TIME OUT My idea of a holiday? I’ll tell you. To sit in the corner of a really easy sofa, legs folded beneath me, eyes shut, listening to old music with my big brother, Che, who introduces every new song with, ‘Ah! Do you know who this is?’ Eyes shining, as he explains Bobby Benson, or Rex Lawson, or Fatai Rolling Dollar, or that guy that used to play the base for Fela; then jumps up and loosens his dreadlocks, whips it back till its tumbling down his shoulders, shuffles on one foot, wiggles his waist and hops unto the other. And I think to myself, ‘Mahn! This is heaven.’ Or to watch my father-in-law dance; after the long, impersonal journey home from work, to meet me with windows all open and the volume on my macbook turned up to the highest, how the tiredness drains away at the voice of Olaiya, how he points excitedly and screams ‘1959!’ when I start playing Sawale, then pretends there’s a woman in his arms. He says that’s how the old men danced in nightclubs in Ibadan. He says in those days the British hooked up rediffusion boxes to the front of people’s houses and sometimes Nat King Cole’s ‘Ay Cosita Linda’ would fill the streets. He says they had parties every Saturday at Our Lady of Fatima’s Grammer School Auchi and if they had to, would still walk all the way to Fugar for more. And when I played Rockin’ Robbin, one evening, I swear he did the shuffle. Ah! The conversations we have in the intoxicating fumes of music from another time – before Boko Haram, before Ebola, before HIV even. Imagine that? Did you know that Lagos was one of the early cities in the world where providing lighting through the use of electricity was tried out? And there was a time the postal service was so good you got mail in the village? True. I like to listen to them talk, head peppered with grey, wrinkles relaxing in the warm fire of memories. I can see it in their eyes. Yes. These people did not peek round the door of Independence with fear and trepidation, they came charging through, came charging down the laterite roads of history, with confidence and hope. And echoes of it – of that titillating spirit – lingers in the music still. And, sometimes, I will admit, when I get tired of the unrelenting commentary of my day – the relentless dissection of our pathologies, brilliant critiques, full of socio-political insights into how retarded and absurd we are, when I’m getting to my plateau, just short of that depressing feeling of helplessness, utter hopelessness, of being trapped on a run-away train bent on self-destruction – I plug in a pair of ear phones and listen to the mindless music of Tony One Week and his fellow kegites. Just because leaping across jagged rocks to the safety of a better future could also do with a drop of headiness. You know what I mean? A dash of inexplicable optimism. Getting up in the morning – in the middle of a total shit hole – and, for no reason whatsoever, feeling quite good about yourself and your prospects. You know what I mean? So, let’s go. ‘Obosi le le, Obosi le le, Obosi! Ayama le le, ayama le le, ayama!’ And even if I don’t know how to dance it, I just let my head roll from side to side, like I was out jogging with that sadistic man o’ war from my NYSC camp, who made us scream at the top of our lungs, ‘Who go tire? Na you go tire!’ Because, you see, for no fault of mine, I was born in a season of blood and uncertainty, but – my brother – I intend to live, to live as if I were immortal. And if that makes absolutely no sense to you, no yawa, just blame it on my frame of mind.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 19:49:04 +0000
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