By Betty Ceesay
Sparklyn spoke about the perception of people about him and said “I take whatever people say or think about me lightly because I am already amazing and don’t need more than I am. Some people take me for a criminal and others think I am just rude which is because I proudly stand for the street which has already been painted dark and so I could not have expected anything different.
On the other hand, there are those who see me on a bright spot and think I have a different philosophy and so on but the overall importance is that I knows who I am and what I stand for”. The singer continued that whatever the case people will know what he stands for and who truly he is if they take time to read through the things he does. He claims to only stand for the good and betterment of society, for the children of those who judge him and paint him as bad.
The singer said that he is fighting to make the generation we live it bearable and he does not need to look a certain way before preaching what he believes in. Going further he said, “People from the ghetto don’t listen to the minister, Imam or Pastor because they feel like those people don’t know the pain they go through thus can’t relate. “I am from the ghetto” Skarklyn reveals and although I am moving forward, I will not disconnect myself from them because I know what I left there, and to be able to advocate for them, I need to stay connected with the current affairs. Again he says,
“There is so much talent in the ghetto” talent that could have been utilized for the betterment of our country but unfortunately nothing is been done for them and this is harming both the youths and the country” the singer concludes.
The singer explained the journey of becoming an artist in the Gambia as a sacrifice. He said that wanting to become an artist in the Gambia should be accompanied with the readiness to make sacrifices till the end. Little money is earned, support may be lacking and fame is not guaranteed.
According to Sparklyn, his coming into the industry was not for any of the above rather to bring changes he felt where necessary and so anything that comes along the way is received as a bonus and this is what differentiates him from other singers. Finally he said “I am not generating cash but I am generating love and my message is being heard”.
Sparklyn Black urged his fellow singers to be mindful of the lyrics they put on those tracks. The singer emphasized on that point saying “we live in a tiny community” and added that the Gambia is among the poor countries in the world and parents struggle to send their children to school thus if the music produced here is negatively consuming the young people, then the artists are misusing the funds of our country because the kids look up to them and equally imitate them whether we like it or not. The singer also expressed disgust on the dude music videos produced by his fellows. “It is the artists that dude these females because little was known about the hidden things in women but now the entertainment industry strip them, out naked through the lyrics we write and the songs we sing which most of the time is advocating to see women necked and so the women feel like they have to transform themselves to merge the lyrics of the songs they hear. The singer gave an example of a strategy that could help correct the ills of fashion saying that if twenty hottest artists in Africa produced songs advocating for women to dress in a modest way, (this could be a brand) it won’t take too long before people will start seeing changes on the mode of fashion for African women: it will become a trend and if any lady dresses in an inappropriate manner, she would appear outdated and this he said is an easy way to fix the problem of lack of reckless fashion styles. On the other hand the singer urged the government to help make music an industry after claiming that the Gambian music has not reached a stage where it could be called an industry. Nobody is paying anybody for the music they produce and so it is more like a black market thing for now.
Sparklyn has over twelve tracks on air all of which contains heavy messages drawn from societal dysfunctions.
Sparklyn Black claims that there is no educational background in Africa and as long as he is concerned, nobody is educated in Africa. The singer said education to his knowledge means nothing to close to what we have now and in his views, all schools should be closed and keys sent back to the slave masters. Africa will never be itself because the tool we are using to fight our battles is the enemy of progress yet this is what Africa uses every day to stand up when in actual sense it is why we are going down every day.
To throw more light on his views in the banking system of education, Sparklyn Black reveals that he is currently working on an album educating people on what we lose by using this type of educational system. To add on it, he says he is working on a master plan to request for the funds parents lose in taking their children to school because parents have been lied to believe that education is the key to life and this prompted poor parents to use the resources they could have put into better use to send their children to school and after 12 years of education, all they can do is read and write. Zero skills: we cannot repair a bulb, make a stool etc. 12 years he exclaimed, learning something that we could have known without sitting in the classroom. The singer said we only go to school to learn to communicate and this we could have achieved without wasting 12 years of our lives being in the classroom because he has seen people who read and write without spending so much time I the classroom. Sparklyn makes demands that our school fees should be refunded. Back in the school days he explains when a teacher asks his pupils what they wanted to become and one happened to say a Carpenter, he was laughed at while the one who says minister receives applause because the promise was that after so many years of education, good jobs, a good life and more was to be the reward but nothing is seen, people complete their studies and still stay jobless or obtain jobs that cannot solve half their problems therefore, something is wrong and he is ready to work towards correcting those wrongs.