How Music Helped Me Grow Up by Yemi Abiade

Published in Issue 1 | May 2017

Change is the best word to describe my history with music. I have gone through various points in life where my musical interests have shape shifted and camouflaged according to the trends of the times. I’ve jumped on bandwagons ranging from Ja Rule’s early 2000s dominance (he really was the king) to UK Funky, enjoying the highlights and disregarding the crappier bits. Throughout my 25 years music has produced frustration, anger, sadness and straight up tear-your-hair-out moments. It probably even amounts to 1/3 of my make up as a human being and has enraged, saddened and enlightened me about this thing we call life. It’s kind of hard to explain, but music has always been such a contentious topic for me and those around me – in the barbershop, on the roads, with family. Being such a vital aspect for many people throughout history, we now find ourselves in a world where music is being re-emphasised as a platform for change, as it has been for decades.

For as long as I can remember my parents played Afrobeat and reggae in the house, especially on Sundays when the sounds of Bob Marley, Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade would ring around the corridors. Those were legends who preached love, happiness and defiance, a coping mechanism for my parents who had to confront the racial tension engulfing Britain when they arrived from Nigeria in the 1980s. Knowing what I know now about my parents, that form of music makes every bit of sense, because it gave them hope and kept their spirits up at a time when everything was against them. That music kept them sane whilst fighting off discrimination and intolerance; it meant music would always be a major player in my life.

Having an older brother and sister, I was formally introduced to messages that deviated far from my parent’s tastes. Both hard-core hip-hop connoisseurs, I became more used to hearing Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes on full blast. The Box and MTV Base were in heavy rotation and while I was too young to understand the messages, the many visuals had me hooked, and my siblings’ interests were ingrained in my impressionable mind. Anything that wasn’t hip-hop wasn’t worth listening to. Now, while the rappers weren’t necessarily preaching the same messages as the music my parents listened to, the way in which they expressed themselves was contemporary, daring, and enough to make me a true fan of the art.

Growing into my teens this fandom had not yet subsided, and was amplified with the birth of grime. The music, from the likes of Kano, Dizzee Rascal and Lethal Bizzle, was hyper masculine and intimidating – seeing a 20-man strong gang on the road would scare most people – and yet it made me want to be the same, despite being a scrawny hormonal mess. But that is the beauty of music sometimes; you get to live vicariously through your favourite artists as they do things you could only imagine. From then, grime was my thing, because it gave a real voice to young boys and girls like me who hadn’t had one until that point. But admittedly I was still hanging off the coattails of my brother and sister. When they went off to university I was left to my own devices and completely flip-flopped my agenda. 

I became a music historian, at age sixteen, listening to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Miles Davis. This was because my white friends told me to. It was just as much about wanting to know why these artists are so great as it was for a young black kid trying to fit into a world that was featuring more white faces. Music tends to do that for many young kids of colour – a method for social integration and, perhaps, assimilation, but that is indicative of the world we live in. It was part of a wider mission of mine to appear less intimidating to my white counterparts, to tone down my blackness for the sake of the masses, and music was a good place to start. Despite the mission however, I felt I had left hip-hop and the tastes of my parents behind for the sake of social acceptance, compromising who I was and how I was raised. Was I subverting the message they had taken in to not be a social outcast? This personal conflict would persist for a hot minute, but teenagers can be dramatic, can’t they? In the end, I decided I liked the music I was listening to and it was only natural to branch out, even if I had these inner demons. 

The demons were calling me a bounty, that I was white for listening to white music, that I was losing myself by coalescing with this need to expand my tastes. My brother must have had some kind of sixth sense, or maybe the conflict was all over my face, because one day, when we were in my mum’s car talking about music, he advised me to branch out; that there is more to life than Skepta. It was the affirmation I needed; I had always seen my brother as my role model, so his advice was biblical to me. Telling me to listen to all kinds of music was the green light, and the demons had been vanquished. It was finally ok. 

As the years progressed and I began to meet different types of people with expansive tastes, I began to learn that genres of music were not mutually exclusive – you could like grime and thrash metal, or hip-hop and folk rock, and have a stronger appreciation for what you are listening to. You don’t have to ‘sell out’ to appreciate music; you can acknowledge the greatness of what is out there and engage with it. I am now very happy to have taken a step back from what I was used to and to be charting unknown territory. Just as music brought up a confused young black boy wanting to know his place in the world, it has also had a hand in consolidating his values, personality and general outlook on life. 

I can now happily say that I appreciate all forms of music. A massive music head, if you will. This may sound like I’m sitting on the biggest fence but it is the result of living life. Each musical stage of my 25 years has served its purpose and it becomes more evident that I was never meant to walk on one linear path. Music, much like the world, is too big for that. Eventually, you break down the barriers set upon you, even though mine were unintentional, and you make your own mind up. That is exactly what listening to music has taught me. 

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and bump to some Joy Division.