*And there shall be music again

Tatalo Alamu

As they say, the bigger the head the greater the headache. China’s global ascendancy and virtual elevation to the status of numero uno in the world’s economic pecking order has come with its own aggravations.  All at once, there are so many countries accusing China of unacceptable conduct in international relations and even outright cruelty in its attitude to certain countries and their people.

While some Nigerian officials are openly accusing China of racism and xenophobia in its treatment of Nigerians residing in China or working for Chinese consortiums in Nigeria, the Philippines bitterly laments the sadistic treatment meted out to its sailors working on Chinese fishing fleets.

While Donald Trump openly frets about massive sabotage of the American economy and what he has only stopped short of calling attempted genocide, many other countries, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara, are complaining about Chinese meddlesomeness and virtual overrunning of their territorial space.

These are grievous charges indeed and grievously will China pay for them in the post-Covid-19 epoch. In the comity of nations, nobility and hegemonic status also have their obligations. China still has a lot to learn from its predecessors. Until the nation-state question is resolved or dissolved into the rubric of disruptive global transformation, national ascendancy will not count for much.

In all this, the plight of the head of a polygamous house with quirky and quarrelsome consorts noisily and endlessly feuding among themselves and with the master of the house comes to mind.  Yet it is also known that in polygamous homesteads, some consorts, because they are consortiums in their own right, are more equal than other consorts.

While a debtor-nation like Nigeria and other laggard African nations can be brusquely ignored, China can neither ignore America or Japan, it is old bête noir, nor Taiwan its current doppelganger. Rarely do international relations resemble an uproarious soapbox opera in more significant respects than in the current era. We must recall such classics as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or the ominously apposite epic, The Brides of Fu Manchu.

The protagonist, a mad Chinese doctor with ambitions of world domination, abducts the daughters of world leaders and then compels their fathers to help him build a death ray in return for the safety of their daughters. Echoes of the current global curfew? China may be asking for no less as we may discover when the cloud clears.

Anybody who finds the image of a bridal train upended inapposite should recall the late Mobutu Sese Seko who famously described himself as the cock that leaps from hen to hen in the barn yard. Lord Lugard’s infamous “dual mandate” which forcibly conjoined Nigeria and much of pre-colonial Africa with imperial Britain in unholy matrimony is cut from the same matrimonial loins.

Without batting an eyelid, the great colonial adventurer, in a tremendous turn of uxorious metaphor, actually described the forcible union between a rich and prosperous southern Nigeria and an arid and impoverished Northern Nigeria which he was about to superintend as a union between a promising lad and a woman of means. This is nothing but an elegant trope for colonial plunder and rapine.

As we have noted once on this page, China, unlike America, France, England, Spain Portugal and most of the Latin American countries, is not a land of immigrants and has remained the same for more than a thousand years, with the people merely exchanging the docility under classical feudalism with the docility imperative to communist state capitalism.

Once in a long while, that docility and passiveness are often roused into revolutionary rebellion inspired from above in the face of injustice and inequity but at the end of it all, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The Forbidden City of the old Chinese emperors remains the Forbidden City of the new Chinese emperors.

It is an engrossing and perplexing human drama which has characterized the rise of modernity and its different versions since the advent of the nation-state paradigm. Embedded in the current Corvid-19 tragedy are contrasting visions of how human societies ought to be organized for the maximum benefits of their habitués and a continuing clash of civilizations emblematized by a resurgent China and a backsliding western world epitomized by a troubled America.

The seeds of future despair and defeat are often lodged in the fruits of current success and triumphs. China is very much a victim of its own success, past and current. By the tenth century, China was clearly the leading country in the world.

Its naval vessels with their huge mast unfurling in the skies were described as ocean-going wonders. Artefacts in the old museum at the ancient port of Mombasa in contemporary Kenya suggested that the Chinese had already reached Africa by the seventh century if not earlier. This was when primitive England was being put to sword by Norman conquerors.

But thereafter, China went into steep decline as a result of a protracted power struggle between the mandarinate (the bureaucratic class) and the ruling feudal oligarchy which completely sealed off the nation. By the time China emerged from its political, economic and cultural somnambulism, the world had moved on. There were new kids on the block. Europe had emerged from the Dark Age. The world had new power centres in Europe and America.

There were to be consequences. As a result of its prolonged self-isolation, there is a provinciality about China which cannot be hidden away. Owing to a lack of sustained interaction and engagement with people from other cultures and outlook, racism and xenophobia are never far away.

There is considerable stiffness and starchiness towards strangers, a wary distrust of the non-familiar; an insecurity of outlook which can be overcompensated for by what appears as supercilious arrogance and condescension to foreigners.

Black people are known in local mythology as devils and till date there are no concerted official attempts to dispel this febrile fabrication whereas in neighbouring Russia there were outstanding nineteenth century writers with Black ancestry who were considered the toast of the society. The Ethiopian roots of the writer, Alexander Pushkin, were well known and could only provoke admiring fascination. His maternal great grandfather was an African-born Russian general.

By contrast and in every material particular, China remains a cultural autarky with the demographic dynamism usually engendered by the influx of immigrant talent largely missing. The push and pull of conquest and colonization across different epochs up till modern time, the sustained interaction of commerce and religious proselytization have dispelled the whole notion of racial and cultural monoliths in Europe, America and Africa.

The current difficulties of China can be summed up in one startling paradox: an aspiring empire without a history of recent colonies, well except ill-starred Tibet. This is a paradox that can only be thrown up by the post-Westphalia nation-state paradigm. The normal evolutionary course we are familiar with is for an empire state to shed weight and be gradually transformed into a nation-state.

This is an evolutionary course that bypassed China as it shut itself out from the rest of the world to deal with its own internal contradictions. Unlike Britain, Japan, Russia, America, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland and Italy that acquired colonies if only to drop them eventually either through conquest, defeat or voluntary divestment, China has arrived at pole position through its own unique trajectory and without having to go through the decolonizing purgatory experienced by the colonialist state.

The result is the splendid spectacle of a nation that has achieved unprecedented prosperity and a version of modernity and modernization by pulling itself up by the boot straps. But the toxic side product can also be seen in the frank anomalies of Taiwan and Hong Kong, the inability of China to conform to certain norms of international engagement as well as the dark undersides of the current Covid-19 global debacle.

The more one looks at this, the more it looks like a well-plotted revenge by the nation history and the post-Westphalia nation-state paradigm almost dealt out of contention. The irruption of the Chinese state on the global scene as a superstar and hegemon has eventuated in some revolutionary tremors for the nation-state paradigm. The Wuhan plague is just one manifestation. It can actually get worse.

The nation-state paradigm is a revolutionary advance on the empire-state template.  The intense rivalries and competitive dynamism it unleashed among emergent nations led to remarkable technological innovation, the dramatic expansion of the frontiers of knowledge and unprecedented prosperity in a way that the inherent sluggishness of empire, its constrictive feudal template and narrow confinement of human prospects could not have managed.

In the core empire-states, the energies unleashed by the human spirit in an attempt to break free from the strangulating confines of feudal terror led to revolutions in Haiti, Britain and France and revolutionary wars of liberation that set free Holland from Spain and America from Britain.

The fierce nationalistic spirit this engendered led to the disintegration of the Austro-Hapsburg Empire, the eventual dissolution of the German super-state and the humiliation of the rump of the Spanish Empire in Cuba and the Philippines by the emergent American superpower.

Some lessons can be extracted from this. While the brutal competitiveness unleashed by the nation-state paradigm has led to technological breakthroughs and unprecedented global wealth, the cut-throat rivalries it has spawned among nations have led to epic world wars, unaccustomed global strife, unprecedented bloodshed and most likely the current Coronavirus debacle.

Second, the quest by some later day empires for colonies, or what the Germans colourfully described as lebensraum or living space, engendered acts of unimaginable cruelties and even genocide in the so called colonies: Germany in the old Tanganyika, Namibia, Togo and Cameroons; Italy in Ethiopia; Belgium in the Congo and Japan in Korea.

Correspondingly, the quest by China for post-colonial economic colonies in Africa has spawned accusations of callous mistreatment of Africans and conduct bordering on economic malevolence. Several African communities have called out the Chinese leadership on these grave infractions. Like a neo-colonial power taking umbrage about being told on how to manage its overseas possession, China has responded with a combination of bluff and glum dismissal.

China came late to colonial dominion, and it is probably bent on making up for lost time but under different circumstances. It should be remembered that it almost became a colony too, but for outstanding visionary leadership. The scars and the psychological impairment are still there for everybody to see.

The China Question is part of a bigger nation-state question which must take into cognisance the anomalous imposition of the nation-state paradigm on African communities that were already autonomous states in their own right and which would have benefited from being left alone or as part of a loose supra-national arrangement. Until we address this issue, there will be no order worth talking about in the world.

 

 

 

And there shall be music again

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.