Intervention wished it could also paste the explosive videos of audience excitement that Dr Yusuf Bangura sent along with this piece. The Paléo performance might have been a great outing but no less is this backgrounded reporting of it.
By Yusuf Bangura
Burna Boy, the Odogwu of afrofusion, came to our neighbourhood, at the Paléo festival, on July 23rd, 2024 and gave us an energetic, awesome and memorable performance.
He commanded Paléo’s central stage like a colossus or, as he often describes himself, an ‘African giant’. He was supported by his accomplished and versatile band of guitarists, saxophonists and drummers, as well as his group of agile female dancers.
Spellbinding and seemingly tireless, he sang for 80 minutes non-stop, reeling off a variety of old and new songs from his rich repertoire, especially his two most recent albums, *I Told Them* and *Love Damini*, as well as his fourth album, *African Giant*.
A file photo
Six of the 20 songs he performed—*Big 7*, *Cheat on me*, (with Dave), *Sitting on top of the world* (with 21 Savage), *Tested, approved and trusted*, *On Form*, *City Boys*, and *Taliban* (a remix with Byron Messia)—were drawn from the *I Told Them* album; four—*Last Last*, *For my hand* (with Ed Sheeran), *It’s plenty*, and *Kilometre*— from the *Love Damini* album; and three hit singles—the evergreen *On the low*, *Gbona*, and *Anybody*—were taken from the *African Giant* album.
Burna Boy always digs deep to resurrect old tunes that are popular with fans. The all-time great, *Ye*, which always moves crowds, was featured midway through the show. Many eagerly joined with excitement in singing its refrain:
Ye Ye Ye/Ye Ye Ye Ye,/Ye Ye Ye/Ye, uh-huh/Ye Ye Ye
Ye Ye Ye Ye/Ye Ye Ye/
Ye Ye, Ye Ye/
Ye Ye Ye Ye/Ye Ye Ye
Ye, uh-huh/Ye Ye Ye
These words are surely meaningless, as the popular Jamaican dancehall artist, Bounty Killer, recently observed in comparing afrobeats and dancehall music, but they electrify concert-goers. And Burna Boy is a master in energising crowds.
He connects effortlessly with his audience using his baritone voice, cheeky jokes, and call and response one-liners in singing the refrains. Another fast paced song, which sounded like a new song, with the refrain *da da da/oh oh oh* literally blew the audience away. And *Last Last*, his standard end-of-show signature tune, could have gone on forever as we all got hooked on the refrain *shayo-o, shayo-o, shayo-o, o-o o-o, shayo-o o-o o-o.*
Other hits that filled the evening were *Location* (the opening song), *Alone* (from the film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), *Jerusalema* (a remix with Master KG and Nomcebo), *Tshwala Bam* (a remix with TitoM and Yuppe) and *Higher*, his latest hit single that is inspired by his humanitarian work in his native city of Port Harcourt.
Watching Burna Boy on stage vividly demonstrates the unique ways he has transformed stage performances. His voice and energetic stage movements are not the only forms of entertainment he offers.
He has a full, well-resourced band that he grants much visibility; skillful female dancers that have mastered dance styles for each song; and a huge background screen that provides visuals of the themes that are captured in his songs. I am not sure any other artist provides such a rich menu of activities to fans in one setting.
The songs he performed touched on various aspects of life as he and people close to him have experienced them. However, his music is often criticised for its lack of a social or political message. Critics believe that what he sings is just vibes. Or, as a friend whom I debated this issue with in a WhatsApp exchange after watching the show puts it, ‘His music is like fast food. Very tasty and attractive, but socially (and) nutritionally lacking in vitamins’.
Burna Boy is surely not a Fela Ransome Kuti or Bob Marley—two giants of protest music of the highest quality. He and most afrobeats artists eschew politics, which, surely, is a serious limitation, given the poor state of Nigerian and wider African politics. Shockingly, according to media reports, most of the top afrobeats artists were even out of the country and did not bother to vote during the 2023 general elections.
The one rare Burna Boy song that takes on a burning political issue is *Traumatised*, which addresses the massacre of young protesters during the End SARS protests in 2020 at Lekki, in Lagos. However, I do not think it is fair or accurate to dismiss his music as lacking a message or not addressing social issues.
Music must be judged primarily by its art—i.e. the way it is organised, including the lyrics and instrumentalisation; the creative use of words, slangs and expressions; its ability to connect events that evoke memories; the quality of vocalisation; whether the artist succeeds in getting the listener to think about issues in ways that they had not been thought about before; and whether the music generates emotional feelings in the listener. A close look at Burna Boy’s music clearly demonstrates that it ticks most, if not all, of these boxes.
It is great—indeed, even courageous and admirable—if an artist decides to use music as a form of social commentary or agitational politics, but such music must not sacrifice artistic standards.
Burna Boy is a brilliant music composer—the best, in my view, in afrobeats. His lyrics are about social issues as he has personally experienced them. He boasts a lot about his achievements, which may be off-putting to many. But he provides upbeat messages and focuses on issues that make people happy. He also has a number of songs that depict personal struggles and a difficult past.
Take a song like *Last Last*, one of his most successful records, which I believe ranks among the best heartbreak songs ever. In the lyrics, Burna Boy’s emotions move from bragging and trying to intimidate his ex-lover after the breakup, to feelings of deep pain and sadness (forcing him to want to drown his sorrows in booze and weed), and finally to a realisation that he still loves his ex-lover. He even contemplates a reunion, which he hopes may end in marriage.
Compare the lyrics in *Last Last* with Shakira’s lyrics in her song BZRP Music Session #53 in which she takes a dig at her ex-husband, the footballer Gerard Piqué’s new lover. Shakira’s lyrics, which are one-dimensional in portraying her feelings, are all about hate and putting down Piqué’s lover.
And the way Burna Boy combines different music genres—afrobeats, R&B, hip-hop, and dancehall—is simply first rate. It is the main reason he eschews the label ‘afrobeats’ and opts for afrofusion in describing his music.
He is the only African musician that has been nominated for a Grammy award in a category that is not reserved for Africa or the Grammys’ nebulous ‘World Music’ category. He was nominated for the 2023 Best Melodic Rap Performance for his hit song *Sitting on top of the world*, a melodious R&B and rap song with a touch of afrobeats.
Burna Boy is not only a Grammy Award winner (for his *Twice as Tall* album), he is the recipient of numerous other awards, such as the All Africa Music Awards, the Headies, and the BET Awards, which he has won four times. The music magazine Rolling Stone listed him as one of the 200 greatest musicians of all time.
It was refreshing to see him at the festival without his huge silver ornamental chain, and wearing simple denim bib overalls and a white t-shirt, sporting white canvas shoes with black stripes, and waving a black towel constantly in the air as he tried to whip the crowd into a frenzy.
*The Paléo festival has become a global event* There must have been about 50,000 people who congregated at the big stage or the *grande scéne*, where Burna Boy performed, which is usually allocated to global superstars.
The great Jamaican reggae and dancehall artist, Sean Paul, also performed that evening, but not on the big stage. And Burna Boy was honoured as the last of the three performers on that stage—ensuring maximum attendance as almost everyone at the festival moved to the main stage around midnight to get a bit of his magic and vibes.
The Paléo festival has come a long way. It started as a small folk festival in 1976, sponsoring largely Swiss artists. Today, it is the largest open air festival in Switzerland and one of the largest in Europe. International artists are now the festival’s big selling point.
In 1990, the year we arrived in Switzerland and first attended Paléo, it was still a very small affair. I even bought our tickets at the gate, which is no longer possible.
Before this second visit to watch Burna Boy, I was under the impression that the festival is patronised only by youngsters.
So we never became regular attendees despite living close to the venue. We concentrated instead on the festival village nearby, where we go every year to join other older or not-so-young people to enjoy the ambience and variety of international foods and drinks on offer. It has taken a visit by Burna Boy to Nyon to correct my distorted view of the festival.
There is now a huge scramble for tickets, which are sold online and often finish within the first few hours of their availability. We only managed to get tickets this time through a third party and paid twice the original price.
The space occupied by the festival is almost boundless at first sight. It is a sprawling 80 hectares of farmland or 0.8 square kilometres—almost a third of the size of the City of London, the financial centre of the UK, popularly known as the Square Mile.
It has seven stages, located in different sections on the grounds; more than 200 food stalls serving food from all corners of the world; 50 or more bars; and many well laid out and large sitting areas for eating and drinking.
Despite the large number of people that patronise the festival, it does not look or feel congested. People—young and old—move seamlessly around, creating an atmosphere that looks very much like a small vibrant city with bright lights and numerous recreational activities.
Burna Boy has surely rekindled my interest in open air festivals. I will definitely make it a habit to try and attend the one at Paléo every year, since it is at the far end of our street, which is a mere three minutes by bus or a 40 minute walk from where we live.
