They say you should write about what you know. The same is true in music. If you are looking for something honest and heartfelt, authentic and meaningful, then what better to write about than your own life. And whilst you could argue that most artists do this to a degree, most do it to a very superficial degree. A rapper singing about being happy because it’s payday or pop singer rejoicing in the early days of a love affair, one seemingly penned by Richard Curtis for his latest, interchangeable, Rom-Com are not what I am talking about here. (Both subjects I have been faced with in recent days.)
What we are talking about here are journeys, real life journeys, both physical and spiritual, and that is what lies at the heart of Marius Billgobenson’s latest release. Tribes in Mind tells of the pathways and decisions which took him from a Congolese youth to a man of the world, never forgetting where he came from and the country that made him. It runs on smooth jazz vibes and mellifluous pop structures, lush banks of vocal harmonies and a considered and engaging lyrical delivery.
The world is a small place, in many ways getting smaller by the day and people are less and less tied to the culture of their birth and more and more regarded as global citizens but it always pays to remember your roots and carry your own tribe around with you in your own mind. But it also begs the question of where home lies. Are we the product of where we are from or where we are currently at? Who knew that pop music could be this eloquent or indeed, this elegant?
[…] people’s encounters with the music which lies at the more extreme end of the spectrum. Marius Billgobenson makes music about as far away from that as you can get and still be loosely in the same […]