By Anote Ajeluorou
Although the Etuk Obong Quartet had the
honour of kicking off the show with the intro and after the interlude, the
night didn’t become magically enchanting until the masters of the jazz genre
came on stage. Young and poised to go places, Etuk Obong Quartet is the regular
jazz stuff that excites MUSON Centre faithful so much so that even when their
jamming would otherwise lull newcomers to sleep, the regulars were appreciative
of their performance with applause. But after the 10-minute intermission, they
came on stronger, with Tombratade Roberts on drums really revving up the hall
with his callisthenic virtuoso as he seemed possessed by some drumming powers
even beyond his control. The performance, at last, re-energised slumbering
non-jazz enthusiasts.
But then the masters and avante
garde Afro-centric innovators of the jazz genre came on to create a new
kind of jazz. First was MUSON’s new Artistic Director, Mr. Tunde Jegede, with
his kora, an instrument made popular
by Malians. In his simple white top and white trousers and a pair of sandals,
he was the true court musician reminiscence of the time when the kora serenaded some of Africa’s beloved
monarchs. With his fingers deftly set to work, Jegede plucked away enchantingly,
sexily at the stringed instrument to produce soul-stirring music that could
rouse slumbering spirits from the nether world. It was ‘Timeless warriors’ and
merely the intro to a rich bouquet of radically democratised jazz offering that
was yet to come.
It was perhaps Jegede’s New Horizons’ concert series. It would be
Jegede’s first imprint at taking charge of MUSON artistically and the
innovation it brought would be relived for a while to come in the minds of the
audience.
By
the time Cef (on bass guitar), Imoleayo Balogun (saxophone) and Venus Bushfires,
who bore a totem for a headgear (on hang
- a brass-like and compressed calabash-shaped percussion instrument), joined
Jegede still on his kora, a magical
night of unbridled Afro-jazz was born. It was sheer virtuoso performance, as
Venus Bushfires lent her velvety voice to ‘Last Winter’s Sparrow’. Apart from
the saxophone and possibly guitar, the kora
and hang offered a different sound
perspective, which is a revolution on the way jazz music sounds. The pity was
Venus Bushfires didn’t perform a solo so the true beauty of the hang could be appreciated on its own
without the accompaniment of other instruments.
And when the Balogun and Venus Bushfires left the stage for Jegede and
Cef, it was a wonder from which musical planet the Cef phenomenon emerged. If
there was ever an extravagant, colourful guitar-maniac, Cef right qualifies as
front-runner; he could easily suppliant ‘Guitar Boy’, Sir Victor Uwaifo. He
bends and strains the guitar to his will with the fluidity of a gymnast, as he
coaxes the strings to breaking point crescendo and then, just as swiftly,
brings then down to the least, undulating point, with his powerful voice rising
and falling along with the waves of his guitar. All the while, Jegede is also
plucking at his kora alongside him in
a fusion of high-breed Afro-fusion and mastery that are unrivalled.
When Age Beeka joined them and wailed his way from among the audience in
a negro-spiritual, and brought his own rough-and-ready but tempered voice and
guitar effect to the stage, it was clear MUSON will perhaps never be the same
again. The old, faithful lovers of jazz – Nigerians and a sizeable number of
whites - would wonder if it was the same MUSON they’d known. They might have
given a grudging applause to the performance, but they just can’t stem the tide
of musical revolution that happened in a jazz radically democratised for the
high-breed effect.
In all the genius of the night remained Cef, a relatively unknown
quantum but a music force to beat. He navigates from the guitar to the beat-box,
the choral drum or udu, the gong or ogene or agogo and other local instruments with effortless ease. Even the
setting for the performers was so ancient and rustic in its ground-level
elevation it lent certain quaintness to the players’ setting and the entire
performance. Most times, Cef would sit cross-legged like a monk and kneel like
a supplicant or just sit on the bare floor while working at a given instrument.
It was such a radical departure.
From ‘We’re moving to higher ground, rising like a morning star’ to
‘You’ve got to hear the river crying’ and ‘Breaking barriers’ and ‘Always
Love’, it was the finest musical experimentation shone of any encumbering
orthodoxy. And one looked around and didn’t find any Nigerian hiphop ‘stars’
trending the airwaves. The concert was for them to learn a thing or two about how
music is made, as much as it was for its pure enjoyment for the loyal audience
that thronged the Agip Recital Hall.
Perhaps,
what really got to the audience after this high-breed Afro-jazz feast were the
politically-charged liberation words of Dike Chukwumerije, a spoken word artist.
Chukwumerije’s poetry is street poetry laden with the failings of the Nigerian
society and its inhabitants, who profit by sucking the blood of fellow beings.
It’s poetry that spits at so-called modern ways that are sharply at variance
with old, golden days of yore.
But
he caps it all with ‘Bring Back Jos’, perhaps a city he’d lived that used to be
haven of peace suddenly torn to shreds ‘when we dipped our hands in blood’, as
the claims and counter-claims of indigenes and settlers or immigrants deafened
the ears in staccato of guns and bullets and arrows to destroy centuries-old
harmony and peace. It’s what is at the heart of Boko Haram insurgents, abductors of innocent schoolgirls. How do we
bring them home and restore our bleeding humanity are the poetic concerns of
Chukwumerije. He got a standing ovation for his supreme performance.
Wrapping
up performance was the Art Essemble of Lagos comprising of Jegede, Cef, Beeka
and the Etuk Obong quartet. In their white apparel, with Jegede on bass guitar,
Cef on African instruments and Beeka, as lead voice and doing ‘How many
prophets do we have to lose?’, the essemble is the future of a redefined
Afro-centric jazz. And if you thought you’d attended a music concert in recent times
and missed Sunday’s concert at MUSON, then you need to stay close to your
calendar.
March 29 is next musical date at MUSON, when Jegede performs African Messiah. It features MUSON Choir
and the Samadhi Essemble, which will be conducted by Sir Emeka Nwokedi.
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