THE MIX WHO IS AT HOME?
In art, as in life, home can be a slippery, complicated thing. AYODEJI ROTINWA reviews a book, a movie and a piece of music (al) controversy that capture this uncertainty.
That gyasi’s novel is an epic about slavery, is likely by now – an overstated fact. The novel ambitiously seeks to cover slavery’s long history (some 250 years and eight generations) from when Africans existed as family, neighbours, and friends in closely knit communities, to when they were substituted for trade items by their family, neighbours and friends; with this fresh economic direction inspired by white invaders. At its heart, homegoing is literally about home. In ghana. In America. About who has a right to it, about those who are separated from it, about where it can be found; as dictated by the circumstances of captivity. Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi are separated at birth, one marrying an English slave master, another sold to an American planter, across the Atlantic. Effia’s descendants remain in ghana, and Esi’s in America until two centuries and a half after when descendants from both lines, Marjorie and Marcus meet – though unbeknownst to either, that they are related) Marcus is Esi’s greatgreat-great-great-grandmother (and a couple more times over) The book follows the characters struggle to settle, to accept freedom, with compassion, the crushing blow slavery deals not only to physical body, but to the mind. Though at times, episodic and the writing too urgent, rushed; the stories feel raw and the reader inhabits the characters’ powerlessness to determine their own fate or future.
Mad over Mr. Eazi’s Nationalist Tweet? Nigerians ignore Mr. Eazi’s accra to Lagos Mixtape
Should inspiration have a nationality, a place of origin? Are we allowed to take it across borders, drawn lines? where should its home be? on music charts of a foreign nation and subsequently exported across the world or in the hall of fame for sound developers who do not have the capacity of their foreign counterparts. These seem to be the implicit questions in Mr. Eazi’s tweet a few weeks ago that sparked righteous outrage on Nigerian Twitter. he said, “ghana influence on “Naija Sound” cannot be over emphasized!” In plainer terms, he was saying music that is credited or referred to as Nigerian has ghanaian roots and perhaps what was unsaid that this credit should be recognized. In even more plainer terms, he was saying there’s no such thing as an (original) “Naija Sound”, that it was ghanaian. Now, Mr. Eazi, on the former count is accurate. Nigerian music is heavily influenced by ghanaian sounds but inspiration does not belong to one place. Nigerians for years have been mining raw sounds from ghana, refining it and making it more precious and valuable than those to whom it’s a natural resource, ever could. Should Nigerians make more of an effort to reference their influences? Absolutely. how- ever, we must not create an environment where said influences cannot move freely. At the moment though, Nigerians seem to be punishing Mr. Eazi for his comment by not giving his new body of work, lagos to Accra any ‘eartime’. It is barely catching on on radio, nor being played by DJs at the numerous parties that happen in the country every week and usually a fair barometer for how well a song is doing.
P.S. In another twist, some theorists believe that what Mr. Eazi is really griping about with regards to the tweet, is the fact that the biggest song of 2016 turned out to not be one of his many hits but runtown’s ‘Mad over you’ a monster mid-tempo hit whose influences are indeed unmistakable, has more than one home. To rub salt into injury, the song’s first goes, “ghana girl say, she wan marry me o…”
OLOIBIRI
Nigerian cinema is enjoying a rare throwback moment with three films released in the historical fiction genre in 2016 alone. The most charged and political of them all is probably oloibiri, an ambitious thriller that dials back to when and where oil was first discovered in Nigeria – oloibiri, Bayelsa State, South-South Nigeria. The film which stars the likes of richard Mofe-Damijo as a creek warlord, olu Jacobs holds the spotlight on environmental neglect and its consequences. A people’s home is forever compromised when oil is discovered beneath them. This leads to foreign oil companies swooping in, mining their wealth, polluting their water and their wellbeing, and making angry militants out of men who depended on their community’s waters to feed their family. In all of this, the Nigerian government looks the other way. who will take care of home? who has a right to the god-given treasure beneath it? who will pay when its preservation isn’t accounted for?