In “Piano and Drums”, Gabrial Okara, the poet — or in any case, the protagonist — suffers a serious dissonance: to stick with the vitality of the drums of his nativity (African culture) or be lured by the seductive though destructive lure of the European piano — but end with putative cultural death!
Cultural death is, of course, the most lethal for the living dead: for without your culture, what are you?
Performance poet, Akeem Lasisi and his performing songbirds suffer no such dissonance. Their earlier works, Wonderland: Eleleture, the sweet Udeme and the epochal Ori-Agbe, in celebration of Wole Soyinka, our own WS, at 80, were a splendid mix of the piano and drums for poetic euphony and vitality.
Way back, in the late 1960s to late 1980s, during the musical hegemony of the duo of Ebenezer Obey and Sunny Ade, and the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Africa 70 and Egypt 80 ruled the roost of Afrobeat (Fela’s own piano and drums musical brew), the debate between always ensued between “praise” and ideological music.
Juju, where both Obey and Sunny excelled, was often dismissed as happy-go-merry, praise music without any ideological core. Afrobeat, on the other hand, was trumpeted (and not unfairly) as ideological music that spoke truth — nasty truth — to power, no matter the huge cost.
Indeed, costly it was: for Fela really did bear a lot of brunt in military-era savagery; by a ruling military order, scared stiff by Fela’s fearless and formidable moral authority, even if the soldiers-in-government controlled all the hideous instruments of state coercion.
So, from Eleleture and Udeme, solid socio-political poetic commentaries, is Akeem Lasisi the poet veering into “praise” poetry, as his poetic telescope zooms on two eminent citizens, Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (rtd) and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu?
Not quite, though the listener would make his or her own judgment.
One quick observation, however, on From General to Manager, Lasisi’s tribute to Danjuma. In this work, Lasisi’s trademark African drums (to borrow again from the Okara image) are mute. Only the European piano raises its plaintive voice.
The poet should perhaps have, as he is wont, given the Danjuma work some Jukun musical background. That would have steeped it in African nativity; and added more vitality to its performance and rendition. Sure, that would have needed some arduous research. But the final product would have been much more pleasing — and entertaining.
Still, that hardly distracts from this work: a fair, if poetic assessment, of the public persona of Gen. Danjuma, from when he first burst on Nigerians’ public consciousness as a young military officer, to his exploits as chief of Army staff and virtual guarantor of return to civil rule in 1979, under Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo as commander-in-chief, his foray into business thereafter, brief return to politics during Obasanjo’s second coming as elected president from 1999-2003, and his philanthropic activities happily ever after!
“If I deny you a place in the Muse’s house,” the poem opens, “The Zuma rock will break its stony silence/The Niger and Benue will find their liquid tongues/From Mokola to Trinidad battalions will rise/Millions of IDP children will join a flood of SAPETRO staff/The Congo will rise and sing your praise …”
Mokola and Trinidad battalions, the Congo, SAPETRO workers and millions of IDP [internally displaced children] are all allusions to Gen. Danjuma’s rich vein of past and present life: the early regimented times, peace keeping at the Congo, another era as oil investor and community charity in troubling times, tending Nigerian children displaced by the murderous Boko Haram fanatics, by virtue of chairing a presidential fund-raiser to care for the displaced.
One life? Ay, but with a texture of many rolled into one! That would appear why this allusion echoes another in the scriptures — that bit about nature, animate and inanimate, rising to applaud the virtues of the Christ Jesus, even if spiteful humans demurred.
Indeed, Gen. Danjuma burst on the public consciousness, as somewhat an enforcer of northern political hegemony, given his reported roles in the July 1966 counter-coup. But over the years, he would appear to have morphed into a revered Nigerian patriot.
Hear the poet’s parting shot: “Danjuma, teach me a cardinal lesson/to dodge invisible bullets in the market square/Give me the magic wand/To coast to victory in our Civil Peace [Note the clever pun on Civil War?]/From Barracks to the board room your breed is rare/From General to Manager your gut is high.”
In the Lion Speaks to the Poet, the Lasisi tribute to Tinubu, the parting shot is reminiscent of the concluding lines in J.P. Clark’s poem, “Streamside exchange”, a deadpan response that further confounded the child-protagonist, over its mother’s return prospect: “You cannot know” replied the river bird, “And you should not bother;/Tide and market come and go/And so shall your mother.”
But while the Clark river bird deadpanned, the Lasisi Lion revealed the “secret” of Tinubu’s stunning political triumphs — which has reaped him bitter and implacable enemies; and his rare talent at nurturing future leaders — which has earned him due praise, even from grudging quarters.
“When others were saving for the rainy day,” the Lion roared in full glory, “I picked my cutlass and sharpened my hoe/I tilled and planted for the rainy day. The dreaded season has finally come/They are chasing my crops with their anxious cash.”!
That is as clinical a poetic response as any to the thick peer envy against Tinubu, from political opportunists who hate to sweat, yet love to be the first to swoop on the groovy.
Why, it even echoes another Obafemi Awolowo quip: When others are busy chasing after women of easy virtue, I was always at my desk, forging out solutions to Nigeria’s problems! Awolowo was, after all, the most meticulous politician of his generation, if not, so far, in all of Nigerian history.
As to the old issue of piano and drums, the Lion has both aplenty. The poem itself runs on cutting wit: “But is it really true,/That everything golden belongs to you?” And a couple of hyperboles, perhaps to underscore ridiculousness of it all: “They say Aso Rock now belongs to you/That you are the new owner of Disney Land …?”
But this piquant piano soars on the wings of African drums: a traditional Yoruba genre that thrives on ote (intrigue) and efe (biting humour), twin-concepts the Yoruba devastatingly deploy to wrong-foot adversaries. That sure would be music to Tinubu’s friends; but pure poison to his fiends!
In General and Lion, Lasisi has entered uncharted waters in his glorious poetic career: that of a poet making definitive judgment on active, if not outright controversial, citizens in the public space.
Will he retain his poetic rigour? Time will tell. Meanwhile, like Ori-Agbe that toasted Prof. Soyinka at 80, General and Lion epitomise praise clinically — and poetically — earned.
