Artists says media should dictate what people listen to

A Nigerian contemporary folk musician, Segun Akinlolu, popularly known as Beautiful Nubia, said on Friday, that the mass media should be blamed for giving air time to bad music.

Beautiful Nubia said in Lagos that it was the media that pushed out all types of music thereby taking hold of the peoples’ minds.

According to him, there was a natural process where people thought deep and listened to more reflective music.

“We should try to push out music the people need, on honesty, hard work, good neighbourliness, sincerity, love and protecting one another all for the society to change. Every good music should have a message to deliver and for people to appreciate it and also dance to it. The musician has to impact on the society through what they are singing, which I believe should continue to be that way,” he said.

Nubia said that present generation represented the attitude, personality, confidence of the people, now matched with a fusion between western influences and Nigerian music.

“But the media should be the ones to dictate what goes out. They should not because they want to make money play all kinds of music. Music is not about making noise and jumping about, but impacting positively on the listeners,” he said.

Nubia said that he had no problems with musicians whose music primarily dwelled on women and love since it provided them an income, but added that some sanity had to come into play.

“That is what the public wants, but there is no impact on the society through what they are singing,” he said.

Nubia said that when artistes used their music to underscore the ills of the society, then they could take pride in their work not exposing women’s anatomy.

“My music is a tradition-natural music, new music that reflects who we are, traditional music brought in a different way out in a contemporary way. I call myself contemporary folk and root musician and it is an honest music of modern way. It reflects the problems in our society, the challenges we face every day in our society, the ancient wisdom and philosophy of our people and how we live a clean life. It is about the wisdom of all Africa, which I collected and put it into song and let people hear what we have to preach,” he said.

Nubia has eight albums to his credit.

(NAN)