It's my blog, and I can post what I want to...

A jam session I had over at a DJ's house with some old Afu-Ra and Nas got me on some golden oldies hip-hop thing today. Maybe I should have named this post Reasons Why I Don't Listen to the Radio Anymore.

I get a lot of side-eye from folks because I don't funk with a lot of Nigerian singers/rappers. Here's the thing - when you're into real lyricists (None of that Soulja Boy isht) you can't go back to listening to majority of the new stuff out there parading as rap. I don't do affirmative action you're-Nigerian-so-I'll-buy-your-s***-anyway mess. If I think you're wack or otherwise below par, I couldn't be bothered with listening to any nonsense you spew on your record. I'll dance to that mess in the club, but don't get it twisted - I don't discriminate much after a few drinks.

Even then, there's some songs that'll sober me up quick.

Staring into the crystal ball

From Okot p'Bitek's, one of my favorite writers, has an essay titled "Indigenous Ills" (1967; Transitions Magazine), and I was struck by how true this is. Ever since I first read this article, I've been referring to it as the 'African Paradox':

First:

There is a growing tendency in Africa for people to believe that most o their ills are imported, that the real sources of their problems come from outside.

And:

Another, but contradictory phenomenon is the belief that the solutions to our social ills can be imported.

Then:

I believe that most of our social ills are indigenous, that the primary sources of our problems are native , rooted in the social setup. The most effective solutions cannot be imported: they must be the result of deliberate reorganization of the resources available for tackling specific issues.

He then bemoans what he calls "Africans colonizing Africans" and laments that anti-revolutionary stance of young people on the continent.

You see this in the anti-gay sentiment: "Homosexuality is Un-African! Then let's use Christianity to combat it!"

Same with growing our economies: "We need to grow our own economies and be self-sufficient! Let's use American and British money to do it!"

I'm more than a little freaked out that, once you take away the mention of trouble with the missionaries and his talk about dictatorships, this essay is still relevant. And this essay was written in 1967. Hell, even if you were to leave all that stuff in it'll still be relevant.

This is just one piece of writing. Wole Soyinka's Jero plays were written in the 1970s, and they were talking about swindler-churches. In 1970. I don't think Flora Nwapa's "Efuru," Ama Ata Aidoo's "No Sweetness Here," Buchi Emecheta's "Joys of Motherhood," or even Mariama Ba's "So Long a Letter" has been rendered anachronistic. I doubt that we can even say Fela's "Suffering and Smiling" belongs to another age. One of the most frustrating things, beyond looking at the open sore that is corruption and poverty, is knowing that we'll be talking about the same things for years to come.

Poem for Sunday III

Billy Collins has an understates style that I've always envied, sort of like those people who just are so cool without trying, or that say things over dinner that sound like they belong in a poetry anthology without even trying. His eloquence, even when he's being playful like in his poem about Emily Dickinson, is truly something to behold.

This poem has such a great mood to it, has so much soul.

The Nightclub

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don't hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else's can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o'clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

Poem for Sunday II

From another favorite Kim Addonizio. This poem really goes at your senses, from the very first sentence about "strongest cheese" to "the bruised scent of blackberries" and "staggering and flailing my way/through the bars and back rooms,/through the gleaming hotels and weedy/ lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks/ where dogs are let off their leashes."

The poem is from the collection Tell Me.

For Desire

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look

Poem for Sunday I

Ogaga Ifowodo is probably one of Nigeria's best-kept secrets. He doesn't get as much press as, say, Chris Abani, but his poems are beautiful, measured, and well-observed, with a wistfulness that's never affected. Check these out, from his collection ":

God Punish You, Lord Lugard

The traffic warden's white-and-yellow sleeve
stopped our transport, a Lagos mini-bus
bought from one of the rust heaps of Europe
part of the great scheme to gain reprieve

for the city's long-suffering commuters.
A horde of beggars swarmed the bus; he beat
all to the vantage position in front
of the open door. He had good manners,

and what he lacked, such as the Queen's english,
he faced with uncommon calm and courage;
blind and battered, with a withered left arm,
not for him the plain and unlearned

"Help me for chop, I beg. God go bless you."
Some flourish, or polish, he thought
would persuade far more than suffering's worst gown.
And so he: "Good day, brodas and sistas.

Half massy on me, please half sampaty.
Allah's piss for you." In the bus now, silence
and private wars between purse and charity.
"Half ya broda, half sampaty on me."

The conductor, scorning all etiquette
laughed loud, pitying country, not beggar
and swore: "God punish you, Lord Lugard,
na you bring this english come Nigeria!"

The white-and-yellow arm beckoned the bus,
a wild fury of horns startled it past
ferrying us beyond claims of charity
and of Lugard's shadow in the black smoke.

Ogaga Ifowodo

3 May 1997

And from "Homeland, and Other Poems":

Homeland

What are the things that grow here?
Those that grow from stone, lacking
life and root, flesh and water
things cut as caps
for the baldness of stone.

What are the things that flourish here?
Those that rise from dust, without
teeth for the nourishment of sand
things frail and fallen, that fly
with the winds in sweat and sadness.

And what are the harvests here?
Of corn crippled before teething
Of tubers poorer than the planted head
Of tomatoes rotted before ripening
Of sand and gravel, burntbush and anthills.

What are the dwelling places?
Houses bitter like a weeping face
homes grievous like smoke-pipes
walls held up by pillars of anguish,
where lament makes bed and roof.

And how do children grow here?
Out of wombs whipped with want
and desire, the burst forth, to be
tough like street leather, sweet and hardy
like sugarcane, to learn love in safe time.

Here, we will walk the streets
where laughter is hidden in deep places
and stores cannot shut their doors
choked with hearts that bleed from gathered wounds
and you will see nothing can grow here but agony.

Ogaga Ifowodo

3 October 1992

And in this week in self-congratulation....

Not to pick on people, but this is what the f*** I'm talking about when I talk about self-congratulation:

Lagos is suddenly a hot new destination for writers from all over the world – courtesy of the exploits and efforts of writers like Adichie. Her four-year-old annual Creative Writing workshop, sponsored by Nigeria’s oldest and biggest beer company (which before now appeared to be more at home with sponsoring music festivals and talent hunts) has brought Jason Cowley, Nathan Englander, Binyavanga Wainaina, Jackie Kay, Doreen Baingana and Dave Eggers to Lagos, to facilitate writing sessions. This year Ama Ata Aidoo, Niq Mhlongo and Chika Unigwe are the guest writers.

In July it will be the turn of Helon Habila to lead creative writing workshops in Lagos and Abuja. The Habila workshops will be sponsored by Fidelity Bank, which sponsored the first two editions of Chimamanda’s workshop, before Nigerian Breweries Plc took over

Somehow, in the 150 million strong throng of people we have, we managed to find, oh, 10 writers who have gained international recognition! Wow! See how awesome we are?

You know, I think I'm going to make this a feature on this site: Self-Congratulation Watch. It's not so much that this article is wrong; We do have a literary revival in Nigeria. But it doesn't require substantial work on the part of Nigerian leaders, it doesn't propel our people/country forward, and we shouldn't get drunk on this moonshine that we intoxicate ourselves with on how amazing we are, believing in our exceptionalism that we have done, frankly, nothing to deserve.

Cue the "we can't focus on the negative" comments on my twitter/email. Whatever. My point is this: It's nice to have Adichies and Okris et al, but we have a tendency to focus on these feel-good stories and use them as a reason to desensitize ourselves to the myriad of very serious issues we have to deal with. We need to keep our eyes on the prize, people. We have not arrived.

New Tu Face!

*Does happy dance*

When I'm not shaking my head about how he has 5 kids and wondering why most people I know think he's hot, I'm thinking - You. Effin'. Rock.

"Little Bee" by Chris Cleave

From the "Little Bee" review on Amazon.

ll you should know going in to Little Bee is that what happens on the beach is brutal, and that it braids the fates of a 16-year-old Nigerian orphan (who calls herself Little Bee) and a well-off British couple--journalists trying to repair their strained marriage with a free holiday--who should have stayed behind their resort's walls. The tide of that event carries Little Bee back to their world, which she claims she couldn't explain to the girls from her village because they'd have no context for its abundance and calm.

OK! A story about a Nigerian orphan written by a British dude - Hmmm...

I loved What is the What, written by Dave Eggers on a Sudan boy during the genocide, so I don't think you have to be Nigerian necessarily to write a good Nigerian story. Still, it's either going to be a train-wreck or a masterpiece. All the reviews I've read indicate it's the latter. Check out the review, and maybe read the book.

Readers' Review: "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave (Rebroadcast)

It's my blog, and I can post what I want to...

If you haven't heard any BLK JKS, do it now. They'll be playing at the World Cup opening concert, so get acquainted. Here's the title track off their newest titled "Zol!"

(Sorry, the embed code doesn't seem to be working).

A Lie is Oversimplification in Drag

Pankaj Mishra has a devastating piece on Ayanna Hirsi Ali's newest book "Nomad". A taste:

“Nomad” is unlikely to earn Hirsi Ali many Muslim admirers. Neither will her recent support for the proposed French ban on face veils and the Swiss referendum outlawing minarets. In denouncing Islam unreservedly, she has claimed a precedent in Voltaire—though the eighteenth-century scourge of the Catholic Church might have been perplexed by her proposal that Muslims embrace the “Christianity of love and tolerance.” In another respect, however, the invocation of Voltaire is more apt than Hirsi Ali seems to realize. Voltaire despised the faith and identity of Europe’s religious minority: the Jews, who, he declared, “are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts,” who had “surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct and in barbarism,” and who “deserve to be punished.” Voltaire’s denunciations remind us that the Enlightenment was a much more complex and multifaceted phenomenon than the dawn of reason and freedom that Hirsi Ali evokes. Many followed Voltaire in viewing the Jews as backward, an Oriental abscess in the heart of Europe. Hirsi Ali, recording her horror of ghettoized Muslim life in Whitechapel, seems unaware of the similarly contemptuous accounts of Jewish refugees who made the East End of London their home after fleeing the pogroms.

Or this.

Islamic fundamentalist groups have long terrorized many Muslim countries, especially those, such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, that were ravaged by blowback from the Cold War and the war on terror. These extremists, who now assault the West as well, have always lacked popular support within their own countries. The anarchic vivacity of contemporary Muslim societies—featuring such figures as Ali Saleem, Pakistan’s cross-dressing television host, and Cairo’s hijab-wearing sex therapist Heba Kotb, whose talk show is beamed across the Arab world—does not quite match Hirsi Ali’s description of an incurably medieval people busy devising ever-harsher laws for themselves while plotting mayhem for the infidels. In recent years, Islamist movements, led or assisted by women activists, have helped democratize Indonesia and Turkey; innumerable Muslims, such as Asma Jahangir, in Pakistan, and Shirin Ebadi, in Iran, fight to defend the rights of women against both Islamic fundamentalists and secular autocrats.

I am under no illusions as to the horrors done in the name of Islam on the African continent and elsewhere. I am most certainly not ever going to depict Mohammad, but the most anyone who chooses to will get out of me is an irritated sigh -- I cannot fathom raising a hand, much less a gun or a knife, at someone for not adhering to my beliefs. Still, not everyone accepts this.

Islam is an equalizing religion in many ways. In Nasfat, where many members of my family go in Lagos, everyone wears the same white garments. You probably wouldn't know who's rich from who's not until its time for everyone to go home and you can see who's driving a jeep and who's getting on a beat-up Peugeot. People pray on the floor -- there are no hierarchies in the mosque. You're either a mullah/Sheikh who gives the service, or you're in the populace, sitting down like everyone else. Well, if you're a woman your ass is seating way in the back. You know, so the preacher doesn't get distracted by your beauty or anything. Still, equalizing nonetheless.

Religion in general is what people tend to hold on to when stripped of everything. In countries where so many have so little, it takes on immense importance. The reason I am not consumed by religious belief is because I consume so much else, and allowed so much else. I do not have just one place where I go to get a certain level of respect. I have not needed religion to keep me going in times when everything else I had was taken from me. In short, I am not overly religious because I don't need to be. I don't need to be because I have so much.

Beneath the oversimplification of complex issues from Israel/Palestine to fundamentalist Islam is the need to paint people/beliefs/entities/nations as good and evil, designations that typically defy nuance and reject the idea that actions carried out by said people can be understood. For something to be understood, after all, it has to have a certain logic to it, and for it to have logic acknowledged is to acknowledge the humanness of he who has carried out the action. This is where I part with people like Ali; Understanding an issue is not the same as providing excuses. I may understand the logic of why a boy stole money -- he was hungry and he'd been fired from his job, perhaps, and maybe had a family of 4 to feed and couldn't go home with nothing -- but that does not mean that stealing is right. I may understand the reason for believing in a religion, but may not agree that religion is necessary in my own life. I can understand the grievances that drive someone kill, but that does not mean that I believe that murder is ever justified.

To illustrate my point on lack of nuance, here's a story in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz on How to Tell When a Mid-East Expert Is Lying:

1. The Expert knows with certainty which of the two sides - only one - is responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and which - the same one - for the failure of Mideast peace efforts.

2. The Expert treats the civilian victims of violence on one side as individuals, but assesses collective responsibility for the violence on the whole of the other side.

The Expert speaks as though the entire civilian population of the other - call it the Dark - side, were directly, actively, complicit and thus accomplice to whatever excesses were committed in its name, and therefore deserves whatever sanction, condemnation, or reflexive collective punishment the Dark Side civilian population is about to experience.

3.Field Guide

Dark Side: Commits atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity. Expert's Side: Exercises its right to self-defense.

Dark Side: Violates peace deals with impunity. Expert's Side: Cannot move forward in light of Dark Side's bad faith.

4. The Expert hints, implies, or states outright that the actions of the DS are comparable to those of the Nazis.

5. The Expert begins, "The conflict is fundamentally very simple."

6. The Expert advocates a One State Solution, but doesn't come out and say so.

I don't always succeed in doing this, but I think that the best way to approach sensitive issues is to seek those tangled lines of historical happenings that confound us, because therein, I believe, lies our humanity. In short, if it lacks nuance it's probably a lie. By refusing to delve deeper than her own experiences and by turning a blind eye to faults of the Western civilization she hurried to embrace, Ali has shown herself time and again as someone who cannot be taken seriously by anyone with an understanding of history. By painting the West as wholly good and the East as needing to be abandoned wholesale in order for one to achieve any measure of freedom, she strips both the West and the East of their humanity.