Simi Woman Review: Afrobeats highlighting discriminations that women face
Simi is not a musician who does cheap music. Judging from the amount of quality music she puts out. Rejecting to write about her music at cillacritic is a very hard task because most of her music oozes sense and class. Also the diversity and variety in her genre selection is always spot on as she takes Nigerians and the world in different sound direction. Whether it is Ballad, Soul, RnB, Afrobeats and Afropop, Simi is good to go.
Her new single is one that I did not really lay my hands on quickly. But my attention was drawn to it by the social media challenge which it brought with it. Women have always been termed second class citizen for as long as I can remember. Even Jazz/Soul music genius in the person of James Brown made a song and titled it: “it Men’s world”. What Simi does with her new music is to highlight the struggles of an average woman on planet earth. She highlights the criticism and discrimination women face because of their gender.
THE MESSAGE
As stated in the above paragraph, Simi makes a songs that highlights the sufferings that women face. Simi opens the song lamenting that women have suffered. She claims that men do not like women and even women do not like themselves. According to her if a woman was well physically built and beautiful, she will be criticized and if she lacks in that aspect, she will also be criticized and sidelined.
The song verse has Simi sound sarcastic while making her point. The gospel of women submission to their husband is frequently preached that she wonders if the submission was because women have a lifelong assignment. Stating that this Gospel of submission is always preached while neglecting the suffering and intimidations women face.
Furthermore, Simi shade light on the problems of financially independent women. According to her, if a woman is financially independent, she is criticized as not being a woman probably because she cannot be managed as a result of her wealth. In same the same way, if she is not financially independent they classify as not being a woman because she cannot take care of herself.
In summary, she laments the struggles of a women trying to find a balance in a world that its opinions are stack up against the female gender.
THE PRODUCTION
In case the world is confused about what an original Afrobeats is; Simi and her team of producers did justice to that with this song. The intro is an extraction from Fela’s Zombie single, while some other extracts are from some his most popular lyrics which are “water” and “suffer on earth and enjoy in heaven”.
The percussion are pure Afrobeats drumlines with the ever present shekere, the bongo and conga interplay with a steady play of the Tony Allen Drum kit sound. Although there are elements of contemporary sounds to it in terms of the harmony grand piano keys; the song was created with at least 80% Afrobeats flavour with the presence of the horn interludes and solos which are used extensively in the song.
The Arrangement of the song is also something to talk about when talking of Afrobeats. The addition of interludes, refrains and extensive intro and outro to allow for instrumental solo; gives it that Jazz feel which Afrobeats originally is.
