By Eromo Egbejule*
[caption id="attachment_15270" align="alignleft" width="290"] Photo: Lauryn Hill Lauryn Hill[/caption]
There are a million ways to end a year on a good note and attending a Lauryn Hill concert has to be in the top bracket of that list.
Long before Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea began to dominate the rap scene and our TV screens with their butt-flavoured hiphop videos, there was Ms. Hill. A pioneer of today's feminist movement, she was the complete Hollywood package as she could sing, rap, dance and act. Her flow is still hailed as one of the best around and her Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album is one of the best hiphop albums of all time.
It was from this album and her projects with The Fugees that she dished out greatness at Independence Square, Accra, venue of the second annual Afrobeats Big Weekend Festival. Her first ever performace in the sub-region of West Africa, it was quite a blast.
The festival was three days of sparks, running from Friday, December 12 to Sunday, December 14. A host of local performers including Sarkodie, E.L., Efya, Samini and more performed in the days preceding the grand finale. On the D-day itself, the show started late, beginning well after midnight but the beautiful performances thereafter from Stonebwouy, Miz Vee and the eccentric Wanlov the Kubolor more than made up for the delay. They kept the crowd singing, dancing and gyrating without so much as a moment for rest.
When Ms. Hill took to the stage a little later to lead her band, it was unfettered greatness that she splashed from the stage to downtown. Beginning with a powerful rendition of her hit, Everything is Everything, she delivered a masterpiece - a series of acoustic remakes of all her solo hits and those as a member of the Fugees. She also performed a number of songs from the never-ending catalogue of reggae legend, Bob Marley with a guitar as the crowd jumped and thumped happily to the singing of his (unofficial) daughter-in-law. The legendary singer was in action for well over an hour, with none of her flow, delivery and vocal process showing signs of being diminished as a result of her unnecessarily long hiatus from "the game".
It was easy from the standpoint of a fan to be disappointed and even angry at Hill for not releasing any new music in recent times, given that the quality of contemporary music is calibrated in the doldrums of the industry. Performances like this only serve to further accentuate what the world has been missing and Ms. Hill will do well to arrest our appetite with at least a mixtape in 2015.
*Source This Day/Allafrica .The author who was recently in Accra for the concert, writes from Lagos]]>
