The Implications of “Wuwa Ika” have Just Begun to Manifest -By Hussein Adegoke

For my believes and logical standpoints about music, I stopped listening to it almost a decade ago. In 2012, before my resignation, I knew the famous hip-hop crooner, Olamide Baadoo, so well through his lyrics: “First of all, go down low”. I sang that famous line, I knew it by heart but had given no thought to its inherent meaning. Before it dawned on me that the line herein referenced was a lewd talk about some bedroom affairs, I had mentioned it for the umpteenth time. This is the problem with music, as I see it. Listeners become blown away by the sounds and the sensations it brings that it would matter not anymore to them the actual message that is being passed. Except for the hugely discerning minds, one might never understand the subtle messages in what one popularly chants. For those who argue that the sensation that music brings is all that matter, we might just want to ask how logical it is that you had a different conviction as the musician about a subject but then, you appraise his thoughts everytime. You believe legitimate work comes before success, yet you chant “kin sha ti lowo”—that you get rich by any popular means!

Towards the twilight of 2021, an uncanny music erupted. It was unsettling. Some famous lines in it had were “Zazoo Zeh”, “Wuwa Ika”, “Daju”, “Kala” etc. What the music enshrined was even then beyond lewdness; it had Satanic utterances that seemed to be sponsored by the underworld. Like every popular notes, the lines therein went banal and it was almost difficult you didn’t hear it in any direction you turn while on streets. It had featured yet again Olamide Baadoo Sneh, the singer with the “Voice of the Streets” identity. Much unlike in 2012 when he invited us to obscenities, around now, his fans are wooed to diabolism. Any Yoruba speaker would, even if a fan, firstly find it reprehensible to adopt the popular words because of the uncouth meanings they enshrine. To be clear, “Wuwa Ika” connotes brutality, “Daju” is to be wicked, “Kala” is to be merciless, “ma rẹ́rin” is to frown and be unsuspicious, and “leju”, “rúnjú pa” could just pass for the euphemistic variants of such devilish miens.

If we begin to probe the objects of oppression in the aforementioned instances, we might just have unravelled the innocent lives that were victims to the surging voodooism and occultism. There was Sofiat Okeowo who lost her life to the antics of some ritualist-teenagers in Ogun State and there was baby Haneefah who was slaughtered in cold blood by her blood-thirsty teacher in Kano. This is not to attribute all killings or killers to a particular hip-hop crooner or put the blames of a non-Yoruba speaker, nay, murderer, in Kano, on Olamide. Rather, by this analogy, this writer hopes to expose the effect of (bad) music or movies on human behaviours, nay, their societal conditioning, while using a name.

Many at times, our government fail at resolving some looming crises because they do not approach them organically. Truly, high taste, poverty, discontentment and loss of morals are factors responsible for killings, robbery, kidnapping and occultism but the immediate things that prod people to act devilishly are the voices they listen to. Like the toils intoxicants take on you, music would consume you and you become propelled to act—either nicely or callously, as dictated by the vibes.

Last week, I was hinted about the imminent obituary of Olamide Badoo’s hop songs. One thing we may begin to be ecstatic about in that is the banishment of depravity and/or extinguishment of vulgarity. The canonization of lascivity might just have begun an uneding sojourn. Albeit sadly, there is the fast-emerging Poco Lee and other recruits of known infamy who have been groomed so well to succeed the Crooner. So, the tension in our society has not just been calmed, yet. Artistes like 2Pac Shakur, Eedris Abdulkareem and Fela who had huge followers in their times would either sing to oppose oppression or sensitize the masses about their rights. But right now, the audience jubilate hysteria and before they ever regain consciousness, the singer had carted them away to the “Land of Osu” where the husks of “Cards” are “shelled”. Our times are filled with terrible musicians who break hard metaphors for unscrupulous businesses!