The Music Deal (Episode 1)

            Kofo is a young aspiring musician. He meets Blessing, a 100 level student of the University of Ibadan at a musical concert featuring 2face Idibia. It was love (or was it lust) at first sight. It even gets better when Blessing claims she has contact with some important people in the music industry. People who would propel Kofo's music career into the international scene.

What happens to Kofo's aspirations and how did it affect his relationship with Blessing? Enjoy this interesting tale of human desires and exploitation. 
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Music, music, music. I am a sucker for music and even more so when I was younger. When I was in secondary school, I was inspired by P-Square. I wanted to be like them except that I had no twin brother, I was only me. I also liked musicians like Tony Tetuila and Idris Abdulkareem. I found my final inspiration in 2face Idibia. He was a one-man battalion like me and I thought we had many similar physical traits.

In my secondary school days, I co-founded a music group with two of my friends, Oluwole and Munir. We called ourselves The Sweet Cymbals. We did many performances in school even though most of them were in front of our classmates or worse, juniors.

The Music Deal 1

The only payment our classmates could make for our stress was clap and they were even stingy with it. Sometimes we put on some great performances – we thought so – and we thought it deserved a standing ovation but then these guys could only manage to give us a standing ovation if their seats became too hot.

They reserved their standing ovations for few selected people and not great performances. The school principal could make a rubbish speech and they would give him a standing ovation at the end of it. On those occasions – when our vocal cords were hurting – we just kept a smile on our faces even though we were cursing them for being unappreciative bastards.

It was even worse with our juniors because they would put on a sycophantic show just to make sure they offended no senior. They would laugh and clap even when we knew our music was boring. All in all, we never got accurate assessments when we were in secondary school. I still preferred the performance in front of our classmates because I believe harsh criticism is more beneficial to the development of the work of art than unwarranted praise.

We had the opportunity to perform thrice in front of the whole school during our social days which came up once in a term. We were delighted to have these performances because they made us feel important. We thought we were going to be the next big music group just like thousands of music groups in other schools were also thinking. We were ignorant of the odds though.

Reality dawned on us when after our senior school leaving examinations and unified matriculation examination, I got admission into LAUTECH, Oluwole into U. I. and Munir into O. A. U. We had no music group anymore. How do you make a non-existent entity big?

After about four months in school for my first semester, I was relieved to finally go home for my holidays. I had made new friends in my new school but I was itching to see my old friends. I had called Munir if he was going to be in Ibadan and I was happy to hear that their vacation was a week after ours. Oluwole was never going to be a problem since his university is in Ibadan. I would see many other friends who had not seen me for four months. I was surprised to see Tayo, one of my friends at home, at LAUTECH. He was the only friend I had on the university campus that wasn’t new.

When I got home, my mother was happy to see me. She had missed me and I had missed her too especially her nagging. She asked me many questions about my first semester in the university. I knew she really cared about me but another part of me thought she was looking for something to nag me about. I answered most of her questions truthfully except the parts where I either had to leave out or sugar-coat to the point of distorting facts.

To be continued...
Read episode two HERE