Stop Singing! There is A Bird in the Sky! - The "Suicide Note" Experience

On the 22nd of December, Papa Appiah’s Africoblues album, Suicide Note, was released in all major on-line download sites including CD Baby, Amazon and ITunes. Finally, Papa could sit down and rest after years of struggling to get this album out. In his desire not to take any short cuts, he employed the very best musicians Ghana could boast of and a few top class international musicians to play on this album. The list goes on forever; Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Terry Townson, Kwame Yeboah, Kari Bannerman, Nana Tsiboe, to mention but a few.

But it had not all been smooth sailing. Papa had had to battle against serious financial constraints to finally get this project completed. And when all the instrumental was done, he sought counsel from well-respected Ghanaian musical sources as to the way forward. You see, Papa had done all the recording in a plush little studio in Leicester called the Deadline Studio, whose owner, Adam Ellis, was a genius Sound Engineer. For the final vocals and mixing, however, he thought he had to go a notch up.



Following, rather blindly, the advise from the musical source, which he after all respected, he made the two and a half hour journey to London, to meet the gentleman who had been so strongly recommended to save the project. And he was a wonderful personality; very courteous and polite. But the first question Papa asked him was whether he had done any stuff for the musician who recommended him.



“No” he said, quite truthfully “but I’ve mixed for some people, and some have actually been released”



Oh Christ! The guy was honest, but Papa did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Worse was to follow, for they finally arrived at his “studio”. You see, he had met the gentleman in an area of the Canary Wharf near the river Thames, with a number of top class studios. Papa was soon to realize that the big studios had actually placed some “ship containers” in a spare plot of land, which they lent out to people to do some business by the side. And it was in one of these containers Papa was going to do his singing and mixing. He had been led from his posh little studio in Leicester to come and sing in a “ship container”. And still, he decided to give this individual a chance, based on the source of his recommendation.



It was going to get even more interesting. There was virtually no soundproofing at all. To counteract that, the gentleman had secured a microphone that blocked noise from the side.



First instruction: You have to keep your head still. No left and right movement. And keep your head the same distance from the mic at all times.



So basically, Papa had to stand like a statue all throughout his singing. Fair enough. He did his best to abide by the rules but tapped his right foot to the rhythm as he sang.



Second instruction: No no no Papa! Don’t tap your foot. The sound registers in the mic.



Unfortunately for the gentleman, the “studio” was in an air flight path. So every now and again, there would be another instruction.



Third instruction: I’ve got to stop you Papa. Let the plane pass first.



Fourth instruction: This bird. Goodness me. Sorry Papa, you’ve got to start from the top.



But what finally served as the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he edited a bum note with some monodyne software, something Adam regularly did without making a fuss, and seemed so pleased with himself, that he turned to a rather bemused Papa and gave him the high five.



‘This is no witchcraft, Papa” he said, laughing.



Papa had no choice but to boot out a rather pleasant gentleman and pack his bags back to Leicester and to Adam Ellis’ little studio. But the question he is grappling with is why anybody with any knowledge of music, would lead him to a guy like that.



Lesson number One: Papa, never trust anyone in the music business!



www.ghanansemsem.blogspot.com

PLEASE GET YOUR COPIES OF PAPA APPIAH'S SUICIDE NOTE (AN AFRICOBLUES ALBUM)FROM CDBABY

From Afrobeat to Africoblues - Fela Kuti to Papa Appiah (1)

There is only one true exponent of Afrobeat, and that is the maestro, and creator of the sound, Fela Kuti. Everyone else, including his own child Femi, may pretend to be playing afrobeat, but in truth, and they know it themselves, it's all a big joke. For afrobeat is not merely a musical style. It's borne out of the pain of a man, of the stripes on his back from senseless police brutality, and of his cry for justice. Even humour in afrobeat is laced with pain.

So afrobeat is as much a musical style as it was, a political stance against corruption and oppression. And the sum total of these diverse influences is what makes Fela unique. Not to mention the fact that, the man who pranced around his home and received visitors in only his panties, was a london-trained musician, who wrote every single note in his music himself; from the clappers, through the maracas to the baritone sax that characterised his sound.

And yet, despite his best efforts, not a lot has changed in Africa, and what little change we've had, like the acceptance of democracy and the rule of law, is as much, if not more, a product of western financial pressures as to Fela Kuti's singing. So what did Fela achieve from all the suffering? The publicity attracted the world's attention, not to the suffering of his people, but to the quality of his music and a multi-million musical empire has survived in his name that his descendants will forever benefit from. And that is all there is to it. Even Fela himself, in the latter stages of his life started questioning whether his songs had changed anything...

Wetin Fela go sing about again oh
Make I sing about corruption?
Na old old thing be that

Therin was an implicit admission, that while he had succeeded as a musician, he had failed miserably to effect societal change from lyrics in his music, and the torment he had to endure because of it.

So, Africa has moved on. We have democratic institutions which though are in their tottering infancy, will grow with time. With democracy has come a degree of press freedom. Not a single day passes by in Ghana for instance, when there is not a revelation of one corrupt deal or the other. The impression is that of a more corrupt society. I believe it is no worse than before, except that people have the confidence now to expose wrongdoing. So what we need in Africa is not more Fela Kutis to make us the laughing stock of the world, but to build strong institutions and allow them to work. Time will sort us out.

Any musical sound that calls itself afrobeat merely on account of the repeating chords, the percussion and visceral vocals and yet lacks the political sword and collective experience of a Fela sounds hollow. And come to think of it, is it not time that we started to sing about what is beautiful in Africa? And believe me, despite our numerous problems, there is a lot that is beautiful in Africa. How long can we continue to sing about poverty and hunger and disease and corruption. Not everything is right in Europe for instance. They have their own kinds of problems. Just recently Jimmy Saville has been locked in jail after a lifetime of horrific sexual abuse of children, most of whom were vulnerable sick children in hospitals. But I don't think any of their singers are going to try to announce that to the world in their songs

We need to sing about what is good in Africa - our lovely weather, our beautiful women, our smiling people, the walk down the riverside, the stolen kiss through the window, even of our heartaches and heartbreaks, for aren't we human after all?. And Papa Appiah attempts to do that in his new album - Suicide Note - an African Love Story. He refused to call his album afrobeat because he could not reconcile a romantic message with that genre. He calls his new sound "africoblues" It is a love story that ends with a letter that sounded suicidal. Thankfully, there was no suicide or he would not have lived to tell the story.