The first time I listened to a song from Congolese singer Fally Ipupa, I couldn't believe my ears. The song was so good that I stormed download sites to get more of his songs. For the next few hours or so, I scoured the internet to find and listen to every song linked to Fally Ipupa. His voice was all I wanted to hear.
While listening to his songs, one of them piqued my interest. I put it on replay and listened to it again and again. The song was really enjoyable; the vibe was good. And then, I decided to overstep my boundary. Having listened to the particular song about six times in a row, I suddenly wished to sing along.
I tried to sing the song the first time and failed woefully. Not to be deterred, I tried to do that again and again with each effort leading to a resounding failure. Then something struck me: I have been trying so hard to sing a song sung using a somehow crude French language. Besides the regular salutations and common words in French, I know next to nothing about the Language.
There I was in flesh and blood making a fool of myself trying to sing along to a song I barely understood what was said in it. Funnily enough, I was still murmuring passionately despite my shortcomings. And that right there is the beauty of arts in its purest form. It doesn't have to make sense. You don't even have to think. As long as you can connect with it on whatever level, you are good to go.
When I was still a teenager and trying to find my path, I derived a lot of joy listening to rap and reggae songs. I'd turn my speaker to the loudest volume while listening to Twista's Kamikaze album. As frequently as I listened to that album then, there was never any of the songs that I could say a quarter of what Twista said in his raps. The dude was way too fast for me to comprehend. Yet, he was - and still is - one of my favourites.
The general belief has always been that the best of arts are those with the deepest of meanings. But then, I've witnessed artists go into the studio, record songs that sound off and with no deep meaning only for it to come out as successful. Wizkid sang Azonto as a freestyle; Olamide had some freestyle raps in his early rap career that were huge successes. They had no deep meaning yet they had deep connections.
One thing about art and meanings is that the interpretation will always vary. An argument once broke out in a church about the use of portraits depicting Jesus. The head pastor said he doesn't want it hung on the church walls because those in the portraits are actually not Jesus. He argued that people are merely hanging in their churches the portrait of dudes that acted as Jesus because the picture of Jesus Christ never existed in our time.
Despite that, some dudes in the church didn't flinch. To them, the portraits represented Jesus and they care less about the identity of whichever white dude on it. What they see is the picture of Jesus and that's the only thing that matters.
In fact, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I have listened to songs where the artists were addressing societal ills but the only thing that appealed to me in the songs were the heavy percussion in it. Whatever message they were trying to pass across as at that time was none of my business. The only thing that mattered were the stuff that piqued my interest.
In conclusion, deep messages really do give life to art works. Yet, an artwork can be as entertaining and enchanting without a deep meaning to it. It's just about finding how to connect with the simplicity of some work of art and enjoying them to the fullest.
