‘Fake People’: When Tina Turner gets worthy Bongo Flava imitators

Innumerable listeners and followers of Bongo Flava trends will of course have already taken note of it in their usual social media platforms, and many have taken heart at some of its novel features.

Yet it must be said that novel features in a song are not big news in Bongo Flava, but perhaps what global trends it is reflecting.

A summary online write-up says that the song is a sonic journey that showcases the exceptional talent of the collaborators, ‘and takes listeners on an unforgettable ride’, making it a 'Hip-Hop masterpiece that you won't want to miss’.

In several online entries, the author and presenter of the song are given as ‘Young Lunya’ featuring Appy, identities that are well known to connoisseurs as artistic names.

Their proper names soon pale into oblivion and just a few well-known artists remain true to their actual names when anchored in Hip-Hop proper, like Ali Kiba.

As those who follow Bongo Flava songs are at best uneven in knowing blues and rock traditions around the world, and especially in the United States and its neighbourhood, it was not surprising to see scant awareness of the origins of the ‘fake people’ hit.

It was based on an idol whom a musical chronicler and expert in the state broadcasting channel profiled in the past month or so, following her death three months ago at the age of 84.

Tina Turner was an artiste who had two lives in the industry, first as a young woman coming from the church choir and then married.

It was the second part of her artistic life that set the stage for the artist that we sort of live permanently with, a rebel against love in the old state of the notion, without for once going to the vulgar extremes of a role model, Marvin Gaye in ‘Sexual Healing’.

To be sure, the song that annoyed the churches and most ‘moral majority’ people in the United States and well beyond was not vulgar in the sense of initiation lyrics in the 'single’ variety of Bongo Flava, and its piquant popularisers as in the much as in the grand label Wasafi traditions.

‘Singeli’ is Isles's adoption of a single, and music that comes to alluding to the music of women clad in single khangas.

Marvin Gaye was just rudely realistic about the facts of life, but with social ideas centered on directing such attention to a life of marriage, the song was a trendsetter but earned the singer a one–way ticket to join other rebels in the afterlife.

Soon after the song his ties with his father became more constrained, and he died of a gunshot in 1984, just two years after the blockbuster.

An online entry dating mid last year says Sexual Healing is an iconic song by Marvin Gaye released in 1982, written by Gaye and produced by Quincy Jones, but this line of explanation on his death is not likely to be tracked by commentators as it requires a spiritual format to realize.

‘Fake People’ lyrics have unmistakable footprints of the late Tina Turner both in the posture, the style (beat), and delivery (song steps, stages) without for once having picked up the song, for instance ‘Simply the Best’ but the content is nearer to ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’.

Yet there is a thematic divergence despite the proximity of presentation, namely the Western character of the two other artists (Marvin Gaye and Tina Turner) and the local coastal setting of ‘fake people’.

Both ‘Sexual Healing’ and ‘What’s Love…’ look at individual rebellion, as to what ideals or morals to follow, which zeroes on freedom to live romance, period.

Traditional teaching, which is now being overly emphasized owing to the influence of American and Western trends generally among the youth, regrets the tendency to show youths’ wishes or preferences in romance for all to see.

Many may show extrovert attitudes for wishing to carve a niche in romantic presence, as there are fewer suitors for lifelong relationships than tradition wants.

They are after day-to-day living, which means being on someone’s call list, to obtain regular earnings.

In the case of artists, rebellion is basically about itching the feelings of society on the edges, and exciting youth imagination, which offers solace in an unstable situation of fruitful engagement or social presence.

Youths are reminded of their successes in romantic relationships, whether regular or occasional, and the chronic inability to create families and respectably fend for them pushes them out of the sphere of traditional dance music.

That was firstly a sphere tied to community loyalties centered on parents and in-laws, just pains to them.

In that case, ‘fake people’ is culturally localized, as it talks about what people or youths do in groups, sporadic professional engagements, and unpredictable romantic affinities.

While the two US musicians close the door to meaning, as different from living what you want, the local lyric leaves the door open as with Faustina Mfinanga 'Nandy' (reversing ‘the pain of loving you’-Dolly Parton).

There is still hope a young woman (or man) can steer clear of ‘fake people’ and move on, not a curse.