Latest revision - July 5, 2023
This is Part II of a three part pancocojams series that showcases the Nigerian song "Saro" by Niniola.
This post showcases Niniola's video "Saro" and provides information about Niniola and her music, with a focus on her song "Saro".
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/02/nigerian-singer-niniola-saro-official.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. Part I showcases the official YouTube video of this song and presents its Yoruba lyrics with an English translation.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/02/some-examples-of-african-american.html Part III presents examples of comments from the discussion thread for the official YouTube video of Niniola's song "Saro" that include African American Vernacular English.****
The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Niniola and thanks to all those who are associated with this video. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.
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SHOWCASE VIDEO: NINIOLA SARO (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
OfficialNiniola, Jan 4, 2018
-snip-
Here's a comment exchange from the discussion thread for this video:
Tajah Lawrence, 2019
"I loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee this song. But what does "Saro" mean?"
**
REPLY
blazinghot99, 2019
"Tajah Lawrence Saro is a name. She is talking about her lover...how much she loves and misses him."
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INFORMATION ABOUT NIGERIAN SINGER NINIOLA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niniola
"Niniola Apata (born 15 December 1986),[1]Professionally known as Niniola, is a Nigerian singer and songwriter.[2] She participated in the sixth season of Project Fame West Africa in 2013.[3] After releasing her debut single "Ibadi", she was nominated for Most Promising Act to Watch at the 2015 Nigeria Entertainment Awards.[4]
[...]
Career
Niniola participated in several social activities and competitions while attending secondary school.[5] She finished third runner-up in the sixth season of Project Fame West Africa.[6] During the competition, she performed a live rendition of "Limpopo" with Kcee, and also performed her Cobhams Asuquo-produced composition "Itura". She has cited Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, The Cranberries, Madonna, Beyoncé and Angelique Kidjo as her key musical influences
[...]
In 2017 Niniola went on to release another single titled MARADONA which went on to become a global hit.[11] MARADONA enjoyed a good 13 weeks on the South African charts and was at the No.1 spot for over 6 weeks.[12] The song MARADONA earned Niniola a BET Awards and SAMA nomination. [13][14] Since then Niniola has gone on to receive nods from International heavy weights like Drake, Timbaland and others.[15][16]
In 2019 elements of her single MARADONA were sampled on the LION KING "THE GIFT album by BEYONCE on the track FIND YOUR WAY BACK as she also appeared as a songwriter and composer of the song, which has gone on to get a Grammy nomination.[17]”...
-snip-
According to https://www.nairaland.com/1288918/traditional-yoruba-names-meanings/3, "niniola" means 'a child that brings wealth'.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2017/10/yoruba-nigerian-names-with-ola-prefix.html for the 2017 pancocojams post entitled Yoruba (Nigerian) Names With Ola Prefix Or Suffix (Adapted From a 2013 Nairaland.com Discussion Thread)
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EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE ABOUT NINIOLA'S SONGS
From https://www.pulse.ng/entertainment/music/niniola-the-hidden-meaning-behind-her-hit-songs/z1d9rp6 Niniola: The hidden meaning behind her hit songs
EHIS OHUNYON 05/24/2018
..."Niniola has been saying a lot in her songs, from sexual innuendos to an overtone of carrying out the act, perfectly masked in her chosen language of expression and sometimes there is a need to strip the song bare to understand the out of view messages.
[...]
Artistry
Niniola describes her style of music as Afro-house, a blend of Afrobeat and house music.[18] Niniola's lyrics are mostly written in Yoruba. In an online interview with Gbolahan Adeyemi of TalkGlitz Media, Niniola said the Yoruba language makes her song's delivery beautiful.”...
Niniola's This is Me album is a 13 track body of work delivered in a mix of English and Yoruba language, thriving on short verses and melodious hooks, assisted by Sarz's outrageous beats.
The album had hit singles like Maradona, Sicker, Magun and more, but perhaps distracted not just by the beauty of her voice, many including the music industry's gate-keepers, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) get lost in the moment and never really take time to understand the real message of her songs, that are usually armed with expressive sensuality and sexuality.
[...]
Niniola knows that sex sells, and this she is clearly selling without inhibitions, and even though she is not the first to latch on our human cravings in promoting her songs, she is perhaps the best at openly concealing it.
For all the good that the English language does, it is limiting in camouflaging and accurate description when it involves art, so for Niniola, the Yoruba language is the handy tool for hiding clues and euphemisms in her lyrics, keeping the true meaning far from the untrained ear.
Niniola is a very talented and soulful singer, this she has shown in singles like Akara Oyinbo and Saro, but the universal truth of the music industry is that sex sells and she has found her pathway to packaging it right.”...
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EXCERPT FROM ARTICLE ABOUT NINIOLA'S SONG "SARO"
From https://thenativemag.com/music/best-new-music-saro-niniola-album-debut/ "BEST NEW MUSIC: NINIOLA’S “SARO” IS A SWEET WAR CRY SOLD AS AN ENERGETIC LOVE SONG" November 1, 2017 By Toye Sokunbi
..."Though primarily set on Afro-house, This Is Me threads around traditional R&B, Afropop and African Folk music amongst other divergent sounds, to converge at the wispiness of Niniola’s feather-light vocals and her poetry-infused songwriting. Niniola naturally uses a combination of Afropop’s genre-blending and electronic experimentations, thus it’s not hard to imagine an artist that constantly seeks inspiration from so far and wide will eventually lose the plot somewhere in the mix. Yet, with a tracklist of expertly composed energetic Afro-house songs, her long-awaited debut might as well be one of the most sonically cohesive projects of the year.
Like many tracks on This Is Me—however, inverted and (or) layered with Niniola’s pseudo-sexual references—“Saro” also tells a love story, it’s brilliance, however, is in presentation. Sarz who has been a complementing Robin to Niniola’s Batman for the past two years is credited for the purposefully bass-heavy percussive production on “Saro”. The track itself is recorded like a pulsating war cry, an energetic tribute—sort of—to freedom era music. Some of this symbolism surfaces when Niniola calls for solidarity, clamours for fire and pays homage to Fela’s Kalakuta Republic. It is noteworthy to mention here that one of reasons sampling is finicky in this part of the world is due to the low scale for inventiveness. Niniola’s “Saro” boasts of reaching for nostalgic elements without petering modern ideas at the salacious altar of lyrical sampling, a pitfall even her more celebrated contemporaries could not resist on “Sweet Love” by Wizkid, or “IF” and “Fall” by Davido.
Niniola has been self-proclaiming herself as the queen of Afro-house for a minute now, and “Saro” is a highlight of peak mastery and craftsmanship needed to validate such title/crown."...
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This concludes Part II of this three part pancocojams series.
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