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It looks likes the pretty songstress, Irene Logan is bent on satisfying the whole nation by singing a song at least in all the major languages. To my surprise, she’s doing it and doing it quiet well. It begun with the smash hit -  “Runaway”, which

was mostly done in twi, and continued with her tehno/disco-kpalogo number-“ Keep playing the music” , predominantly Ga, and now she’s here with another this one she calls “Kabilla”, which she does in hausa.

I would categories Kabillo as an Afro Soul song. Done in three and a half minutes, the song begins with the heavy sound of grand piano chords which introduce Irene’s voice. I can not go on without mentioning that the texture of Irene’s voice in the first two lines is incredible. Though it is soft and windy, its sweetness and smoothness immediately calls the attention of anyone who knows the sound of “gooood” music. That is not to say that the other parts of the song are not sung well, no! very far from that, but as you might know, the very beginning of a song is very essential to how it is judged.  After Irene has come In to sing the chorus, there’s an interesting one bar hook done by heavy voices which changes the atmosphere of the song and brings a Zulu feel to the listener. Then comes the first and only verse of the song.

About the content of the song, I feel Irene and her lynx crew could have done better. I think there should have been at least a second verse. Or Irene is there another verse? If there is, then I could not notice, probably because the structure of the song is not the usual 2 verse, coda style of Rnb/soul songs. But even if there isn’t a second verse, there’s no law which says there should be two verses in every song. The structure of this song adds to its uniqueness, I guess.

After the verse, the chorus and hook are repeated a couple of times, and the song ended gracefully with Irene’s voice.

I can pass very little comments about the lyrics since I speak no Hausa. But listening to the so-called English version which still carries a lot of Hausa, I hear Irene lamenting to his lover that they’ve come to far to let their fear put them apart. So I guess its about a lady crying over love she thinks she’s about to loose.

 About the instrumentation, If they wanted to do something very African, then I feel they could do a lot better if they would look outside their own “white” box.

All in all, I think it is another brilliant effort by Irene. It falls in the class of those songs usually done by Angelique kidjo and the late Brenda fasie that wins hearts all over the continent and around the music-loving Globe. But it Kabillo would get to these heights, it depends on three things; marketing, marketing and marketing. Not just marketing but a world market centered strategy.