How I learned to love Celine Dion

I should begin by telling you that Chifundo is really cool. Seriously, he struts when he walks, speaks three languages in a lazy drawl and just generally radiates a casual ease that makes you think “man I wish I was as cool as that guy.” If you ever meet him you’d instantly like him no matter who you are. He could come to America and fit into whatever crowd he wanted to: the athlete community with his build, the artsy community with his accent or the business community with his experience. I have a total friend-crush on him. So when I was eating at his house the other day and he turned on his favorite DVD of Celine Dion music videos, I was taken slightly aback. I didn’t want to lose my cool though, so I just said, “Oh yeah, Celine. Celiiiiine. Sweet. Y’know she’s Canadian right?” So we watched the video for “A New Dawn” I think it’s called. Then we watched the making of the video. Then we listened to the song again set to a slideshow of Celine pics. The music video itself just swims with feel-good New Ageiness. A blue-screened Celine swoons and sings in front of a sun-soaked cloudscape. This base is intercut with shots of attractive couples of various ethnicities grasping each other in intimate positions as they begin the process of kissing (though the slow motion never allows them to get around to it) in front of studio representations of their home countries. According to the video, hot young adults around the world are all after the same thing . . . well, yes that . . . but more importantly, world peace inspired by the airy vocals of a singer that will never quite be as exotic as Enya. Second to Enya; that's a tough place to be. As we watched the slideshow, Chifundo made a profound observation: "She must be an old woman but somehow they make it seem as if she is very young and single." So sadly true.

The weirdest thing is, I enjoyed watching Celine Dion music videos.

Maybe this is because I’m starved for American familiarity (admittedly, Celine is Canadian, but that’s close enough). It’s more likely that I’m just starved for a music video with the slightest shred of production value, no matter who the singer is.


Let me share with you the formula for the Malawian music video. 1. Create pop-like song from synthesized beats and Casio organ sounds. 2. Purchase cheap digital video camera (I think this is actually the first problem with the formula). 3. Invite all your friends and some other random people you meet that day and film them along on the side of the road performing unpracticed dance moves to the beat of your song. 4. Give the footage to your 5-year old kid to edit. And that’s it. The worst perpetrator of this practice is Lawrence Mbenjere, the Malawian Jack Johnson. His songs sound like Wee Sing kids’ songs and somehow they’re wildly popular. He also thinks he’s the coolest thing since Lucius Banda (who is another story entirely), but the guy looks like anyone else you’d see on the street here. He dresses in normal clothes and cheap suits. I would have thought he was just another one of the goofy dancers except that he was singing. The lyrics of one of his songs, (a song that sounds like a loop on my Casio keyboard I got when I was 6), are actually putting down the other artists that imitate “his sound”. It’s literally one of those “Will the real Slim Shady please stand up” kind of song, y’know, where you’re the original guy, and then a bunch of wannabes come in and steal your sound and make money off of your artistry. What I don’t understand is who would take the trouble to imitate this stuff? Apparently it's a lot. The Mbenjere formula is copied everywhere as if it's just gold and maybe it is. At the very least it's darned catchy, I can't get it out of my head most of the day.

The result of all this exposure: I heard the song "All Star" by Smashmouth the other day and I actually enjoyed it. The songs I regularly hated during their height of popularity in the states are now so familiar I actually like them. God help me. I'm just starved for any music with production value beyond a 4-track and a Casio synthesizer can produce.

The biggest Reggae band here though, Black Missionaries is actually pretty good. They’re dying one by one (the most recent one last Monday) from smoking Chamba and crossing the government, but they were actually pretty good if you like Reggae and don’t mind the synthesized trumpet sounds. They couldn’t get a trumpet, most likely. They paint an intricate tapestry of political philosophy in their song, “Babylon system fallin’ down” or religious exploration when they sing “Did he come to be a king? Oh no! He said no, don’t fight. Rasta have got the answer, I want to know why Jesus was born”. It’s so true, y’know? (Also their album Shark Sandwich got a two word-review…)

I’ve actually started to enjoy the Malawian music scene. It’s entirely home-grown. There’s no line that I can see between celebrity and normal guy. It’s literally about just grabbing a camera and going out to shoot some friends. It’s the same story with the shows on TV, the Soaps and such. Malawi TV is a lot of home movies and while it may be unbearably bad, it’s hard not to develop some fondness for the homemade feeling it gives you. The media here does not construct an unrealistic fantasy world, it’s entertainment that is true to the country itself, rough, homemade, low-budget and ultimately personal. You know when musicians talk about they 'good old days' when they didn't have much money, just dreams and before the music scene became so corporate? Those days are happening right now in Malawi. My friend Louis told me that producers use synthesizers a lot because there is not much access to real instruments which are unreasonably expensive anywhere you are. I'm actually starting to like the feel of the music. It's endearing and fun. Just not every night.