Dance and democracy at MUSON Fest 2018

The event, which has guests pick songs and give each choice a background story, hosted publisher Maiden Alex Ibru, telecoms executive Oti Bazunu, arts entrepreneur Ugoma Adegoke and lawyer Adeyemi Akinsanya. Kitoyi Ibare-Akinsan was compere for the night.

The music selection from each guest was as different as the fields to which each belongs, the choices reflecting age as much as experience.

While Akinsanya stayed close to the MUSON’s preference of classical music, Adegoke veered away, choosing to play some hip hop music to the festival’s audience. Bazunu, the founder of the Lagos Jazz Series festival, played jazz music and Ibru played chose some old school music.

Last year, Music In Africa characterized the event as “music meets memory” and it was a recurrent theme at this edition. Most of the songs selected have been favourites of the guests for decades.

Among the night’s highlights was Adegoke’s selection of Mary J Blige’s ‘Sweet Thing’, which Adegoke said, is superior to the Chaka Khan 1975 original. (The song was vocalized by Chaka Khan but credited to both Khan and the American band Rufus.) Adegoke waxed a little on the song’s lyric concerned with loving someone whether or not they stay.

Ibru chose ‘All I Ask of You’ from the Phantom of the Opera and spoke about the usefulness of musicals in teaching children to play music. Ibru also played Timi Dakolo’s ‘Iyawo Mi’. Bazunu reminded the audience of the treachery of humans when one is penniless by playing Nina Simone’s ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’.

George Handel's ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ was one of Akinsanya’s selection, the song leading the lawyer to wonder about the majesty of King Solomon meeting the eponymous queen. “A great queen meeting the great king,” he said.

As though to illuminate Ibru’s point about music in other media and children, Akinsanya chose Mozart’s 'Marriage of Figaro' to close his selection and spoke about its use in Tom and Jerry. He added that the famous Chinese pianist Lang Lang credits the cartoon as his inspiration for taking up classical music. (The episode featured Franz Liszt’s ‘Hungarian Rhapsody Number II’.)

Other songs selected include Whitney Houston’s rendition of The Lord is my Shepherd, Miles Davis’s ‘So What’, Tony Allen’s ‘No Discrimination’, Q-Tip’s ‘Vivrant Thing’, John Coltrane’s Love Supreme, The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ and Aretha Franklin’s cover of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’.

The session ended with the Maiden Ibru lady choosing Marcia Griffiths’ ‘Electric Boogie’. "I dance, I move. It makes me happy,” she said and stood to show how. Adegoke joined her as did four other women. Suddenly, a sextet of women was doing the Electric Slide dance at a stage run by the MUSON, lovers of a famously elitist type of music.

Sometime later, the compere tried to join but he couldn’t quite figure out the moves. One could say the music selection on the night was certainly eclectic, but some might say the closing dance was decidedly feminist.