Music Review: Allusive Images & Symbols as Perceived in Lojay's Monalisa.

 By Prosper Ifeanyi

The "Monalisa" crooner, Kelvin Nnamdi Odenigbo, alias Lojay, has been labeled as one of the leading lights in Afro-fusion in Nigeria. He came into limelight after featuring Wizkid in his debut EP “LV N ATTN”, and has since then gone on to pull off a stellar performance in the world of Afro-music. One notable and commendable track under the “LV N ATTN” EP/project is “Monalisa” (2021); produced by the veteran super-producer, Sarz.

                            Lojay & Sarz

 Lojay, being a creative and immensely devoted songwriter, has infused certain images and symbols which he uses in aesthetically driving home his message to the audience of his music. These images and symbols are apt, lewd, direct but wittingly contrived. They range from the gamut of the visual, kinesthetic, auditory and tactile form imagery. The opening lines of the song shows this:

Baby follow my commanding like zombie

Go down on me o

With your coca body

The above lines conjures up a visual image of a zombie. Now, we all know that a zombie is a fictive contraption of a person who becomes reanimate after death and tries to attack the living without any will power but acts on orders. This was what Fela sang about in his track “Zombie” (1977) when he croons:  Zombie no go go, unless you tell 'em to go (zombie)/ Zombie no go stop, unless you tell 'em to stop/. This exactly was the allusive image Lojay tried to paint. 

He uses the symbol of the coca-cola bottle to describe the body of a lady which is interpreted as a elegant body curve; since the bottle of a coke is curved and rotund.  As earlier stated, the lyrical quality of the song resides in it's ribaldrous undertone. This, in turn, aids the imaginal realisation of what Lojay tries to limn in the minds of his audience. This artistic impression he further expounds on when he says "...cause this your miliki for front na for me/ Hol am for me/ And no go do me koni..." The term “miliki” is a borrowed lexical item for the word “milk” in a Yorubaoid context. The milk he refers to here is that gotten from a woman's bosom; that is why he (Lojay) lyrically creates a mental image by situating it in the front of the body, so listeners can have a vivid and thick description of what is implied. Showing how potent and efficacious his use of imagery stretches, he artfully weaves a composition of images, when he sings: “your water bum wey drown like tsunami orekelewa o ehe”. Here, he compares the lady/referent he sings about to "orekelewa", a word popularly used in the Nigerian music industry. Orekelewa, in this context, isn't a simple platitude neither is it just a melodious tune, its a celebration of the beautiful virtues of the African woman. He uses this to sum up and praise the features projected by his muse (or referent).

Conclusively, music like poetry is an art; and like every other art, it conforms itself to certain touchstones which can be used to ascertain it's level of instrumentality. The application of literary devices to music is in most cases considered one of the most beautiful experiences one can come across when studying and listening to a song—especially as music is not a regimented art form and can be thrusted and given lots of subjective interpretations in meaning.

                                               

Prosper Ifeanyi is a writer and student of Delta State University, Abraka. He is the founder of OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review.