THE REAL QUEEN

I stumbled on “Moment with Mo” on NTA network service on Saturday 6th March 2010 and the guest was Queen Salawa Abeni, I showed good interest in the show because it was another opportunity in a long time to watch this self style Musician who never allowed her illiterate background to affect her career. She took it upon her self to educate herself despite her old age and she was never shy to show her improvement in learning the Queen English at any given time. The show went well with Salawa performing the show in Queens English. Her English was flawless and I was so moved at what we can achieve if we set our mind to it. Her use of English was very good and her confidence was spot on. She looked more confident than Mo who was interrupting her answers with the thought of helping her out with the answers. She didn’t buy this bail out as she revisited the questions and answered them in her own words and it was flawless to Mo’s expectation.
The lesson here is for our new generation artistes who can’t put a single sentence together without mixing it with penguin English and vernacular.
The crop of commercial music artistes we have now are drop outs and they hide behind the fusion of vernacular language and English of any immoral form in their music to hide their inability to speak the Queens English.
Illiteracy is not rampant only among indigenous musicians; it’s also noticed among most artistes from the suburb of towns and those that call themselves undergraduates. The general believe that Fuji and other indigenous musicians are illiterate is no more an established fact as many so called English hip-hop musicians who are young have trouble with proper English. A careful observation of English hip-hop artiste showed that they hide under the umbrella of cross over music to protect their improper and lack of Queen English. A popular twin in hip-hop scene is an example, they are rave of the moment but careful examination shows they cannot go 20 minutes with Queen English after graduating from the countries capital model university.
Salawa Abeni has today showed what made her a legend in the entertainment industry, her wiliness to improver and empower herself with what she lacked at her younger age. She schooled with her children and she was a laughing stock then, but now many young artistes that refused to take the advantage of the easier education we have now will ask someone next to them to interpret what Salawa is saying. Salawa Abeni was the star of the “Moment with Mo’s” special edition showcasing and celebrating Yoruba Divas in Nigeria music scene, the show paraded other indigenous Yoruba female artistes, but the beauty of it is that regardless of there genre they all spoke in flawless Queens English. This is a challenge to the male folks who I believe have a lot of proud university and O’level drop out basking in the glory of their unsuspecting elite fans praises while they fail to improve personally, Its time we accepted that the Queens English is our official language and we will like our role models to lead in propagating sound education among our younger population.