Tell Magazine

The strength of a people’s culture is determined by the weight of their music and arts and also by how long these have lasted. All these could be learnt from their folklores and artifacts that will show the age of their civilisation as an organised system of government.

Former Midwestern Nigeria offers the history of a people with an ancient, hierarchically structured administration that has survived European influence. A ride in any of the air-conditioned buses plying Accra – Lagos – Benin presents the knowledge of the Edo people’s ways of life before medieval times from the musical releases of folklores of those times that are now still evergreen.

One significant piece played during a trip I had in one of these buses, which piece is now a bit modernised into highlife music. It tells the story of a king, one of the Ogisos, of Benin, whose most senior wife, steeped in intrigues, plotted to execute the only son of the king on a trumped-up finding of a fake oracle that he was the cause of the barrenness of the king’s wives. It used to be sung as a ballad at moonlight reveries by elderly women who told stories to their grandchildren in the 1940s. That king’s wife, whose title was “Esagho” and head of the “Oloris” (Oba’s wives), eventually fell into the ditch that was dug, ready to bury the prince alive, through her instrumentality. As she fretted around trying to cajole the prince who was unaware of the plot to sacrifice him, she tripped and landed in the pit. Her co-plotters then confessed that the oracle really traced the curse to the wicked wife. They suffered equal treatment as the wicked woman’s.

This happened before Oduduwa but is yet fresh in the music of the Edo. The music of the people of the old Midwest is identical but in different forms. The Esan are pleasantly acrobatic. The Urhobos, Isokos, Itsekiris, Asabas and Kwales swing their hips like the Melanesians. The Binis, Oras and Etsakos take to the more relaxed and arrogant swagger in dance steps. All the beats in varying music forms pleasantly blend to represent a typical idiom of the Midwesterners that is ancient and of high quality.

In the 1960s when African nations were gaining independence, most of them bought the best radio equipment available to be able to reach their peoples who mainly lived in rural areas and, in some cases, the jungle. Radio Ghana and Radio Congo Leopoldville were the most prominent because of the local musical pieces they played to entertain listeners. These stations were very popular with Nigerian listeners. Radio Ghana played highlife music which had been honed into an art form, under the leadership of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, to gain worldwide recognition. Radio Congo Leopoldville, thanks to Franco and his Ok-Jazz Band, dished out Rhumba and Cha, Cha, Cha, the rhythms of which did not represent the present, obvious instability of that country. Africans savoured their melodious and rhythmically well-arranged music to the envy of foreigners. Many local, Edo combo bands featured on the airways of these two stations because of the calm, entertaining and, at times, erotic music oozing from them.

That was the Africa of patriotic citizens led by enlightened and informed nationalists who knew where the shoe pinched. The Structural Adjustment Programme of the IMF and World Bank ensured that Africans lost their originality and initiative. Our music has not been spared the crushing blow dealt on Africa’s independence.

West African highlife was a motivating force for the continuing growth of the belief of the people in themselves. In Nigeria, for example, the people have lost their cheerfulness. There seems to be gloom everywhere, among the overwhelming majority of the people. There is more noise than music now because of the indiscipline arising from the race for the filthy lucre. Music composers no longer take pains to write songs and arrange rhythms that last for ages. They produce more of what Americans call “fads”.

The worst that has happened to Nigeria is the intrusion of the Rap music form to the already declining artistry of the players. The adherents holler and render unintelligible words carelessly arranged to mean nothing. It is not danceable as the Highlife or the juju music form. Juju, the product of the “Creoles” of Sierra Leone and the Krus of Liberia, which developed later into a thriving form which the muscle given to the style by the legendary Tunde King, spread to many parts of Nigeria in the 1940s. It is a shame that young Nigerians nakedly expose their lack of originality in the way they now ape America in every aspect of life. They are not to blame because this country has been absent of good leaders for some long while. My recollections are of scenes when Nnamdi Azikiwe would take the floor to open gala dances to raise funds for Commonwealth and Olympic sports competitions, when Obafemi Awolowo, in his well-starched agbada, would perform the same chore to lift the people to more cheers, and when Chike Obi would dominate the scene with expert highlife steps. Mbonu Ojike had lighted the environment with his “boycott the boycottable” and Nigerian leaders, starting from Dr. Akinola Maja, the doyen of our politics then, had shed his Western suits for agbada, itself a move which Ojike made popular. Bode Thomas followed on the heels of Ojike and the atmosphere became purely African as we savoured our first taste of partial participation in how we should be ruled. Civil servants started to dare the British over stopping them from wearing native dresses officially. That was the “can do” spirit that pervaded much of the Nigerian scene.

It was not that West Africans completely dumped the Western-style of dressing. They certainly were no longer slaves to that fashion. Some of the best-dressed Nigerian politicians before independence were Aminu Kano, Theophilus Benson, Alfred Nwapa, Matthew Mbu and Babs Fani-Kayode. They were all always attired in well-tailored Western suits. But the native dress syndrome had so taken root that our attires were equally elegant and though they appeared in Western suits, they also helped to popularise native attires.

These days, every noise-maker is a musician. They inflict pain to the ears instead of providing melodies that calm the nerves. Well, the media, equally empty of those with the knowledge of music and sound, provide them the forum. What a national debacle!