Mood of disbelief as Prof Jay teases tone of current day pop music

Even his being popular enough to vie for the legislature had to do with how far his singing affected imagination, being a sort of role model for the youth, and unquestionably many are to be found among the ranks of current day musicians.

Is the former MP really a man of yesterday when it comes to local pop music, or there is a sort of mea culpa sentiment?

Checking an online definition, one reads that the phase means ‘through my fault,’ namely admitting guilt for something, the way people say in prayers ''I have sinned, I have sinned….,’ several times, though it is unlikely that the ex-MP actually wanted to admit guilt to having contributed to this situation.

More in keeping with what he said, he appeared to believe that he is a bystander to what is happening now, and is expressing surprise (perhaps also regrets) as a musician, one who knows something in the art.

He is not suggesting by any chance that he helped bring about this situation, as his lyrics were decidedly different.

Yet any attempt at checking out lyrics of Professor Jay in his heydays, those which were good enough before his audiences and were thus placed online as frontline inputs that one seeking samples of his lyrics comes across shows something a bit different.

It shows a significant level of daring, provocative lyrics intimating upon the youth to move beyond set limits, in which case it actually encourages hurting the rules or norms of tradition, which those of the older generation held in veneration and only attacked or focused on individual failings.

Just a few pickings can do, perhaps just two to start with, to taste the stuff.

Without need to go through a whole stanza, one picks just one phrase, ‘vunja mifupa’ (break the bones) and when while pondering what it represents, one is given a boost with an online phrasing, that Ladies and gentlemen give it up for Professor Jay,’ and then starts figuring out what is being ‘given up.’

Conceptually this admonition or suggestive inclination in the dance hall isn’t far from the bones that he directly asked that they be ‘broken,’ and surely that’s not far too off from what the current generation is intimating. They are sort of braver and more forthright, but the words or concepts are quite proximate.

In that case if Professor Jay was one day to meet any of the more daring musicians of the current generation (and since he didn’t mention anyone in particular, we can keep the clear implication of generic criticism, of the whole lot of musicians so to speak), they would be surprised.

One way of reacting would be to ask the old Latin question, ‘Et tu,.Brute?’ It was according to William Shakespeare in his majestic theatric classic of ’Julius Caesar’ that the youthful Julius K. Nyerere translated into Swahili, a question that Caesar asked Brutus, the magistrate of Rome who joined conspirators to knife Caesar to his death.

What the satire says is that Caesar knew it was unfortunate some lower class people, high enough in status to attend a town hall meeting in Rome which would affirm a ruler or make changes as the case may be, as kingship was still incipient at that stage, wished to kill him.

What he couldn’t understand was that the chief magistrate in Rome, Brutus was also among the conspirators, and that pained him a great deal, as it sort of made it appear that those who were knifing him were right, not just mad plotters.

That is why the current day musicians can take the tongue lash if it comes from some preachers or elders of one sort or another, but a fellow musician who is just clocking 45 years of age and can’t stand them already? How?

One good thing about the lyrics of Professor Jay is that he may even have contributed to the formulation or propagation of current phrases of Kiswahili that weren’t there in the past, for instance ‘ndivyo sivyo’ as it was one of his songs or anchor lyrics.

This term, like its cousin ‘figisu’ that is also quite recent in the sense of going back less than 20 years, may have been propagated by musicians and then accepted by the gate keepers of the language.

The latter have a habit of coming up with a completely new term while street innovations propagated on stage are easier to grasp their origins.

Here, we can celebrate with Professor Jay as to his contributions to the language, via pop music – and skip his other misgivings, etc.