Jaajo Mbadi: Yolo Music is Danceable Afrobeat, Highlife and Calypso Combined
The Njaba Prince, Jaajo Mbadi, has something new with vibrant dance patterns, combining traditional Igbo dance rhyme with his Afrobeat, high life and calypso; the Yolo brand is a re-mix from the original. Nduka Nwosu who listened to the Deluxe remix, also spoke with the New York based Jaajo. Excerpts:
The Njaba Prince Jaajo Mbadi is gradually acquiring a mystique commonly associated with such controversial artistes as Robert (Bob) Nesta Marley and Fela Anikulapo Kuti (Abami Eda, the strange one).
Just when this review was being put together, the global media was celebrating 40 years of Bob Marley’s demise, a passage that shook the world of music to its very fabric. Bob Marley’s death went beyond the music world; the world mourned the loss of an icon at such an early age of 36 (1945-1981). Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s demise at 58 (1938-1997) was equally felt among lovers of his Afrobeat music. Long after his exit, Afrobeat continues to resonate in manifold forms and styles producing great Nigerian artistes like Burna Boy, Davido, Wizkid, Kiss Daniel, Tiwa Savage, et al.
Enters Jaajo Mbadi, the New York-based Njaba Prince with his brand of Afrocentric music, a combination of Afro beat, highline and Calypso. What is remarkable about his music is its danceability. He blends the sound with an appealing dance pattern which he Njaba does so well on the dance floor. In his #Endsars release, he appeared more political and philosophical, yet there was something that told us the Njaba Prince was out for the big-ticket break if he maintained the consistency needed to consolidate his music and style. After that impressive intro, we were entertained with a plethora of what the unfolding Njaba Prince was up to, giving his audience so much material to play with. The Njaba playbook right now is replete with innovative ideas, new formats and an inspiration perpetually churning out something innovative and appealing to Afro music lovers.
He gave us so much that we least expected he would be out again any time soon with his vibratory dance pattern which he has elevated to high art. Watching Jaajo and his dance troupe on stage makes you want to dance; something eclectic connects with the subconscious reminding you this is a familiar pattern. For Jaajo, it is all about freeing the body and mind of all encumbrances that will not allow the soul to rise and live a normal life. That is what Yolo is all about.
We connected with Yolo the first time it hit the ground running. Yet Jaajo went behind the studious to repackage its ingredients, added the needed spices and came out with a pot of soup Nigeria’s new sensation in the Guinness Book of Records most outstanding global chef Hilda Effiong Bassey, would not fail to endorse as a heroic effort with her dancing skill. Yolo is not just enjoyment, wining, and dining. It goes beyond that façade of the bacchanal, an orgy of delight for the children of Bacchus. No. It merely begins from the mundane, the artificial embrace of ordinariness to the more complex issues that make existence worth living.
In its first incarnation, Yolo came strongly as a song for loosening up, notes the singer, adding that this is true “especially when you have been uptight on yourself, working like seven days a week. Boom, you decide to loosen up just for one night. It is a song meant to relieve stress.”
In an earlier preview when he launched his seven-track album-Afrolypso, there was an attempt to capture Jaajo’s evangelism in music as a cultural reawakening full of hope and love, unlike the great wailer’s refrain of the Jewish captivity in Babylon, where God’s chosen nation wailed and asked why the Lord’s song must be sang in a strange land. For all you know Jaajo’s inspiration is one of hope, not despair. He has always wanted to present something different by way originality, waxing lyrical and comparative with great musical personalities of yesterday though he would rather not sound controversial. We took the example of Hey Jude, an attempt to take a bad song and make it better by Paul McCartney of the Beatles, an inspiration from Hey Jules, a ballad of his time, just to comfort John Lennon’s son, Julian, downcast after his father left his mother Cynthia, for Japanese artist Yoko Ono.
An Afrolypso track fits into that bill, the song of a lost love. Now who would comfort Jaajo, bereaved of a great love? Just when he was working so hard to give the world a fantasy of unrestrained opulence through the Yolo remix, news came that the New York based musician has lost his wife through childbirth. He had successfully struggled to bring his family over to the US. When the visa was out, the recipient was gone, leaving behind a daughter and the new baby boy. What a tragicomedy. Dancing with the crowd at this point is to dance away the pain offered by the unexpected vicissitudes of life, the eerie, unseen influences of everyday living.
Could this be the flip side of Out of my way, one of his hit tracks in Ralypso where he lamented that life is all about fighting the principalities and powers of this world? A befitting victory song tells the story of how we overcame, like the negro slaves, all the odds set before us. We join Jaajo to celebrate man’s defeat of the overwhelming obstacles of life but only after crying with him, mourning the exit of his most beloved and then wiping the tears from his eyes.
Jaajo keeps updating his status as a rising star, employing a fecundity of talent peculiar to him using the glamorisation and fusion of Afrocentric sounds of Afrobeat, highlife and calypso. The Yolo re-mix expectedly did not disappoint with the same producers awarding him a pass mark of progress as in other exposures.
Yolo re-born becomes philosophical by reminding all we only live once and “so you might as well enjoy your life and what you do to the fullest. It is also a way of making people create a yolo mindset which drives them to conquer their fears and act faster to actualise their dreams. Life is short, he reminds us with all the fear that comes with it.”
Jaajo continues: “It is a Deluxe, a notably luxurious, elegant remix of the original Yolo version of the same yolo from my recent published EP produced by Original Beatz mixed and mastered by Zeeno Foster”
Foster is described on his Facebook page as an ace sound engineer, mix master and producer who had worked on major hit tunes in Nigeria since the 1990s.
Foster reminds the discerning reader of another Jaajo producer, the erudite Walter Blackson who in an earlier write up disclosed why he placed his bait on Jaajo as a budding artiste with his Afrocentric background. Jaajo’s originality, he disclosed, weighed against the backdrop of fellow artistes, recommending him as the new kid on the block, hence his willingness to breathe life into his kind of music.
That was Blackson in the Song of Protest. His belief in Jaajo has not waned since then. Now comes Foster, another brilliant sound mixer and producer with more than two decades of experience as a backup. With him and Blackson, the sky seems to be the limit for Jaajo.
In his seven-track album-Ralypso, every track comes alive in the Yolo remix deluxe album. Rollam in particular is visible and Jaajo takes it from there with hip swaying damsels and their male partners with Jaajo on the lead. He had described Rollam as a traditional highlife song which requires a female to tilt down the head and lift the hips up just to render a fast hip dance. According to Jaajo: “It is a song to promote the African traditional dance of the Igbo people in the Eastern part of Nigeria. What is interesting here is Yolo came alive with Rollam whose base is traditional Igbo hip dance mixed with an Afrocentric culture that borrows the rhythmic impulse of the Japanese Konami’s video game-Beat mania. You can call it Afro mania if you like, but it does not take away the essential Afrocentric, pulsating beat and danceable rhythm.
Just as we earlier noticed, Jaajo keeps updating his status as a rising star. The potential is unfolding even in a foreign land both as a musician and a fashion designer. We had likened him to Gianni Versace, even in his moments of sorrow, he still wants to give to the world a fantasy of unrestrained opulence, which he promised when he launched into two great creative industries-fashion and music. In Afrolypso the sounds resonate, and his producers backstage are satisfied with the mix and response from the audience.
Whatever, Jaajo still belongs to that generation of the African child that has risen against a jaded old system of leadership, crusading for an Africa, in this context a Nigeria, that radiates deep freshness and unsuspected candour that holds a great hope for the youth who came out in vast numbers to register to vote. It was an unprecedented outpouring of patriotism, the identification for change which collapsed like a pack of cards when they were told the promises made by the umpire may have failed, it was not anything against the constitution of the land which has a different laid down rule for conducting an election. Doublespeak conducted the election, not the transparent, trusted umpire whose assurances melted by the day and left the youths jaded, wondering where the future lies.
Jaajo’s message is from Ngugi Wa thiong’o’s Weep Not Child, a novel whose title was originally lifted from Walt Whitman’s poem: On the Beach at Night, which amplifies the dilemma of the Nigerian youth but urging them not to give up because they shall overcome some day.
