The Color of Music.

In Nigeria and many parts of Africa, people fall in love with good music, irrespective of the language, color or the nationality of the musicians or singers. It is indeed common to walk into the home of a music lover in Nigeria and see an array of CDs, tapes and, for those who still have them, "albums" of assorted music genres from indigenous Nigerian music to R&B, Soul, Reggae, Country, Jazz, Classical and Rock. Some Nigerians even listen to Hard rock and the Metallica!

When you tune to any Nigerian radio station, one moment, a Soul music will come blaring at you while, the next moment, a Country music will start to play to your delight. Over there, once you are a music lover, that is it! Back in those days...and I am talking about 20 years or more...I could vividly remember a lot of friends, neighbors and colleagues whose stereos would blast, day and night, mostly the songs of Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Patton and those of the other Country musicians. 

The Nigerian music scene has always been a showcase for the popular phrase that music is an international language with no form of barriers. I thought that was the belief all over the global community until I got to the United States and discovered, to my chagrin, that music did (and does) have language and color barriers among a whole lot of people.

During the apartheid regime in South Africa, according to one White South African I once met, the music of Mariam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and certain other Black musicians were officially banned on radio and other media. This however did not stop many White South Africans, including some of them who were most notorious in their  supports for the evil practice, from listening to these same "Black music" in the privacy of their homes.

That is the effect music has on the psyche of people the world over with the exception of America!


A couple of years ago, as a believer in "music while you work", I was at work listening to a series of downloaded music on my desktop computer when a colleague walked into the office.

"Don't tell me you're listening to that kind of music..." he asked indignantly. "...that's a Redneck music!..."

What he referred to as a "Redneck" music was "In the Misty Moonlight", a classical duet recorded among others such as "Dear John" and "Together Again" in the 1960s by Skeeter Davis and Bobby Bare. These were beautiful love songs that I grew up listening to and, so were such a huge part of my childhood that they never fail to evoke certain sense of nostalgia in me each time I listen to them. Incidentally, while in high school in the 1970s, a classmate of mine brought a tape containing some of these songs to school that we all enjoyed listening to. But to my ignorant colleague, all he could hear or see in the song was some racial issue!

Some minutes later, I was listening to "I can't stop loving you" by Ray Charles when another colleague, of a different race, walked into the office.

"Jesus!..." he exclaimed in disgust. "Are you turning this place into an extension of Soul Train?"

Ironically, this was the same fool who, about an hour earlier, had paid me huge compliments for listening to some "good, old Country songs."

This time though, I had to educate him. I told him he had been so blinded by racial prejudice that he did not know "I can't stop loving you" by Ray Charles was under the Country genre of music.

All over the world, music is an international medium of expression with no barriers of color, race or language. But in America, interest in music is divided into race, color, language and everything else anyone with a sense of racial bigotry can think of. The only exception to the rule consists of very few individuals who dare to appreciate whatever they consider to be good music without any narrow recourse to the racial backgrounds of the musicians.