Why today’s music isn’t totally useless

In the good old days, music was about having a sizeable group of artistes: guitarists, saxophonists, trumpeters, conga players, drummers, and so on and so forth, rehearsing ahead of a stage performance or a recording session. It was an onerous process.

That’s rarely the case these days. Anyone with a good voice will go to a studio where he’ll ask the producer to prepare for him computer-generated beats.

Some people tend to rubbish the songs of artistes of the so-called new generation, but let’s be honest: there’re quite a good number of songs of their “genre”, which are truly educative. Yeah, not all of them are about girls’ body parts.

Admittedly there’s a lot of vulgarity and impunity but so what? Where freedom of expression is allowed, we all must be ready to be splashed with lots of crap— and bear with it.

I’m not one of those who dismiss in total the new generation artists even, much as they annoy me with their rejection of Bongo’s traditional rhythms. And instead, they play Nigeria’s Afrobeat or South Africa’s Mapiano. What a shame!

But since the beats are danceable and music lovers are not provided with an alternative, they succumb to it. Like this song by one Chino Kidd that, although it’s too complex to follow, I’m so impressed when it comes to its refrain, “Pombe siyo sigara.”

These words give drinkers an apt reminder that you should not drink alcohol on and on, the way you puff a cigarette. Smoking will kill you too in due course, for sure, but at least you’ll pack for your next life in the hereafter with intact brain. At least, that’s the idea one gets when listening to the line, “Pombe siyo sigara...aa siyo sigara”

As you slowly partake of your chosen brand that comes in a 330ml bottle, you notice this fellow seated at a table a few paces from yours. His table is full of empty bottles, and there’re some that are actually lying on the table.

It’s clear this fellow has taken advantage of a sales promotion gimmick of buying in a basket of seven bottles for which you “only” pay Sh11,000 instead of the Sh11,900 you would cough up if you bought the same number of bottles in terms of one-one at a time. Saving a handsome sum of Sh900 is no joke!

The trouble is, do you really need to drink a whole seven bottles in a single sitting? I don’t think you’ll get a yes from many. However, the lure of drinking on a bargain arrangement will make some fellows buy two baskets and end up drinking 14 bottles. And save a whopping Sh1,800 that way!

Our fellow drinker must have decided to take advantage of the sales promotion and…here he is! At the behest of a certain drinker, the resident DJ, who is also the man in charge of the kitimoto kitchen agreed to play ‘Pombe siyo sigara’ as the basket beer drinker slept on, mouth agape.