Tatalo Alamu
If music be the food of love play on, William Shakespeare memorably pleaded. After Sam Mbakwe, the late teary governor of old Imo state, dramatically promoted a school musician on account of the sonorous beauty of his rhythm, the Daily Times wrote an inspired editorial titled: Play me that number again.
The Daily Times was then under the delectable spell of the cultured, cigar-chomping Patrick Dele Cole and the immensely cultivated, cognac-swigging Stanley Macebuh. A few months later, both Cole and Macebuh were to disappear in a great purge masterminded by Umaru Dikko and the hard men of NPN. Pray, of what use is music to a man monitoring the slow progress of his rice armada in the implacably rough seas? It was sheer irredeemable folly coming from some Americanised sissies. Let them go back to Brooklyn or better still Albuquerque.
Yet a nation’s political and economic decline is often accompanied by the retreat of good music. Political barbarity is always accompanied by a corresponding cultural barbarity. Whenever barbarians arrive at the barricades, it is the cultural monuments they first go after either out of vulgar fascination or sheer destructive vengeance.
Now ask yourself this troubling question. Where are all the great cinema houses in the country today? Where is Scala, Odeon, Rivoli, Metro, KS, Plaza, Royal etc? Some have fallen off the face of the earth forever. Some have been converted to huge abattoirs. Some have become warehouses for unholy merchandise.
Some have become great refugee camps for hoodlums and casual riffraff on the fringes of the society. Tell your children that you were at a cinema every weekend in those days and you will be greeted with juvenile guffaws. You will be lucky if one of them does not ask you: daddy what is a cinema?
Led by insensitive and culturally challenged interlopers, this is the trough of social degradation that we have found ourselves. If it is so bad in the department of visual refinement, one can imagine the damage that has been done to musical evolution in the country.
Just as you cannot philosophise on an empty stomach, you can also not listen to music when your stomach is rumbling away, or when hunger is “wiring” you—— as Bishop Gbonigi once memorably put it.
But there is a silver lining in the cloud. There is some quiet revolutionary stirring in the land which suggests that Nigeria may well be on the road to slow recovery in the musical department. For the past three weeks, snooper has been on the cusp of what is truly a musical renaissance in the country. It has been the equivalent of a midsummer madness.
Ironically, it all began on a sad and sombre note. Snooper was to attend the wedding of the daughter of a late and beloved friend, a remarkable medical doctor who died as a serving brigadier-general five years ago in 2002. Our departed friend was a genial social animal and a plucky, thoroughbred officer to boot. Although a medical officer, the late Brigadier had served as John Shagaya’s personal bodyguard on the night the tanks rolled out of the mechanised brigade in Ikeja to terminate General Buhari’s rule.
As a mark of respect and honour to a fallen officer and gentleman, snooper began the day listening to his friend’s favourite musician: Theophilus Iwalokun, a.k.a “Theo Baba”. Iwalokun was an obscure juju musician of the late sixties, a quiet, self-effacing genius of stirring and soulful lyrics. In a feat of counter-hegemonic cultural politics, the medical students of UNILAG in the early seventies made sure that the Ilaje musician was a regular fixture at their annual ball. This was where our friend caught the bug.
But how to locate Iwalokun’s music became an odyssey of cultural sleuthing on its own, and investigation led snooper to a quiet corner of Somolu and to a heroic and intrepid collector and cultural entrepreneur. Of course, snooper went for more after the wedding.
Ever since the head has been bursting with the complete works of Fela, Olaiya, Roy Chicago, Rex Lawson, Eddie Okonta, Ambrose Campbell, Zeal Onyia, Felix Aigbe, Celestine Ukwu, the mournful and deeply thoughtful Igbo philosopher, Julius Araba, Christopher Oyesiku, Tunde Nightingale, Ayinde Bakare, Fashola, Joseph Olatunji, Tatalo, Foyanmu, Oluwa, Danmole, Denge, Ojoge Daniel, Rose Adetola, I.K Dairo, Dan Maraya and a host of other musical titans.
That a single nation could throw up such a wide and varied assembly of musical geniuses in a single epoch is a weird tribute to the glorious fecundity of the womb of mother Nigeria, and a proof and affirmation that such a nation will not go under lightly without a historic combustion.
Listening to these geniuses, one can hear the anxieties of influence playing out, one can detect skilful borrowings and what is known in cultural theory as inter-musical tensions, one can measure the seismic tremors of oedipal strife between musical fathers and their children. These are profound resources for a nation’s journey to cultural and political redemption. And there shall be music once again.
Author’s note
When this piece was published thirteen years ago on this page, a Nigerian musical revolution was still in embryonic form. Now the revolution is in full bloom with Nigerian music ruling the global roost. Contrary to what the author thought, it has not been a complete return to the past but a mere grafting of aspects of the past with the radical musical ingenuity of the present. All the same, memories are made of this.
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