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LADY by Jane Bryce continued...
‘Didn’t she notice you cooking food and carrying it out of the house?’ I
ask. ‘Me sef, I start to sell small small things for street,’ she replies,
‘cigarette and kola and salt and soap powder, and the money wey I make
I keep. Na so I go buy meat and rice for Chief Priest.’ ‘But what did your
aunt think about you going to the jail? About you visiting a convicted
criminal?’‘Criminal?’ She looks at me wonderingly, as if my ignorance
were so profound she can only pity me. ‘Chief Priest no be criminal.
Everybody sabi na military government wey put innocent man for prison.
My aunt na city woman, she too know all about soldier. No be soldier wey
dey come for market, overturn her stall, burn her wares, kill people? She
tell me say, go my daughter, Chief Priest go know this town get good
people as well as Eko.’
I’m impressed by her clarity and lack of ambivalence. I know, as well as
she does, that soldiers rough up women, that beatings and rapes are
common, that she was taking a risk in publicly associating with Chief
Priest, whose outspokenness made him unpopular with the military rulers
even as it raised his capital with those who had no other voice to speak
for them. But something still niggles at me, and drives me to pursue her
further. ‘And so, now you’re in Eko, in Chief Priest’s compound, isn’t it
just like being an old man’s wife?’ I ask. ‘Only instead of being four, there
are dozens of you. How often do you get to see him? Don’t the women
fight over him?’ Ngozi sighs and close her eyes. I understand the
conversation is over, but the dissatisfaction remains. I need to see for
myself what it is that keeps Ngozi in thrall to the man, even while she
cooks for me and sleeps with me.
There are competing views of why she’s here. According to a woman
journalist who visits off and on, the girl’s no better than a prostitute. She
and Ngozi are from the same part of the country, and she’s adamant that
she can have only one motive for hanging around a white man. ‘She
wants money, of course. You wait, you’ll see. Either she’ll ask for it or she’
ll take it. There’ll be a sick relative, or some such excuse, and once she’s
got what she wants, she’ll take off, and you won’t see her again.’ Another
woman friend is less brutal, but tends to agree. ‘What else can she be
after? It’s not sex, she’s with Chief Priest. What he doesn’t have is
money, and you’re a white man. She can’t see you any other way.’ But
worse than their scepticism is the open admiration of one of the foreign
correspondents. As far as he’s concerned, she’s the ultimate in exotica, a
dancer at the Shrine, touched with Chief Priest’s aura of sexual excess
and male power. He wants to know how she performs in bed, for God’s
sake, and he won’t leave it alone. ‘Is it true black women are hot? Does
she let you suck her? I hear black men refuse to suck. How about her,
does she do it to you?’ He only sleeps with white women – ‘I don’t want to
catch anything, man’ – but he regards all women in basically the same
way. I hate the way men like that assume some kind of camaraderie, but I
work with the guy and I don’t know how to deflect it without creating an
incident. It’s the price of being white in a black country, other ex-pats
assume you’re the same as them. Then one day, Fabian comes. He
turns up at the apartment on one of his impromptu visits to the city, to
remind me of my promise to introduce him to Chief Priest. Fabian’s a
musicologist, living in a village to the north and studying the influence of
tradition on contemporary musical forms. Funds are low and I spot a
radio item in it. If I’m honest, it’s the chance I’ve been looking for.
It’s nothing unusual for foreigners to visit The Republic. Chief’s
compound is an island of sound and movement in the quiet residential
backwater, pulsating Afrobeat vying with the shouts of women, children
screaming, the slamming of car doors as messengers are dispatched on
errands. The arrival of a battered yellow taxi, and the emergence of two
white men hung around with cameras and recording equipment, hardly
attracts attention. The guard at the gate recognizes me from previous
visits, and gestures for us to come inside. We’re shown into a shabby
waiting room, where we sit in a couple of well-worn cushion chairs until we’
re called. A naked child wanders through, pursued by a young girl who
might be his mother. Like all Priest’s women, she’s fearless and
unimpressed by our presence, dropping a cursory curtsey but hardly
glancing at us. The only decoration in the room is a giant poster of
Priest giving his customary clenched fist salute, with the words ‘Black
President’ splashed in red across his lower half. Fabian leans forward
restlessly. ‘What do you think he’s doing?’ he mutters. ‘Is this just for
show?’ I laugh. ‘What would you be doing if you had twenty-seven wives
and assorted concubines?’ I ask. ‘It’s a full-time job keeping them all
satisfied.’ Fabian looks impressed, but disbelieving. ‘When does he get
time to make music?’ he asks. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I suggest. ‘He’s
bound to have an answer. He’s got one for everything.’
Forty minutes pass in desultory conversation beneath the larger-than-life
image on the wall, before one of the ubiquitous hangers-on calls us
inside. Chief Priest is ensconced in his personal sanctum in an immense
arm-chair. Apart from a couple of smaller chairs, the only other furniture
is an enormous music system with standing speakers six feet high
against the end wall. The walls reverberate to the beat of one of his own
instrumental arrangements, loud enough to drown out any human voice.
He greets us without getting up by means of a clenched fist half raised
towards them. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of shocking pink
underpants and his head is wreathed in smoke from a fat spliff, which he
passes to me as soon as we sit down. I obediently take a drag and offer it
to Fabian, who hesitates for a second. I catch his eye and Fabian gives
way with a good grace. I know the score; you don’t set the pace of these
interviews, you leave that to Priest himself. You can try to hurry him
along, mindful of your broadcasting deadline or the curfew or just
something else you have to do, but all that achieves is further withdrawal
on his side, a deepening of his ironic detachment. Once you enter the
Republic, time itself comes under the sway of its President. It’s better to
inhale deeply and adjust your rhythm. He might make you wait, but he’s
not going to disappoint you.
Seven hours later, dishevelled and red-eyed, we stand again in the road
outside the compound, while one of Priest’s boys goes for a car. It’s a
dark night, but we’re in Priest’s territory and there’s nothing to fear. Our
hearing adjusted long ago to the blast of sound, which Priest obligingly
lowered during the recording. We exchange a wordless look, and slap
the palms of each other’s hands in gleeful triumph. We’re high and not
just on smoke. ‘Man’, says Fabian softly, ‘what a guy. Now I know what
makes him think so much of himself. He really is a phenomenon.’ Already
acquainted with Priest’s powers of seduction, I’m less ready to be
impressed, but even I feel elated. I knew Priest was a consummate
performer, projecting the image of a man of the people, one with the
working poor, mouthpiece of the voiceless, cock of the walk, symbol of
sexual potency to encourage the impotent, tormentor of authority,
exposer of hypocrisy, ruthless critic of corruption, satirist of the foibles of
the powerful. But there’s another side to him, one that he doesn’t parade
in public, that he showed us this afternoon and evening. Despite the
smoke and the underpants, the man we sat and talked with had been the
western-educated, aristocratic son of an elite family, christianised and
literate for generations, politically astute, articulate, soft-spoken and
courteous. Trained in music at an overseas academy he talked
knowledgeably about the technicalities and intricacies of his own and
others’ musical forms, tradition and innovation, influence and interaction.
We found he could talk about anything, from western classical
conventions to the language of the talking drum, from jazz to blues to
township jive, apala to hiphop, juju or reggae. He had Fabian
mesmerised by his charismatic connectivity between worlds, a
shapeshifter juggling with words and images. I sat and twiddled the dials
on the Sony, forgetting to worry about the broadcast. Editing for
highlights was going to be like trying to separate out a single strand of a
kaleidoscope.
In the course of the evening, Priest calls for drinks, and the floor begins
to fill with empty bottles of Star. After a few hours, three women come and
kneel before Priest, and then proceed to bring in stools and bowls of
water for washing, before serving each of us an earthen bowl of egusi
soup accompanied by pounded yam. We eat and talk, the women take
the bowls away and bring water for our hands again. As I dip my hand in
the plastic container, I realise with a shock that I know the hands which
hold it, know those polished fingernails and the darker folds of skin over
the knuckles, the slim wrist, the smooth skin disappearing into the sleeve
of a silken wrapper. My eyes meet hers, and she’s smiling, unafraid, as if
we were alone in the apartment and she had cooked just for me. She
looks not in the least discomforted, whereas my face burns and I lose
concentration, letting the tape run without adjustment from then on.
When the moment arrives when Chief Priest is ready to let us go, he
finally rises from his chair, a thin, wiry man, shorter than me by several
inches. As Fabian packs up his equipment, Priest speaks just loud
enough for me to hear and no-one else. ‘That one na fine fine sisi, no be
so?’ he says, conversationally. ‘She no be lady-o, my brother. That one
na African woman for true.’ And he begins to sing softly, lines from his
famous song of a decade before: ‘African woman go dance she go dance
the fire dance/ She know him man na master/She go cook for am/She go
do anything he say….’ For a moment only, I glimpse something atavistic
– pride, cruelty? - before the urbane, cultured persona takes over and
genially says good-bye, do come again. So abrupt and subtle is the
transition, that I think I may have imagined it. Once on the street, I’m able
to participate in Fabian’s excitement at the coup we’ve pulled off in
getting the continent’s most controversial musician to reveal his private
thoughts about his music. But I remain disturbed, uncertain how to
translate to myself the words Priest has spoken. What I do understand is
that some sort of a challenge has been issued, which sooner or later will
have to be answered.
Ngozi comes several times after that, her behaviour the same mixture of
calm practicality and sensuous teasing as always, and for a while, I allow
myself to believe that nothing has changed. But I take to delaying tactics
when she’s leaving, trying to prolong the time she spends with me, to
spin it out indefinitely and trick her into staying. I wait till she begins to
change out of the old house wrapper and into her street clothes to come
up behind her and pulling her against me, tease her nipples in the way I
know she can’t resist, just as I can’t resist the pressure of her taut
buttocks against my crutch. But she pulls away, laughing, insisting she
has to go, and extricates herself, tying her wrapper with one hand as she
fends me off with the other. Her nipples are still erect under the flimsy
fabric as she backs laughing out of the door, and I’m sore and turgid with
desire.
One night, seeing her standing naked before the wardrobe where she
has carefully hung her clothes, I can’t bear it any longer. Without the soft
intimacies that are our usual prelude to love-making, I take hold of her
from behind, and throw her face down on the bed, falling across her back
and forcing her legs apart. There’s a hum in my ears, and I hear myself
groaning, but Ngozi is silent, lying unmoving till I judder to a sweaty
panting halt. When I roll off her, she slides off the bed and calmly
proceeds to dress, as though nothing has happened. But she never
comes again.
As the weeks turn into months, I work so many hours my friends start to
doubt my sanity. I’m possessed by the feeling that I have destroyed
something, and guilt hounds me. This feeling pursues me even to the
neighbouring country where I go to cover a coup. Surrounded by limbless
victims of rebel attacks, under fire, all I can think of is Ngozi, all I can see
her face as she leaves my flat for the last time.
Then one day, I’m given another assignment. Chief Priest is to headline a
massive outdoor concert at the sports stadium, which is being unofficially
billed as a musicians’ protest against the continuing presence of the
illegal military regime. Officially, it’s a fundraiser for the children of
detainees, in itself a provocation, but not enough to have the concert
banned. A foreign radio station wants live coverage, so I go, telling
himself it’s just a job, but undeceived by my own attempt at self-delusion.
I’ve carried the pain of losing her for months, and I know I’m going for
Ngozi, in the hope of seeing her and somehow resolving the lurking
shame which is her legacy.
I arrive at the stadium in a car with a journalist from one of the city’s big
weekly journals. Dele, who always wears a shirt and tie, is soft-spoken
and smooth and has a way of talking himself into anywhere he wants to
go, and out again afterwards. It’s a useful characteristic in a place where
press passes alone don’t always guarantee entrance, and if you refuse
to bribe. Dele’s driving, and as we come across the flyover and pull into
the nearside lane to descend to the stadium, we both gasp at what we
see beneath us. ‘Shit! What have they brought out the armoured
vehicles for?’ ‘They want to make trouble, my brother,’ Dele responds
softly, slowing the car to a crawl. Police cars are ranged on both sides of
the entrance to the stadium, armoured cars parked at a safe distance,
waiting. ‘For what?’ I ask again. ‘It’s just to scare us,’ says Dele, sounding
unperturbed. ‘They’re expecting 30,000 people, so they have to show
they’re in control. They’re afraid if Chief Priest starts talking about
cancelled elections, structural adjustment, or any of the other things he
likes to talk about, that people may get excited. So they’re here as a
warning.’ ‘Not much use against a miracle,’ I point out, ‘that’s what he’s
promising for tonight after all. They’ll need more than armoured vehicles
to contain that.’
The concert has been billed to start at two pm. It’s nearly seven as we
gain the VIP entrance and show our passes, which let us into the
performing area. A ragged reggae outfit are jamming limply on stage,
and we head to the bar to see who else is there. The stands are half-full,
people filtering in slowly, security guards at every turn, swaggering, half-
bored. In the guests’ bar, beer, greetings, a sense of suppressed
expectation. Gradually a chant starts to gather force outside, ‘Baba-o!
Baba-o!’ and I turn to see Chief Priest make his entrance from the far
end of the stadium, dressed in white, surrounded by his bodyguards,
similarly dressed in white. They move as a group, literally storming the
stadium, Chief Priest running to one side and stopping dead, punching
the air in his characteristic salute, the young men at his heels. Then he
turns, darting to the other side, stopping dead again, the young men
rushing to his side. The ever-growing crowd goes wild, screaming its
approval. On stage, a slow warm-up of the instruments is in progress,
horns riffing, percussion dimly in the background, the faint tapping of a
drum. After the excitement of Chief Priest’s entrance, anti-climax. People
are standing on the terraces, grouped towards the front, contained by
the wire fence. Then a burst of sax, pure and mellifluous, and Chief
Priest is suddenly on stage.
As he attacks the keyboard, the first strains of a familiar tune rising like
incense into the humid darkness, a rebellion begins amongst those who
are penned in on the terraces. Unaware, I’ve left the bar and I’m
wandering towards the stage, to which my press pass gives me access,
when I notice security guards running for the fence. People are filtering
onto the pitch, escaping from the confines of the meshed-in terraces,
more and more of them. The guards are having trouble holding the
gates, as bodies build up against them, rocking backwards and forwards.
A couple of bodies hurtle across the fence, others begin to scramble up
and it sways dangerously. Frozen for a second, my journalist’s instinct
comes to my rescue, and I sprint for the stage, pulling out the Sony as I
run. A line from one of Priest’s songs teletexts across my vision: ‘If
trouble come, yanga go meet am.’ Whatever happens, I’m there to record
it.
I gain the stage at the very moment when Chief Priest steps forward,
gesturing to the instrumentalists to be quiet. From the terraces, missiles
are being thrown, bottles are smashing on the track, a woman is cut by
flying glass and screams, holding her face. Unable to hold back the
crowd, guards are striking out with slabs of wood as people scatter
across the pitch. Throwing both arms in the air, Priest shouts into the
mike: ‘Easy now, my brothers, easy. Make we no fight, I beg. Make
everyone come for front, guards too, everyone.’ The dun dun player
steps to his side and raps out the same message, the old language
stilling the activity on the ground. In the momentary pause, Chief Priest
continues, lowering his voice to barely a whisper, caressing the mike with
his breath, so the air is filled with the sound of his breathing, gradually
taking shape as words: ‘My friends, we no be animals. If anybody tell us
we be animals, it no be true at all. No be our leaders who say, “This
uprising will bring out the beast in us”? No be us, we no be animals. You
know how to recognise who is an animal in human skin? He wears suit or
agbada as disguise, and he drives Mercedes.’ Behind the words, a tune
is starting to take shape, and Chief Priest steps back abruptly to merge
with the instrumentalists.
Throughout this performance, my eyes have been riveted on Priest,
except for a couple of glances at recording levels. Now, as I turn my
attention to the grounds I see that a miracle has taken place. The same
people who were scuffling and fighting a few minutes previously are
dancing with each other, guards and audience both. What had
threatened to become another item in a catalogue of violent cliches has
spontaneously transformed itself into a playground. Two men have made
themselves into a swing, with a third on their clasped hands, swinging to
the beat of the music. A tall man in a Fulani hat and dark glasses is
flirting with a woman in an immaculate silk wrapper and high heels,
dancing ever more suggestively in front of her, and she’s laughing. From
nowhere, a flotilla of tiny girls has appeared with plastic bags, out of
which they sell frozen banana ice lollies. Young men in tattered clothes
hold up life-size portraits of Chief Priest for sale, and as well as a
playground, it’s a market-place. A huge uniformed guard blissfully sucks
a lolly, swaying gently as the instruments build their wall of sound and the
repetitive phrases circle above it: ‘My people are useless, my people are
senseless, my people are undisciplined. Which kind talk be that?
Government talk be that, animal talk be that.’
Turning back to the stage, I’m once again frozen with shock. A line of
women is dancing in the middle of the stage, their exposed skin painted
in elaborate designs, faces heavily made up, eyes and lips accentuated,
cheeks highlighted, earrings dangling, feet bare, a narrow strip of cloth
stretched across breasts, waists swaying. No more than a few feet from
me is Ngozi, apparently oblivious to everything but the music and the
movements she is sinuously and provocatively performing. Her lithe body
is one with the song’s rhythm, her face rapt, her eyes half-closed,
transported as he has seen her many, so many times, in different
circumstances, to a different tune. Music and movement blur together, so
that I can no longer distinguish who is singing, or which instrument is
playing, and instead all sound is focussed in her body, and it is her body
which sings, demanding my response. And though I never dance, I start
to move, standing in one corner of the huge stage, bag at my feet, Sony
round my neck, aware of nothing any longer but the moment and the
sensation of dancing, which links me to her, and to the crowd which
moves in unison, as though driven by a common energy, a single heart
beat. And as the climax approaches, Priest leads us in a spontaneous
call and response in which everybody joins. ‘Animal can’t dash me’ sings
Priest and pauses for the thousands of voices to roar back: ‘Human
rights!’ And again, ‘Human rights na my property! So therefore?’ And the
response: ‘You can’t dash me my property!’ ‘Animal can’t dash me?’ ‘My
property!’ And finally, the authoritative voice of Chief Priest, the
highpitched voices of the dancers, the multiple voices of the crowd,
merge together in one prolonged chorus, ‘Animal in human skin! Beasts
of no nation!’ over and over, encircling the stage, the stadium, the
slumbering armoured vehicles, the sleeping soldiers, the city with its
barracks and prisons, its slums and market-places, its lagoons and
flyovers, swirling upwards on eddies of air and outwards to the ocean,
scattering on the wind.
Jane Bryce is of the Faculty of Humanities,University of the West
Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.
jbryce@uwichill.edu.bb
‘Didn’t she notice you cooking food and carrying it out of the house?’ I
ask. ‘Me sef, I start to sell small small things for street,’ she replies,
‘cigarette and kola and salt and soap powder, and the money wey I make
I keep. Na so I go buy meat and rice for Chief Priest.’ ‘But what did your
aunt think about you going to the jail? About you visiting a convicted
criminal?’‘Criminal?’ She looks at me wonderingly, as if my ignorance
were so profound she can only pity me. ‘Chief Priest no be criminal.
Everybody sabi na military government wey put innocent man for prison.
My aunt na city woman, she too know all about soldier. No be soldier wey
dey come for market, overturn her stall, burn her wares, kill people? She
tell me say, go my daughter, Chief Priest go know this town get good
people as well as Eko.’
I’m impressed by her clarity and lack of ambivalence. I know, as well as
she does, that soldiers rough up women, that beatings and rapes are
common, that she was taking a risk in publicly associating with Chief
Priest, whose outspokenness made him unpopular with the military rulers
even as it raised his capital with those who had no other voice to speak
for them. But something still niggles at me, and drives me to pursue her
further. ‘And so, now you’re in Eko, in Chief Priest’s compound, isn’t it
just like being an old man’s wife?’ I ask. ‘Only instead of being four, there
are dozens of you. How often do you get to see him? Don’t the women
fight over him?’ Ngozi sighs and close her eyes. I understand the
conversation is over, but the dissatisfaction remains. I need to see for
myself what it is that keeps Ngozi in thrall to the man, even while she
cooks for me and sleeps with me.
There are competing views of why she’s here. According to a woman
journalist who visits off and on, the girl’s no better than a prostitute. She
and Ngozi are from the same part of the country, and she’s adamant that
she can have only one motive for hanging around a white man. ‘She
wants money, of course. You wait, you’ll see. Either she’ll ask for it or she’
ll take it. There’ll be a sick relative, or some such excuse, and once she’s
got what she wants, she’ll take off, and you won’t see her again.’ Another
woman friend is less brutal, but tends to agree. ‘What else can she be
after? It’s not sex, she’s with Chief Priest. What he doesn’t have is
money, and you’re a white man. She can’t see you any other way.’ But
worse than their scepticism is the open admiration of one of the foreign
correspondents. As far as he’s concerned, she’s the ultimate in exotica, a
dancer at the Shrine, touched with Chief Priest’s aura of sexual excess
and male power. He wants to know how she performs in bed, for God’s
sake, and he won’t leave it alone. ‘Is it true black women are hot? Does
she let you suck her? I hear black men refuse to suck. How about her,
does she do it to you?’ He only sleeps with white women – ‘I don’t want to
catch anything, man’ – but he regards all women in basically the same
way. I hate the way men like that assume some kind of camaraderie, but I
work with the guy and I don’t know how to deflect it without creating an
incident. It’s the price of being white in a black country, other ex-pats
assume you’re the same as them. Then one day, Fabian comes. He
turns up at the apartment on one of his impromptu visits to the city, to
remind me of my promise to introduce him to Chief Priest. Fabian’s a
musicologist, living in a village to the north and studying the influence of
tradition on contemporary musical forms. Funds are low and I spot a
radio item in it. If I’m honest, it’s the chance I’ve been looking for.
It’s nothing unusual for foreigners to visit The Republic. Chief’s
compound is an island of sound and movement in the quiet residential
backwater, pulsating Afrobeat vying with the shouts of women, children
screaming, the slamming of car doors as messengers are dispatched on
errands. The arrival of a battered yellow taxi, and the emergence of two
white men hung around with cameras and recording equipment, hardly
attracts attention. The guard at the gate recognizes me from previous
visits, and gestures for us to come inside. We’re shown into a shabby
waiting room, where we sit in a couple of well-worn cushion chairs until we’
re called. A naked child wanders through, pursued by a young girl who
might be his mother. Like all Priest’s women, she’s fearless and
unimpressed by our presence, dropping a cursory curtsey but hardly
glancing at us. The only decoration in the room is a giant poster of
Priest giving his customary clenched fist salute, with the words ‘Black
President’ splashed in red across his lower half. Fabian leans forward
restlessly. ‘What do you think he’s doing?’ he mutters. ‘Is this just for
show?’ I laugh. ‘What would you be doing if you had twenty-seven wives
and assorted concubines?’ I ask. ‘It’s a full-time job keeping them all
satisfied.’ Fabian looks impressed, but disbelieving. ‘When does he get
time to make music?’ he asks. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ I suggest. ‘He’s
bound to have an answer. He’s got one for everything.’
Forty minutes pass in desultory conversation beneath the larger-than-life
image on the wall, before one of the ubiquitous hangers-on calls us
inside. Chief Priest is ensconced in his personal sanctum in an immense
arm-chair. Apart from a couple of smaller chairs, the only other furniture
is an enormous music system with standing speakers six feet high
against the end wall. The walls reverberate to the beat of one of his own
instrumental arrangements, loud enough to drown out any human voice.
He greets us without getting up by means of a clenched fist half raised
towards them. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of shocking pink
underpants and his head is wreathed in smoke from a fat spliff, which he
passes to me as soon as we sit down. I obediently take a drag and offer it
to Fabian, who hesitates for a second. I catch his eye and Fabian gives
way with a good grace. I know the score; you don’t set the pace of these
interviews, you leave that to Priest himself. You can try to hurry him
along, mindful of your broadcasting deadline or the curfew or just
something else you have to do, but all that achieves is further withdrawal
on his side, a deepening of his ironic detachment. Once you enter the
Republic, time itself comes under the sway of its President. It’s better to
inhale deeply and adjust your rhythm. He might make you wait, but he’s
not going to disappoint you.
Seven hours later, dishevelled and red-eyed, we stand again in the road
outside the compound, while one of Priest’s boys goes for a car. It’s a
dark night, but we’re in Priest’s territory and there’s nothing to fear. Our
hearing adjusted long ago to the blast of sound, which Priest obligingly
lowered during the recording. We exchange a wordless look, and slap
the palms of each other’s hands in gleeful triumph. We’re high and not
just on smoke. ‘Man’, says Fabian softly, ‘what a guy. Now I know what
makes him think so much of himself. He really is a phenomenon.’ Already
acquainted with Priest’s powers of seduction, I’m less ready to be
impressed, but even I feel elated. I knew Priest was a consummate
performer, projecting the image of a man of the people, one with the
working poor, mouthpiece of the voiceless, cock of the walk, symbol of
sexual potency to encourage the impotent, tormentor of authority,
exposer of hypocrisy, ruthless critic of corruption, satirist of the foibles of
the powerful. But there’s another side to him, one that he doesn’t parade
in public, that he showed us this afternoon and evening. Despite the
smoke and the underpants, the man we sat and talked with had been the
western-educated, aristocratic son of an elite family, christianised and
literate for generations, politically astute, articulate, soft-spoken and
courteous. Trained in music at an overseas academy he talked
knowledgeably about the technicalities and intricacies of his own and
others’ musical forms, tradition and innovation, influence and interaction.
We found he could talk about anything, from western classical
conventions to the language of the talking drum, from jazz to blues to
township jive, apala to hiphop, juju or reggae. He had Fabian
mesmerised by his charismatic connectivity between worlds, a
shapeshifter juggling with words and images. I sat and twiddled the dials
on the Sony, forgetting to worry about the broadcast. Editing for
highlights was going to be like trying to separate out a single strand of a
kaleidoscope.
In the course of the evening, Priest calls for drinks, and the floor begins
to fill with empty bottles of Star. After a few hours, three women come and
kneel before Priest, and then proceed to bring in stools and bowls of
water for washing, before serving each of us an earthen bowl of egusi
soup accompanied by pounded yam. We eat and talk, the women take
the bowls away and bring water for our hands again. As I dip my hand in
the plastic container, I realise with a shock that I know the hands which
hold it, know those polished fingernails and the darker folds of skin over
the knuckles, the slim wrist, the smooth skin disappearing into the sleeve
of a silken wrapper. My eyes meet hers, and she’s smiling, unafraid, as if
we were alone in the apartment and she had cooked just for me. She
looks not in the least discomforted, whereas my face burns and I lose
concentration, letting the tape run without adjustment from then on.
When the moment arrives when Chief Priest is ready to let us go, he
finally rises from his chair, a thin, wiry man, shorter than me by several
inches. As Fabian packs up his equipment, Priest speaks just loud
enough for me to hear and no-one else. ‘That one na fine fine sisi, no be
so?’ he says, conversationally. ‘She no be lady-o, my brother. That one
na African woman for true.’ And he begins to sing softly, lines from his
famous song of a decade before: ‘African woman go dance she go dance
the fire dance/ She know him man na master/She go cook for am/She go
do anything he say….’ For a moment only, I glimpse something atavistic
– pride, cruelty? - before the urbane, cultured persona takes over and
genially says good-bye, do come again. So abrupt and subtle is the
transition, that I think I may have imagined it. Once on the street, I’m able
to participate in Fabian’s excitement at the coup we’ve pulled off in
getting the continent’s most controversial musician to reveal his private
thoughts about his music. But I remain disturbed, uncertain how to
translate to myself the words Priest has spoken. What I do understand is
that some sort of a challenge has been issued, which sooner or later will
have to be answered.
Ngozi comes several times after that, her behaviour the same mixture of
calm practicality and sensuous teasing as always, and for a while, I allow
myself to believe that nothing has changed. But I take to delaying tactics
when she’s leaving, trying to prolong the time she spends with me, to
spin it out indefinitely and trick her into staying. I wait till she begins to
change out of the old house wrapper and into her street clothes to come
up behind her and pulling her against me, tease her nipples in the way I
know she can’t resist, just as I can’t resist the pressure of her taut
buttocks against my crutch. But she pulls away, laughing, insisting she
has to go, and extricates herself, tying her wrapper with one hand as she
fends me off with the other. Her nipples are still erect under the flimsy
fabric as she backs laughing out of the door, and I’m sore and turgid with
desire.
One night, seeing her standing naked before the wardrobe where she
has carefully hung her clothes, I can’t bear it any longer. Without the soft
intimacies that are our usual prelude to love-making, I take hold of her
from behind, and throw her face down on the bed, falling across her back
and forcing her legs apart. There’s a hum in my ears, and I hear myself
groaning, but Ngozi is silent, lying unmoving till I judder to a sweaty
panting halt. When I roll off her, she slides off the bed and calmly
proceeds to dress, as though nothing has happened. But she never
comes again.
As the weeks turn into months, I work so many hours my friends start to
doubt my sanity. I’m possessed by the feeling that I have destroyed
something, and guilt hounds me. This feeling pursues me even to the
neighbouring country where I go to cover a coup. Surrounded by limbless
victims of rebel attacks, under fire, all I can think of is Ngozi, all I can see
her face as she leaves my flat for the last time.
Then one day, I’m given another assignment. Chief Priest is to headline a
massive outdoor concert at the sports stadium, which is being unofficially
billed as a musicians’ protest against the continuing presence of the
illegal military regime. Officially, it’s a fundraiser for the children of
detainees, in itself a provocation, but not enough to have the concert
banned. A foreign radio station wants live coverage, so I go, telling
himself it’s just a job, but undeceived by my own attempt at self-delusion.
I’ve carried the pain of losing her for months, and I know I’m going for
Ngozi, in the hope of seeing her and somehow resolving the lurking
shame which is her legacy.
I arrive at the stadium in a car with a journalist from one of the city’s big
weekly journals. Dele, who always wears a shirt and tie, is soft-spoken
and smooth and has a way of talking himself into anywhere he wants to
go, and out again afterwards. It’s a useful characteristic in a place where
press passes alone don’t always guarantee entrance, and if you refuse
to bribe. Dele’s driving, and as we come across the flyover and pull into
the nearside lane to descend to the stadium, we both gasp at what we
see beneath us. ‘Shit! What have they brought out the armoured
vehicles for?’ ‘They want to make trouble, my brother,’ Dele responds
softly, slowing the car to a crawl. Police cars are ranged on both sides of
the entrance to the stadium, armoured cars parked at a safe distance,
waiting. ‘For what?’ I ask again. ‘It’s just to scare us,’ says Dele, sounding
unperturbed. ‘They’re expecting 30,000 people, so they have to show
they’re in control. They’re afraid if Chief Priest starts talking about
cancelled elections, structural adjustment, or any of the other things he
likes to talk about, that people may get excited. So they’re here as a
warning.’ ‘Not much use against a miracle,’ I point out, ‘that’s what he’s
promising for tonight after all. They’ll need more than armoured vehicles
to contain that.’
The concert has been billed to start at two pm. It’s nearly seven as we
gain the VIP entrance and show our passes, which let us into the
performing area. A ragged reggae outfit are jamming limply on stage,
and we head to the bar to see who else is there. The stands are half-full,
people filtering in slowly, security guards at every turn, swaggering, half-
bored. In the guests’ bar, beer, greetings, a sense of suppressed
expectation. Gradually a chant starts to gather force outside, ‘Baba-o!
Baba-o!’ and I turn to see Chief Priest make his entrance from the far
end of the stadium, dressed in white, surrounded by his bodyguards,
similarly dressed in white. They move as a group, literally storming the
stadium, Chief Priest running to one side and stopping dead, punching
the air in his characteristic salute, the young men at his heels. Then he
turns, darting to the other side, stopping dead again, the young men
rushing to his side. The ever-growing crowd goes wild, screaming its
approval. On stage, a slow warm-up of the instruments is in progress,
horns riffing, percussion dimly in the background, the faint tapping of a
drum. After the excitement of Chief Priest’s entrance, anti-climax. People
are standing on the terraces, grouped towards the front, contained by
the wire fence. Then a burst of sax, pure and mellifluous, and Chief
Priest is suddenly on stage.
As he attacks the keyboard, the first strains of a familiar tune rising like
incense into the humid darkness, a rebellion begins amongst those who
are penned in on the terraces. Unaware, I’ve left the bar and I’m
wandering towards the stage, to which my press pass gives me access,
when I notice security guards running for the fence. People are filtering
onto the pitch, escaping from the confines of the meshed-in terraces,
more and more of them. The guards are having trouble holding the
gates, as bodies build up against them, rocking backwards and forwards.
A couple of bodies hurtle across the fence, others begin to scramble up
and it sways dangerously. Frozen for a second, my journalist’s instinct
comes to my rescue, and I sprint for the stage, pulling out the Sony as I
run. A line from one of Priest’s songs teletexts across my vision: ‘If
trouble come, yanga go meet am.’ Whatever happens, I’m there to record
it.
I gain the stage at the very moment when Chief Priest steps forward,
gesturing to the instrumentalists to be quiet. From the terraces, missiles
are being thrown, bottles are smashing on the track, a woman is cut by
flying glass and screams, holding her face. Unable to hold back the
crowd, guards are striking out with slabs of wood as people scatter
across the pitch. Throwing both arms in the air, Priest shouts into the
mike: ‘Easy now, my brothers, easy. Make we no fight, I beg. Make
everyone come for front, guards too, everyone.’ The dun dun player
steps to his side and raps out the same message, the old language
stilling the activity on the ground. In the momentary pause, Chief Priest
continues, lowering his voice to barely a whisper, caressing the mike with
his breath, so the air is filled with the sound of his breathing, gradually
taking shape as words: ‘My friends, we no be animals. If anybody tell us
we be animals, it no be true at all. No be our leaders who say, “This
uprising will bring out the beast in us”? No be us, we no be animals. You
know how to recognise who is an animal in human skin? He wears suit or
agbada as disguise, and he drives Mercedes.’ Behind the words, a tune
is starting to take shape, and Chief Priest steps back abruptly to merge
with the instrumentalists.
Throughout this performance, my eyes have been riveted on Priest,
except for a couple of glances at recording levels. Now, as I turn my
attention to the grounds I see that a miracle has taken place. The same
people who were scuffling and fighting a few minutes previously are
dancing with each other, guards and audience both. What had
threatened to become another item in a catalogue of violent cliches has
spontaneously transformed itself into a playground. Two men have made
themselves into a swing, with a third on their clasped hands, swinging to
the beat of the music. A tall man in a Fulani hat and dark glasses is
flirting with a woman in an immaculate silk wrapper and high heels,
dancing ever more suggestively in front of her, and she’s laughing. From
nowhere, a flotilla of tiny girls has appeared with plastic bags, out of
which they sell frozen banana ice lollies. Young men in tattered clothes
hold up life-size portraits of Chief Priest for sale, and as well as a
playground, it’s a market-place. A huge uniformed guard blissfully sucks
a lolly, swaying gently as the instruments build their wall of sound and the
repetitive phrases circle above it: ‘My people are useless, my people are
senseless, my people are undisciplined. Which kind talk be that?
Government talk be that, animal talk be that.’
Turning back to the stage, I’m once again frozen with shock. A line of
women is dancing in the middle of the stage, their exposed skin painted
in elaborate designs, faces heavily made up, eyes and lips accentuated,
cheeks highlighted, earrings dangling, feet bare, a narrow strip of cloth
stretched across breasts, waists swaying. No more than a few feet from
me is Ngozi, apparently oblivious to everything but the music and the
movements she is sinuously and provocatively performing. Her lithe body
is one with the song’s rhythm, her face rapt, her eyes half-closed,
transported as he has seen her many, so many times, in different
circumstances, to a different tune. Music and movement blur together, so
that I can no longer distinguish who is singing, or which instrument is
playing, and instead all sound is focussed in her body, and it is her body
which sings, demanding my response. And though I never dance, I start
to move, standing in one corner of the huge stage, bag at my feet, Sony
round my neck, aware of nothing any longer but the moment and the
sensation of dancing, which links me to her, and to the crowd which
moves in unison, as though driven by a common energy, a single heart
beat. And as the climax approaches, Priest leads us in a spontaneous
call and response in which everybody joins. ‘Animal can’t dash me’ sings
Priest and pauses for the thousands of voices to roar back: ‘Human
rights!’ And again, ‘Human rights na my property! So therefore?’ And the
response: ‘You can’t dash me my property!’ ‘Animal can’t dash me?’ ‘My
property!’ And finally, the authoritative voice of Chief Priest, the
highpitched voices of the dancers, the multiple voices of the crowd,
merge together in one prolonged chorus, ‘Animal in human skin! Beasts
of no nation!’ over and over, encircling the stage, the stadium, the
slumbering armoured vehicles, the sleeping soldiers, the city with its
barracks and prisons, its slums and market-places, its lagoons and
flyovers, swirling upwards on eddies of air and outwards to the ocean,
scattering on the wind.
Jane Bryce is of the Faculty of Humanities,University of the West
Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados.
jbryce@uwichill.edu.bb