel music is to spread the gospel of Christ. Love God, and love thy neighbour as thyself. It is worthy of note that whereas as church songs can be referred to as gospel songs, not all gospel songs can be referred to as church songs. You want to know why? Try singing Christiana Love’s Yaree ye ya, Yaw Sarpong and Asomafo’s Asor no egu or McAbraham’s Hye w’akonoso in church one day.

So the next time you are referring to Daddy Lumba’s ‘Theresah’, Pat Thomas ‘Sika Ye Mogya’ or Amakye Dede’s ‘Handkerchief’ as Highlife, remember not to refer to Daughters of Glorious Jesus ‘Okokoroko’, Tagoe Sisters’ ‘W’atua Maka’ or Christiana Love’s ‘Me wrenfi’ as gospel. They are all Highlife, but in lyrics some are secular, while others are gospel.

STOP SCREAMING: WE CAN HEAR YOU

I wonder what comes into the minds of this new breed of gospel artistes when they set their feet into the studios to record their songs. The fact that the songs seem to bear no new message is not as hurtful as the fact that these artistes just do not mind breaking our ear drums. They literally scream their lungs out as though we cannot hear them when they sing like normal people do. I do not want to sound offensive, but this has gone on for a long time now, and even when listeners tend to complain, the artistes just do not seem to care; they simply can’t be bothered.

The likes of Daughters of Glorious Jesus (particularly Cynthia Appiadu), Tagoe Sisters, Pastor Joe Beecham, Rev. Thomas Yawson, Nana Yaw Asare, Cindy Thompson, Bernice Offei, Stella Seal, Mary Ghansah, have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that you do not need to be good at ‘screaming’ to hit your notes and get your audience to appreciate you.

Well, maybe this unfortunate occurrences stem from the fact that the artistes fail to realize that the main purpose of doing gospel music is for the message, and not necessarily for entertainment. It could also be that the sound producers are not helping the artistes to nurture their talents; so at the end of the day, we have lazy artistes going into the studios to compete with beats produced from high tech sound machines. I am not bothered when I hear some secular artistes screaming on top of their voices. They are known to make noise, and thus is no news. For the gospel artiste, lots of things need to be taken into consideration before making a song. The rise and fall of the music should be accompanied by the intended passion and emotion. You can’t just make it loud for loudness sake… Girl, boy, tone down a bit, for we really want to hear what you have to say to us… if you do not want to be bothered, then just do not bother us with your so called messages.