Beyond Labor Pains

In the gathering of accomplished R&B musicians, Syleena Johnson is worthy of mention. Not just because she is has a heritage rich in music (as her father was Syl Johnson), but that she has carved for herself a niche in the genre in which she practises.

Her albums, for one, have been a musical documentation of experiences that draw deeply from love, relationships and other emotional details. And from the names she gives each effort, it seems she is penning the draft of a book and releasing them in instalments/chapters. To her credits are four chapters that plumb the recesses and permutations of emotional scenarios, and for the benefit of this review, I will write about the fourth chapter.

Chapter four is subtitled Labor Pains, and we have an opening interlude which is a rather unnecessary parody of Syleena’s acoustic plight as it negotiates its way through her birth canal. And there is another interlude worthy of mention, Redstorm Domestic Lesson, a spoken word session, which reprimands men who make women subservient to them. Very sympathetic to the female cause and 21st century-ish.

What I find remarkable about Syleena’s music is her depth. R&B is generally regarded as the genre that takes into account every gritty detail of emotion but Syleena liberates her brand and plunges it beyond the coffers of soft sentimental droll.

After listening to Labor Pains severally, I could marry the title, which I initially found rather unapt, into the core message and the looming theme that string most, if not every, song on this album together. Her Labor Pains extends beyond the gamut of a parturient; it morphs into a collective noun that capsulate the history and the reality of being black. The album confronts what it entails to be female, black and human respectively. Without being overly didactic, this album explores previous black experiences with much newer accounts and marries them together on the altar of Soul.

Easily, Syleena becomes the officiating chorister who sings into the depth of being black and her arsenal is not only her distinct voice, she also draws from the culture of Chicago blues. This album is tainted with the unmistakable quaint feel of the blues of yesteryears and this is perhaps why its reach would not extend beyond the hearts of true music lovers. It reaffirms that this album would not spill into pop charts or become an essential radio song.

Although there is the issue of unevenness of quality of the featured songs, this helps to jar at the hearts of Syleena lovers who would forgive rather dismissively. And one last thing, this album would be fondly remembered.

Saraba's latest effort: The Niger Delta Issue.

A man's thoughts and Mine.

A sixth studio album is no lean feat; it proves that whoever is on the other side of the speaker has consistency and substantial following as propellers. Well, Ginny as a lot more than that. He is a married father, “small town” dancing crooner with a lot of regard for his fans, hence each effort follows the slant of his musical career—not careening, just a slow lilt—and a rather remarkable thing about the guy is that he doesn’t have the delusion of the great R & B album being in his rather under-utilised vocal cords.
A Man’s Thoughts, no doubt, draws from previous efforts: upbeat tracks that necessitate slow movement, great love songs with a tinge of erotica and bland interludes. Personally, I think, Ginuwine should learn a lot from Carl Thomas whose interludes are short songs that sometimes outwit full-length songs in his album. It is worthy of note that these interludes are no audio movies, unlike The Senior.
I am biased to Ginuwine. I think his song writing is crappy, very below par in terms of intellectual engagement, but music is not “writing”, what makes a song or an album is appeal. A good album must appeal to several human conditions. I have found out that we humans attach songs as memory aids often.
So what do we have in this album other than good love songs that you can croon on the bed or in the car: nothing. But that should suffice, after all the album holds a shelf slot in the R & B department, the most mawkish of all contemporary music genres, and the direct consequence is that it must appeal to the lover, the loved and the bed.
Trouble is a great track, upbeat and all, but Orchestra is a personal fav(actually reminds me of someone). The song blows me away every time, the lyrics holds water. Show me the way has some recurring cords that surface in the most bizarre places e.g toilet. This album can best be described as a long playing continuum with several spots of brilliance and the rest is at best accounted for by mediocrity.
Anyway, I like it.

Saraba Issue 4b

Immigrant blues

A review of Segun Afolabi’s A Life Elsewhere
I find the title of this debut story collection A Life Elsewhere apt, for indeed what the author seeks to achieve with these seventeen stories or so is a literary embellishment of an anthropological concept. It is notable that there is no eponymous story which lends it title to the collection as trends demand. The title seems to be grafted from the motive behind each story: an exposition into the Immigrant Experience, a thematic concern most Nigerian writers residing abroad often flirt with.
Perhaps the sudden removal from their culture and their erstwhile homeland often metes upon them the desire to pose their experience as narratives. The bulk of Adichie’s short stories in The Thing around Your Neck dwell on this theme; Habila’s The Immigrant (check African-writing.com) also grazes this topic, although with less authorial imperialism; Chika Unigwe’s Phoenix about a Nigeria woman’s international marriage and consequences thereof…the list continues. In essence, one can make an educated guess that their accounts are autobiographic in its trappings (his short biography offers a glimpse at his itinerant childhood); but more than this, they are graphic in expression and intention to attest that it is indeed not a bed of roses as we are often misled by the gallant display of Diaspora returnees. Hence the stories are suffused with a strong sense of setting and estrangement.
Monday Morning, the Caine-Prize winning story, chronicles the tale of a refugee family particularly of a young son; their efforts to fit into the community that their homeland wars had put them. As you grope deeper into the narrative, Mr Afolabi recruits all sort of characters. This arrangement gathers little boys, overweight adolescents, religious fanatics and delusional pensioners—the characters own interesting profiles and engaging stories to dispense. They tell their tales with varying voices and point of view(s), assuming voices that would best suit their predicament and temperament. So what we have is an assorted delivery of similar vignettes.
Their narratives share a lethargy and vagueness, a sort of listlessness that is either an ingenious effort of the author or his signature style that would probably balk the aesthetics of his subsequent offerings. Be that as it may, this style suits the stories and if the readers allows themselves to be absorbed, they would come away with the contagious grief that is rooted shallow in the lives of the characters. So here is a sound off warning: detach yourself from these stories else you catch on the Immigrant blues.
However there are some stories that leave one wondering if the manuscript ever encountered a competent editor. Some hackneyed phrases and clichés, and even warped imaginations could have been cured with the slightest editorial pruning. Unimaginative descriptions like in The Husband of My wife’s Best Friend, a character’s face was described as an “uncooked doughnut “not only appalls and undermines the author’s creativity, it is a matchless evidence of the gaping hole existing in the chain of Book Publishing. But one cannot put this book down on this premise. Most, if not all, the stories of this collection have appeared in several international literary journals.
The book is indeed a panoramic survey of the Diaspora experience that leaves one with a lasting impression: that fiction is at its best when close to reality.

Not Water Closet Material

Wande Coal
Mushin to Mo-Hits (M2M)
Contrary to popular expectation once again, Wande Coal has “wowed” his fervent critics. He has produced a long playing record which is not W.C (water closet) material. Rather this album is going to stay where it deserves—in our hearts and on our CD trays.
Perhaps he might have disappointed his earlier fans who expected his chosen genre of music to be the sparse and unrewarding segment of R and B crooners, but all the same he has produced an album worthy of his record label, the indomitable Mo Hits.
Wande’s watchword for this album must have been PARTY. Hence club-bangers abound and even when the songs are not particularly up-beat to initiate or sustain body-wiggling, bumping of heads would suffice. This attribute is courtesy Don Jazzy, an acoustic maven who deserves to be called the High Chief of Nigeria Contemporary Production. His ingenious and Wande’s lofty croonings are the pieces that make the master-piece in this album.
The Mo hit cohorts also got their field day out on several tracks. More than not however, their efforts were below par and their contributions strike more often than not as fillers, of course except for D’Banj’s, a stud who has consistently justified his claim to being an entertainer.
I, for one, would have preferred if Wande collaborated with more homegrown, non-Mo hits affiliates. But this is something not obtainable from his record label; they rarely obliterate the confines of their Koko mansion, and even when they do, they limit interactions with the Storm record’s Ikechukwu and Nateo-C.
The album is an effort that can be repeatedly relished in one-sitting. With various high and lows that can cater to the listener’s needs, from love songs to party tracks to serious songs replete with real talk, every song hits its target and every target is accounted for in terms of record sales.

Expediting Life Itself

I recently stumbled—o.k., not stumbled—read might be more appropriate as the New Yorker Fiction has become a weekly addiction of mine. So in very few words, I wish, I read Egan’s explosive short story Safari. And am still wowed by the effects.

Essentially, it’s a story of a family—a father and his latest girlfriend, with her PH.D in view, his two children—among a group of tourists in Kenya on an expedition of wildlife. It seemed to be an out of life experience for them; Of course because they were whites, and Africa was just vacation and sun enough to tan their skins.

For the father, perhaps it was more than that. Owing to the fact that he is notorious with ladies, he enjoys the ambience and pleasure of a warm flesh next to him, which he could reach out to at any odd hour when sexual intuition gets the better of him. But alarmingly, his latest girlfriend, as subtly as a crush could be written into a story without heralding character bias, is sexually attracted to another.

This story, in the most subtle form, comments on the complexity of the relations and relationship. And surprisingly, gives a tidy ending—something not readily obtainable in the short story form. The unhindered plunge into the future gives the story its denouement, and makes it function as a short story. I enjoyed this story and would recommend it to any reader.