9th December, 2011
Nigeria’s music industry, in the days of the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Sir Victor Uwaifo, the late Haruna Ishola, Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey, Sir Shina Peters and a host of others, had always been professional with ethical values.
Today’s trend, Afro hip-hop/rythm and blues, has dominated the mainstream, attempting to push aside Highlife, Juju Fuji and Apala.
While the development has created a sort of global acceptance for Nigerian music, the proliferation has resulted in the promotion of all sorts of nonsense musics on major television and radio stations across the country, displaying the good and the not-so-good.
The sad development is that most of these music are rated and hyped beyond their real value due to manipulations and lack of a medium to checkmate their influx and rate them accordingly.
The average listener and viewer who consume the junks, however, has no choice but to accept them due to hype and several hours of air play.
It is this ugly trend that inspired the emergence of Nigerian Music Critics Arena (NMCA), which started as a discuss platform on social network, Facebook and Twitter, for music followers, to air their views.
NMCA promoter, Rotimi Dawodu (Timi Blaze) and his team, felt the need to create a platform to address this menace. The team include Jesse Heaven and Oloukun Opeyemi. NMCA, an online platform with thousands of followers, kicked-off in September 2010, leading to the launch of NMCA website last November. It has since gained popularity and commendation from both local and foreign visitors.
According to Timi Blaze, “research by our team shows that talented artistes are mostly from not-too-wealthy backgrounds and some of them lack the support needed to get their works aired.
“NMCA has the mandate to restore music to the mainstream by promoting truly talented and lyrically skilled artistes, entertain followers with latest gists, promote and market well analysed good music.
Blaze added that “since the launch of the website, it has attracted over 50,000 visitors across Nigeria and abroad, thereby keeping alive the hope of a revolutionalised and sanitised music industry, while efforts are on to launch a radio and television show for NMCA.”
—Kayode Aponmade