Practising politics is easier than music -Kenny Saint Best

Kenny Saint Best has been doing what she loves best in the last 16 years - music. She started when she was Kenny Saint Brown and she had to drop Brown and replaced it with Best when her marriage crashed.

This mother of two does a whole lot. Aside from being a musician, she is a politician, technocrat, youth coach, who is interested in the economic development of Nigerian youths.

When she ventured into politics with the intention to serve and give more attention to the youth, she did so with all her heart. She was asked if she would have been able to do that. In other words, wouldn’t she find politics too difficult to handle?

“Music is more difficult to practise than politics. I’m serious about this. It may just be the player that wants to outplay the contender which of course is not the best way to play politics,” she said.

Buttressing her point, she described music as spiritual.

“But music is spiritual, you are dealing with spirits you don’t see or know. They come and serve you songs. Sure, you are being served by the spirits that are higher than you. And sometimes, you need to position yourself, your mind has to be calm, you have to be heartbroken to be able to bring out some good songs. For instance, for me to sing the song like ‘Alaye’, I had to be down there in the pit. I had to ask for death and death would not come. I had to overcome death and then because another spirit would come and serve me life through songs. As I sing the songs, strength had to come back to me. Before Fela called himself Anikulapo Kuti, he was a Ramsome Kuti. Michael Jackson had to go to the burial ground to contact the power of the dead for him to do ‘Thriller’. All those things that were pictured in the video, you think they were just make-up? No! It was a spirit that served him. Eventually, he looked like a ghost and he died,” she revealed.

Kenny emphasised that such spirits are not seen.

“With music, you are dealing with a spirit you don’t see. It would overpower you and then for you to be able to rule over it, you have to overpower it. But it gives you detection. It tells you how to do things and when you can’t do it like that, then it starts to trouble you. When you want more fame, some have to go and touch things. This means that the seen is touching the unseen.

Even in America, they are saying the Luminati. It’s the higher spirit. Music is highly deadly and highly spiritual. So, you have to overpower and overcome the spirit of music. There are two lives to music - the beginning life and the second life. A lot of people don’t survive the first life of music. I have seen many of my colleagues, they were able to push music to a level and it will be asking for a higher thing from you. It is demanding for a higher strength and the ability to be able to withstand it is not easy. It would break you and you become broke. Go and ask idris Abdulkarim, go and ask people that are into music. It has to break you.

It is either you just wash your hands and say, ‘music I’m handing off from you, I have tried and I’m tired’.  Because at times you even put your money into it and it doesn’t come back, she said.

Kenny also said that such higher spirits have the tendency of keeping you awake at nights. “Then you are dealing with that spirit that would not let you sleep. It keeps you awake and be serving you music at nights. You are awake and you are writing songs down. Go and see some musicians; they can attest to what I’m saying by their looks. That is why people say they are abstract, they are not normal and for some, they have to be permanently on weed because it’s easier for them that way,” she disclosed.

Has she experienced these, you may ask!

“Yes, I have been there for 16 years. I have been able to have my challenges. It came through marriage, blackmail, people saying I can’t do it, pointing at me and saying who are you by the way? She is just Kenny Ogungbe’s younger sister, they are just helping her. But I'm able to stand the heat, to prove to the whole world that music called and equipped me. I have survived it. I'm a musician and I'm happy to be one.

“Give me the stage anywhere and I will kill it. I would perform and make you dance until you forget your sorrow. I can call the spirit of music down and it blesses you and use music to bring the glory of God down upon humanity. My connection to life is music and that is why I can’t even leave it and opt for something else. It is another service; you must serve people with music. It is not the kind of music that brings attention to yourself. Such music destroys.

“When you begin to sing and you are sexy in your songs, it can destroy you. If you doubt this, go and ask Janet Jackson. Then when you sing that you are high’ in your songs, that also can destroy, because you want to be getting higher and higher. If you doubt this go and ask Whitney Houston. But if you leave the purity of music as it is, it continues to serve you even at the time of your challenges.

“You just hold on to God, cry to God. Remember crying is a song, especially when you are wailing. That was why the South Africans then, when they wailed and without even saying anything, they were hearing songs from somewhere because of their suffering and apartheid that was put upon them. So, music can just be a wailing. You just move into it and you touch the spirit of music,” she emphasised.  

By ADAEZE AMOS