C.E.O

Dagrin
Chief Executive Omo-Ita (CEO)
Remarkable rapper of YQ’s Efimile fame, Dagrin, has released yet another studio album. He must have furiously returned to the studio perhaps to assert his claim to the Nigerian Mic and air waves after the disappointing outing of his first effort.
A 10 track album with three bonus tracks, one being the instrumental of one of the previously featured song, Pon Pon Pon, this album is suffused with enough energy to power a clubhouse. The upbeat tempo of most of the tracks reminds one of youthful exuberance which is perhaps the only short-coming of this album.
Summarily on track six, the artist enunciate the purpose of this L.P—OWO, IGBO, ASHEWO, all remarkable articles of wild life often attributed to the young. But one can’t put this album down on this premise. Dagrin, as a lyricist, is witty, brave and very stylistic, although his offerings are reminiscent of the dimunitive Lord of Ajasa. Dagrin is taking dialectical rap beyond boundaries, his vocals are almost entirely in his mother tongue and his word plays are still on point. This puts him in the same realm with the likes of 9ice, fellow proponents of the Yoruba language.
The first four tracks are my favourites. They are filled with the energy that hip-pop seem to have lost to what is obtainable on the radios of late. These tracks are wholesome takes on his life, survival and hustle which characterize the “Nigerian dream”. “Everyday”, a pretty much short track thrives on gross experimentation and rather than bury Dagrin’s craft in the graveyard of Sampling, it exalts him as a quintessential rapper with an important voice.
Pon Pon Pon’s delivery is similar to 50cent’s Get rich or Die trying album. It’s perhaps the most Hip song of the year: real hard core stuff replete with gunshots and off-the-cliff word plays. Kondo is easily a Nigeria version of Magic stick but has the high-school charm of J-kwan’s Tipsy. Other remarkable tracks are Hola with Isolate, who sounds a lot like 9ice; the gospel- appeal song with West African idols’ Omawunmi and booty song with Lala, Nla.
This album is perhaps a remake of the typical Brooklyn rap album packaged as a Nigerian version with our definition of hustle and sensibilities. A good L.P!!!

On The Abyssinian Boy and the Boy who wrote it.

There is no longer any such thing like fiction or non-fiction; there’s only a narrative. This were the exact words of E.L Doctorow, a reputable American author which holds true in The Abyssinian Boy, debut effort of Onyeka Nwelue, one of the youngest Nigerian novelists .
It is startlingly remarkable that Mr Nwelue penned this manuscript before age twenty, a time when his peers are beleaguered by the consequences of hormonal fluctuations and are decisively bothered with trendy ways of combating them and asserting themselves as indeed a generation with a difference.
Even more remarkable is the fact that at such a nascent stage, Mr Nwelue could dip his imaginations in the dyes of reality so much so that what he achieves is refreshingly familiar. The streets he describes, the people that populate his fictional world and even the emotional concerns of his characters are so real that his characters could be next door neighbours. His fiction is indeed a potent and genuine remake of reality which can neither be centrifuged nor decanted by analysis.
A part of this novel unfurls in India, in fact it in India we meet our characters in their “usual state”, before the essence of the story creeps in. This part of the novel is an amazing love song of India. The author takes readers on a virtual tour of the aesthetics of the World’s second most populous nation, romanticizing even its dregs in crisp prose. Easily, this part of the novel evokes colorful scenes similar to the kind in Bollywood movies. It is not surprising that the author wrote a decent helping of his manuscript in India and his narrative must have been roused by familiar sensations.
The major characters are the members of an “international” family comprising of a South Indian essayist, his East Nigerian wife and their half-caste nine-year old son, David. The most toward action in the novel’s plot is a visit to the wife’s home country Nigeria by the family and their encounters thereafter. Through Mr Nwelue’s ornate and sometimes faltering narrative, we plumb the detail of their lives. We see their imperfectness, their mistakes, misgivings, misadventures and even the weird relatives with whom they co-exist albeit idyllically.
We delve into their pasts often to relive their experiences, sometimes immaterial to the denouement, but all the same experiences thrust on us by the author’s prerogative. We traipse through refreshing anecdotes and comic vignettes that are perhaps posers of the author’s overseas experience.
The voice through which this story is told is controlled. And convincing. One sees Mr Nwelue toeing the lines of great predecessors like Amos Tutuola in his attempt to birth a language for his works. Even though one is not particularly convinced that he achieves this in The Abyssinian Boy, one can be sure he has set a template which would become a centerpiece attraction of his subsequent fictional endeavours.
The syntax of this work gives it the nuanced feel of a work in translation and the liberty with which the author deals his expressions might herald a new trend in sentence constructions. However the hyphenated depiction of expressions that are supposedly descriptions in this novel— you-are-very-stupid-and-hopeless-eye, so-what eyes—though heaps on the reader’s plate of humor are puerile nonetheless. Encountering invented adverbs like Neverthemore is shocking but hints readers on the poetic license the author has compelled to his prose.
More than anything, the thematic concerns enjoy a multiplicity that does not correlate with the length of the novel. Often, it seemed like the author’s artistic attempt to flare his connoisseurship and grant opinions on pertinent issues that have garnered cultural concerns and had become denominators cutting across humanity. However these issues are tackled fleetingly and often leave the reader with opinionated rather than holistic insights.
Colourful characters also abound in this novel. Easily the narrative becomes a marketplace where all sort of characters are introduced, perhaps in an attempt to achieve a sub-plot which doesn’t entirely work into the “big” narrative. These characters, with peculiar idiosyncrasies and sometimes phonations, interact with themselves and grapple a cast of human conditions such as religion, sexuality, cuisines, amongst other cultural concerns.
Also are the mystic overtones that lend the magical realism tag this novel sometimes bear from previous reviews. The recruitment of Nfanfa, an imaginary albino dwarf that fuels David’s hallucination is reminiscent of similar illusionary characters in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl, another first novel by another remarkable young Nigerian that dwells on homecoming and the troubles thereafter.
Mr Nwelue, no doubt, has penned a moving tale that underscores the issues of racial integration and culture clash. He has shown his promise and his flair as one of the important emerging contenders of the Great Nigerian Novel and readers can still expect the masterpiece tucked up his sleeves.

Concerning Tile-Tile and Other Children Stories

I am not against censorship for children. I think parents must be careful about what their children are exposed to especially in this time and age when sexuality ooze from all orifices—and the media does not help matters much. The contents of the Media which, is often solicited, as slowly morphed into home-delivered pornography in the guise of liberty of expression. Now radios blare lewd and explicit innuendoes and picture that best cuts the result is that a five year old singing to her uncle, with appropriate body wiggles, Tu-face’s Flex, it’s time to have sex, flex…
There are no two ways to say pathetic. And sympathy would not cure the danger the child is exposed to, for the child is not only endangered, he or she becomes a danger to him or herself. Much as parents review what their children are exposed too, at a critical stage their efforts are thwarted especially when a child gets into school, or any similar arrangement of its kind.
When my nephew was enrolled at a day-care, he started bringing abusive phrases like “bitch”, ambiguous cuss words like Oloriburuku—Just imagine!—home to the utmost surprise of his parents. But little could be done about this because much as some parents try hard to censor what their children are exposed too, some parents are lax in their (in)actions and the school, a meeting place, un-achieves parental efforts by and by.
At this stage very little can be done. Sex education could be employed but with extreme tactics and care. The parents would have to ensure a painstaking re-education of their children at regular intervals to purge them of both peer and societal mis-education. This might thrive in the early ages but the divide teenage years herald can be disastrous. The confidence of parents at this age becomes dubious to the young adolescents who are wont to lean on peers in his quest for propriety and social acceptance.
The adolescent, in defiance to his parent’s instructions, does exactly the opposite of what he or she is told at home. He listens to what the media proffers him; he thinks that rap music is hip; that it’s cool to “sag” his trousers below his gluteal cleft; that it’s absolutely cool to make female friends, in spite the parents’ admonitions in the favour of his academics. Terry-G with his dyed air and his habitual love for marijuana adopts the adolescent has a nephew with televised ease. And his avuncular instructions are obtainable from the lewd lyrics the adolescent pitches in the bathroom, in the unabashed company of his nakedness. And the impact, the sexually awakening that result could leave dire consequences.
It’s not that I don’t like Terry-G. I find his music and production skills top-notch perhaps that is why his status is an enviable one in the Nigeria Hip-pop Scene where he governs and churn out his brand of music to meet unsolicited record sales and massive radio play. Terry-G is easily Nigeria’s Lil Wayne in acoustic delivery and, I think, the only person that stumps his chances as Nigeria’s Producer Laureate is Don “Baba” Jay.
His art is impressive, and replete with the controversy that distinguishes any proponent of an art form. Artists have the tendency to become social dissenters, breaking norms and crossing mores with the liberty that their fame affords them, but I, as an individual, can separate the man and his works. I can assess his music without being perturbed by his life-style, love for extravagance and exuberance. I can enjoy his music, strip it of all authorial labels and relish it as an art form, even though it does not particularly fall in the category of higher arts.
But my little nephew cannot. He is not aware of the marked difference between the honeyed voice that brands a typical Nigeria girl, “Tile-Tile” and the reprobate who bears a bohemian haircut and basks in fumes of cannabis. So he would think calling a girl “Tile” or “Omo-Ele” is cool amongst many other sexually- implicit innuendoes obtainable from Terry-G’s, nay most Nigerian musicians lyrics. Soon he would ask his peers what Terry-G is smoking, and when they call it Mary. J, he would be obliged to attempt it. Like all inquisitive individuals, he is inclined to experiment. Now what I ask myself is who is to be blamed? The Bible says teach your child in a way of the lord so that he would depart from it. But I think again: the didactic role of parent is inherently inadequate, in the light of several opinions posited earlier. However I have resolved that whenever I am around my nephew and am urged to sing AY.com’s pass me your love, I would stifle the desire, hide my tongue under my palate and in my best tenor lisp the first few words of Panam Percy Paul’s Bring down your Glory—Lord, we are sorry.

Saraba on Issuu

Open publication - Free publishing - More saraba

Saraba!

i daresay this is the most succesful of saraba's outing. its mad good.

interview with Niran Okewole, essays from Eghosa Imasuen, reviews from Jude Dibia. short stories , great short stories form emmanuel iduma and ayo Famurewa. Its just too full! try download it, abeg. and pass on to your friends--and enemies.http://www.sarabamag.com/assets/saraba_issue3.pdf

Has Carl Found His Voice Yet?

Unarguably, Carl Thomas remains my best soul singer. This is can be wholly attributed to the artistic success of the Emotional Album, especially his track Summer Rain. But beyond that, Carl has a penchant for making good music. Good music being the kind of music that appeals to several experiences. Thus, his albums are eclectic in their outreach and, even though his genre of music is loosely based on emotion, Carl distinguishes himself as consummate professional.
Born in Aurora, Illinois, Carl left home, hiking to New York in his quest for fame and fortune, with his impressive vocal skills as the only item on his résumé. Lines fell in pleasant places for him when he met with P.Diddy, a renowned talent scout who could seek a pearl in a sprawling landscape of garbage.
Under the Bad Boy Label, Carl released his debut album, Emotional, in 1999 which met with widespread approval and impressive record sales—it even went platinum. I still listen to Emotional even though ten years has passed since its release. What draws me into this album is its originality. The blend of Carl’s fusion is so complete that it’s hard to decipher who he sounds like, hence his authencity. Great tracks abound in that album, in fact every song as the temperament and occasion it suits. And on a whole, it’s a smooth, long ride down the alleys of acoustic perfection.

Let’s Talk About It, his sophomore effort released in 2004, heralds a completely different experience. It’s definitely a more urban album designed to appeal to a larger fan base. This, of course, is an ingenious attempt of Carl’s Record Label at making more money under the auspices of catapulting Carl into renowned fame. Carl produced another eclectic fusion, but of Urban R and B and soul music, a mixture that had only been attained by few, even then grossly by serendipitous experimentation.
The initial swing with which the record begins is wild and rather than sustain the thumping beats courtesy successful American hit makers, Carl ingeniously sways into his usual slow tempo to deliver tracks reminiscent of the good, old, balladic Emotional days. However as fate would have it, Carl had to back out of the promotional tour of his second album when he heard the news of his brother’s death from an accidental drive-by shooting.
In an interview, he said, he sort of “lost his voice”. The loss of a close relative is no joke. And I sincerely empathesize with his grief. It was a good reason to remove himself from further musical endeavours and creep into the warmth of family to dissolve the hurt. That move also sort of thwarted his producer’s attempt at making a global hit out of Let’s Talk About it. And it turned the hype of the album to the barest minimum.
Perhaps it is the admixtures of all these scenarios that led to Carl’s exit from the Bad Boy Label. Carl left on the premise that he was not afforded the creative liberty he was awarded for his debut album on his second, and so launched into another record label, where, hopefully, he would become the captain of his musical career sail.
The result of this detachment from his custodian of fame produced another album in 2007 titled So Much Better. Like the name suggests, So Much Better, was a sincere declaration of liberty being more acceptable in comparison to his stilted stint at Bad Boy. Hence So Much Better, fashioned out primarily as a Mix Tape, became an experimental project that showcased Carl in his most sublime state.
Sincerely, So Much Better is a good album, with the usual spectrum of emotional range, with less executive intrusion, and is perhaps a sincere tribute to Carl’s temperament. I Thought Should Know, is a noteworthy love song, Oh No is a successful experimentation of soul with reggae, replete with the “marleian” feel. Home is an unbridled emotional avalanche on the importance of family, and signature interludes, usually unfinished songs, abound in this effort. But missing is Spoken Word poetry blended with rhythms, a feature on his previous albums, and the interludes are disappointedly shabby, lacking the usual lustre and feel brimming in his previous efforts.
On the whole, I was not convinced that Carl had gotten his voice back since the unfortunate incident of his brother’s death. I was also confused with whether to ascribe the failure of So Much Better entirely to the experimental basis of the effort or the poor publicity services proffered by his new Record Label. However, I would rest my case till Carl hits the stores again with another album.

Thoughts on Geisha.

War is a terrible thing. At least that is how I felt after I watched Memoirs of a Geisha. The movie produced by Speilberg( that is responsible for its length, some 2 hrs), and adapted from a book by Arthur Golden is indeed an expose on Japanese culture. And that is exactly what movies should be: a mirror through which a people, nay a culture, can reflect upon themself.
So what is a Geisha, you should ask? And what is so noteworthy in a Geisha to deserve a memoir? There is more to it than the eyes meet or the ears hear. The western culture is responsible for most of our wrong notion on Geishas and other figments of the Japanese culture.
Contrary to our opinions, traditionally a geisha is not a prostitute. Rather a geisha is a Japanese hostess trained in the acts of entertaining men by dancing, singing and serving. Even if I didn’t take any other thing away from this movie, at least that initial notion has been corrected. And I feel if that is all a movie does, rather than engage the viewer’s few hours, it is successful.
But this movie goes beyond that. It is structured. Even though a lot of scenes were thrown into building a story and educating the viewers’ about the Japanese culture, the plot is set in motion, albeit slow motion. All aspects of human emotions and endeavour are taken care of; talk about aspirations, desire, poverty, adventure, test of filial relationships, and most important of all love, is brushed into the mix. The story is essentially the coming of age of a young girl who becomes a geisha. The story is also essentially a Japanese tale of their status quo before the war, presumably WWII. When the war came, the structures of their culture were strictured. Names were preserved but duties were misplaced. Thence a geisha became a cheap prostitute, rather than an effigy of Japanese hospitality. But one is tempted to ask if this is the product of the war or time or both.
If there is anything a movie should leave one with, it’s a topic for future discourse. No doubt, Memoirs of a Geisha does.

Coping with Grief (Again!)

Coping with Grief: Another Perspective.
A while ago I read John Irving’s A Widow for One Year and I was in awe of the themes espoused; that of grief and how humans cope with it. I saw a movie recently that drew parallels to these themes. And I was again in awe of the similarities of themes in different scenarios.
Based on a book by Kim Edwards, A memory keeper’s daughter is a movie about an orthopaedic surgeon husband and his pregnant wife. His wife delivered a set of twins, one was male, the other was a mongoloid female, striking a cord of memory with husband whose sister also had down syndrome and died early in life causing her mother so much pain.
In a whim of moment, and cascades of memory, he thought what was best was to spare his wife such unnecessary emotion so he planned register the child into an institution for people with Down syndrome, and then lie to his wife about her death. As fate or providence would have it, the nurse, who was to deliver the child into the Institute, kept the baby and became her foster mother. With her man she met in serendipitous circumstances, the baby also had a father.
The doctor who later received the gift of a camera from his wife processed his grief via photography. By photography, the tales of the lives are told. Their marriage was left with scars of distrust which later transformed into the wife’s infidelity, whilst the fostered daughter flourished and became a source of joy for those who kept her.
What is striking about this movie, like I said earlier, is it’s similarities with Irving’s story. The conflict although is much different—the death of two sons. What the husband resorts to is also different: philandering; the wife became a detective novelist. But what is noteworthy about this film is the effects of grief on the lives of individuals. How humans, amongst many other things, share their grief, how they process it, how they overcome it, how they surmount it, or how it surmounts them.
But one moral lesson I took away from this movie is that little (in)actions can reap the darnest of consequences. Thence we should always be sure of our actions before we perpetrate them.

The taking of pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123.
Denzel Washington and John Travolta

I am in awe of John Travolta as a bad guy, especially the gangster type, replete with tattoos, bohemian hair-cut and cuss words. From Quetin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction to his tag team with Nicholas Cage, who happens to be losing his grip in his film selections lately, in Face Off, to this latest unlikely team with Denzel, Travolta seems to cut the physique of a bad guy better for me than he does of the imperial hero who literarily saves the day.
A film adapted from a novel by John Godey of a selfsame title. From the title, one can infer that it inclines towards a terrorist hijack of some sort. It turns out to be a mercenary enterprise carefully wrought with stock exchange manipulations and ransom demands.
Denzel seemed to be shoveled between ends. He is a train operator with a previous history of alleged bribery currently being investigated and ill-luck of being the operator of the train being held hostage. But trust Denzel, you would get always get a stellar, even near perfect, performance.
Like in all sensational films, there is the part “Providence” plays. Providence being the rough edges of the story smoothened by authorial intrusions towards preservation of the protagonist’s glory. For instance, providence puts a teenager with a laptop with webcam who transmits the ongoing events to national television. Providence makes things go awry with the ransom car, etc.
One can’t but question the predictability of the plot but I really felt Denzel’s wife response when he informed her via telephone that he would personally deliver the ransom money to the hoodlums. Now she didn’t say be careful or anything that implied that, she said he should pick up milk on his way back home. Now that, for me, is a courageous thing to say. And is perhaps my most thrilling scene in the movie.
The taking of Pelham 123 is not a great movie, it’s a good one and it does what most movies should: thrill you and engage you for a few hours.

a kind of poem.

...there she was in all her splendor,

as exquisite as ever,

her body against the evening sky left me breathless,

her stance was a promise of sturdiness and comfort,

so full of strength and yet sleek in her appearance,

there i was wishing she was mine to take,

wishing she and i,history we have to make
i walked up to her as bedazzled as ever,

in a trance-like state oblivious of other existence,

like a ferric material in a magnetic field,

i was drawn to her, my body in a state of hyperdynamism,

inexplicable palpitations,

blood coursing through twice as fast,

my breath coming in a handful of gasps,

the closer i got the weaker i felt,

like the sun she was,and i a rock,

the closer i got like lava i melt
there she was her body a few inches from mine,

the smell of her wafting through the evening air,

down my nasal faculties,causing a neural uproar,

i stood transfixed,wanting to touch her but undecided how to,

wanting to be just perfect,never too rough and never too gentle,

her body was as smooth as glassware,

as shiny as a well polished brassware,

an epitome of beauty,a real show of craftmanship,

in unspoken words i expressed my love for her,

hoping and praying that she feels the same,

no one else but love to blame,

like a lion in a cage she has me tamed
unexplored and undiscovered she was,

all newness and as virgin as ever,

each part of her a promise of a taste of heaven,

the thought of her being mine welled me with pride,

like a groom,smiling at his bride,

the whole of me i give to her,

every molecule and every atom,

oh!how much i love you my rolls royce phantom.

The essential Whitfield ointment

The Essential Whitfield Ointment
A review of This Christmas
Starring Idris Elba, Chris Brown, Columbus Short, Regina King
A film about the Whitfields, a Black family at Christmas. That should suffice as a summary, but it hardly does. Perhaps because it lacks the simulated emotions inputted into this movie. Although truth be told, this film does not offer any new perspective to the ‘black challenges’, but it however engages the viewer’s few hours. Without offering new insights, it’s not enough to say that it does bring much to the table. The scenario is pretty much cliché: a whirlpool of problems tucked under armpits of a seemingly faultless family.
It’s Christmas and everyone is home. Everyone being facets that cater for the varying conditions that burden the black man, as it were. A mother of six who isn’t over the father of her children; a cuckolded wife who bears the brunt of others without looking out for herself; a gambling son; an interracially-married brother in denial; a well-to-do female that relies on a vibrator for satisfaction, etc. Different scenarios that can be trashed in their own rights merged into a big whole flick.
This entertainment flick, not devoid of black anecdotes and humor, is suffused with borderline performance from every member of the cast to make a theater money maker. This film is sure not to cart away awards, aside Black film awards. But whatever it lacks in new perspective is made up for by the super, super soundtracks. These apt songs would make the day of a soul-lover. And Chris Brown wasn’t bad with his renditions.
A refreshing movie in all.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Pride and Glory
Starring Collin Farell, Edward Norton
Duration: 2hr 10 min
Genre: Crime /Drama
I found the title quite deceptive and in retrospect, quite apt. I had seen a film titled Pride (starring Terrence Howard) and another titled Glory (Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington) and one thing could be said about these films. Beyond having a substantial Black cast, they appealed to the black experience.
Pride and Glory however doesn’t. At least not in a frank manner, I mean. It deals with something more encompassing. And by virtue of dealing with a global (mis)deed, it appeals to the human experience.
Corruption especially within Law enforcement, we can safely assume from the amount of Hollywood movies that theme on it, is not a strictly African problem. I have seen L.A cop, Black Dahlia, to mention a few and all these films point out the savagery human is capable of especially once placed in an exalted position.
Only yesterday I was having a conversation about a review of The Known World by Edward P. Jones in Farafina Magazine. And this review was contemptuous in its dealings with P. Jones’s version of slavery amongst the same race; amongst blacks that is. I not only found it repugnant and but shallow. The Pulitzer winner was ascribing a universal rather than racial fault to slavery. He meant that if a ‘role swap’ occurs and blacks happened to be on the other side of the Atlantic, on the side of civilization, they probably would perpetrate even worse deeds. And it’s true.
Let’s take corruption in Nigeria for instance. Roger (20 naira) is a mandatory fee all transporters most pay in Lagos. How about illegal road blocks, civilian harassment in all forms of display and all other acts of corruption law enforcement agencies indulge in? Perhaps this trivializes the more extreme forms patronized by cops in the movie Pride and Glory, but it also vitalizes the essence of Jones’s theme that slavery is not a problem of humans and not of race
A family of cops—father, two sons and a son-in-law—are in the nexus of the film reel. Sons look up father as some sort of idol cop, and often take to his counsel. Ray Tienery(Edward Norton) has a previous history of listening to his father, which led the collapse of his marriage. And now, his brother’s precinct is blacklisted on account of corruption. And there is evidence of his brother’s laxity, consequence of his wife’s cancer, and the man-in-charge (son-in –law/Collin Farell) as linchpins of the ‘bad cop racket’ perpetrating evils such as bribery, drug-dealing, armed robbery, extensively.
Ray is at the crossroads again, the only man who can pin his sister’s husband to the crime. His father has an idea on how to fix this amicably and salvage the family. But Ray chose to be upright this time; he decides to do what is right. It might not be gainsaying that Justice was not served especially in the manner of the son-in-law’s death. He subjected himself to jungle justice. He wasn’t condemned in the confines of the law to which he had deterred. But rather he suffered within the confines of humanity. In the confines of the maxim, man shall die by what he lives.

We can do better than this!

Obsessed
Actors: Idris Elba, Beyonce Knowles, Ali Larter
The most remarkable attribute of this movie is its outstanding picture quality and when you check the name on the back—Rain Forest Films, the motion picture company behind Motives—one would be less surprised.
In a similar vein, one could compare this film to Motives; they both theme on the trial of relationships. The cameras rolled in on Deker Charles, ably played by black hunk, Idris Elba, is an executive vice president of a financial firm and his wife, Beyonce, and their son,Kyle, moving into their new house and their gestures suggests a young rich family.
Another female character is introduced: Lisa, who worked as a temporary secretary to Derek. She plays a pivotal role in the denouement of the plot. This delusional woman fell in love with Derek and tried inadvertently to start an affair to no avail. She had no choice but to resort to ideas from her crazy brains and consequently, Derek marriage and family is put through the test of infidelity and trust by her actions.
This film could have easily passed as a Nollywood flick save the quality of the picture and appropriate directing. The actors and actresses were however remarkable and the sound tracks were apt. One can’t stray too much from the reason; Beyonce’s signature vocals.
This is not a movie I would want to watch again perhaps because the plot is not elaborate and might not necessary pass through what would call the African kaleidoscope. It’s mostly foreign and tends towards the realms of artificial.

The Audacity of Pain: A review

I am Memory
Author: Jumoke Verissimo
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 56
ISBN No: 978-978-088-065-1
Personally, I don’t like reviews. I think they are high-opinionated, utterly sentimental and directly related to book sales. But often I ask myself if sentiments can be distilled completely from a work of art. Can sentiment, the gnawing emotion that wills pen to paper and occasions the resultant work, be separated from Art? Absolutely not. So we can safely conclude that Sentiment is the artery through which Art in itself is fed and one is tempted to end it there.
In the fashion of American writer, Richard Matheson’s novel recently made into movie, I Am Legend, Ms. Verissimo substantiates her claim to her chosen genre, poetry, with her first collection of poems, I Am Memory. Erstwhile Jumoke Verissimo has been heard and read both as a performance poet and in literary journals respectively and I must say, her collection is anticipated and timely.
I noticed the book featured about thirteen poems, divided into four memory lanes after I got passed the rather lengthy acknowledgments. Then I launched into the first of her offerings which perhaps is her most outstanding poem, Sequence (of desire).
This love poem is nothing like the Shakespearian sonnets, or Robert Frost’s verses, its much bolder, penned specifically for performance. The lyricism is quite remarkable and works in tandem with the eloquent string of emotions that built into a robust narrative on one of the most unifying themes in the universe. Recently I was privileged to watch a performance and I was struck with awe.
As a poet, Ms Verissimo is versatile as well as judicious in her use of literary mechanics to furnish poems with a fluid progression. Like the Free Verse poet she is, her style borders more on internal rhythm than rhyme and stanzas, often uneven, do not mince or maneuver words, rather it hits the proverbial nail on the head. Generously, she coins words with pun intended. Words such as Shell-ers, aba-shed are used to further buttress and delineate her emotions, setting them as roots and templates for revisiting issues that bulked most of her themes. Truly, an African poet can’t be without activism.
I am memory revisits past issues swept under the carpet of history, gnaws old scars and initiate new tears and perspective to the several woes that have betide the Nigerian state. So often, the poet assumes an angry tone and one could envision the pains the poet had sifted into verses. Her poems tackled themes like tyranny and dictatorship, hunger and famine, unsolved murders of politicians, unjust killings, leaving out only HIV/AIDS to have become a complete personal reproach on African sensibilities.
Ms Verissimo has penned a book of nostalgic history. She has collected poems that truly reflect the reactions of a bona fide Nigerian to the turbulence and tribulation the nation has faced for ages. This collection is a bold stance of pain and other emotions, filtering through the pores of gross indifference and achieving a communal cry of protest.
With this collection, Ms Verissimo asserts and secures herself a seat on the table of the new Nigerian contemporary poets, the likes of Ifowodo Ogaga, Chiedu Ezeanah, Lola Shoneyin, Tade Ipadeola, Niran okewole etc. No doubt she would be heard from for a while.

Clinical Blues I

This poem is a product of boredom in a class of obstetrics. talk about disillusionment, sometimes i wonder how i found my feet in the medical school. but thats another story. that afternoon, i actively poured my thoughts in my notes and what i have written below is the refined composition. i hope its enjoyable!

Clinical Blues

Sing me a song
not from your larynx
probe deep
deeper into lungs,
the recesses of your soul

I am a lonesome observer,
the clinical sentinel
who sits still to wage
wars against infirmities

And your organic sax
plunges snot and sounds
into my drink of of patience
the truth is eerie,tall
like swabs of heavy winds

Bored purveyor!
where lies your magic
your medicine of
doses and regimen
that mount eternal
wars against Hypnos

The blip of an ailing heart
tolls a symphony of symptoms
but am no open chest surgeon
for I'm a jazz pianist
With little stint with blood

The morbid applause of the gut
claps of bilious thunder
in the economy of sound
music is found
in scribbles,
in slow latent dribbles
drops and drips
beams of ray scamper
as life shudder into light
and souls slip into purgatory

Measuring Habila

Book: Measuring Time
Pages: 322
Year of Publication: 2007
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
ISSN No: 978-978-080-513-5
A writer’s ability to simulate reality borders both on his creative acumen and experience. Habila, fully knowing this, wrote his sophomore attempt at “the novel” after garnering these rather important writer-ly ingredients. I digress a bit.
His first effort launched him into widespread literary acclaim and a splash of notable literary prizes, the Caine( fondly referred to as the African Booker) and the Commonwealth First Book Prizes inclusive. Waiting for An Angel, his debut collection of inter-connected short stories, fashioned after John Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heavens, wrote into the depths of Nigerian condition during the military regimes.
Measuring Time, which also tackled topical issues, is a very much different book. Habila, in an interview, said that he always knew he wanted to write the book even before he wrote his first. This seemed similar to Orange-prize winning Chimamanda Adichie’s response when she was quizzed about Half of a yellow Sun, also her second novel.
The mastery of a writer hinges on his ability to write directly into the human conditions. Habila aptly did so with Measuring Time, and for this discourse, the medical conditions of his characters are of utmost importance.
Mamo, the protagonist, is a twin who suffered a blood condition peculiar to the blacks. The medical practitioners would call it Blood Dyscrasia, Hemoglobinopathies but it remains Sickle-Cell Disease, a popular scourge that plagues one out of every four blacks.
Mamo inherited his traits from both his parents. His mother, also sickly, died shortly after she delivered the twins. Her death was peculiar to complications resulting from multiple gestation, her peculiar blood condition and untoward health care, for she was delivered at home with very little medical intervention proffered by a midwife.
Habila captured the ill-health that plagued Mamo as a child. Being motherless, his aunt played a pivotal role in his staying alive in spite of his sickly predispositions, telling him fairytales which in exact ‘habilan’ words goes thus:
He imagined the stories insinuating themselves into his veins, flushing out the sickle-shaped, hemoglobin-deficient red cells that clogged the nodes in his veins and caused his joints to swell painfully. It was the stories and not folic acid tablets that he swallowed daily or the green vegetables and liver that were staples in his diet, or the special care not to get bitten by mosquitoes; it was his auntie’s stories slowly working their magic in his veins, keeping him alive.(P. 19)
Numerous medical conditions also come to fore: Waziri, a major character in the denouement of the plot, suffered from a squint: “one of his eyes, the left one was off focus”; Binta, the lady to which Mamo lost the innocence of his youth, was an incurable nymphomaniac who eventually dies by the hands of sexually transmitted infections, presumably AIDS, from Habila reference to her shriveling up, an euphemism for profound weight loss; Sadiya, Mamo’s father’s first and only love suffered a stroke that affected her memories.
Mamo, set back by his blood condition, lacked the physical vigour he needed to pursue his desire to become a solider like his brother, La Mamo. Habila attests to his having to twin his major character in a similar fashion to fellow African writers like Chimamanda Adichie(Half of a Yellow Sun), Diana Evans(26a), and Helen Oyeyemi( The Icarus Girl). This was a major architectural decision that held the literary outlay affording Habila an avenue to wedge several subthemes including War, Crime, Corruption, and Politics amongst other human sensibilities into the structure of his novel. And also since La Mamo, the twin brother, did not have a voice in the narrative. His sojourn in the world had to be captured in several letters spanning the intervals he spent abroad fighting wars, a similar fashion to Lekan Oyegoke’s novel.
Like most writers, Habila is aware of the role a love story plays in the novel. The love story is the horse on which the plot rides; easily, it provides the tension and suspense that turn pages and tugs at the heart of readers. Zara, whom Mamo fell in love with, is a matrimonial fugitive seeking respite in the obscurity of her hometown. A single mother abused often by her soldier husband, who also fell in love with Mamo to requite his affections, but strangely their love resolves in unfortunate circumstances.
It is also important to note that Habila learnt from the masters. Himself, a contemporary writer, he drew a lot from his encounters with previous influential writers, the likes of John Steinbeck and Alex Laguma, a South African who wrote prolifically against Apartheid. Of mice and men and A walk in the Night are chapter titles in the book but are also important books authored by the aforementioned writers. Plutarch, a greek philosopher and writer, also was of beneficial influence. His Parallel Lives, a book of four single biographies and twenty-seven pair of biographies, is an important fabric to the essence of the major theme. The novel raised pertinent, even disturbing questions, about the veracity of history and Mamo the protagonist in his attempt to establish true history wrote the biographies of ordinary people that constituted Keti, where most of the story is set.
It’s noteworthy that Habila is no medical expert. However in his attempt at transmuting his research work on Sickle-cell Anaemia into fluid sentences firing up vivid images into reader’s mind, he stepped on some medical terminologies. But all misgivings would be forgiven, for he has indeed written an important book on history for posterity.

On This Year's African Booker

It was a good thing the Caine Prize people thought it right to put out the shortlists on their website. I, like many handicapped literary enthusiasts, would have mastered story titles, perhaps fantasize about their text and waited till the clincher is announced late July. But instead, this year is better and by God, I have the five stories downloaded into my little laptop, all for my enjoyable consumption.
So I started out with End Of Skill, the Ghanaian story trashed by Toni Kan. Kan did put this story down, below Chikwava’s Dancing to the Jazz Goblin and His rhythms which I was opportune to read in a ride out the back of Tade Ipadeola’s friend car after a writer’s meet at The Palms. But reading through Kabu’s story about a weaver who sold his father’s legacy and passion for western currencies, I concluded that the story was not entirely as weak as Kan purported it to be, although the romance with weaving was in excess and of little import to the progression of plot and its denouement. In other words, if we excise Kabu’s ramblings on Kente and spice what is left, we still have his good story, which is obviously not my Caine Prize winner.
Next on my list is Waiting, E.C Osondu’s second chance to clinch the prize he narrowed missed with Jimmy Carter’s eyes in 2007. I was somewhat disappointed that his AGNI published story didn’t win and I can’t proffer reasons because I didn’t read the other entries. But Waiting, I must say, is not as strong as Jimmy Carter’s Eyes. Never. In his romance with refugee children and their plights, Osondu chronicled in his usual straight albeit short prose his imaginations which I find sympathetic but shallow. Personally, I was not moved. And I doubt if the judges would be.
Next is Parselolo Kantai’s story, You Wreck Her. Parselolo comes highly recommended so as I gunned down his scripted thoughts I couldn’t but feel refreshed reading through his gospel on an already trite theme. It’s refreshing perhaps because of unique narrative. There was an elusive manner in which the story began but the story holds through for the reader to immense in the writer’s recesses and the empathy generated in the reader’s mind is neither induced by the writer’s choice of words or the mood portrayed. With so much said, its safe to conclude that the story is a favourite.
But not so fast, Mukoma wa Ngugi also told a good tale, How Kamau wa Ngugi escaped into Exile. I find that title exasperating but it was while reading these stories I found how perfectly edited these stories were, if not for anything, I think it’s a fine reason they made the shortlist. Kamau comes as a fugitive activist fleeing from the enforcement agencies who sought him and in his escape in goes through a lot that exposed to the reader the depth and the gory details of the inhuman experiences he fought against. I liked the feel of love in the story that was soon threaded behind the serious fabric of its themes.
Last but not the least is Alistair Morgan’s story which also came highly recommended and which I think would be a popular choice. Personally, I respect this product of his narrative and if history is anything to go by, the last winner was also South African. The story written in first person in the opening lines got me questioning what African sensibilities it appealed to? I thought it was well written but could have passed as western prose touching on themes like gruesomeness of reality. I was, I must admit, a little too quick to pass judgment, for the story built into an African sensibility. However, the genius of Alistair’s craft can be based on his dwelling more on how human adapt to his theme rather than running graffiti on their actual gruesome consequences. I reiterate that it’s probably the popular choice, but we must wait till July to know the true clincher.

Coping With Grief: A John Irving Approach

Whilst reading Stephen King’s semi-autobiographical book On writing, I found a page that he recommended some books as “great reads”. John Irving’s A widow for One year was one of them. I was not surprised for I was not new to Irving’s work. I had read his National Book Award winning The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules that clinched him the best screenplay Academy award. So when I happened upon the book for sale, I was quick to make the purchase and instantly began to read.
From the first line, I was enthralled. The novel chronicled the death of two sons of a family and how various characters struggled to overcome their grief. The central character, Ruth, was conceived after the death of her siblings and the first part of the novel began absurdly with the four-year- old walking in on her mother and her father’s driver in a strange act of sex.
Very peculiar to Irving’s writings are characters as writers. In this novel, Irving went a little too experimental: every character that mattered to grand scheme of the plot were writers or involved intricately with writing: Ruth was a best-selling novelist; her father, Ted, resorted to children stories after he had written previous unremarkable adult novels; her mother, Marion, became a crime writer whilst she sought closure after the disastrous loss of her two sons in an unfortunate auto crash; Ed, her father’s driver, wrote several novels about young men falling in love with older women, numerous remakes of his circumstantial affair with Ruth’s mother; Hannah, Ruth’s best friend was a journalist liberal about her sexual relations; Ruth’s Editor became her husband. And so the waft welted into a hob of Irving’s imagination of writerly characters.
The first part of the novel, Summer 1958, introduced the key characters: Ted, Marion, Ed and little Ruth. Ed takes up a vacation job of being Ted’s driver and he is soon accustomed to Ted’s predilection for seducing young mothers using his fame as a children writer to lure them to pose for his children books. Gradually, he peels off their propriety and gets them to pose nude after which an affair usually ensued. However these affairs, usually short-lived and prolific, did not go unacknowledged by Marion whom Ed had found attractive. The webs of the story spun Ed right into the Marion’s bed and she exposed the virile teenager to sex, a tangible substitute for his habitual masturbations.
We are introduced early to a defunct family system. All the values that characterized family lacked and a young daughter was perhaps the sole reason against actual divorce. Both parents handled their grief in separate manners: Ted became a drunk and perpetual womanizer and his beautiful wife grew cold and steely almost frigid until her sexual encounters with Ed, who easily was her dead son’s age mate.
Memories of the boys were preserved as pictures hung around the house and one is often a tourist offered privileged information about the reasons that occasioned the snapshots and the typical familial circumstances involved. This novel in this way is quite psychological; it helps to discover how people cope with blunt pain, grief. Toward the end of first part, Marion leaves home, leaving her young daughter to her husband’s care; Ed returns home and Ted employs a Mexican couple as gardener and nanny.
The second part of the book teleports us to the fall of 1990. We meet Ruth, an accomplished best-selling novelist with two efforts pegged to her belt; Ed, 48, had written more novels but had less success and still had not outgrown his obsession for Ruth’s mother.
The second part is mostly about Ruth’s life as a writer: her sensibilities and prejudice, if you may. The creative process involved in coming up with what her friend, Hannah, described as “autobiographical” novel. This, Ruth objected until an idea struck her to write a novel about such a delicate themes as sex and depravity. Her research led her in close contact with prostitutes; where she witnessed the murder of a prostitute while “researching” in the prostitute’s closet. It’s in the phase that Africa gets a mention by the way of fleeting Ghanaian prostitutes in a brothel landscape, perhaps that makes Women Trafficking registered in the minds of Africans and Non-Africans alike.
Ruth proceeds to give vital information that helps a police officer apprehend the murderer and she also wrote a novel about the experience. She had earlier been having second thoughts about getting married to her editor but after her experience, she got married and forgave Hannah who had warmed her way into her father’s bed. She unfortunately lost her husband in circumstances I found “questionable”, and she became a widow like one of the characters in her previous novels. Her father also committed to suicide in the circumstances I have wanting in clarification.
Resolution of themes occurred in the final segment of the book when Ruth discovers her mother was a crime writer who wrote novels that had psychological undertones and always alluded to “two missing kids”. Ruth bore a son, Graham, whom she named after Graham Greene, one of her favourite writer’s whose biography held her interest and got numerous mentions in the novel. She also by chance met the police officer, who was also a fan of her novels, had they fell in love in circumstances I find “questionable”.
Irving’s succinctly raised themes and matters of discourse which he made relevant to his novel: of loss and how people handled Grief; of the novelist and the creative process; of how earlier events predispose individuals to reoccurrence and perhaps the unpredictable patterns of fate most especially love and death.
If it serves as any consolation, the denouement after a torturous course of the novelist involved Ruth finally finding love in the arms of a retired Dutch police officer and Marion’s return to Ed’s life in a nick of time to prevent his belated mid-life crisis. And the ending bore unmistakable resemblance to the beginning, when Ruth sights Ed and her mother again together and Marion said, “Don’t cry honey, It’s just Eddie and me”.

The diagnosis of my coma

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its being a a while since i last held a pen to write. my laptop had issues and i had become to lazy to undergo the stress of having to type and queue up at cybercafe to publish online. but now its back and am back and i hope to be faithful to my blog! easy

Saraba April

Living the dream, we are! check the website,www.sarabamag.com, for our latest issue!

To blog is fine, but to write is divine.

I am a writer. That’s who I see when I look in the mirror, not an ordinary face with bat-ear deformity. That’s who I aspire to be (at least that what led to writing that silly poem in 1998). But I understand how far-fetched a dream of basing my entire livelihood on writing is in this country and continent. I do not want to write my way to the top by writing the white’s version of Africa; what they like to read about Africa (of machetes, (e)maciated mothers, malnourished children, and mad men). I want to write about Africa, shedding postive light on her awesome cultures and sensibilities. But I also want to eat three square meals without batting an eyelid. Thence, I am studying medicine.
As I approach my penultimate I begin to think of my ultimate dreams—to write and to be read in the world over—and am happy am actually actualising these dreams (www.sarabamag.com). Am living it, reliving it, believing, leveraging it, beveraging it. Overthin! But I don’t write most of the time. Most of my best works are abadoned (half-cooked). And whilst I procastinate on completing them, am fully aware that one big time will NOT come for me to write to my fill. But all the same, I expect it.
Whilst am holiday-inn at home( by the way, home is ibafo, a town where people set to work after the sun rises and set with it talcum-laden after few hours), I hope to write to my fill in the next couple of months so help me GOD. So I would hope to post a 300 word stint here weekly and hope God helps me cos to write is really divine.

Thin lines

The thin line between life and death is both the pulse and the ability to percieve impulses. Once those two criticeria has been reached (breached), you are safely dead. Dead, men. Gone. Gone too soon, at least that’s what your obituary would read if your family is decent enough to get you one. But that point has been reached more than once by most, if not all, of us. That critical point where a little more effort would shortput you into the oblivion. Trust me, I know.
I have been there too. More than once. Even recently. Precisely a week ago, I was driving on Campus. I had just completed my exams. And I had passed. But the backlog of sleep and sleep deprivation made my eyes heavy, or what it the undue stress and excessive joggling my system had suffered in the recent past? I don’t know. But I was driving, and then a blackout. OR is it sleep? Whatever, I just slipped.
In that second my car rammed into a traffic light and an electric light pole, which I eventually lifted. I touched the line. But I was restrained. By prayers of my mum and my loved ones. The prayers that had made me use my seat belt, a rare occurrence at 6 am, a time I thought I was far from danger’s gaze. The seatbelt saved my life. Like it did save kayne west’s life and for that aint I grateful? I am. I thank God and my loved ones who for the past days have placed restraining order on my movement. No doubt there are lessons learnt—don’t push yourself too hard—and prices to be paid like I have been reduced from four legs to two, but am grateful, grateful for the experience, grateful for the divine intervention which makes it possible for me to not to have crossed that thin line.

Grav Superlatives

This week holds quite some significance to me. Yes it does, cos by tomorrow I would add me another year on the surface of this earth ( don’t ask me my age) and the next day I would sit(more appropriately stand) for a clinical exam that would lead me to my penultimate, making my days as a student about 22 months. 22 months away from a family’s dream, 22 months away from the Doctorate, the Hippocratic Oath, mainstream business of helping and saving lives. I can’t but say, I can’t wait!
Yet again, as I pride myself and turn out my appreciation to the Most High for making it possible for me to be quite older, i think again I near my grave. Yes am still very far away from it; I mean I have not written 14 books, married, birth children, witnessed naming ceremonies of grandchildren, handed out my daughter(s) to men in exquisite suits, buried my parents, etc.
Still quite a lot to get done o! And I don’t see death in the next 50 years (God’s willing) but the cruel fact is am much closer to my grave than I was before my last birthday.
Grave.
Gravid.
Gravity.
These three words draw out a meaning that interconnects in my mind. Apart from sharing the first four letters, they seem to remind me of something.
Grave is something we dread (myself inclusive). Frankly am not a fan. Gravidity is more like it. I once was put my mama in the place, then she gave birth to me and if not for the doctor’s intervention as I popped ( or pooped) out her birth canal (after belabouring the poor girl at that time for about 17 hours) I would fall to ground, gravity intervening( John Mayer).
So, I feel smug with my brilliant rendition( thank you, thank you) with these three words but not quite as I was when the missing link between them stumbled on my subconscious; I thought I had the imprint of a good poem!
Let me conclude by saying, I hope my pasteurized thoughts came out like it was preserved in terms of authenticity, synchronicity and relevance. Cuz really, I just dey blab. Many happy returns to me! DA