William Onyeabor's Anything You Sow

I've given myself the task of writing about one song a week for 2024 because, well, I think it'd be fun.

William Onyeabor's Anything You Sow

1985, the same year William Onyeabor's "Anything You Sow" was released, began with the Lebanese hostage crisis, pedalled into the bombing of Air India Flight 182 by Sikh terrorists, and ended with the deaths of more than 20,000 people in Colombia from the eruption of a volcano. Oh, then there was the ongoing starvation of the Ethiopian people that had begun two years back, whose photos can still cause despair on the human condition today. It's hard not to think these events, in this miserable year, influenced Onyeabor, who believed, earnestly, in his song "This Kind of World" that the world's advanced nations should help the rest of the world.

"Anything You Sow" would also be his last album. Onyeabor would become a born-again Christian and disavow his music. Right before his death in 2017, he said "I only create music that will help the world." An odd take for sure, but the other way to look at it is that he has ridiculously high expectations for himself. This supremely gifted electronic musician, perhaps one of the greatest, felt melancholy all of his life, starting from 1977's "Crashes in Love". The beginning track, "Something You Will Never Forget", reminds its listeners of their mortality, despite their wealth. "Heaven and Hell", a highlight in his oeuvre, exhorts people to be good lest they be cursed for their evil. Belying this fundamental sadness are some of the sweetest romantic songs put to synth, as "Love Me Now" on "Tomorrow" (1979) and the titular "Great Lover" (1981).

For whatever reason, dance music brings out the idealism in people. As Gil-Scott Heron recounts, jazz music was once "ass music", played in the ghetto. Techno's Belleville Three sought utopia within it. Alas, I should have touched on this subject after talking about Bladee's music. For Onyeabor, music was capable of containing the literal heaven and hell in his heart; his breakout song - breaking out 35 years after its release! - "Fantastic Man", which has been used to promo the tenth season of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and in a 2017 commercial for the iPhone 7, contains adoration for his lover and insecurity concerning how his lover sees him. "When The Going is Smooth & Good", a staple of Dan Snaith's, otherwise Caribou's, sets, is his most bitter song, about the betrayal of his friends. It's also great rave music. I imagine - this is speculation - Onyeabor may have had great trouble with his business at the time, so I don't think the danceability conveys any optimism. But he certainly finds humor in his reversal of fortune.

What's surprising about Onyeabor's idealism is how pragmatic it is. He felt no need to construct worlds, but he did feel a need to ask other people to simply be good to one another; for lovers, to be faithful to one another. It's almost as if he is saying, through his incredible melodic music, that this too is hard, and requires the maintenance of greater forces than ourselves. Music certainly seemed to act the role of exorcism for Onyeabor; his synths make his pain easier to digest.

I would watch a documentary, however long, to understand how he constructed his music. I'd love to know the machines he used, how he assembled his back-up singers and, most importantly, how he composed them. The one-minute intro to "Great Lover", containing, I think, two synth tracks with one drum track, is beatific, presaging the joy and nervousness that comes from loving someone so greatly. I literally can't put into words how perfectly it conveys the intensity of Onyeabor's passion and his genuine belief in love. Then there's the intro to "Heaven and Hell", containing a real drum and what sounds like a real band, which conveys perfectly Onyeabor's idea of a white and beautiful and just heaven, through the synth shimmering like the luminous heavens and the horns resembling the trumpets of angels. "Love Me Now", from "Tomorrow", begins silently and slowly, with that repeated, chippy riff by the synth, a relatively muted intro compared to his other songs which means the man fully knows what he's doing.

Which gets to the topic of the intro to "Anything You Sow", the song under discussion: I don't know how he did this. This is the song that tail-ends Noisey's excellent documentary on Onyeabor, which introduced me to him. The intro has three important tracks to pay attention. There is a "wheezing" track, which sounds like the faint whistle of a train. There's the helicoptering track, which sounds more like an instrument i.e. the riff on a synth. Then there's the last track that sounds most like the twang of a guitar, though if it really did come from a guitar it is the muddiest, most filtered guitar I've heard, where the strings sound more like springs. I legitimately have no idea how Onyeabor created these tracks (not that I'm much of a musician anyway). Like "Heaven and Hell", the juxtaposition of these tracks, along the chorus of singers, depict Onyeabor's idea of heaven, but rather a going to heaven, over an actual depiction of the place itself. This interpretation is crucial to the song, as we shall see.

Onyeabor's introduction is almost biblical:

One early morning, I prayed to my God in heaven,
And I asked God, Why do we suffer in this world?
My God said to me, My son, listen well:

his voice steeped in melancholy. Or, I'm mistaking woe in his accent.

Then the following lines:

If you plant suffer, expect to suffer during your harvest, my son,
If you sow harm, expect harm during your harvest, my child,
If you plant trouble, expect trouble during your harvest, my son,
If you sow goodness, expect goodness during your harvest, my child,

except... those aren't the lines. These are my favorite misheard lines, right up there with Taylor's "You come around in the Arbor Falls" in "State of Grace". I always thought Onyeabor's accent made him pronounce the "h" in "harm" as "y", which interpretation I chose because it seemed cooler (truthfully, more, that by giving "harm" a meaty "y" onset he emphasized the actual harm inflicted). No, the actual lyrics make more sense:

If you plant cassava, expect cassava during your harvest, my son,
If you sow yams, expect yams during your harvest, my child,

so I'm an idiot. (It took me to this essay to realize this, which meant I was ignorant for about a decade.) Neverminding my misinterpretation, for anyone familiar with the Bible, Onyeabor is likely referencing several sermons of Christ, possibly the Parable of the Sower, possibly the Parable of the Growing Seed, possibly something else because Jesus talked a lot about plants (more of a horticulturist than a carpenter). You can, of course, interpret anything out of the Bible, but Onyeabor's interpretation is the plainest one and the one most people would take: do unto others as you would want them to you. It's certainly not "eye for an eye"; Onyeabor's interpretation leaves out any notion of vengeance.

Onyeabor ties these lessons in one neat bow: "Anything you sow, you will reap during your harvest, my people." Here is advice and prayer at the same time: he is begging people to do good unto one another, but he knows the immense difficulty it takes to grow the goodness in other people. His is prayer steeped in despair as he looks at the destructive state of the world. But if he felt there were no reason to be hopeful, he wouldn't be offering advice. Thus the nuance in Onyeabor's message lies in the wavering in his belief in his God's omnipotence and whether the world can actually fix itself. His reliance on the imagery of Christianity is the perfect demonstration of that, where the actual son of God (perhaps I should put "son of God" in quotations) is the reconciliation between the spirit of God and his relationship to the flesh of mankind.

The remainder of the song after the lyrics is an extended outro of approximately five minutes (so the final ratio is 3:5 of lyrics to music), beginning with a sole horn inviting the audience to leave the bloody earth humans have created, joined later by other horns, before diminishing again. As a note, that "helicoptering" synth fades when that horn starts, and returns again shortly after the horns leave the composition. Around the 5-minute mark the horn returns but in an even more baleful tone, as the process of transcension is completed. But I never find it a sad song; the song still fulfills the function of all of Onyeabor's music, which is to make people dance. It's wise to remember that, for those believing in an afterlife, even though transitioning involves death, that same death of the body gets them closer to their maker who is decidedly made of spirit or light or whatever handwaved substance justifies human sentience.

It's a bittersweet song surely, and it's my favorite in his oeuvre. Onyeabor had been full of doubts, and this is the one doubt that could never be assuaged - friends might come back, lovers may be reconciled, but men may never stop hurting one another. He never let those fears enter in their entirety into the music, and instead, through "Anything You Sow", transfigured it into a soothing song for those who felt the same hopelessness as he did, the same hopelessness we might honestly feel now. It's telling that "Anything We Sow" is succeeded by "Everyday", his true last song, an upbeat, heart-racing track where Onyeabor recognizes "Every day, you keep on telling me / you're very much in love" and admits "Verily, verily, verily, verily I say unto you / you are my only beloved one", feeling the unconditional love that Christ has for humanity upon the object of his affection, the truest and purest form of love. Whether we believe it or not matters little: his conviction alone convinces, that love can be so purifying as to dispel the evils of mankind and that love so intense and strong can actually be felt. Again, whether we can believe in these sentiments or not, we should accept his naivete, and make the attempt to believe ourselves, for there are few acts as brave as loving so openly and so passionately.