By Nimusiima
Maybe I am a late comer (something I intend to outgrow and bury in 2015) because, wait, how did Askali by Afrie pass me by without any knowledge about it? If there is a song that will tickle your insides, shoo you to bliss city and reinvigorate your taste in World Music, then it should be Askali. Forget the corny name. Don’t corny names make the most creative of arts? I am not in the moods to argue. Let me digress.
There is the way this little girl grips your attention with her melodic, vibrant, sweet and bewitching vocals. She teases you with her captivating lyrics. She makes you feed from her palms. She holds you captive from the time you hit play and before you know it, you capture yourself falling in a bottomless pit of musical awesomeness and only God can pull you out. It is a terribly good song. And to even call it a good song might come off as an understatement. I have listened to the acoustic version. I have watched Afrie sing it on stage and it hasn’t left me the same again. It caged me. It robbed me of my conflicts and struggles. It notified me that the apocalypse, indeed, didn’t wipe out music out of the world; there is still good music floating away unnoticed. Most especially the acoustic version that tends to pluck you off the face of the earth and throws you in the galaxy where you will wander aimlessly, but wallow in unbridled delight. It is a musical fountain of sort that quenches your burning thirst because, come on, the world is short of good music.
Askali, basically, is a pile of lamentations of a lover begging his/her better half to find an acre of space in her heart where he/she will guard it and be an askali of sort. Love can make you think things, but they are all forgiven because love is love and nothing else. Now, capture all that seemingly drivel of love and fuse it into a song and let it be sang by a talented Afrie, what do you get? A masterpiece!
Listen to the song below: