When Busy Signal landed in Malawi he had on a Puma
top and one of the Facebook statuses I saw accused him of being one with a
common vendor and not like a respected artiste.
He was ‘shabby’ because he was away from office.
When Busy came on stage in Salima he was ready to host a TV show, blue
creaseless shirt, greyish blazer atop slim fitting pants and black shoes so
shiny a girl could use it as a mirror. He was fully official.
 |
| Minutes Before He Hit The Stage - Busy |
Busy is a high flier and despite that and the
fat cheque he pocketed,
he showed real humility in being in Africa. He did explicitly say this on
several interludes specifically highlighting that he is but a son of Africa.
He promised a good show in his promo video and
during his first press appearance in Malawi, and he fully lived up to it and he
did remind us during the show. He said it’s not just in Malawi that he lights
up the place, he said he gives a hundred percent even when performing to young
school children.
He was said to give a two hour show, but 2
hours fifteen minutes later, he was still on stage and asking the crowd to
request songs.
How he can sing that long without losing his
voice is a mystery, especially because his dancehall lyrics are packed with
words. He drank water only twice or thrice during the show and never left
blanks between songs.
How he could infuse ‘Malawi’ into his lyrics
and still not go out of sync is a mystery. He does his homework and planning,
remember he was nicknamed Busy Signal because they said he was always busy. His birth name is Glendale Goshia Gordon also
known as Reanno Devon Gordon.
When he came onto the scene at the start of the
millennium I wrote him off along his fellow new entrants such as Bling Dawg.
Cheap lyrics, quasi-gangster affiliations and nothing to offer me, a hardcore
reggae fan. I was wrong. Among his contemporaries, he and the likes of the now
obsolete Vybz Kartel went on to become men of substance in the music industry.
And of those that made it, very few have
managed to conquer Africa in the way Bob Marley, Culture, Yellowman, Shabba
Ranks and Burning Spear did. Busy has
just done that. And he worked hard for this.
Since he came with his Tic Toc and Nuh Go a Jail
Again, he has fine-tuned his game, to me I think he found out that
Dancehall is hard to sell beyond the Islands and he slowly went soft, went
reggae and brought in conscious lyrics to beef up the cheap dancehall clichés of
sex, money and gangster culture.
And he sort of walked us through his journey,
he did Nuh Go a Jail Again, Hustle Hard,
Unknown Number, Bad Man Place, One more Night, Night Shift, Comfort Zone,
Dreams of Brighter Days, Hard Drugs, Night Nurse among his many hits and
also dished out a new release Shanty Town
which is an updated version of Desmond Dekker’s 1967 hit of the same name.
Yes, 1967, and that is what makes Busy Busy… as
a reggae don, I know the original Shanty Town song, but for the millions of
millennials and slow learners they would never have heard of it if Busy never
went to the archives to repackage the song for the current tastes.
My sister never knew of Gregory Isaacs until I
told her that the Hard Drugs tune she
likes from Busy is actually a Gregory Isaacs’.
That is why I say that where Bob Marley left,
Busy Signal is continuing. Just this one trip to Malawi and Zimbabwe and
recently elsewhere in Africa is as important a mission to Reggae as Morton
Stanley’s and David Livingstone’s were to their masters.
It is one thing to get old songs, or write catchy
ones but performing them is a different story. Ever seen Hip Hop awards where
they just play a CD? Yes, boring and banal. Busy joins the cool Jamaicans who
recreate the song on stage using a band replete with keyboards, drums and
guitars. No CDs.
I mentioned the blazer? It came off soon, his
blue shirt was to be drenched in gallons of sweat that streamed off his face
and body - understandable since he did about twenty songs, some of which came
in ragga stylee.
Busy does songs the audience can sing with,
When he says ‘we nuh go a jail again’ the audience has no choice but to shout ‘oh
no!’ Or the relatable ‘Bou-yah’ in the song of the same title.
Versatility is the Signal’s strength, he showed
us that he cannot only do his songs but can also do other’s too. He infused
bits of songs from Buju Banton, Gregory Isaacs, Cocoa Tea, Chaka Demus and
Pliers, Romain Virgo and Lionel Richie with perfect ease.
Still on versatility, Busy did songs such as Dreams
of Brighter Days without Righteous Child (RC) who also featured on the song, he
also Did Shanty Town without Sugar Roy, he Did Bad Man Place without Mavado but
no one noticed their absence, he delivered it so well and so craftily that I did
not miss the others.
He however brought along Esco Levi with whom he
delivered, perfect at that, the difficult to sing, Wicked Evil Man, again,
versatile.
The posters should have included Esco Levi, it
was not just one Jamaican star that performed. Esco gave the crowd a good time
with a quick performance of Jah Nah Sleep
also from the Brighter Days Riddim.
We got to see him in person, now we know he
always has a hat on because he is fast getting bald, we know he is not bad man
as he sometimes claims, and we know he is fast becoming a conscious reggae player
and moving away from dancehall, his Reggae
Music Again album being the indicator and its popularity probably his
motivation.
My favorite part of Busy’s show was when he did
a rendition of Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry
Be Happy. He reminded Malawians to stay positive even in hard times. He
whistled catchy part into the mic and then pointed the mic at us to bellow out
the ‘Don’t worry’ part. Classic.
The rest of the crowd were captivated by Dreams
of Brighter Days, for obvious reasons and the ladies loved One More Night and Sweet Love. Th crowd really wanted Busy to do Praise and Worship, but he did not and this would be the only low I can write about.
I sang along so hard, I lost my voice inside an
hour, I danced so much, I slept 11 hours straight after that but even then, I cannot
match the effort Busy put into the show. And that Sunday morning will go into
the memories of many people.
