Ayabecca shows off songwriting skill on ‘Soyaiya’

By Emmanuel Esomnofu

Afrobeats has continued to grow from strength to strength, daily, records are being broken, new ones are set. The future looks bright for the industry players however one thing remains the drawback, the place of songwriter in the music industry. More than two decades after Afrobeats became a formidable sound, songwriters are rarely talked about, they don’t even give them credits, these days, artiste even refrain from telling their fans they used songwriters while recording. Most of the beautiful songs around the world are made by songwriters.

While this problem seems to be on, more Nigerians are coming out as songwriters, they pen songs, giving it out to other capable hands to fashion out a record. It is a beautiful and seamless wave of division of Labour. One of such fellows is Rebecca Ayabie, better known as Ayabecca, a budding northern based songwriter.

Few days ago, I listened to one of the songs she wrote. While shuffling songs on YouTube music, her song “Soyaiya,” was recommended to me. The title which means love in Hausa language finds Ayabecca cleverly using the illustrative and beautiful words to convey her emotion and feeling to her partner.

Besides Ayabecca being the main songwriter , other co-writers on the song were Elizabeth Eze with the stage name Ellizzee, Victoria Chidinma with the stage name Chidiivick, Munachi chukwudi Onyeukwu with the stage name Munaachucks, Blessing Simon with the stage name Bmelemu, Odera Alexander (Songwriter) with the stage name SaintOdeba.

The singer of the song is George Joshua aka Spokegizzy. The song was released by Ameboloaded Worldwide with Martin Okechukwu aka Okemasky producing the track while Boniface Ayabie aka B4umatrix mixed and mastered the track

The song, which is a few seconds short of five minutes, finds the singer and the songwriter jointly convey their romantic message to everyone listening. While the song is mostly sung in Hausa, the emotion and the feeling it distills makes it laudable to listen to.

Soyaiya finds Spokegizzy brilliantly singing about how his partner makes him feel. The song began with some endearing words in which the singer celebrates and showered encomium on his partner with lines like Nace soyaiyaaaa nakwarai Kai/ Mm soyaiya nakwarai/ Agidan soyaiya nidake zamu kwana.X3/Tunda iyayenji sunbadake gurina.X2/Toh Nina game Nina game souna kikeyi/Ama aikema kinsani/ Nima sonki nakeyi.

The second verse of the song is tailored towards reassuring his lover. With the chaos in the world, romantic relationships tend to battle with a lot of naysayers, however, I will be there for you, he seems to sing. Laid over a drumstick, a racing tempo and a kick, the mid tempo mode of the song elegantly conveys the message of love more.

By the time the song raced to a close, it was glaring why Ayabecca remains one of the most sought after songwriters in northern Nigeria. “Soyaiya,” is a beautiful rendition rife with pristine songwriting and brilliant mixing and mastering.