Revisiting Fela's Power Show.

There's something about Fela's early 80s ouevre which had the gentle kick of the heydays, the mid-seventies.Power show, a 14 minute spool of soft-tempo melancholia attacks the circumstantial misuse of power, which, surprisingly, is characteristic of nigeria, nay africa.What is most innovative about this low-keyed dirge is Fela's recourse to the piano, which he had majored in at the Liverpool Trinity School where he trained as a musician. There were several short and intermittent solos of brassy key notes with a blast of reponse intiated by the horn section but later orchestrated by d maestro himself, all these being observed by the soft percussion and a mellow rhythm section.The vocals are employed earlier on with the adopted call and response reminiscent of Soul music. And about a third of the way down the track, the real music of organic instrumental dialogue begins till the track tampers down the crescendo.This for no apt and reason justifiable happens to be my personal favourite after d order of Trouble Sleep.The two songs are very social in their content and have charged itself with the responsibility of telling the story of the down-trodden, something a man from at least bourgeois origin tells most eloquently.

On a Certain Nigerian Movie

Now I believe that the Choc Boys have a shot at the forefront in Nigeria Arts and Music. I think they can be at the melding point of the renaissance, where popular music may transform into art, and their price will be higher regard in excess of what the reigning circus of entertainers and their presumably easy-going chieftain come away with. This is a relevant aside; let me return to the business of this piece, presumably the glorification of a good Nigerian movie.

The idea to market M.I’s sophomore as a movie was effective, especially in the early days when the blogosphere and social networks speculated that perhaps the fine hip-pop act was thinking of venturing into Nollywood. The Idea of the movie to the frame of the album is not entirely fitting, neither is it completely discordant. Three tracks allude to movie: Action Film, Wild Wild West and Epic, and these tracks in a light can be described as the strongest at different moods.

The Cover-image is excellent and brings to memory the first album’. Only that here MI is suited with a rather apt bow-tie and in his clutching the butt of a mic, with his left hand stylishly dipped into his pocket. The picture oozes of business, the business of musical mastery.

MI has morphed. He has become what he wanted to be. The classic rap maestro who lyrically experiments with rap in several musical formulae has succeeded at composing compound sounds which in good time will bear his insignia.

MI 2 works on several levels. It works as a leisure L.P, the type you listen to for the heck of hearing good sounds. Action Movie is perhaps the only club-banger or the song orchestrated to cater to dance. Brymo, the man with the honeyed husk of a voice, does his “thing” again, asserting that his excellent collaboration with Ice Prince on Oleku is not particularly a fluke or a lucky ride.

Slow Down is one of my personal favourite and MI is not without assistance in the vocals of another croning chap, Julius Caesar. The track is interestingly refreshing, it’s a booty song with a feel good twang, sort of like a love song miss road come jump on top bed.

Number One is a landmark hit, the first success of its kind, a fusion between highlife and rap. The track is awesome on both levels and entirely works. The lyrical arrangement is almost divine and MI was on top of it. Yes sir
Anybody and Nobody respectively recruiting Timaya and Tuface are not exceptional. They are just regular musical collaborations that will do their bit in entertaining, reigning and eventually fading. They may find themselves a place in the back corner of tracks reserved for old school, if they keep their airplay up.

Beef, MI’s retort to his beefers, itself a metaphor, is witty in the handling of material, does not take itself serious and delves the blow where it is most needed. Then Wild Wild West is a love song to the religio-ethnic war ravaged J-town, Jos. It is relevant in the concern of music and arts with the human condition brought about by either religious and political propanganda or both.
One Naira with Waje absolutely works in its uniqueness of an age old concern, love.
Craze is not a personal favourite, it is my least heard track.
Undisputed reiterates the essence of the entire LP, that MI’s glory is inimitable. And I agree.

Epic is reminiscent of gospel, the crooner, called Praise, handles his business in a John Legendish fashion and the track will be known for its autobiographical exposition.
Imperfect me is a musical tribute to imperfection and features close allies voicing what they don’t like about MI. This is MI selling his personality with his sophomore album, perhaps he is also reiterating that his art and his life is inseparable.
And of course, back to the beginning we have a choc boys anthem, with each lieutenant in the fold acoustically represented.
Indeed M.I has made a good album.

Translation of Asa's Bamidele into English Language

Robert Frost affirmed that poetry is lost in translation.
I set at doing an experiment to disprove this and i picked the most assured material to dispel every mind of Robert Frost's caveat to translation. A song. Not just any song, a poetic kind and i translated it into English language.
Might i quip that i am more dexterous in the English than my mother tongue, Yoruba in which this song was written but what the heck! I face challenges headlong with my arsenal. My arsenal is passable Yoruba and a slippery grasp of English grammar, for i am only proficient in

my ability to juggle words as if I am a circus man.
Whatever. Find my translation below and be the judge. My inference is RF is right.

Asa's Bamidele , Bonus track in her sophomore effort, Beautiful Imperfection
Either you are happy or not,
You must accompany me home

Even if it will take some force,
We must go together to my father's house.

Akinyele wants to marry wife,
He doesnt want to pay some brideprice, you better find it.

Akinyele Jinadu does not want to pay
Some brideprice, you better find it

Akinyele o(8ce)

I feel cold,
I suffer backache,
Come home with me.
Didn't you say the same thing yesterday
I'm back again, lets go meet my parents

Headstrong lawyer, first class liar
Stupid, pay before service.

My mother did give birth to me,
My father nurtured me,
I'm not fit for registry marriage, literate lawyer.

Akinyele o(8ce)

Headstrong lawyer first class liar
Stupid, pay before service.
You indulge so much in drinking,
Eating and flirting that u dont no better.

Akinyele o, till fade.

Writer's Karma: Becoming One's Character

I once fell in love with a certain phrase which I assumed described rootless characters that floated on alien lands without shelter or any form of affiliation whatsoever in sight, what is often called the literature of the dispossessed.
And as a writer, I have found patterns like this in some of my writings, particularly a short story published in Sentinel’s first issue titled Pot of Gold.

Kabir, the protagonist, is a cynic after the order of Diogenes. An underachiever who disbelieved his certainty of good fortune, he fell in love with a beautiful prostitute to whom he tested his first stint with trust on. Obviously, this had disastrous implications and this was what I attempted to plough with my narrative. Sadly, one and half years or so after I wrote this story, I find myself in a precarious condition my character was in.

My story began almost routinely with a knock on my character’s door and ended almost on the same note but the second knock was imagined and expected. The first knock was assumed to be the knock of a Jehovah’s Witness. The last knock was expected to be his landlord’s demanding a rent which, for reasons to be found in the heart of the narrative, he wouldn’t have.

I have become Kabir in just a matter of years. My scenario is rather colourful as opposed to his, as I have the good, or is it bad fortune, of having my rent of three months advance refunded and told to get out of the small cubicle I am writing from in less than a month.

Like Kabir, I have become dispossessed. Like Kabir, I expected this event from when my Landlord sent a summoning text message. Like Kabir, I have no where to stay and I wear that plight on my face like makeup. Like Kabir, I didn’t sleep well last night as I felt

Perhaps now that I have experienced what it feels like, I can write the story of Kabir better. Perhaps I can safely say fiction is a fact teased from the loins of reality. Kabir is my imagination and as now become my plight.
But I pray I strike a pot of gold.

A Peer into Giovanni's New Room

Make no mistakes: I do not review Saraba’s fourth poetry chapbook as a contributor or its part-publisher; I review it as a literary consumer in awe of its relevance and finesse.
Its title, GNR alludes to the seminal work of one of Black’s greatest, James Baldwin. Although Baldwin’s book deals with a rather different and precarious kind of love, it retains an aptness only fit for this anthology of poems.
Love is an elusive concept. It supersedes definitions and keeps being reinvented; only the characters are different. Boy and girl, boy and boy, girl and girl. Love in its mutation has knocked out gender as a denominator, rather it dominates in every hearted emotion, be it incest or the conventional love shared between lovers.
Love in its elusiveness cannot be boxed into a suite of an emotional kind. It keeps unveiling and relieving itself in varying circumstances retaining a unique feature: animals. Humans as animals only enjoy a higher kind of love elevated well above the cusps of lust and this is what we find in GNR, a suite of expressions and impressions and expectations on the act of loving.
The motive of love in itself is questioned in the poetry of Zino Asalor where he affirms, “I love because I can/I love because I do”. This is a rhetoric answer, the panacea to all questions that question the need for love.
The poetry of Dadepo Aderemi is expressive in all filial intents, it surmises familial love into an entanglement that present itself with doubt, dowry and divinity.
Rayo Adebayo’s suicidal litany is suggestive of the fate of awry love, which is love nonetheless. It speaks into the highs and lows and the occasional overflow of passionate love and the result is poignant and satisfactory to all those who identify with it.
My poems and that of Emmanuel Iduma are an urban dialogue reminiscent of J.P Clark’s Streamside Exchange only that the characters are different, they are two heterosexual lovers trying to outwit their adulation with The Love Songs of Alfred J. Prudfrock in context.
Uche Peter Umez’s economy is the gift of words not said. Meaning is substantial and replete in his renderings that shapes earthly beauties as a woman’s anatomy.
Numero Unoma, the Queen of erotica, presents poems that thrive on word plays with such astonishing depth. Her sense of Imagery is almost clinical, scalpel-sharp and precise.
And Ajayi Kolade’s Odes to his Late Father is a fit conclusion to this intriguing spherical odyssey on the means and meaning of love. There is love in here, all of it!!!

Finally, Finally, Finally

At last. At long last.We are able to put issue six, long overdue, on the website.
Phew.

How I Write Poetry

Writing poetry for me is an organic process which is triggered by the act of living closely. By close living, I refer to the act of subjecting life’s detail to scrutiny, sifting through experiences and bookmarking what is deemed remarkable.
As an artist, I set to achieve this the similar manner a painter grabs his oil paint when the desire to create comes, only that my desire to create is triggered by reflex and to a large extent am only a medium through which the poem flows. And so it’s an out of body experience as well as internal combustion of energy that heralds what I write; am as much in my poems as am out of it. This allows for the spontaneity which I find to be chief in act of poetry.

And pretty much the reflex comes at its own timing; I have no control over when the words fall upon me like a burden. For instance, I was in a lecture room when the first few lines of Clinical Blues V dropped into my mind. As it came, I knew that was yet another beginning of a poem.
Of course, after the draft comes out, I contribute editorial maneuvers which are largely removal of words, checking for consistency in ideas and rarely, addition of new words; alas, sometimes the process is just the act of taking out words and replacing back those same words. Nevertheless, what I seek to achieve is precise words that evoke distinct emotions while retaining their beauty. Poetry is that triad for me—precision, message and beauty.

And with Precision comes brevity, I think. The need to sift out words that attenuate the impact of the poet’s imagination is imperative and perhaps informs my editorial process. Each poem carries a message and the uniqueness or better yet, the ingenuity of a poem is the complexity of message. A poem must function from every bearing; there must also be intersections that allow for purposeful drifting, the intercourse between ideas. And lastly whatever is spewed on paper must be aesthetic, not necessarily musical, as I subscribe fully to Ezra Pound’s Logopoeic Vision—the dance of intellect among words and ideas vis-a-vis the emphasis on musicality and rhythm.

What I seek to achieve with my poetry is simple: I try to create the mundane with artistic flair, precision and fervor. I seek to beautify experiences. I seek to recreate reality, not in a singsong manner, but close enough to evoke poignant emotions.

And my influences are numerous. I sift my taste for poetry regularly and I search for poets who have honed their skill of arranging words which proffers different perspectives and ideas to different individuals and even the same individual at different times. Poets like Lenrie Peters affect me, perhaps because he is a surgeon and I can relate closely to the medical ambience his works exude. I admire the way his poems are not cluttered with needless words; what he achieves is neither mechanic nor sparse, he achieves wonderful poetry. Wole Soyinka, Kwesi Brew, David Diop, J.P Clark are amongst poets whose poetry I enjoy. And among western writers, I am fascinated by particular poems rather than authors. Ezra Pound, T.S Elliot, Langston Hughes, an endless list is in sight if I am obliged to continue.

This brings me to the point of literary devices and figurative expression. First and foremost I seek spontaneity in my poetry and whatever is outside that scope of thought I find to be contrived. The desire to force ideals and expression into a poem I find to be complicit and what is achieved is at best poor mimicry. Contemporary poetry in my opinion as not found sound literary analysis. A time will come when its figurative language would be decoded and documented, but not today. Namedropping however I find to be effective in the sense of precision and consequently brevity. The poet can’t afford to mince words and hence by dropping names he achieves what he would perhaps have to write a thesis over in a phrase or less. This, I find to be effective especially so when attention span is much reduced and everything is fast-paced like a box-office thriller.