Music as literature

Olayinka Oyegbile

Is music literature

Is literature music?

Now, I am confused. How do I clear this confusion?

Where else do I go to clear this than to resort to the Nobel Prize Committee, which in 2016 awarded the Literature Prize to Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman), an American singer-songwriter, author, and visual artist? The award of the literature prize that year to the musician led to so much controversy that it was like awarding the Oscar to a stage play; at least, that was how some people felt.

However, in explaining why Dylan qualified for the award, the committee said the prize was awarded to him “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” To the New York Times, “Mr. Dylan, 75, is the first musician to win the award, and his selection is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901.”

This column is therefore justified to treat the issue of music because literature and music have a very blurred if not thin line that separates both. For those who have access to some of the published lyrics of most world-famous musicians, there is no iota of doubt that most their music are suffused in poetry and rich imageries, metaphors, similes and other things that make literature rich and profound. So why not consider it as literature?

Great literature pieces are couched in music and great music are wrapped in literature. Both have lifted the world out of doldrums and drudgery. Think of the philosophical depths and poetry of Bob Marley, the rich and masterly composition of Fela, Yusuf Ndor, Angela Kidjo etc and then you come in contact with literature.  Is it not this that informs poetry that is today popular as performance poetry? Is poetry not music too?

The Times (London) recently reported that researchers, who carried out a study on the use and relevance of music to human, now have evidence to the effect that music is a kind of universal language, which “also appears to have an underlying structure that carries meaning between the most distant societies.”

The paper quoted the researchers as coming to the conclusion that love songs or lullabies share similar features and therefore transcend cultural boundaries, suggesting that songs are a “product of underlying psychological faculties that make certain kinds of sound feel appropriate to certain social and emotional circumstances.”

Finally, Manvir Singh, who is a co-author of the study, was quoted as saying, “tonality is often assumed to be an invention of western music but our data raises the controversial possibility that this could be a universal feature of music.”

Why am I writing this? Lagos is going to be agog with a grand music fiesta tagged Ariya Eko Music Festival, the brainchild of the Evergreen Music Company under the leadership of Ms Bimbo Esho (aka Ajike Okin), which has been doing a great deal to promote our original music in the past years. The focus of the festival holding at the expansive Lagos City Hall on December 15th on the Island is parading a galaxy of artistes that have at one time or the other played very prominent role in the entertainment of the city. It promises to be a grand night with the likes of Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, who is also to be honoured on that night with a lifetime achievement award.

The event has on parade such great names as Sir Victor Uwaifo, Tee Mac, Jimi Solanke, Sir Shina Peters and a host of others is surely a glorious way to eclipse the year and welcome a new dawn.

So, if music is the fruit of love, play on and let us have excess of it. Koma roll…