Will grammatical blunders ever end in music blogging? By CHINEDU HARDY NWADIKE [@hardynwa]
I have always acknowledged that the things we see as easy from the outside will never be the same from the inside because the player is mostly faced with anxiety, opposition and even fear of the unknown.
Welcome to 2014, and I should have started with a happy new wish, but I know someone will be reading this in November.
In 2013, I wrote more on things that would change the industry especially where it involves the artistes and their promoters [the so called bloggers], and the funniest part is that I am both [artiste and blogger] and even as unknown as I could be I am not happy the way things are run in Nigeria in music blogs especially.
Teachers and Preachers
Musician and supposed to be preachers, while bloggers are meant to be teachers. I remember one my bosses saying the media is where people come to learn English.
Who can attest to that today? How many artistes are preaching and how many bloggers can teach you a new world or sentence structure from their posts.
I hope to carry over my 2013 apologies into 2014, so if whatever I am going to say here will ever offend you, the apology has already been tendered and I bet you, it is very sincere.
I stayed away from music blogging because I never understood the entire concept until I realized it is something I must do to stay afloat as a blogger.
But while it takes an average Nigerian blogger a very short time to post a song, I spend time on just one especially those ones that will come with the entire history of the artiste.
I see the kind of grammar that will never pass a ‘Junior WAEC’ English examination, yet it will be written there that the artiste is a graduate of one Nigerian University. Shame! How can someone who cannot put down a straight sentence in a plain English be a teacher or preacher? What medium will he use to communicate with the people he is teaching or preaching to? No wonder titled of songs in Nigeria today are either our native dialects or ‘nothing’ dialect.
It is only in Nigeria that a man who returned from China after five years forms American accent while the Chinese man cannot even speak English. Ok na!
A certain blogger who wrote an article with lots of f**k, wanna, goona, sh*t and the rest of it , claimed he writes like that because he was not born in Nigeria and when I investigated, I found out he was born in Malaysia. Is Malaysia closer to America than Nigeria? Do they speak English more than Nigerians?
We often defend these things calling them the ‘street language’; my brother get over it, every reader is not a ‘street reader’.
Every Nigerian who can read and write attempted West African Examination Council (WAEC), so it would be better if we continue with that language that has been the standard.
The question is this, who writes those blunders that are attached to songs that end up being posted on blogs around the country, the artiste or the blogger?
The artistes write in most cases because they believe no one knows them better and they go on writing everything they can remember. At times I ask myself if one must finish those long articles before he can download the song.
The blame
I blame the bloggers because they send it out and they post it as well. It is funny to note that the so called big music blogs in Nigeria do not care about the grammar attached to most of their posts. They just care about the songs and video. A blogger can play a song five times just to be sure it meets his standard but will never take time to read through what has be written. Like this we flood the internet with our misfit English, telling the whole world it is our best.
Will these grammatical blunders vanish someday from our blogs? Somehow I see this happening when Nigeria starts having steady power supply [which makes it possible]. In a country where no one cares about what you know but how much you have in your pocket or bank account, how can knowledge help again?
It is time for bloggers to start typing with a standard Word Processor like Microsoft Word which will detect their errors free of charge and not the usual typing with Notepad because we fear our errors.
Someone will say it is unfair, but soon, bloggers will rise and reject songs because their press materials are not well written.
We should also avoid copying and repeating because at a point people are tired of seeing ‘After releasing his last single, he is back again with another club banger and is ready to tear the clubs in the country”
We can actually avoid words like ‘After, returned, back again’; they make bloggers look like fools.
Have it in mind that a blogger is the editor of his site, whatever you post is the best of your ability at the moment and it is internet where things remain as long as your site is still on.
Bloggers must not do the bidding of artistes by accepting to post their black American ‘wanna, gonna’ accents just the same way they have sent it.
I know Nigerians are tired of seeing these things.
Complete your words and avoid substituting d for the; u for you; de for they etc. I can still bet that some people do this because it is their best. How can you then write your songs? At least you have Igbo, Housa and Yoruba languages to make it up and no one is complaining of grammatical blunders there.
2014 is time to bring in intellect into blogging and music, remember bloggers and artistes are Teachers and Preachers.
Bloggers should bring in creativity into what they are doing, giving time as well to what is written and not just certifying the attached materials.
Everyone has something in them, but until they make a move to use it, they will never know what they have.
Chinedu Hardy Nwadike is writer, blogger, singer; he writes from Owerri, Imo State Nigeria. You can reach him on chikinow@yahoo.com 08038704454, Twitter: @hardynwa; BBM; 222E7850
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