Tuesday, March 25, 2008
rice with beef stew
After spending half of the day at a coffee shop updating my blog, I went to the grocery store to buy supplies for my naked pantry. As I meandered through the aisles I debated in my head whether I should buy fresh vegetables which I would then blend and cook into a stew to be had with rice, or whether I should just get prego and stick to pasta. In the end I decided to make my own stew. My decision was based on the premise that we have a food processor at home, but alas, I got home to realize that the food processor does not work. I ended up having to grate the peppers manually, bruising my fingers and developing a renewed appreciation for technology. It eventually took about 2 hours to make dinner, and after all that stress I was sure that dinner wouldn't turn out good. But to my surprise it did!
Monday, March 24, 2008
eureka! moments
March 24, 2007. It feels like I have been in San Francisco for only a few days, but I have actually been here for two weeks. That is a long time considering that two weeks is actually half of a month. When I stop to think about what I have achieved in those two weeks, I have to say probably a lot, but then I realize that I am here for only about two months, and I feel like I should have made more progress.
If there is one thing that I am learning from this fieldwork experience, it is that you can never really measure your progress in terms of how much activity you pack into each day, but how significant those activities are to your research goals. Every experience in the field is valuable no matter how far removed they seem to be from your purpose, but not all those experiences can answer definitively the questions you set out to find answers to when you entered the field. Because the field is like San Francisco weather—unpredictable, you never know when those sunny moments of revelation will occur. When they do occur, however, they are so gratifying, so golden, so eureka!
Sometimes you will get your eureka moments right at the beginning of your adventure, and afterwards they might be replicated over and over (which ironically could lead to stress ultimately diminishing productivity). At other times, being in the field can be like an expedition to a parched dessert, monotonous and riddled with mirages which really lead to nowhere. You find yourself waiting endlessly for a breakthrough, but the waiting time, while excruciating could actually heighten the taste of success when it finally comes your way, making it feel like the drawn out “aaaaaahaaaaa!” that emanates from deep inside your being after drinking a long needed glass of cold water.
I have been at both ends of the emotional spectrum that the field experience induces. Fieldwork in New York City was a blast. The musicians were generally very enthusiastic to welcome me into their worlds. Each week I found myself conducting several interviews and attending several shows, and those eureka moments just kept coming, over and over and over again. After a while I found that I was so drained that I started to avoid going to gigs and even meeting musicians.
My experience in Lagos was quite similar, largely productive.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, was generally a drag. Most of the musicians in L.A just seemed cold and unwelcoming. Besides one or two exceptions, the musicians I set out to meet in Los Angeles came across as very aloof. Repeatedly, my emails were ignored and efforts to schedule interviews were spurned. One informant that I eventually interviewed stood me up two times before finally showing up the third time for an interview, even though each time he had picked the date and time for the interviews. I should add that this informant, when he eventually came around, was quite helpful.
I did have a few eureka moments while I was in Los Angeles; for example, having the opportunity to watch Femi Kuti perform live at the House of Blues. Irrespective of the multiple let downs I had encountered in L.A., that one event made me feel that my being in L.A could not have been better timed. And the next day, when my wonderful roommate gave me an article about Femi that had been published in a local newspaper that I may otherwise have been unaware of, it seemed certain that the stars were aligning in my favor after all.
One thing that I did learn when I was in L.A was that San Francisco is the place to be for anyone who is interested in exploring the West Coast Afrobeat scene. That eureka moment happened when I had the opportunity to interview D.J. Said, a San Francisco based “Afrohouse” disk jockey who had come to perform in L.A. Ever since he briefed me on how vibrant the Afrobeat scene in San Francisco was, I knew I would eventually have to come out here. In the end, I have to say that my L.A. experience was valuable in the sense that if I didn’t go out to L.A., I would probably not have realized that San Francisco is where I needed to be.
And so I am now finally in San Francisco, and so far, it’s been good. There are many things that I love about this city, but the one thing I am still trying to find is the “vibrant” Afrobeat scene which was promised. One of the bands that I came out to see was on tour around the bay area when I arrived but at the time I was still too unsettled to try to trail them. What I am curious about though is why the email I sent to their myspace page was read but never replied. This is not an unusual experience, and I have learnt that you cannot always take the seeming nonchalance of the musians you are trying to write about (and by extension, promote) personally. The band, after all, was on tour. Maybe my email was somehow forgotten in the midst of all the busyness of the tour, at least this is what I tell myself to avoid the feeling of being blown off. It’s harder for me to justify why another musician, from another band, has not returned my calls after leaving her detailed voicemail messages on several occasions about my work and desire to meet her. I did get through to another member of the same band, however, who showed enthusiasm about my work and even emailed me the phone numbers of a few other contacts. I have called them, and await their responses.
Tracking down musicians at gigs can be like trying to catch clouds and pin them down, just ask the nuns from the Sound of Music. But sometimes, surprisingly, musicians come after you, and that’s always eureka! This was the case last Thursday when I attended the weekly Afrolicious party hosted by D.J. Pleasuremaker and his brother OZ at the Elbo room in the Mission district. As I sat in the dimly lit club, observing, taking notes and waiting for the party to break out full swing, D.J. Pleasuremaker, who had taken a break from the stage walked up to me and said “hi, thanks for coming out tonight.” I seized the opportunity to introduce myself and explain about my research to him, he was very enthusiastic in sharing about what he does and we ended up talking for a while, eventually exchanging contact information. Now, that’s the way fieldwork should always go.
I really do not have any doubts that there is a vibrant Afrobeat scene in San Francisco, it just seems to be unraveling rather slowly. Or maybe I had my expectations raised too high and I am expecting a little too much a little too early. When emails and phone calls fail to yield results, meeting musicians up front at their shows sometimes (not always) works. This is what I intend to do this weekend as shows by D.J. Said, Sila and the Afrofunk experience, Albino, Aphrodesia and Kotoja are will be happening.
If there is one thing that I am learning from this fieldwork experience, it is that you can never really measure your progress in terms of how much activity you pack into each day, but how significant those activities are to your research goals. Every experience in the field is valuable no matter how far removed they seem to be from your purpose, but not all those experiences can answer definitively the questions you set out to find answers to when you entered the field. Because the field is like San Francisco weather—unpredictable, you never know when those sunny moments of revelation will occur. When they do occur, however, they are so gratifying, so golden, so eureka!
Sometimes you will get your eureka moments right at the beginning of your adventure, and afterwards they might be replicated over and over (which ironically could lead to stress ultimately diminishing productivity). At other times, being in the field can be like an expedition to a parched dessert, monotonous and riddled with mirages which really lead to nowhere. You find yourself waiting endlessly for a breakthrough, but the waiting time, while excruciating could actually heighten the taste of success when it finally comes your way, making it feel like the drawn out “aaaaaahaaaaa!” that emanates from deep inside your being after drinking a long needed glass of cold water.
I have been at both ends of the emotional spectrum that the field experience induces. Fieldwork in New York City was a blast. The musicians were generally very enthusiastic to welcome me into their worlds. Each week I found myself conducting several interviews and attending several shows, and those eureka moments just kept coming, over and over and over again. After a while I found that I was so drained that I started to avoid going to gigs and even meeting musicians.
My experience in Lagos was quite similar, largely productive.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, was generally a drag. Most of the musicians in L.A just seemed cold and unwelcoming. Besides one or two exceptions, the musicians I set out to meet in Los Angeles came across as very aloof. Repeatedly, my emails were ignored and efforts to schedule interviews were spurned. One informant that I eventually interviewed stood me up two times before finally showing up the third time for an interview, even though each time he had picked the date and time for the interviews. I should add that this informant, when he eventually came around, was quite helpful.
I did have a few eureka moments while I was in Los Angeles; for example, having the opportunity to watch Femi Kuti perform live at the House of Blues. Irrespective of the multiple let downs I had encountered in L.A., that one event made me feel that my being in L.A could not have been better timed. And the next day, when my wonderful roommate gave me an article about Femi that had been published in a local newspaper that I may otherwise have been unaware of, it seemed certain that the stars were aligning in my favor after all.
One thing that I did learn when I was in L.A was that San Francisco is the place to be for anyone who is interested in exploring the West Coast Afrobeat scene. That eureka moment happened when I had the opportunity to interview D.J. Said, a San Francisco based “Afrohouse” disk jockey who had come to perform in L.A. Ever since he briefed me on how vibrant the Afrobeat scene in San Francisco was, I knew I would eventually have to come out here. In the end, I have to say that my L.A. experience was valuable in the sense that if I didn’t go out to L.A., I would probably not have realized that San Francisco is where I needed to be.
And so I am now finally in San Francisco, and so far, it’s been good. There are many things that I love about this city, but the one thing I am still trying to find is the “vibrant” Afrobeat scene which was promised. One of the bands that I came out to see was on tour around the bay area when I arrived but at the time I was still too unsettled to try to trail them. What I am curious about though is why the email I sent to their myspace page was read but never replied. This is not an unusual experience, and I have learnt that you cannot always take the seeming nonchalance of the musians you are trying to write about (and by extension, promote) personally. The band, after all, was on tour. Maybe my email was somehow forgotten in the midst of all the busyness of the tour, at least this is what I tell myself to avoid the feeling of being blown off. It’s harder for me to justify why another musician, from another band, has not returned my calls after leaving her detailed voicemail messages on several occasions about my work and desire to meet her. I did get through to another member of the same band, however, who showed enthusiasm about my work and even emailed me the phone numbers of a few other contacts. I have called them, and await their responses.
Tracking down musicians at gigs can be like trying to catch clouds and pin them down, just ask the nuns from the Sound of Music. But sometimes, surprisingly, musicians come after you, and that’s always eureka! This was the case last Thursday when I attended the weekly Afrolicious party hosted by D.J. Pleasuremaker and his brother OZ at the Elbo room in the Mission district. As I sat in the dimly lit club, observing, taking notes and waiting for the party to break out full swing, D.J. Pleasuremaker, who had taken a break from the stage walked up to me and said “hi, thanks for coming out tonight.” I seized the opportunity to introduce myself and explain about my research to him, he was very enthusiastic in sharing about what he does and we ended up talking for a while, eventually exchanging contact information. Now, that’s the way fieldwork should always go.
I really do not have any doubts that there is a vibrant Afrobeat scene in San Francisco, it just seems to be unraveling rather slowly. Or maybe I had my expectations raised too high and I am expecting a little too much a little too early. When emails and phone calls fail to yield results, meeting musicians up front at their shows sometimes (not always) works. This is what I intend to do this weekend as shows by D.J. Said, Sila and the Afrofunk experience, Albino, Aphrodesia and Kotoja are will be happening.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Nigerian Muse-ic: Crisis of Creativity or Creativity in Crises?
When I was first approached to write an article on Nigerian music for Muse Magazine, I accepted the invitation without hesitation. Truthfully, I was quite excited. Being an ethnomusicologist who had recently returned to Nigeria from the U.S. to do fieldwork in the area of popular music, the prospect of contributing—giving back, as it were, to the society which not only had spawned me, but which had now become the bedrock of my academic research was indeed delightful. Almost immediately, I started to think about a topic to write about. It did not take very long, however, for me to realize something that I had known for a long time; something I should have first considered before my initial gleeful acceptance of the invitation to write. My muse was long estranged.
Benumbed by the fear of that daunting realization: that I was going to fail to deliver, I relapsed into a state of crisis. My muse, you see, is highly unreliable. She disappears for stretches at once, and then, when least expected, reappears. Sometimes her reappearances are fleeting; a hint of an idea, a spark of creativity, followed by long periods of darkness. But at other times the visits are protracted and rapturous. I wished I was experiencing one of those longer reunions. Maybe I was. Slowly, but very clearly, revelation came. It occurred to me that my current creative crisis, the relationship between my capricious muse and I could be a metaphor for the state of affairs of Nigerian music.
Historically, Nigeria has produced some of the most exciting music to have emerged from the African continent and its far flung Diaspora. Most of these musical genres formed over time within the cauldron of crises, socio-cultural and political. Pre-independence, highlife emerged in Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries along the West African coast as the transethnic soundtrack to nationalism. Highlife’s brave brassy chorus line and sinuous guitar rhythms embodied the struggles of diverse ethnic groups to forge urban identities which registered, yet transcended the colonial affiliations of newly emerging polities. Its potpourri of local rhythms, melodies and polyglot palette consolidated emergent national identities.
The crises of the Nigerian Civil War contributed to the decline of highlife music in the West, simultaneously opening up space for the rise of juju music in this region. Championed by exponents such as I.K. Dairo, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade, juju music would achieve international success as a “world” music genre proffered to be in league with reggae. In Eastern Nigeria, the devastation of the War stripped most people of all means of livelihood. Musicians were not exempt. Shorn of all but the most portable, cheapest and easily accessible instrument of the highlife band, the guitar, highlife musicians in the East developed a guitar band variant of the genre. It is from this Eastern school that the memorable Sweet Mother, still the most well known popular song across Africa, emerged.
By far the most explosive musical genre to have come out of Africa so far is Afrobeat. Created by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Afrobeat’s staggered rhythms, boisterous horns, stark poetry and antiestablishment ideology gave voice to the teeming Nigerian grassroots, articulating their disenfranchisement with the postcolonial state. It is a testimony to Afrobeat’s universality that today, the genre can be heard live in the bars, café’s, clubs and concert venues of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, etc.
The global flowering which Afrobeat has encountered since the death of Fela in 1997 seems to have eluded the genre’s country of origin. While bands like Antibalas, Akoya, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Aphrodesia, Fanga, Afrobeat Academy and Albino continue to spring up all across the U.S and Europe, only a few stalwarts—the Kuti siblings: Femi and Seun; Dede, for example, have been able to successfully carry on the tradition in Nigeria. To be sure, there are other Nigerian Afrobeat ambassadors, but most of these musicians have had to relocate to Europe and America where their roles in the perpetuation of Afrobeat music continues to be significant. What could be responsible for the stagnation of the Afrobeat tradition in Nigeria? Where has the Nigerian muse gone, and should we be concerned?
Many reasons have been proffered for the crisis of creativity that we are currently experiencing, most of which center around the dearth of live music which the country experienced in the 90s. The economic decline that gripped the country during the military era resulted in a situation where only a very few could afford musical instruments. It also meant that for most people, budgetary decisions were reduced to the choice between a loaf of bread and live music patronage. Most people naturally chose the former. With poverty, the attendant problem of poor security kept most people indoors at night even when they could afford to spend some money at live music venues. The decreasing bar and club crowd was matched conversely by the church and mosque going demographic as Nigerians became increasingly religious, seeking spiritual succor from the economic hardships they were facing.
There are other factors unique to the retarded growth of Afrobeat in Nigeria. The fact of Fela’s larger than life imprint on the genre is of course an issue that cannot be overlooked. Most Nigerian musicians shy away from being identified as Afrobeat musicians because those whom have thus ventured have been shortchanged financially due to criticisms of either trying to copy the Chief Priest verbatim without displaying much of their own creativity, or, taking the genre too far away from its essential elements, distorting a musical style which many hold as somewhat sacred.
Although many would argue that Nigeria is not yet experiencing a true economic rebound—and perhaps this may be so—the live music scene is definitely experiencing a revival not unconnected to increased private investments and urban development. Several clubs, bars and restaurants have sprung up in Lagos, some of which are owned by foreigners whom as a result of the government’s economic reforms have been emboldened to make monetary investments in the country. However, with this influx of private investment, the country has also been opened up to a fresh bombardment of foreign musical culture. This influence is most significantly felt in the growing ascendency of hip hop music and the competition it is posing against the time tested Nigerian musical forms: highlife, juju, Afrobeat.
Of course, Nigeria is not new to the impact of foreign cultural influences. In the 60s and 70s, the nation, along with other West African countries was deeply influenced by the worldwide explosion of African American soul. During this time, several “copy cat” bands emerged whose sole repertoire consisted of covers of soul hits or local compositions which aped such hits. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the “copy cat” bands of the 60s and 70s and the current Nigerian hip-hopers, namely: medium of performance. While the “copy cat” bands were bands, playing live musical instruments, the deejay culture with its heavy reliance on electronic gadgetry appears antithetical to live music making. Ultimately, there are fewer “true” musicians, and musical development is stymied—(I once attended a hip-hop concert in which all the musicians lipsynced to their prerecorded tracks). On a more positive note, its is commendable that some Nigerian hip-hop musicians have been incorporating elements of Nigerian rhythm, melodies and languages into their music, carving a distinctly Nigerian hip-hop niche for themselves in the popular media. It may be argued, then, that the economical conservativeness of hip-hop music has provided an alternative outlet for a younger generation of Nigerian musicians whom have not been privileged to learn musical instruments. However, it is yet to see whether as it happened during the soul/funk era, a Nigerian musical form that is as unique and explosive as Afrobeat will emerge from our current musical experience.
It is yet too early to tell what the Nigerian muse of musical creativity is up to, whether what we are experiencing is really a crisis of creativity, or if there is some latent creativity in the cultural crisis we are currently experiencing. Has the Nigerian muse absconded, leaving Nigerian musicians to their floundering antics? How long will she be gone, or, did she ever leave to start with? After all, some musical genres: fuji, apala, juju etc. continue to thrive in uncanny byways all across the country regardless of the superficial vagaries of the corporate music industry and the polity as a whole. Everyone knows that sometimes, the best places to eat aren’t posh restaurants but those lowly and obscure sheds far away from opulence. Perhaps similarly, the best places to hear the most contemporary African music are those byways where accomplished bards historicize through song and rhythm the current moods and experiences of the ordinary Nigerian. And because through all the political and economic turmoil that have befallen our nation these musicians were never silenced, it can be debated whether live music ever really died in Nigeria; whether our muse ever really left.
Benumbed by the fear of that daunting realization: that I was going to fail to deliver, I relapsed into a state of crisis. My muse, you see, is highly unreliable. She disappears for stretches at once, and then, when least expected, reappears. Sometimes her reappearances are fleeting; a hint of an idea, a spark of creativity, followed by long periods of darkness. But at other times the visits are protracted and rapturous. I wished I was experiencing one of those longer reunions. Maybe I was. Slowly, but very clearly, revelation came. It occurred to me that my current creative crisis, the relationship between my capricious muse and I could be a metaphor for the state of affairs of Nigerian music.
Historically, Nigeria has produced some of the most exciting music to have emerged from the African continent and its far flung Diaspora. Most of these musical genres formed over time within the cauldron of crises, socio-cultural and political. Pre-independence, highlife emerged in Ghana, Nigeria, and other countries along the West African coast as the transethnic soundtrack to nationalism. Highlife’s brave brassy chorus line and sinuous guitar rhythms embodied the struggles of diverse ethnic groups to forge urban identities which registered, yet transcended the colonial affiliations of newly emerging polities. Its potpourri of local rhythms, melodies and polyglot palette consolidated emergent national identities.
The crises of the Nigerian Civil War contributed to the decline of highlife music in the West, simultaneously opening up space for the rise of juju music in this region. Championed by exponents such as I.K. Dairo, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and King Sunny Ade, juju music would achieve international success as a “world” music genre proffered to be in league with reggae. In Eastern Nigeria, the devastation of the War stripped most people of all means of livelihood. Musicians were not exempt. Shorn of all but the most portable, cheapest and easily accessible instrument of the highlife band, the guitar, highlife musicians in the East developed a guitar band variant of the genre. It is from this Eastern school that the memorable Sweet Mother, still the most well known popular song across Africa, emerged.
By far the most explosive musical genre to have come out of Africa so far is Afrobeat. Created by Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Afrobeat’s staggered rhythms, boisterous horns, stark poetry and antiestablishment ideology gave voice to the teeming Nigerian grassroots, articulating their disenfranchisement with the postcolonial state. It is a testimony to Afrobeat’s universality that today, the genre can be heard live in the bars, café’s, clubs and concert venues of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, etc.
The global flowering which Afrobeat has encountered since the death of Fela in 1997 seems to have eluded the genre’s country of origin. While bands like Antibalas, Akoya, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Aphrodesia, Fanga, Afrobeat Academy and Albino continue to spring up all across the U.S and Europe, only a few stalwarts—the Kuti siblings: Femi and Seun; Dede, for example, have been able to successfully carry on the tradition in Nigeria. To be sure, there are other Nigerian Afrobeat ambassadors, but most of these musicians have had to relocate to Europe and America where their roles in the perpetuation of Afrobeat music continues to be significant. What could be responsible for the stagnation of the Afrobeat tradition in Nigeria? Where has the Nigerian muse gone, and should we be concerned?
Many reasons have been proffered for the crisis of creativity that we are currently experiencing, most of which center around the dearth of live music which the country experienced in the 90s. The economic decline that gripped the country during the military era resulted in a situation where only a very few could afford musical instruments. It also meant that for most people, budgetary decisions were reduced to the choice between a loaf of bread and live music patronage. Most people naturally chose the former. With poverty, the attendant problem of poor security kept most people indoors at night even when they could afford to spend some money at live music venues. The decreasing bar and club crowd was matched conversely by the church and mosque going demographic as Nigerians became increasingly religious, seeking spiritual succor from the economic hardships they were facing.
There are other factors unique to the retarded growth of Afrobeat in Nigeria. The fact of Fela’s larger than life imprint on the genre is of course an issue that cannot be overlooked. Most Nigerian musicians shy away from being identified as Afrobeat musicians because those whom have thus ventured have been shortchanged financially due to criticisms of either trying to copy the Chief Priest verbatim without displaying much of their own creativity, or, taking the genre too far away from its essential elements, distorting a musical style which many hold as somewhat sacred.
Although many would argue that Nigeria is not yet experiencing a true economic rebound—and perhaps this may be so—the live music scene is definitely experiencing a revival not unconnected to increased private investments and urban development. Several clubs, bars and restaurants have sprung up in Lagos, some of which are owned by foreigners whom as a result of the government’s economic reforms have been emboldened to make monetary investments in the country. However, with this influx of private investment, the country has also been opened up to a fresh bombardment of foreign musical culture. This influence is most significantly felt in the growing ascendency of hip hop music and the competition it is posing against the time tested Nigerian musical forms: highlife, juju, Afrobeat.
Of course, Nigeria is not new to the impact of foreign cultural influences. In the 60s and 70s, the nation, along with other West African countries was deeply influenced by the worldwide explosion of African American soul. During this time, several “copy cat” bands emerged whose sole repertoire consisted of covers of soul hits or local compositions which aped such hits. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the “copy cat” bands of the 60s and 70s and the current Nigerian hip-hopers, namely: medium of performance. While the “copy cat” bands were bands, playing live musical instruments, the deejay culture with its heavy reliance on electronic gadgetry appears antithetical to live music making. Ultimately, there are fewer “true” musicians, and musical development is stymied—(I once attended a hip-hop concert in which all the musicians lipsynced to their prerecorded tracks). On a more positive note, its is commendable that some Nigerian hip-hop musicians have been incorporating elements of Nigerian rhythm, melodies and languages into their music, carving a distinctly Nigerian hip-hop niche for themselves in the popular media. It may be argued, then, that the economical conservativeness of hip-hop music has provided an alternative outlet for a younger generation of Nigerian musicians whom have not been privileged to learn musical instruments. However, it is yet to see whether as it happened during the soul/funk era, a Nigerian musical form that is as unique and explosive as Afrobeat will emerge from our current musical experience.
It is yet too early to tell what the Nigerian muse of musical creativity is up to, whether what we are experiencing is really a crisis of creativity, or if there is some latent creativity in the cultural crisis we are currently experiencing. Has the Nigerian muse absconded, leaving Nigerian musicians to their floundering antics? How long will she be gone, or, did she ever leave to start with? After all, some musical genres: fuji, apala, juju etc. continue to thrive in uncanny byways all across the country regardless of the superficial vagaries of the corporate music industry and the polity as a whole. Everyone knows that sometimes, the best places to eat aren’t posh restaurants but those lowly and obscure sheds far away from opulence. Perhaps similarly, the best places to hear the most contemporary African music are those byways where accomplished bards historicize through song and rhythm the current moods and experiences of the ordinary Nigerian. And because through all the political and economic turmoil that have befallen our nation these musicians were never silenced, it can be debated whether live music ever really died in Nigeria; whether our muse ever really left.
flash back: Lagos
The sociohistorical study of any musical genre would be incomplete without reference to the origins of the music. Realizing this I traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, the home of Afrobeat, during the months of October to December, 2007. Like my previous sojourning in Los Angeles and New York City, and my current San Francisco experience, the purpose of my Lagos trip was to explore the Afrobeat scene(s) in the city.
Lagos, the urban commercial and financial nerve center of Nigeria, and the larger West African region, is a sprawling metropolis of 11 to 15 billion inhabitants. Having a metropolitan area of only 300 square kilometers, the city of Lagos (capital of the greater Lagos State area) is nevertheless one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the world. Geographically, it is made up of a concentration of islands connected to a main land area through a network of rivers, creeks and lagoons all of which ultimately drain into the Atlantic Ocean at the southern border of the state.
The first (and second and third and fourth etc) time visitor to Lagos should brace him/herself for multisensory hyper-neurological experience like they have never or will ever experience any where else. The blaring horns and squelching grind of rush hour (which is sometimes every hour) traffic is complemented by highway hawkers, popularly called “on the run” aggressively advertising their wares—ranging snack items and sunglasses to irons and computer hardware—by thrusting them in your face (if you are in a car with air conditioning, keep your windows up, unless of course you are trying to buy something).
On a less major road, you might enjoy the singsong calls that the more domesticated hawkers make in an effort to attract the potential buyer’s attention. On most streets you will find a church from which highly charged Holy Ghost drenched music regularly streams through invasive loud speakers, forming a counterpoint with the five-daily megaphone channeled Muslim azan (call to prayer), always within an ears reach.
The open air markets dazzle with color, smells, brawls and the cacophony of musical (and sometimes not so musical) sounds pouring from a million distorted loudspeakers. Lagos might very well be the modernist composer’s dream of a cataclysmic aleatory project in real time. If you listen above the din, you might hear the voice of a lone warrior, hoarse from decades of shouting indictments, leading an army of chanters and musicians in sometimes humorous, often scalding critiques of the system:
I sing about one street for Lagos/I sing about a street in Lagos
Dem call am Ojuelegba/They call it Ojuelegba
I think I compare how Nigeria be/I compare it to Nigeria
One cross road in center of town
Larudu repeke
For Ojuelegba/At Ojuelegba
Moto dey come from east/Cars approach from the east
Moto dey come from west/Cars approach from the west
Moto dey come from north/Cars approach from the north
Moto dey come from south/Cars approach from the south
And policeman no dey for center/And there’s no traffic warden in the center of it all
Na confusion be that ooo!/That is confusion
This is the Lagos of which Fela Anikulapo Kuti sings, the Lagos of Afrobeat’s birth, and which continues to bear strong imprints on the genre whether it is played in New York, Paris, Japan or London.
The language of Afrobeat, pidgin English, is also the language of the market place. Pidgin English, formed from a mixture of words in Portuguese, English and a variety of indigenous languages, registers not only the city’s turbulent history of foreign and colonial interactions, but also its long established status as an immigrant city. In many regards, the confusion of which Fela sings in “Confusion Break Bones” directly mirrors this history of unbalanced interactions. The story of Lagos is that of a city that experienced astronomical population growth in a very short time due to its position as a regional commercial and industrial hub, but sadly failed to measure up in the area of infrastructure due to unsavory political distractions that have plagued the nation throughout its existence.
But chaotic as Lagos may be, it has its unusual charms, hard though they may be to discover. And for a born and bred Lagosian such as I, there is no place like Eko ile (Eko is the indigenous name of the city and the only name by which it was known before Portuguese sailors named it Lagos—literarily lakes, after a port city in Portugal). Sometimes unbalanced socio-cultural interactions yield interesting, even compelling bi-products. Examples abound; from the Brazilian architecture of Yaba and Lagos Island, the British colonial houses of Ikoyi and Ikeja GRA., to the city’s multi-derived urban fashion and cuisine.
Arguably, the most compelling product of multicultural Lagos is its music. The urban musics of Lagos, including highlife, juju, fuji, hiphop, and yes, Afrobeat, tell many stories. They tell the stories of Portuguese and West African sailors drinking and making merry on the Lagos Marina; of an emerging African elite aping, at the turn of the 20th century, the high profile ball room dances of British colonial officers which excluded the “natives;” of Christianity’s mellifluous entry into the hearts and minds of otherwise apathetic black Africans; of Islam’s collision with indigenous Yoruba traditions and the results of that connection; of the arduous sojourn of West Africans in Latin America for a while and the return home with neo-African cultural products. Lagos music tells of the attempts by Africans, Black Americans and Caribbean Blacks to forge a Diasporic black identity at an auspicious time in history; a time when globally, black people were either struggling for independence from colonial rule or the attainment of civil rights in the face of systemic racial hostility. The musics of urban Lagos tell of the people’s attempts at apprehending the disillusionment of postcolonial polities which betrayed the glorious and hard fought promise of self rule. Not merely in their lyrics, but in the overall aural and visual experience that they present, these musical styles tell of a people’s encounters with history, of resistance and negotiation, of acceptance and self determination.
Afrobeat, the musical genre that I was in Lagos to research, is widely known to have chronicled some of the darkest and most tenuous moments of the Nigeria’s (and Africa’s) history, and to have done so with a particularly Lagosian inflection. Ironically today, this very Lagosian music thrives more in metropolitan cities oceans away than it does in the city of its origin.
Prior to my arrival in Lagos, I had spent several months exploring the Afrobeat scenes in Los Angeles and New York City and to my amazement there was a lot going on. In New York City where at least 5 or 6 major Afrobeat bands are resident, there was hardly a week when I didn’t find two or three Afrobeat shows slated to be held in the clubs of Brooklyn and Manhattan. In Lagos, the main venue to hear Afrobeat is the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja, where Femi Kuti carries on his father’s legacy on a weekly basis. Seun Kuti, Femi’s younger sibling also carries the torch through his leadership of Egypt 80, Fela’s last band before he died, and can also be seen performing at the Shrine occasionally. Besides Femi and Seun whom I intervied, there are only an obscure handful of other musicians: Dede Mabioku, Daddy Fresh, Duro Ikujenyo etc., struggling to carry on the Afrobeat legacy. It is indeed a curious thing how the Afrobeat scene in Lagos is no where near as vibrant as that of New York City and other major American and European cities. This is a question that I continue to ponder even at the present stage of my research.
Some of the most eye opening encounters I had in Lagos were not with Afrobeat musicians per se, but with veterans of the Nigerian music and culture industry, including Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi, Steve Rhodes, Benson Idonijie, Femi Esho, Tunde Kuboye and Kunle Tejuoso. Most of them mourned the decline of live music whilst reminiscing about a golden era, now bygone, when highlife musicians like Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, Roy Chicago and Fela packed popular venues like the Bobby Benson Hotel (formerly Caban Bamboo), Kakadoo etc. When I asked about the muted state of Afrobeat in the country, I was informed of a more endemic problem, the dearth of live music in general, resulting from a range of factors: political, economic, educational and social. It became clear to me that if Afrobeat was on the decline in Lagos, it is because Afrobeat is a musical form which essentially thrives in live settings, and live music has generally witnessed a rash decline.
Additionally, some blame the decline of live music in Lagos to the rise of hip-hop music. To such critics, hip-hop merely requires the scrunching together of machine programmed beats, the ability to talk rhythmically and the looping of simple refrains. They argue that not much expertise or creativity goes into the production of hip-hop and certainly the ability to play musical instruments live is not required.
In the face of formidable obstacles, efforts are nevertheless being made to reintroduce the quintessential popular music styles of Lagos, even if it is through the reissuing of old records on CD, or the revival of all but forgotten musical legends.
Femi Esho, one of the music industry veterans that I met, runs Evergreen Music, a company that seeks to preserve the Nigerian popular music legacy through the reissuing of vintage material otherwise forgotten. Esho’s most ambitious project yet has been the 40 CD compilation containing 157 songs by Fela, a chronological document of the musicians 3½ decade career.
Kunle Tejuoso, like Esho, also owns a record label: Jazzhole records. Through Jazzhole, Tejuoso is doing much to rediscover and repackage Nigeria’s musical old wine whilst giving much needed exposure to the new. One of his most recent efforts was the staging of a successful come back for the still virile 80 plus year old highlife guitarist and singer, Fatai Rolling Dollar with a new hit CD “Won Kere si Number.” “Won kere…” was produced by Duro Ikujenyo, one time keyboardist of Fela’s, whom I also had the pleasure of interacting with on numerous occasions.
Duro leads his own Afrobeat ensemble: Age of Aquarius and can be heard on Friday nights at Bogobiri, a hotel, art gallery and cultural hub in Ikoyi.
One event that must not go unmentioned is the Great Highlife Party organized by Benson Idonijie and Jahman Anikulapo (editor of Guardian Newspaper) held monthly at the Asian run O’Jez Nightclub located in the National Stadium complex, Surulere, Lagos. The aim of the party is to preserve highlife music, and every month, luminaries in the music and culture industry are celebrated through live highlife music by great performers such as J.O. Araba and Fatai Rolling Dollar and Maliki Showboy. The resident band for the Great Highlife Party is Femi Esho’s Evergreen Musical Band.
Towards the end of my stay in Lagos, I met the editor/publisher of MUSE magazine and she asked me to write an article for the magazine. I ended up writing a piece which somewhat summarizes the state of popular music in Nigeria, and muses on what direction Nigerian popular music will go in the future. Unfortunately I could not supply enough pictures to supplement the article since my digital camera had developed problems earlier on and I had ended up with only a few good shots of live performances. It only seems appropriate, given the issues I have discussed so far, to follow this entry with that article, and so I will be posting the article right after this entry for your musing.
Enjoy!
Oye
Lagos, the urban commercial and financial nerve center of Nigeria, and the larger West African region, is a sprawling metropolis of 11 to 15 billion inhabitants. Having a metropolitan area of only 300 square kilometers, the city of Lagos (capital of the greater Lagos State area) is nevertheless one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the world. Geographically, it is made up of a concentration of islands connected to a main land area through a network of rivers, creeks and lagoons all of which ultimately drain into the Atlantic Ocean at the southern border of the state.
The first (and second and third and fourth etc) time visitor to Lagos should brace him/herself for multisensory hyper-neurological experience like they have never or will ever experience any where else. The blaring horns and squelching grind of rush hour (which is sometimes every hour) traffic is complemented by highway hawkers, popularly called “on the run” aggressively advertising their wares—ranging snack items and sunglasses to irons and computer hardware—by thrusting them in your face (if you are in a car with air conditioning, keep your windows up, unless of course you are trying to buy something).
On a less major road, you might enjoy the singsong calls that the more domesticated hawkers make in an effort to attract the potential buyer’s attention. On most streets you will find a church from which highly charged Holy Ghost drenched music regularly streams through invasive loud speakers, forming a counterpoint with the five-daily megaphone channeled Muslim azan (call to prayer), always within an ears reach.
The open air markets dazzle with color, smells, brawls and the cacophony of musical (and sometimes not so musical) sounds pouring from a million distorted loudspeakers. Lagos might very well be the modernist composer’s dream of a cataclysmic aleatory project in real time. If you listen above the din, you might hear the voice of a lone warrior, hoarse from decades of shouting indictments, leading an army of chanters and musicians in sometimes humorous, often scalding critiques of the system:
I sing about one street for Lagos/I sing about a street in Lagos
Dem call am Ojuelegba/They call it Ojuelegba
I think I compare how Nigeria be/I compare it to Nigeria
One cross road in center of town
Larudu repeke
For Ojuelegba/At Ojuelegba
Moto dey come from east/Cars approach from the east
Moto dey come from west/Cars approach from the west
Moto dey come from north/Cars approach from the north
Moto dey come from south/Cars approach from the south
And policeman no dey for center/And there’s no traffic warden in the center of it all
Na confusion be that ooo!/That is confusion
This is the Lagos of which Fela Anikulapo Kuti sings, the Lagos of Afrobeat’s birth, and which continues to bear strong imprints on the genre whether it is played in New York, Paris, Japan or London.
The language of Afrobeat, pidgin English, is also the language of the market place. Pidgin English, formed from a mixture of words in Portuguese, English and a variety of indigenous languages, registers not only the city’s turbulent history of foreign and colonial interactions, but also its long established status as an immigrant city. In many regards, the confusion of which Fela sings in “Confusion Break Bones” directly mirrors this history of unbalanced interactions. The story of Lagos is that of a city that experienced astronomical population growth in a very short time due to its position as a regional commercial and industrial hub, but sadly failed to measure up in the area of infrastructure due to unsavory political distractions that have plagued the nation throughout its existence.
But chaotic as Lagos may be, it has its unusual charms, hard though they may be to discover. And for a born and bred Lagosian such as I, there is no place like Eko ile (Eko is the indigenous name of the city and the only name by which it was known before Portuguese sailors named it Lagos—literarily lakes, after a port city in Portugal). Sometimes unbalanced socio-cultural interactions yield interesting, even compelling bi-products. Examples abound; from the Brazilian architecture of Yaba and Lagos Island, the British colonial houses of Ikoyi and Ikeja GRA., to the city’s multi-derived urban fashion and cuisine.
Arguably, the most compelling product of multicultural Lagos is its music. The urban musics of Lagos, including highlife, juju, fuji, hiphop, and yes, Afrobeat, tell many stories. They tell the stories of Portuguese and West African sailors drinking and making merry on the Lagos Marina; of an emerging African elite aping, at the turn of the 20th century, the high profile ball room dances of British colonial officers which excluded the “natives;” of Christianity’s mellifluous entry into the hearts and minds of otherwise apathetic black Africans; of Islam’s collision with indigenous Yoruba traditions and the results of that connection; of the arduous sojourn of West Africans in Latin America for a while and the return home with neo-African cultural products. Lagos music tells of the attempts by Africans, Black Americans and Caribbean Blacks to forge a Diasporic black identity at an auspicious time in history; a time when globally, black people were either struggling for independence from colonial rule or the attainment of civil rights in the face of systemic racial hostility. The musics of urban Lagos tell of the people’s attempts at apprehending the disillusionment of postcolonial polities which betrayed the glorious and hard fought promise of self rule. Not merely in their lyrics, but in the overall aural and visual experience that they present, these musical styles tell of a people’s encounters with history, of resistance and negotiation, of acceptance and self determination.
Afrobeat, the musical genre that I was in Lagos to research, is widely known to have chronicled some of the darkest and most tenuous moments of the Nigeria’s (and Africa’s) history, and to have done so with a particularly Lagosian inflection. Ironically today, this very Lagosian music thrives more in metropolitan cities oceans away than it does in the city of its origin.
Prior to my arrival in Lagos, I had spent several months exploring the Afrobeat scenes in Los Angeles and New York City and to my amazement there was a lot going on. In New York City where at least 5 or 6 major Afrobeat bands are resident, there was hardly a week when I didn’t find two or three Afrobeat shows slated to be held in the clubs of Brooklyn and Manhattan. In Lagos, the main venue to hear Afrobeat is the New Afrika Shrine in Ikeja, where Femi Kuti carries on his father’s legacy on a weekly basis. Seun Kuti, Femi’s younger sibling also carries the torch through his leadership of Egypt 80, Fela’s last band before he died, and can also be seen performing at the Shrine occasionally. Besides Femi and Seun whom I intervied, there are only an obscure handful of other musicians: Dede Mabioku, Daddy Fresh, Duro Ikujenyo etc., struggling to carry on the Afrobeat legacy. It is indeed a curious thing how the Afrobeat scene in Lagos is no where near as vibrant as that of New York City and other major American and European cities. This is a question that I continue to ponder even at the present stage of my research.
Some of the most eye opening encounters I had in Lagos were not with Afrobeat musicians per se, but with veterans of the Nigerian music and culture industry, including Chief Rasheed Gbadamosi, Steve Rhodes, Benson Idonijie, Femi Esho, Tunde Kuboye and Kunle Tejuoso. Most of them mourned the decline of live music whilst reminiscing about a golden era, now bygone, when highlife musicians like Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, Roy Chicago and Fela packed popular venues like the Bobby Benson Hotel (formerly Caban Bamboo), Kakadoo etc. When I asked about the muted state of Afrobeat in the country, I was informed of a more endemic problem, the dearth of live music in general, resulting from a range of factors: political, economic, educational and social. It became clear to me that if Afrobeat was on the decline in Lagos, it is because Afrobeat is a musical form which essentially thrives in live settings, and live music has generally witnessed a rash decline.
Additionally, some blame the decline of live music in Lagos to the rise of hip-hop music. To such critics, hip-hop merely requires the scrunching together of machine programmed beats, the ability to talk rhythmically and the looping of simple refrains. They argue that not much expertise or creativity goes into the production of hip-hop and certainly the ability to play musical instruments live is not required.
In the face of formidable obstacles, efforts are nevertheless being made to reintroduce the quintessential popular music styles of Lagos, even if it is through the reissuing of old records on CD, or the revival of all but forgotten musical legends.
Femi Esho, one of the music industry veterans that I met, runs Evergreen Music, a company that seeks to preserve the Nigerian popular music legacy through the reissuing of vintage material otherwise forgotten. Esho’s most ambitious project yet has been the 40 CD compilation containing 157 songs by Fela, a chronological document of the musicians 3½ decade career.
Kunle Tejuoso, like Esho, also owns a record label: Jazzhole records. Through Jazzhole, Tejuoso is doing much to rediscover and repackage Nigeria’s musical old wine whilst giving much needed exposure to the new. One of his most recent efforts was the staging of a successful come back for the still virile 80 plus year old highlife guitarist and singer, Fatai Rolling Dollar with a new hit CD “Won Kere si Number.” “Won kere…” was produced by Duro Ikujenyo, one time keyboardist of Fela’s, whom I also had the pleasure of interacting with on numerous occasions.
Duro leads his own Afrobeat ensemble: Age of Aquarius and can be heard on Friday nights at Bogobiri, a hotel, art gallery and cultural hub in Ikoyi.
One event that must not go unmentioned is the Great Highlife Party organized by Benson Idonijie and Jahman Anikulapo (editor of Guardian Newspaper) held monthly at the Asian run O’Jez Nightclub located in the National Stadium complex, Surulere, Lagos. The aim of the party is to preserve highlife music, and every month, luminaries in the music and culture industry are celebrated through live highlife music by great performers such as J.O. Araba and Fatai Rolling Dollar and Maliki Showboy. The resident band for the Great Highlife Party is Femi Esho’s Evergreen Musical Band.
Towards the end of my stay in Lagos, I met the editor/publisher of MUSE magazine and she asked me to write an article for the magazine. I ended up writing a piece which somewhat summarizes the state of popular music in Nigeria, and muses on what direction Nigerian popular music will go in the future. Unfortunately I could not supply enough pictures to supplement the article since my digital camera had developed problems earlier on and I had ended up with only a few good shots of live performances. It only seems appropriate, given the issues I have discussed so far, to follow this entry with that article, and so I will be posting the article right after this entry for your musing.
Enjoy!
Oye
Monday, March 17, 2008
the Sugar Café
March 14, 2008. I am sitting in the Sugar Café located near the intersection of Stutter and Taylor streets in a San Francisco neighborhood, the name of which I am yet to discern. According to the handy city map that I have with me, I should be in Nob Hill, but I am not so sure. If I come across as geographically inept, don’t blame me, it is because this is only the third day of my first ever trip to San Francisco, a city so small (only 7 miles across) that it is sometimes difficult to determine the boundaries that separate neighborhoods.
(Case in point: within the space of a few blocks I circumnavigated, on foot, Nob Hill, China Town, the Financial District and North Beach all within an hour—ok, maybe a little more. Yes, San Francisco gives a whole new expediency to the term "walking city"! ) I wasn’t doing all that foot pedaling just to validate some taken for granted aspect of the city’s character. What I’ve been doing is hostel hopping and feeling a little bit like Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem hearing repeatedly from aloof hoteliers that there is no room in the inn.
That’s right. I chose, eyes wide open (and a little wide eyed too), to travel 7 hours from the New York City to San Francisco without prearranging room and board. Not that I didn’t try. I did, in fact, call everyone that I know in the Bay Area which, in any case, isn’t a lot of people, but none really had much to offer, although they probably would have if they could. I also spent considerable time browsing through craigslist where I actually found a few offers that seemed promising. But after corresponding with several potential landlords I realized that there was really no way that I could be sure what I was being offered 2582 miles away. Pictures aren’t always worth a thousand words. Most importantly, there was really no way to tell if I was being lured into a seedy neighborhood for the price of the Ritz. It is very unlikely that any landlord would tell you that their property is located in the underbelly of the city.
Apparently, landlords are also concerned about whom they rent to; there’s really no way to know you from a distance. This was a lesson I would learn when one seemingly promising landlord that I had spoken with over the phone sent me an email stating that he had rented out his room to someone else within the city area, someone that he was able to meet in person. So when I learnt that San Francisco has a lot of student hostels which rent out dorm space and private rooms at cheap prices, I decided that the best thing to do was to stay in one of those dorms for a few days while I explore the city and carry on a proper apartment search.
Admittedly, there was something adventurous, even apropos about traveling to a city known for its Bohemian flair on half a whim, but in retrospect, there probably weren’t many other options available to me. What I hadn’t counted on, however, was that San Francisco is a highly sought after tourist destination, particularly popular amongst students especially during Spring Break, and it was Spring Break. In the end, most of the hostels I contacted were either completely booked or had room for only one night, and this is how I ended up walking the walk in San Francisco and staying in two different hostels over three nights.
Somehow, in the middle of all my wandering, I have managed to find some respite at the Sugar Café. Every walker needs to stop from time to time, to recuperate and breathe the air around them and observe. This is even more pertinent in my situation considering the fact that during the course of my research over the last 10 or so months, I have traversed four major cities in two continents. Figuratively, if you like, I have been a walker. Because the three days I have spent so far in San Francisco have moved so fast, I have barely had time to ponder my observations. Today, as I sit in the Sugar Café enjoying a pulled ham sandwich, I notice things I have probably noticed before but this time through more critical lenses.
I notice that the clientele in here is really diverse: young, old, Black, White, Asian, etc. There are professionals in smug suits—lunch seekers from the nearby financial district perhaps, and, laptop armed students in hooded sweaters from the Academy of the Arts across from the café and plausibly other academic institutions. In between is a motley array that I have no way to place. To me, the diversity represented in this small space mirrors the much larger cosmopolitanism of the city. I am reminded of my first night in the city when I went to get dinner from a pizza store across from the Amsterdam Hostel where I was staying. The two attendants were a demure Mongolian girl who had been in the U.S. for only two years and a bubbly Russian girl, both of whom spoke perfect English. A couple sitting at a nearby table spoke in a European language (I don’t recall what language exactly), and I, of course, was taking it all in with my African eyes and ears. Such diversity is normal, you might say, for any major city like San Francisco, but I feel that there is something innately different about San Francisco’s diversity that makes it unique amongst cities like New York and Los Angeles.
I am still trying to place a finger on what makes San Francisco’s diversity unique. I am not yet quite certain but it is different. As diverse as New York City is, there is something insidious that rubs off on everyone regardless of where they are originally from; everyone ends up becoming a New Yorker! Los Angeles is the opposite of New York City, in this regard. So flat and spread out, and with prohibitive traffic, every group appears to simmer in their own enclaves, bubbling over only at transitional boundaries (i.e. Venice) where they sometimes create cultural expressions, often too marginal to outshine the suffocating glitz and glam of Hollywood. I think San Francisco’s (multi)cultural uniqueness has something to do with the distinct charm that each group: White, Latino, Asian, Black, bohemian, gay, straight, professional, collegiate etc. represented in the area bring to the mix. Each subculture contributes a brilliant sparkle to what might be considered an overarching San Franciscan culture without loosing their individual distinctiveness in the mix.
San Francisco’s charm becomes all the more compelling, cast against its breathtaking geography and architecture. Massive rolling hills and beaches characterize the landscape. The hills are sometimes so steep that your knees almost graze your chest as you ascend an incline (I am told this is good for the heart—sigh!). These lushly green hills form the backdrop for San Francisco’s unique Victorian houses which come in a flourish of brilliant colors and amazing baroque-like detail. Being at the summit of a hill is like being at an enormous picture gallery; every direction you turn promises a spectacular scene.
But right now, I am still inside the Sugar Café, typing on my laptop, and occasionally sipping hot apple cider from a mug. I look up and it is raining. Earlier this morning, it was windy and a little chilly, but showed no sign of rain. I take another sip from my mug and when I look up again, the rain has stopped. I am surprised. But such erratic changes in weather, I am told, are characteristic around here. In the three days that I have been in San Francisco, the weather has fluctuated, going from chilly to sunny to rainy. (The one thing I might regret coming here is being unable to bring more sweaters in order to keep my luggage from tipping the scale).
Like most of my experiences, even the erratic weather speaks to me in its own unique way. Field research can be like the weather. I suppose anything that involves human beings can be that way. You never know what you will find, who will respond to your calls for interviews, which events will come to fruition and which ones won’t. You don’t know when traffic will hold you back, or when you will loose your way in a strange new city. You can’t predict when an informant will become suddenly indisposed (when you might become indisposed), what new precious informants you will unexpectedly find, and which highly rated ones will turn out being obnoxious nuisances. Like San Francisco weather, you just never know!
For now, I can breathe easy—at least for a while, because I have found a lovely apartment in the Castro/Upper Market area. Buena Vista, I am told the neighborhood is called. I am finally moving into my own abode after three nights of hostel hopping, and I am looking forward to settling down. …and to the vagaries of research, and to experiencing fully, the charm of the city.
(Case in point: within the space of a few blocks I circumnavigated, on foot, Nob Hill, China Town, the Financial District and North Beach all within an hour—ok, maybe a little more. Yes, San Francisco gives a whole new expediency to the term "walking city"! ) I wasn’t doing all that foot pedaling just to validate some taken for granted aspect of the city’s character. What I’ve been doing is hostel hopping and feeling a little bit like Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem hearing repeatedly from aloof hoteliers that there is no room in the inn.
That’s right. I chose, eyes wide open (and a little wide eyed too), to travel 7 hours from the New York City to San Francisco without prearranging room and board. Not that I didn’t try. I did, in fact, call everyone that I know in the Bay Area which, in any case, isn’t a lot of people, but none really had much to offer, although they probably would have if they could. I also spent considerable time browsing through craigslist where I actually found a few offers that seemed promising. But after corresponding with several potential landlords I realized that there was really no way that I could be sure what I was being offered 2582 miles away. Pictures aren’t always worth a thousand words. Most importantly, there was really no way to tell if I was being lured into a seedy neighborhood for the price of the Ritz. It is very unlikely that any landlord would tell you that their property is located in the underbelly of the city.
Apparently, landlords are also concerned about whom they rent to; there’s really no way to know you from a distance. This was a lesson I would learn when one seemingly promising landlord that I had spoken with over the phone sent me an email stating that he had rented out his room to someone else within the city area, someone that he was able to meet in person. So when I learnt that San Francisco has a lot of student hostels which rent out dorm space and private rooms at cheap prices, I decided that the best thing to do was to stay in one of those dorms for a few days while I explore the city and carry on a proper apartment search.
Admittedly, there was something adventurous, even apropos about traveling to a city known for its Bohemian flair on half a whim, but in retrospect, there probably weren’t many other options available to me. What I hadn’t counted on, however, was that San Francisco is a highly sought after tourist destination, particularly popular amongst students especially during Spring Break, and it was Spring Break. In the end, most of the hostels I contacted were either completely booked or had room for only one night, and this is how I ended up walking the walk in San Francisco and staying in two different hostels over three nights.
Somehow, in the middle of all my wandering, I have managed to find some respite at the Sugar Café. Every walker needs to stop from time to time, to recuperate and breathe the air around them and observe. This is even more pertinent in my situation considering the fact that during the course of my research over the last 10 or so months, I have traversed four major cities in two continents. Figuratively, if you like, I have been a walker. Because the three days I have spent so far in San Francisco have moved so fast, I have barely had time to ponder my observations. Today, as I sit in the Sugar Café enjoying a pulled ham sandwich, I notice things I have probably noticed before but this time through more critical lenses.
I notice that the clientele in here is really diverse: young, old, Black, White, Asian, etc. There are professionals in smug suits—lunch seekers from the nearby financial district perhaps, and, laptop armed students in hooded sweaters from the Academy of the Arts across from the café and plausibly other academic institutions. In between is a motley array that I have no way to place. To me, the diversity represented in this small space mirrors the much larger cosmopolitanism of the city. I am reminded of my first night in the city when I went to get dinner from a pizza store across from the Amsterdam Hostel where I was staying. The two attendants were a demure Mongolian girl who had been in the U.S. for only two years and a bubbly Russian girl, both of whom spoke perfect English. A couple sitting at a nearby table spoke in a European language (I don’t recall what language exactly), and I, of course, was taking it all in with my African eyes and ears. Such diversity is normal, you might say, for any major city like San Francisco, but I feel that there is something innately different about San Francisco’s diversity that makes it unique amongst cities like New York and Los Angeles.
I am still trying to place a finger on what makes San Francisco’s diversity unique. I am not yet quite certain but it is different. As diverse as New York City is, there is something insidious that rubs off on everyone regardless of where they are originally from; everyone ends up becoming a New Yorker! Los Angeles is the opposite of New York City, in this regard. So flat and spread out, and with prohibitive traffic, every group appears to simmer in their own enclaves, bubbling over only at transitional boundaries (i.e. Venice) where they sometimes create cultural expressions, often too marginal to outshine the suffocating glitz and glam of Hollywood. I think San Francisco’s (multi)cultural uniqueness has something to do with the distinct charm that each group: White, Latino, Asian, Black, bohemian, gay, straight, professional, collegiate etc. represented in the area bring to the mix. Each subculture contributes a brilliant sparkle to what might be considered an overarching San Franciscan culture without loosing their individual distinctiveness in the mix.
San Francisco’s charm becomes all the more compelling, cast against its breathtaking geography and architecture. Massive rolling hills and beaches characterize the landscape. The hills are sometimes so steep that your knees almost graze your chest as you ascend an incline (I am told this is good for the heart—sigh!). These lushly green hills form the backdrop for San Francisco’s unique Victorian houses which come in a flourish of brilliant colors and amazing baroque-like detail. Being at the summit of a hill is like being at an enormous picture gallery; every direction you turn promises a spectacular scene.
But right now, I am still inside the Sugar Café, typing on my laptop, and occasionally sipping hot apple cider from a mug. I look up and it is raining. Earlier this morning, it was windy and a little chilly, but showed no sign of rain. I take another sip from my mug and when I look up again, the rain has stopped. I am surprised. But such erratic changes in weather, I am told, are characteristic around here. In the three days that I have been in San Francisco, the weather has fluctuated, going from chilly to sunny to rainy. (The one thing I might regret coming here is being unable to bring more sweaters in order to keep my luggage from tipping the scale).
Like most of my experiences, even the erratic weather speaks to me in its own unique way. Field research can be like the weather. I suppose anything that involves human beings can be that way. You never know what you will find, who will respond to your calls for interviews, which events will come to fruition and which ones won’t. You don’t know when traffic will hold you back, or when you will loose your way in a strange new city. You can’t predict when an informant will become suddenly indisposed (when you might become indisposed), what new precious informants you will unexpectedly find, and which highly rated ones will turn out being obnoxious nuisances. Like San Francisco weather, you just never know!
For now, I can breathe easy—at least for a while, because I have found a lovely apartment in the Castro/Upper Market area. Buena Vista, I am told the neighborhood is called. I am finally moving into my own abode after three nights of hostel hopping, and I am looking forward to settling down. …and to the vagaries of research, and to experiencing fully, the charm of the city.
The full intro.
I am an ethnomusicologist. There’s a lot of debate out there about what the term really means and what it is that ethnomusicologists do. After five years of graduate studies in ethnomusicology, I have to concede that I am not very sure myself how to answer those questions, but for the sake of simplicity, let us define ethnomusicology as the study of musical cultures around the world.
I am a currently at the fieldwork stage of my PhD degree in ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh. My chosen research topic is post-Fela Afrobeat. By fieldwork, I mean traveling to areas of relevance to my chosen research topic—in this case, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Lagos Nigeria, where I conduct interviews with Afrobeat musicians, attend their shows and events, and collect miscellaneous data. The broad geographical and cultural scope of my research dictates that there will be a strong comparative emphasis in my work.
This blog is dedicated to my fieldwork experiences. Here you will read about my encounters in the field, my musings—musical and extramusical, and get an insight into how the ideas I will be discussing in my dissertation are being generated and developed. You will also read about how I came to choose Afrobeat as my research topic, and of course, if you have never heard about Afrobeat, you will learn a lot about the genre.
I started my fieldwork almost 10 months ago, and throughout this time I have kept journals (at least for the most part). Although I am only beginning this blog at this time, I still have a few months of research to do, and there will be a lot to write about. Additionally, my blog will contain excerpts from my past journals and interviews where they are deemed relevant. I will also do my best to post pictures on the blog to make your reading experience more interesting!
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will stay on board throughout this exciting experience and I look forward to your comments.
Always remember Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s words: “Egbekegbe na bad society!” (From Beast of No Nation, 1989).
Entry point: San Francisco, CA.
I am a currently at the fieldwork stage of my PhD degree in ethnomusicology at the University of Pittsburgh. My chosen research topic is post-Fela Afrobeat. By fieldwork, I mean traveling to areas of relevance to my chosen research topic—in this case, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Lagos Nigeria, where I conduct interviews with Afrobeat musicians, attend their shows and events, and collect miscellaneous data. The broad geographical and cultural scope of my research dictates that there will be a strong comparative emphasis in my work.
This blog is dedicated to my fieldwork experiences. Here you will read about my encounters in the field, my musings—musical and extramusical, and get an insight into how the ideas I will be discussing in my dissertation are being generated and developed. You will also read about how I came to choose Afrobeat as my research topic, and of course, if you have never heard about Afrobeat, you will learn a lot about the genre.
I started my fieldwork almost 10 months ago, and throughout this time I have kept journals (at least for the most part). Although I am only beginning this blog at this time, I still have a few months of research to do, and there will be a lot to write about. Additionally, my blog will contain excerpts from my past journals and interviews where they are deemed relevant. I will also do my best to post pictures on the blog to make your reading experience more interesting!
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will stay on board throughout this exciting experience and I look forward to your comments.
Always remember Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s words: “Egbekegbe na bad society!” (From Beast of No Nation, 1989).
Entry point: San Francisco, CA.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
