There has undeniably been a boom
across the music industry in Nigeria which has sparked increased
blogging activities, endorsement deals, album sales and …record deals?? ,
well the issue of record deals is another day’s talk, but underneath
that is a topic that is a lot easier to dwell on and that is the number
of secular international collaborations we’ve witnessed in the past
year between local acts and the likes of Akon, Olivia, Gyptian etc.
Sadly this hasn’t been the case with the gospel music genre; such big
name cross over collaborations hardly ever been witnessed. The closest
that had been attempted was the 2012 remix of the Mighty God by Joe
Praize featuring the internationally recognized Soweto Gospel Choir of
South Africa, but yet that was just south Africa. The gospel music scene
up until this year was certainly not showing any obvious signs of
international collaboration and this made it a lot more unpredictable
when renowned gospel act B.O.U.Q.U.I finally broke the dead lock by
collaborating with the phenomenal 4 time STELLAR award winning gospel
rapper DA T.R.U.T.H on her new single ‘’celebration’’ .Not settling for
just that, she stretched the new dike further by hosting in Nigeria the
American gospel rapper’s ‘’Love, Hope & War’’ tour in promotion of
his latest album which recently was launched in U.S. Amidst the
‘celebration’ ,the big question in the minds of ardent gospel music
lovers is if this was going to be the first of many more to come or
simply a once in a life time affair.
This whole web of information
could be linked back to my question regarding the boom with record
deals. Like we’ve seen in the cases of secular acts D’banj and most
recently as speculated wizkid, accompanying these big crossover
collaborations is often a contention within the record labels because of
the ambition to go international. This could well be the fear within
the gospel circle, the fear of selfish ambition, well that would require
the artistes to provide honest answers for themselves. However, a more
logical approach could be considered to this, if we as Christians are
convinced that the content of our music is relevant to today’s world at
large and not just our local sphere then I’d say it is about time the
others take a cue from B.O.U.Q.U.I.
In doing this, daring to take the
game further then maybe gospel acts might just see a reason to take
song writing, production and marketing to the next level, just may be.
In conclusion,just when I thought I was done with this and planned to
drop my pen, B.O.U.Q.U.I wasn’t thinking in my direction we realized the
video had dropped even quicker,what can we say, it’s an amazing video
that just passes the message of the track just as it is “celebration”.
Check it out,you don’t want to miss DA T.R.U.T.H attempting an azonto
move.
Emmanuel Nk
Regular Contributor and Writer for XclusiveGospel.
Catch him on twitter @TheNameIsNk
Copyright@2013 Xclusive Gospel
