Swings and roundabouts of creation | Juwon Ogungbe

Content creation feels like a vocation for some people. There must have been other ways of describing this activity in the past, and the aforementioned term is probably winging its way towards obsolescence, but we need words to label the things we do.

In my early years of adulthood, musicians used to put calls in classified sections of music papers. A catching phrase of the time was the term ‘ must have image’. In other words, emerging musicians of that time were expected to include the skills of a stylist in their toolkits and have created looks for themselves that were in keeping with the trends of the era.

Nowadays, to keep up with the joneses, we are expected to be creative directors, since we are functioning in an era full of social media platforms. The situation is what it is.

Occasionally, one comes across something droll, such as a mega successful artiste who still uses cassette players to listen to demo recordings and similar things. Some might regard such moments as signs of being old fashioned, past it or being ‘ fit for the knacker’s yard’.

In actual fact, it doesn’t make any difference. Anyone who has been around long enough comes to realise that the tools of the trade only last for limited periods of time. I have an interesting range of gadgets at home that no one seems to use anymore. They were apparently of the utmost importance, once upon a time.

Originally published at https://juwonogungbe.com on September 30, 2020.