Abdullah Ibrahim In The 1960s: How The Famous Pianist Began To Shape An African Jazz Sound

BY STEPHANIE VOS

POST0DOCTORAL FELLOW

STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSTY

The 1960s is a significant era in Abdullah Ibrahim’s story. It’s a time when the South African master’s international career as a jazz pianist was gradually established and he laid the foundations for the signature sound that is recognised today as people reflect on his passing.

He is best remembered for evoking soundscapes that are recognisably South African: harmonisations of church hymns, Cape Town’s ghoema rhythms and Islamic calls to prayer. His delivery in performance was characterised by a sophisticated simplicity and spaciousness.

This musical turn is mimicked by a spiritual one that culminated in his conversion to Islam and name change from Dollar Brand to Abdullah Ibrahim in 1968.

The World of Dollar Brand was a series of articles that Ibrahim wrote and published in the Cape Herald newspaper in 1968 and 1969. They reveal some of his travails and musical developments after he had gone into exile in Europe in 1962.

As I outline in my study of South African jazz artists and exile, to call this time exile for Ibrahim is perhaps a misnomer. He and his wife, jazz artist and activist Sathima Bea Benjamin, returned to South Africa from July 1968 to May 1969, and again in 1970 and 1974.

As South Africa became remote as a physical presence, however, it gained presence in the poetics of Ibrahim’s sound and discourse. These early years of his absence from South Africa present the lesser known corners of his musical career.

Yet through his music, writing and interviews of this time we can trace how Ibrahim imagined and contructed Africa musically, negotiating an African-rooted sense of identity.

The ‘exile’ years

Born in Cape Town in 1934, Adolph Johannes (Dollar) Brand had been a prolific pianist in the nightclub circuit in South Africa since he was 17 years old.

By the time he and Benjamin left South Africa in 1962, he had a solid reputation. He had collaborated on South Africa’s first bebop record, the Jazz Epistles’ Verse 1, with South African jazz luminaries like Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.

In her biography, Benjamin recalls the couple were “literally starving for lack of opportunities” in a time of white minority rule and apartheid. A state of emergency declared after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 stifled the South African jazz scene. With the help of a personal friend, Paul Meyer, Ibrahim and Benjamin left for Zurich.

They arrived in the bitter cold of a Swiss winter to a room infested with bedbugs, and struggled to find work. Ibrahim wrote in the Cape Herald that his initial point of contact in Zurich was Club Africana, but they found his music “too modern”. He finally “managed to strike the right note” with the club’s managers – implying some form of musical compromise on his part – and secured a residency for four and a half months a year with fellow South Africans Johnny Gertze on bass and Makaya Ntshoko on drums.

Despite these adversities, this was a time of great development in Ibrahim’s sound. He put in intensive hours of piano practice, even turning to physical exercise to “sustain a long period of two-handed attack”. He honed his skills as a solo performer, and changed his approach to composition:

A lot of the (mostly American-derived) forms I had been working with in South Africa had become restrictive. I moulded new pieces which allowed me unfettered freedom and improvisation … lots of rhythmic patterns using the pulse … as the foundation.

Ibrahim’s early compositions The Stride, Machopi or Bra Joe From Kilimanjaro are examples of this sound.

The focus on pulse (the steady, smallest beats of music) as opposed to beats organised into metre (typically blocks of two, three or four beats that form a steady, repeating pattern, for example ONE two three ONE two three) signals that Ibrahim’s ear was trained on African modes of organising sound.

Cyclical repetitions of short riffs in the bass provide the structure of the piece, with the right hand freely improvising over it. This short cycle is a hallmark of many African musical traditions.

An encounter with Duke Ellington

A key event of Ibrahim’s time in Zurich was his encounter with US jazz star Duke Ellington in 1963. The story is well-known. Ellington was performing in Zurich and Benjamin convinced him to come and listen to a set of the Dollar Brand Trio. Clearly impressed, Ellington invited Benjamin and Brand to record with him in Paris a few weeks later.

This resulted in two albums: Duke Ellington presents the Dollar Brand Trio (1964), and Benjamin’s A Morning in Paris (only released in 1997). Ellington’s endorsement undoubtedly opened doors for Ibrahim, though it would be several years before his career took off.

brahim’s travels between 1962 and 1965 reveal the difficulties of securing a living. He performed at European festivals and did residencies. Stints from 1963 to 1965 at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen resulted in the live recording released as Anatomy of a South African Village (1965) and Round Midnight at the Montmartre (only released in 1988).

Here some of his “new forms” are audible. After a period in London, Ibrahim and Benjamin moved to New York in 1965. The city became their home for the next four decades.

A solo concert

Ibrahim played his first solo concert in the famed Carnegie Hall on 10 October 1965, launching him into the New York jazz scene in a symbolically significant way.

The concert was largely self-arranged, which struck the pianist as remarkably similar to his concert arrangement efforts when he was still in South Africa.

In this concert, his preference for solo piano performance is already noticeable. In the Cape Herald he observed:


The usual line-up of bass and drums was becoming too restricted and it was quite difficult to find a bass player who could play the fast figures I wanted.

These were difficult years for Ibrahim. Despite generous assistance from the Ellingtons, he could find no work. He poured himself into practice, studying scores, remarking:

The solo piano form was beginning to take shape.
Conversion to Islam

Ibrahim and Benjamin returned to South Africa for 10 months in 1968 and 1969. It was during this time that Dollar Brand converted to Islam. Ibrahim recounts a period of cleansing and spiritual exploration that led to his conversion.

It mirrored the technical development in his musical practices, which Ibrahim said in an interview on BBC radio was connected with internal development.

According to a review in the Cape Herald of the first concert he played in Kensington, Cape Town, however, he had left his audience behind in his musical developments. Although the figure that walked onto the stage “was the old scruffy, well-loved Dollar all right”, the reviewer reports that “Dollar began playing for Dollar, way-out stuff started soaring right above the heads of the audience”. The audience whispered, they fidgeted, and then “started shouting ‘Go back to America’.”

Ibrahim had lost his Cape Town audiences by 1968, his music reconnected with them when he returned in 1974. With producer Rashid Vally he recorded one of his best known albums, Mannenberg – is where it’s happening (1974).

In the track Mannenberg the musical short cycle features again, but this time in the familiar form of the marabi pattern, a mainstay of South African jazz since the 1920s, which forms the backbone of this piece.

Coupled with the distinct saxophone timbres of Cape Town musicians Robbie Jansen and Basil Coetzee, these are the sounds that became synonymous with a home that was only available to Ibrahim imaginatively, sonically, after he left the country in 1974 into what became definitive exile.

They will be the soundtrack to a free memorial concert in honour of his passing in Cape Town on 29 June.

Ibrahim’s writing in the Cape Herald is referenced in this article. The anti-apartheid newspaper closed in 1986 and while these articles are available in archives, there isn’t a link to them online.

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“Backstage & Beyond Volume I” — A Valuable Addition To Any Rock ‘N’ Roll Library

BY KAREN SCHLOSBERG

Veteran rock journalist Jim Sullivan, who has been a mainstay of the Boston-area music scene for four decades, has just released a collection of essays based on the many interviews he’s done during that span. This collection, Backstage & Beyond Volume I, covers those “who began or thrived in the classic rock area,” he explains in the preface (Volume II will cover punk/post-punk/New Wave and will be released in October).

Sullivan’s writing style has always been conversational rather than confrontational; his aim is to make a connection with a musician based on knowledge and a level of respect, and that is on display here — each chapter is an essay usually built from several interviews Sullivan has done with an artist over the years, sometimes including excerpts from reviews.

The pieces are pleasantly informative and chatty. The artists range from Roy Orbison and Darlene Love to both Davies brothers of the Kinks and Warren Zevon, from Pete Townshend and George Clinton to Lou Reed and Joan Baez. Sullivan is not out to write mini-bios of the musicians; he wants to present these artists as people, not stars. So while there is nothing earth-shatteringly new here, he serves up some good stories and evinces a sense of the person behind the microphone.

Of course, sometimes that person is not particularly pleasant and Sullivan, to his credit, didn’t sugarcoat these incidents. Jerry Lee Lewis, for example, appears to be a first-class arrogant misogynist and thoroughly unlikeable — not a surprise; Iggy Pop comes across as disagreeably full of himself, which was kind of a surprise. The sexism that is the dark side of rock ‘n’ roll is an undercurrent in many of these musicians’ anecdotes. I wonder how different some of these interviews would have been if the questions had been asked by a woman. (The skeptic in me thinks Sullivan probably got more truth from some of these guys because he is a man). And then there was Ginger Baker, who never met an interviewer he liked. Sullivan included his encounter as a humorous way of deflating his own goals for the book, and the encounter turned out much worse for Baker.

Overall, the artists in the book come across as thoughtful, hard-working, and refreshingly down-to-earth. The most moving chapter deals with Warren Zevon, whom Sullivan knew for many years; the writer examines the musician’s frustratingly commercially underrated work with compassion and insight. The chapters on Alice Cooper, Joe Perry & Aerosmith, and Peter Wolf & J. Geils Band also benefit from Sullivan’s long association with the artists. Richard Thompson, Darlene Love, and Brian Eno also contribute thoughtful musings on the creative process and the music industry.

Backstage & Beyond is a solid addition to any rock ‘n’ roll library, and I look forward to Volume II.

(Note: Sullivan and I have been writing colleagues in the Boston music scene for many years.)

Karen Schlosberg is a veteran journalist and editor. Her work has appeared in such publications as The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, Rolling Stone, Musician, Creem, and Trouser Press. She can be reached here or on Twitter @karen1055.

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After ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ Hip-Hop Went Global – Its Impact Has Been Massive; So Too Efforts To Keep It Real

BY ERIC CHARRY, PROFESSOR OF MUSIC, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY

Soon after the fall 1979 release of “Rapper’s Delight,” versions of the first commercially successful rap recording began cropping up around the world.

Two Portuguese-language versions, “Bons Tempos” and “Melô Do Tagarela,” were put out in Brazil. One version from Jamaica provided a relatively faithful recreation of the Sugarhill Gang original, while “Hotter Reggae Music” slowed down the track, transforming it into reggae. Other local language versions came from the Netherlands with “Hallo, Hallo, Hallo,” Venezuela with “La Cotorra Criolla” and Germany with “Rapper’s Deutsch.”

Within a few years, one could hear the song’s DNA being altered in disparate parts of the world, as in Japanese artists Yellow Magic Orchestra’s 1981 “Rap Phenomena,” Nigerian Dizzy K. Falola’s 1982 “Saturday Night Raps” and the French duo Chagrin d’amour’s 1982 “Chacun fait (c’qui lui plait).” Even Soviet Russia got into the act with Chas Pik’s “Rap” in 1984.

… and on and on

The rapid spread of “Rapper’s Delight” is an important milestone in hip-hop’s first 50 years. It marked the beginning of the globalization of rap music and the broader hip-hop culture in which it is embedded, which includes deejaying, break-dancing and graffiti-tagging.

More milestones in hip-hop’s global spread soon followed. In 1984 in France, “H.I.P.H.O.P.” hosted by DJ Sidney became the first nationally televised weekly show devoted to rap, preceding “Yo! MTV Raps” in the U.S. by some four years. In the early 1990s, a vibrant French rap scene produced the first internationally touring, platinum-selling rap star outside the U.S.: MC Solaar. France became – and remains – the second-biggest market for rap in the world.

Indeed, by 2000 the term “global hip-hop” had entered commercial and scholarly discourse. Soon, new styles partially informed by hip-hop emerged, like grime in London, which cultivated its own unique identity.

The catch

But the global expansion of hip-hop rides on a paradox. The Black American urban culture that birthed rap and hip-hop makes up its very fabric. But so does the core idea of representing one’s own experience and place. When hip-hop and rap travel abroad, does one or the other have to give?

To an ethnomusicologist like myself, this paradox goes right to the heart of identity and authenticity. How do people use, shape and transform cultural elements from elsewhere to make it speak to their own experience? And in the process, how do markers of authenticity become redefined?

Multitracking global hip-hop

With hip-hop, I believe it is helpful to imagine a wide spectrum of possible markers of authenticity – that is, what it means to stay “true” to the art form.

At one end lies the integration of Black American performance styles and fashion. Some efforts may border appropriation or mimicry.

At the other end lies hip-hop’s potential to inspire global rappers to dig deep into the well of local performance traditions. This could mean sampling music from their own countries or exploring the quirks and intricacies of their own languages and dialects.

Pioneering hip-hop scholar Halifu Osumare explored authenticity in her concept of “connective marginalities,” which established the blueprint for theorizing about global hip-hop. This key concept concerns “social resonances between Black expressive culture” on the one hand and similar dynamics in other nations and cultures on the other hand.

These connections or resonances can be tied to a shared culture among different parts of the African diaspora or through social class, historical oppression or the marginalization of youth.

Expanding this framework a bit, almost anyone feeling marginalized can draw on a hip-hop ethos. This could include Ukraine’s Alyonna Alyonna, who was bullied for the way she looked, and even Nordic white supremacists.

Hip-hop scholar and political activist Yvonne Bynoe presented an alternative view on the genre’s worldwide spread. Writing in 2002, she noted: “While rap music has been globalized, hip-hop culture has not been and cannot be.” To Bynoe, it is irrational to expect that a cultural expression that is centered around Black American experiences and vernacular can speak for all.

“While ‘rap’ as a creative tool is portable and adaptable, it belittles hip-hop culture to continue to insist that as a cultural entity it can be disassociated from its roots,” she wrote.

Manufacturing authenticity

A 2007 documentary about hip-hop in Kenya, with the on-point title “Hip Hop Colony,” addresses the issue from a different standpoint: “Today, Kenya tackles a new breed of colonization,” the narrator notes, “Its chameleon-like quality has allowed it to integrate with cultures around the world. … It is hip-hop [and] in the vein of colonialism it’s dictating the choice of attire, language and lifestyle in general. Unlike the colonists, its presence is welcomed and widely embraced by the majority.”

In a clever twist, the filmmaker, Michael Wanguhu, sets up an initial neo-colonial framework and then dismantles it by showing how Kenyans have made hip-hop their own.

Moreover, hip-hop has been seen as a catalyst for cultural self-reflection and revival wherever it lands.

“The first time we heard Grandmaster Flash rapping on a hip-hop track,” Senegalese rapper Faada Freddy of the group Daara J said in 2006, “everybody was like, ‘OK we know this, because this is taasu,’” referring to a Senegalese verbal art form accompanied by drumming.

“We’ve been rhyming like that for a long time,” he added.

Australian aboriginal rapper Wire MC similarly sees a connection between traditional Indigenous gatherings known as “corroboree” – which involve singing, dancing and telling stories – and hip-hop, which he says “is just a modern corroboree.”

“Hip-hop is a part of aboriginal culture; I think it always has been,” he added.

Native American rapper Frank Waln, of the Sicangu Lakota tribe, also notes a resonance between hip-hop and Indigenous culture.

“I definitely think there’s a connection between traditional storytelling and hip-hop,” he said. “My people have been storytellers for thousands of years, and this is just a new way to tell our stories.”

Digging into the well

Almost anywhere rap and hip-hop have traveled, people have pointed to its resonance with homegrown traditions. Some have employed those traditions to transform hip-hop into something with deep local roots. In this way, Japanese rapper Hime has used the ancient poetic form tanka for the chorus of her song “Tateba Shakuyaku.” In the song, she raps about the Japanese concept of “kotodama,” or “the spirit of the language” embedded in the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable count in that chorus.

Similarly, Ghanaian rapper Obrafour has drawn on esoteric proverbs in his native Twi language, and Somali Canadian rapper K’Naan has drawn on and paid tribute to Somali oral poetry.

Historical connections between modern-day French rappers and French song have also been fruitfully explored. This should be no surprise, given the dual identities of the children of African immigrants in France, like rapper Abd al Malik.

The indelible link between hip-hop and Black American culture remains a constant theme in how to understand its transformations around the world. Take one of China’s most well-known rappers, Vava.

In a 2018 interview in Esquire Singapore, she said that hip-hop “helps us to express our innermost emotions and thoughts about how we understand the world we’re living in.” When asked, “American hip-hop has grown out of the African American struggle. So where does Chinese hip-hop come from?” she replied, “Chinese hip-hop comes from rebellion in young people’s lives. … The generation before us were rockers, but today, we use rap to express ourselves.”

Rap as universal art form

The “global spread of authenticity,” as linguist Alastair Pennycook called it in 2007, has been a concern in the genre ever since “Rapper’s Delight” sparked its travel across the world.

In 1982, pioneering deejay Afrika Bambaataa advised French rappers to “Rap in your own language and speak from your own social awareness.”

Jay-Z addressed the issue in the conclusion of his 2010 memoir, “Decoded.” Implicitly noting the distinction between the culture hip-hop and the art form rap, he wrote:

“Rap … is at heart an art form that gave voice to a specific experience, but, like every art, is ultimately about the most common human experiences. … The story of the larger culture is a story of a million MCs all over the world … and inside of them the words are coming, too, the words they need to make sense of the world they see around them. … And when we decode that torrent of words — by which I mean really listen to them with our minds and hearts open — we can understand their world better. And ours, too. It’s the same world.”

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Amapiano Awards: South Africa’s Dance Music Scene Spreads Its Joy Across The World

BY SANYA OSHA

In 2019 amapiano began to dominate South Africa’s dance floors to such an extent that, by 2021, the first South African Amapiano Awards were held to mark the rise of the country’s most infectious new music export. In 2022, the South African dance music genre continued to expand its galloping world-wide reach. The annual awards are now an established event in South Africa’s music calendar.

Amapiano is a soulful mix of grooves, sonic textures and moods that can be by turns hectic, smooth, melodic or simply enchanting. It is also defined by its unique percussive bass. Breaks within songs are punctuated by brief staccato beats (or signatures) scrawled by the synthesised sounds of the African log drum. In short, it’s a fresh new DJ-driven dance music sound with upbeat piano melodies, a slowed down dance beat and rolling drum sound.

Its ever-growing influence is a joyful celebration of South Africa’s decades-long contribution to global dance music.

The rise and rise of amapiano

Amapiano sprang out of the townships of South Africa’s Gauteng province as early as 2012 and is continually evolving through musical innovation, public adulation and commercial viability. The craze has spread to parts of southern Africa and to countries in west Africa such as Nigeria and Ghana. In Nigeria, artists are releasing amapiano tracks and albums with an Afrobeats flavour. The east African nations of Kenya and Tanzania are also catching the bug. And amapiano artists are touring the globe.

Unlike hip-hop music, amapiano is still in its infancy and exudes an infectious innocence coupled with multiple waves of mesmerising sounds and grooves. For now, there isn’t much of hip-hop’s bad blood, enragement or despair to impede the burgeoning scene. There’s something novel and expansive about the carefree and optimistic sounds of amapiano.

Today, the most exciting celebrities to be found in the South African music scene come from amapiano. Focalistic, DBN Gogo, Pabi Cooper, Reece Madlisa, Zuma, Daliwonga, Lady Du, Nkosazana Daughter, Sir Trill and many more new heavy hitters all drink from the fount of amapiano.
Those left behind

But just as amapiano continues to rage through the South African music spectrum with ingenuity, confidence and creativity, its victims are left perplexed in the dust. Prominent house music DJ Prince Kaybee and Durban’s prodigiously talented Afropop crooner TNS have spoken out about how amapiano is monopolising the music industry to the detriment of other genres. Even hip-hop mainstays like the late AKA knew that the biggest threat to their genre is amapiano.

Consequently, many hip-hop artists hopped onto the bandwagon with amapiano-inspired tracks – from Cassper Nyovest and Khuli Chana to Costa Titch and Reason.

Those in the spotlight

At a glance, the nominees for the 2023 South African Amapiano Awards feature all the usual suspects. The self-styled king of amapiano Kabza De Small leads with nine nominations, followed by Young Stunna with eight, DJ Maphorisa and Daliwonga. There are also several upcoming aspirers on the list, like Toss, Mas Musiq, Kelvin Momo and Q-Mark and TipCee. For the first time this impressive spread also includes a few prominent Nigerian and Ghanaian stars – Davido, Wizkid, Goya Menor and Nektunez.

Indeed the deluge of amapiano hits in the past year was almost overwhelming and the story gets even more promising. Msaki, a multi-talented South African vocalist, had a fruitful collaboration with Kabza de Small. Ami Faku, ordinarily an R&B singer, dazzled fans with features on a few of Kabza’s infectious cuts. By comparison, the celebrities of other genres appear rather staid.

Across the world

On the international front, amapiano stars are beginning to gain greater exposure from frequent festival appearances across Europe and Africa. London is fast becoming an amapiano hot spot with excursions led by the likes of Major League DJz, TxC, Pabi Cooper, DBN Gogo, Focalistic, Maphorisa, Boohle and others going on extended jaunts overseas. TikTok dance challenges by eye-catching influencers and ordinary users alike flood social media, creating constant viral sensations.

These diverse exploits and activities foreground a much-needed independent mindset because amapiano still lives in a space somewhere between underground and mainstream. From production to promotion, there is a can-do, do-it-yourself attitude among amapiano artists that promises to shift paradigms of how music is both appreciated and consumed. It also reflects how the most interesting developments in music such as jazz, punk, grunge, hip-hop and now amapiano, invariably emerge from underground scenes.

TikTok and other social media platforms are upsetting and redefining the meaning and nature of hierarchies and democracy in music. Artists now possess digital technology within their reach to create viral frenzies and remain independent.

Sometimes it is easy to think that amapiano is evolving much too fast for its own good. Already, the corporates are no doubt lurking over its fresh offerings, dreaming up ways to exploit the amapiano craze. After all, other youth music movements like hip-hop in the US and K-pop in South Korea have become ultra-commercialised.

However, before this can happen, South Africa’s amapiano artists continue to dispense the sheer bliss of making music, collaborating widely and moving freely between clubs and countries. For now, there is joy, release and optimism in amapiano. It’s a glorious moment to witness a genre burst loose with distinctive flair, ebullience and ingenuity from the impoverished townships of Gauteng with a goal to take over the world.

The 2023 South African Amapiano Awards will take place on 2 April

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As the global musical phenomenon turns 50, a hip-hop professor explains what the word ‘dope’ means to him

BY A. D. CARSON

After I finished my Ph.D. in 2017, several newspaper reporters wrote about the job I’d accepted at the University of Virginia as an assistant professor of hip-hop.

“A.D. Carson just scored, arguably, the dopest job ever,” one journalist wrote.

The writer may not have meant it the way I read it, but the terminology was significant to me. Hip-hop’s early luminaries transformed the word’s original meanings, using it as a synonym for cool. In the 50 years since, it endures as an expression of respect and praise – and illegal substances.

In that context, dope has everything to do with my work.

In the year I graduated from college, one of my best friends was sent to federal prison for possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute. He served nearly a decade and has been back in prison several times since.

But before he went to prison, he helped me finish school by paying off my tuition.

In a very real way, dope has as much to do with me finishing my studies and becoming a professor as it does with him serving time in a federal prison.

Academic dope

For my Ph.D. dissertation in Rhetorics, Communications, and Information Design, I wrote a rap album titled “Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.” A peer-reviewed, mastered version of the album is due out this summer from University of Michigan Press.

Part of my reasoning for writing it that way involved my ideas about dope. I want to question who gets to determine who and what are dope and whether any university can produce expertise on the people who created hip-hop.

While I was initially met with considerable resistance for my work at Clemson, the university eventually became supportive and touted “a dissertation with a beat.”

Clemson is not the only school to recognize hip-hop as dope.

In the 50 years since its start at a back-to-school party in the South Bronx, hip-hop, the culture and its art forms have come a long way to a place of relative prominence in educational institutions.

Since 2013, Harvard University has housed the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute and the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship that funds scholars and artists who demonstrate “exceptional scholarship and creativity in the arts in connection with Hiphop.”

UCLA announced an ambitious Hip Hop Initiative to kick off the golden anniversary. The initiative includes artist residencies, community engagement programs, a book series and a digital archive project.

Perhaps my receiving tenure and promotion at the University of Virginia is part of the school’s attempt to help codify the existence of hip-hop scholarship.

When I write about “dope,” I’m thinking of Black people like drugs to which the U.S. is addicted.

Dope is a frame to help clarify the attempts, throughout American history, at outlawing and legalizing the presence of Black people and Black culture. As dope, Black people are America’s constant ailment and cure.

To me, dope is an aspiration and a methodology to acknowledge and resist America’s steady surveillance, scrutiny and criminalization of Blackness.

By this definition, dope is not only what we are, it’s also who we want to be and how we demonstrate our being.

Dope is about what we can make with what we are given.

Dope is a product of conditions created by America. It is also a product that helped create America.

Whenever Blackness has been seen as lucrative, businesses like record companies and institutions like colleges and universities have sought to capitalize. To remove the negative stigmas associated with dope, these institutions cast themselves in roles similar to a pharmacy.

Even though I don’t believe academia has the power or authority to bestow hip-hop credibility, a question remains – does having a Ph.D and producing rap music as peer-reviewed publications change my dopeness in some way?

Legalizing dope

Though I earned a Ph.D by rapping, my own relationship to hip-hop in academic institutions remains fraught.

Part of the problem was noted in 2014 by Michelle Alexander, a legal scholar and author of “The New Jim Crow,” when she talked about her concerns about the legalization of marijuana in different U.S. states.

“In many ways the imagery doesn’t sit right,” she said. “Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses … after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing?”

I feel the same way about dopeness in academia. Since hip-hop has emerged as a global phenomenon largely embraced by many of the “academically trained” music scholars who initially rejected it, how will those scholars and their schools now make way for the people they have historically excluded?

This is why that quote about me “scoring, arguably, the dopest job ever” has stuck with me.

I wonder if it’s fair to call what I do a form of legalized dope.

America’s dope-dealing history

In the late 1990s, I saw how fast hip-hop had become inescapable across the U.S., even in the small Midwestern town of Decatur, Illinois, where I grew up with my friend who is now serving federal prison time.

He and I have remained in contact. Among the things we discuss is how unlikely it is that I would be able to do what I do without his doing what he did.

Given the economic realities faced by people after leaving prison, we both know there are limitations to his opportunities if we choose to see our successes as shared accomplishments.

Depending on how dope is interpreted, prisons and universities serve as probable destinations for people who make their living with it. It has kept him in prison roughly the same amount of time as it has kept me in graduate school and in my profession.

This present reality has historical significance for how I think of dope, and what it means for people to have their existence authorized or legalized, and America’s relationship to Black people.

Many of the buildings at Clemson were built in the late 1880s using “laborers convicted of mostly petty crimes” that the state of South Carolina leased to the university.

Similarly, the University of Virginia was built by renting enslaved laborers. The University also is required by state law to purchase office furniture from a state-owned company that depends on imprisoned people for labor. The people who make the furniture are paid very little to do so.

The people in the federal prison where my friend who helped me pay for college is now housed work for paltry wages making towels and shirts for the U.S. Army.

Even with all of the time and distance between our pasts and present, our paths are still inextricably intertwined – along with all those others on or near the seemingly transient line that divides “legal” and “illegal” dope.

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Nurturing Future Leaders Through Music & Innovation

 ETM-LA's Executive Director Victoria Lanier attend EDUCATION THROUGH MUSIC 8th Annual CHILDREN'S BENEFIT GALA Honors Violin Virtuoso JOSHUA BELL at Waldorf Astoria on May 7, 2009 in New York. Image: Clint Spaulding/Patrick Mcmullan/Getty

Music and the arts have a profound impact on students and their communities. According to ongoing research, the benefits of learning music in school are deep and lifelong – socially, cognitively, and creatively – and may be linked to higher engagement, motivation, and attendance in school. Yet, less than one in five California public schools has a dedicated arts or music teacher; and in Los Angeles County, equity continues to be a challenge in arts education. Schools with higher populations of English learners and students eligible for free and reduced price meals provided less arts instruction, according to the LA County Arts Ed Profile in 2017.

Founded with the mission to provide quality music education as a core subject in under-resourced schools within marginalized communities, the nonprofit Education Through Music-Los Angeles (ETM-LA) is working to remove barriers to equity and access and close achievement gaps. ETM-LA has grown from two schools reaching 800 students its first year, to reaching 42 schools and over 18,500 students.

A two-year external evaluation published in 2021 by Evaluation Specialists, “Short-Term Impacts of Education Through Music-Los Angeles in Elementary Schools,” looked at ETM-LA’s school-wide approach to providing yearlong, sequential music education. Focusing on outcomes related to socio-emotional wellness and attitudes about learning music, the evaluation reported key findings on the benefits of music, including:

• 95% of ETM-LA partner school teachers believe music education should be offered as part of the core curriculum.
• 92% of ETM-LA partner school teachers said their students were engaged in learning; this was a 40% increase in partner school teachers observing student engagement (most or all of the time) compared to only 7% in control schools receiving intermittent or no music.

Seventh-grader Isaac, who struggled with expressing his feelings, said, “I would be emotional and sometimes take [my anger] out on the wrong people. But when I’m doing music it calms me down.” Isaac found joy and motivation through music, confiding, “It’s made my anxiety better, because school’s kind of stressful. I had like 4 Fs…[now they’re] straight As.”

Fellow student Ruby added, “I feel safe here while I play my keyboard. I honestly don’t know what my life would be like without music.”

Principal Monique Pugh (McKinley K-8 School of Integrated Arts) commented, “Music primes [a student’s] brain for learning, it settles their spirit, and gets them in the right frame of mind.”

Based on the ETM model with over 30 years of success in New York City, ETM-LA’s holistic approach, robust teacher training, and comprehensive design implementation serve as a template for long-term sustainable programming. Strong collaboration with districts/schools, parents and students, educators, community members, local leaders, and businesses, among others, are vital to these efforts.

ETM-LA ultimately aims to help youth reach their fullest potential, whether they choose to continue on in the arts or other sectors. Creativity, innovation, and the arts will help them along the way. Since California’s creative economy is responsible for roughly 23% of the state’s gross regional product (GRP) (The Creative Economy, Otis College Report 2022), we must continue to invest in music and the arts in schools. In November 2021, NBCUniversal and Illumination partnered with ETM and ETM-LA to raise support and awareness of the importance of music education while celebrating the launch of the animated film Sing 2. As Sing 2 honors the life-changing power of music and “dreaming big to reach your goals,” the partnership showcased how key collaborations can amplify positive outcomes for students like Isaac.

“Together, through music, creativity, and innovation,” said Victoria Lanier ETM-LA’s executive director, “we can uplift the future leaders of tomorrow.”

Learn more at etmla.org.

----------------Los Angeles Business Journal

Singer Angelique Kidjo Hopes To Close Financing Gap For African Women

In this Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018 file photo Benin's Angelique Kidjo performs in front of heads of states and world leaders during ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. One of Africa's iconic artists, Kiddo, is the voice of a new project aimed at rewriting laws across the African continent that keep millions of women from becoming a more powerful economic force. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, Pool, File)

BY CARA ANNA

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The insect-eaten money fluttered in pieces to the floor. For global music star Angelique Kidjo, that image of her grandmother having to use a closet as a bank is driving her desire to see African women leap the many obstacles to obtaining credit — and respect.

The Benin-born singer, one of Africa’s iconic artists and a collaborator with Philip Glass and others, is the voice of a new project aimed in part at rewriting laws across the continent that prevent millions of women from becoming a more powerful economic force.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Kidjo described what she has seen over decades of travel in Africa during which women in vibrant marketplaces wished they had the means to do more.

“Why do banks give more loans to men versus women? That’s the question I have,” she said. “Millions of women entrepreneurs in Africa, they lack loans versus the men. Once again, we come back to this patriarchy. And we know men pay less back than women.”
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Every time credit is refused to African women, who invest some 90% of what they earn in educating their children and supporting families and communities as opposed to about 40% for men, it’s a disaster, Kidjo said. “We’re taking up reducing the poverty rate in Africa to the smallest number ever. That’s my passion. That’s why I’m here.”

She will help the African Development Bank next week launch AFAWA, or Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa. Already the G-7 group of the world’s major democracies has committed $250 million, and the bank is providing $1 billion for the project that will be deployed across all 54 countries.

In this Sunday Aug. 25, 2019 file photo French President Emmanuel Macron, right, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina, left, and UNICEF ambassador Angelique Kidjo attend a press conference on the situation in Sahel during the G7 summit in Biarritz, southwestern France. One of Africa's iconic artists, Kiddo, is the voice of a new project aimed at rewriting laws across the African continent that keep millions of women from becoming a more powerful economic force. (Ian Langsdon Pool via AP, File)

The goal is to raise $5 billion for efforts that include helping to guarantee loans, training women on financial matters and eliminating laws and regulations that make accessing credit more difficult. African women face a $42 billion financing gap even though one in four starts or manages a business, the highest percentage in the world, the bank says.

In some African countries, women can’t open a bank account without their husband or father, or inheritance laws leave them with little or nothing. That means no collateral.

But reforms are catching on. In the World Bank’s latest Women, Business and Law report in 2018, 32% of reforms tracked in sub-Saharan African countries addressed equal treatment for women and men in accessing credit and financial services. Angola, Congo and Zambia joined others in prohibiting gender-based credit discrimination, it said.

With the new fund for financing African women “we will be able to go as low as a few hundred dollars’ loan ... for people who need it the most,” said Vanessa Moungar, the African Development Bank’s Chadian-French director of gender, women and civil society.

She was not ready to announce further pledges but said talks are continuing with potential donor countries, including African ones. With the continent’s 1.2 billion population expected to double by 2050, the pressure for growth is huge.

“Look, women are one of the most powerful forces of nature on this continent,” Moungar said. “If they can be economically empowered, transformation will be fast-tracked like we’ve never seen.”

Launching along with the new financing project is an index to assess how commercial banks are performing. “When they come to us for more (loans) we’ll say, ‘What have you done for women?’” Moungar said.

The project is also turning accountability on itself, with Kidjo and other ambassadors meant to speak up if they think the project isn’t moving quickly or effectively enough.

True, Kidjo said. “I’m not a very patient person. Those women, they don’t have time to waste. Their livelihood is in danger. I’m gonna be very strict.”

Women across Africa have told her they don’t want charity, the singer said. They know how to make money but aren’t given the chance to try.

She recalled women in Ghana who resorted to digging a hole in the ground to stash their earnings because they didn’t have bank accounts. And during a visit to Benin last month, one woman told her that to obtain a loan of 5,000 CFA ($8) she had to show a property deed and hand over 100,000 CFA as collateral.

Such experiences have helped to inspire another new program, the $100 million U.S.-run Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative fund with projects in 22 countries in Africa and elsewhere. They include Morocco, where women are benefiting from new laws that allow them to own land.

The Africa-focused AFAWA, with vocal backing from French President Emmanuel Macron, will launch this month in Rwanda at the Global Gender Summit, which gathers multilateral development banks from around the world.

When that East African nation changed its laws to give women access to land, their financial inclusion jumped from 36% to 63% in just four years, Moungar said.

“Can you imagine?” she said. “I want all the women out there to know that’s what’s really driving us and our hearts. We are working for them and nothing else.

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer Win Hailed As 'Big For Music'

BY MARK KENNEDY

"Damn." by Kendrick Lamar. On Monday, April 16, 2018, Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for music for his album. (Interscope Records via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — The decision to award rapper Kendrick Lamar the Pulitzer Prize for music represents a historic moment not just for hip-hop and American music but also for the usually stuffy Pulitzer process itself, says one of the music jurors who picked the album "DAMN." as a finalist.

"It's big for hip-hop. I think it's big for our country. It's big for music. But it's big for the Pulitzers, too. Institutions are not stuck in time, either. Institutions can change," said Farah Jasmine Griffin, a Columbia professor.

Lamar's win on Monday made history as the first non-classical or non-jazz artist to win the prestigious prize since the Pulitzers included music in 1943. Just having a rapper nominated for the prize is considered a stunning development for awards that usually honor musicians of European classical background.

"I knew that there would be some anger and some resentment and some people who wouldn't like the idea, but surprisingly enough, I haven't heard a lot of that," Griffin said. The decision was hailed as a turning point in music history by Jetro Da Silva, a professor at the prestigious Berklee College of Music who teaches a class on hip-hop writing and production.

"We are at a time in history here perhaps there is a new way to analyze what is considered a contribution to music. Critical thinkers are asking what it really means to be a composer and what is a composition," he said. "The sky's the limit."

In addition to Griffin, the music jury this year included music critic David Hajdu, violinist Regina Carter, Paul Cremo from the Metropolitan Opera and the composer David Lang. The five-member music jury listened to about 180 pieces of music and after deliberating for a few days then submitted to the final board three works — Lamar's album along with Michael Gilbertson's "Quartet" and Ted Hearne's "Sound from the Bench." Adding "DAMN." was a unanimous decision by all five.

"Everyone expects that there would have been some form of resistance. There was none," said Griffin. "It was just welcomed by everyone as an opportunity to have a serious conversation about the art, about Mr. Lamar's work, but also about what constitutes what kind of music that should be eligible for this."

The final decision was made by the Pulitzer board, which hailed Lamar's CD as "a virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern African-American life."

The Pulitzers have been accused of past mistakes when it comes to African-American contributions to music. In 1965, jurors recommended awarding a special citation to Duke Ellington, but were rejected. And it was not until 1997 that the Pulitzer for music even went to a jazz work.

"All of us sitting at that table were fully aware of Duke Ellington in 1965 being passed over for the Pulitzer and a jazz artist not winning for some time," said Griffin. "We all brought a history to the table and thought, 'Why not?' and 'Why not now?'"

The Pulitzers have lately expanded their inclusion of popular music, including honoring Bob Dylan's lyrics with the prize for literature and giving Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop-inspired score for "Hamilton" the Pulitzer for drama.

The Lamar news stunned many and was cheered by the rappers' fans, including celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Anthony Bourdain, who wrote: "The album was brilliant and deserves every accolade." Leon W. Russell, chairman of the NAACP, wrote on Twitter that the win conferred a literary legitimacy but that Lamar had already gotten "street credibility and artistic authority."

TV personality Charlamagne Tha God noted that Lamar joined African-American luminaries such as playwright August Wilson, writers Alex Haley and Toni Morrison, and musician John Coltrane as Pulitzer winners. "Congrats to that brother! I'm inspired!" he wrote.

Griffin, a professor of English and African-American studies who has written about Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, was a rookie on the Pulitzer jury this year. "I will cherish that experience, of going through that process," she said. "On so many levels, I felt like this was major — both the music that we put forward but also what happened in those deliberations."

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

African Drum Class Fosters Friendship And Cultural Understanding

BY ALEXIS EICHELBERGER

Mitch Endioc (left), Susan Freeman, Beth Maccombs and Kathryn Cooper listen to Lawrence R Greene (right) as he instructs them on technique and style during their Ugata drum class in Arts West in Athens, Ohio. Greene has practiced and played the drums for seven years and began teaching this class two years ago. (HANNAH SCHROEDER | FOR THE POST)

ATHENS, OHIO (THE POST) -- On the stage of ARTS/West on a Tuesday night, 15 people sit in a circle with African drums placed in front them. Some have the instruments strapped around their abdomens, and some grip them between their legs. Some wear shoes, and some are barefoot.

As the rhythm begins, some eagerly smack their drums with strong hands. Some gently tap the drum head, listening carefully. Some smile, bouncing in their seats to the beat. Some sit still, frowning slightly in concentration.

In the center of the circle sits Lawrence Greene. He wears bright colors and has a bright smile, beaming at his students as he leads their musical performance, wiggling in his seat and stomping his heels to make the bells tied to his ankles jingle.


For 12 years, Greene has taught African drumming classes in Athens, and for the past two years, he has taught the Tuesday night group of adults, most of which are retirees. The experienced musicians travel the area, performing at local events like the Mid-Ohio Valley Multicultural Festival. Greene has also organized an African dance class at Factory Street Studio, which sometimes accompanies the drummers during their local performances.

The classes cost participants $10 per session. But it makes enough profit to allow Greene to work full time on his programs, which he calls Ugata. The name serves as a type of acronym for Underground African Themed Art.

With the money he makes from his Ugata programs, Greene is able to take his African music expertise to schools around Southeast Ohio and West Virginia to start a dialogue on diversity.

“The main purpose of it … is to give people in the area who wanted a cultural outlet,” he said. “Or taking it places in Appalachia that are primarily white areas just to be able to break that cultural boundary and have some kind of dialogue and conversation while they’re actually doing the cultural art instead of just having it lectured.”

In his weekly Athens classes, Greene said he hopes to foster a sense of togetherness for the participants and bring people together over a shared activity they might never have imagined themselves doing.

“It really is just something that, even traditionally, just builds community when you’re all sharing a cultural activity together,” he said.

It seems he has succeeded in creating an atmosphere that promotes unity. The group has even taken to forming impromptu “drum circles” on College Green during weekday afternoons. Many of his students agree that drumming together is one of their favorite things to do.

Several drummers, who were part of the original group, were prompted to sign up by their friend Sheila Mark.

“I heard it at one performance and I thought it sounded like fun,” Mark said. “And I had read an article that said it was good for your brain to play music.”

In the beginning, the group said they struggled. But Greene was unfailingly patient, making every step of their learning and improvement enjoyable. What started as a six-week venture has grown into years of fun spent traveling and making music with friends.

“It’s like we’re an orchestra making music, so when that all comes together, it really I think makes it special for everybody,” Cindy Birt, another drum student, said. “We recommend it to everybody we see.”

Grammy-Winning Musician And Activist Angelique Kidjo Speaks At TU

BY JAMES D. WATTS JR.

TULSA WORLD

Angelique Kidjo Image Via Bucknell University

When the band Talking Heads released “Remain in Light” in 1980, the album’s use of African rhythms and musical structures led to a spate of critical controversy about Western musicians appropriating aspects of other cultures.

Angelique Kidjo, the Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and activist who has been called “Africa’s premier diva,” dismisses such ideas with a laugh.

“That is a Western idea,” Kidjo said. “An Africian musician would not be thinking, ‘These people are taking our music,’ because they know what they are really doing is drawing something from our shared humanity, from our human family.

“Don’t fool yourself — we are all African,” she said. “Every single one of us can trace our ancestry back to Africa. So how can you deny someone this music, when it’s in their DNA?”

Kidjo’s own acclaimed career has been built on combining music and rhythms from multiple cultures, from the distinctive vocal techniques of her native Benin to American jazz, rock and blues, from Afrobeat dance music to collaborating with composer Philip Glass.

Her most recent project is her own version of “Remain in Light,” taking the original songs from the Talking Heads’ album and reimagining them in her own way. She is working on the recording, which is expected to be released in 2018.

She debuted the project earlier this year at a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall, of which the New York Times wrote: “Where Talking Heads had dealt in tensions and dualities, Ms. Kidjo’s element was joyful empowerment: the joy of an all-conquering voice and a righteous, uplifting spirit. In West African tradition, her own songs are lessons from a community’s history and conscience, with music that maintains African roots while drawing on all her cosmopolitan experience.”

“I didn’t want to wait to do this show until after we had finished the recording,” Kidjo said. “It’s such an iconic album, and what I realized was that a lot of people have been interested in seeing what I would do with this music.

“It is a conversation, really,” she said. “The Talking Heads were inspired by the music of (legendary Afrobeat pioneer) Fela Kuti. So I’m just giving my answer back. That’s the whole point of music. It is limitless — no boundaries, no countries, no color. It is the universal language.”

Kidjo will come to Tulsa for the first time Tuesday as part of the University of Tulsa’s Presidential Lecture Series, presented by the Darcy O’Brien Endowed Chair.

Her presentation will draw from her 2014 memoir, “Spirit Rising: My Life, My Music.”

“Basically, I describe my journey from growing up in a very poor country to get to where I am today,” Kidjo said. “I want to give people a sense of the world of possibility and opportunity, to show that you are your own destiny.”

Kidjo was born in the West African country of Benin, where she began performing with her mother’s theater troupe when she was just 6 years old. She performed with other bands and released a solo album, “Pretty,” in 1981.

Two years later, because of the increasing oppression of Benin’s Communist government, Kidjo moved to Paris, continuing her career. Her 1991 album, “Logozo,” was her international breakthrough, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard World Music chart.

Kidjo’s subsequent albums include the Grammy-winning “Djinn Djinn,” “Eve” and “Angelique Kidjo SINGS with the Orchestre Philharmonique Du Luxembourg,” and she has collaborated with many of the world’s leading rock and jazz musicians, including Carlos Santana, Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel, Dave Matthews, Branford Marsalis, Christian McBride and Dianne Reeves.

Kidjo is equally known for her humanitarian work. She has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2002 and co-founded the Batonga Foundation (named for one of her first hit singles), which provides secondary education for girls across Africa to help empower the female leaders of tomorrow.

Kidjo said she “was singing before I could talk,” and added that her sense of advocacy is about as long-lived.

“It was what I grew up with,” she said. “My father’s car was the local ambulance. Anyone who needed to be taken to the doctor or the hospital, my father would take them. Even now — I just returned from visiting my mother in Benin. She is 90, and she is taking care of a young boy. His father died, and his mother’s family doesn’t want to deal with him because he is troubled.

“And I said to my mother, ‘What are you thinking? You are 90 years old and you’re going to care for this boy?’ My mother answered, ‘What am I going to do — let him sleep in the street?’ ” Kidjo said. “And that was the end of the conversation. Because when someone needs help, you give them help. That was how I was raised, and that’s what I try to do.”

Yorima Beat: Vibe Of Many Genres

MUSIC REVIEW

AMBROSE EHIRIM

I'm not sure if I have done this before, besides the vinyl LP era when I would spin a record on the Elizabethan stereo turntable, like The Temptations 'Masterpiece,' repeatedly over and over again until something else distracts me. Songs like that, back in the day, was how a music appealed to me, by way of listening to it continuously, paying particular attention to the generated beats and lyrics while studying the arrangements and compositions in addition to the liner notes that tells it all -- the album itself and origin.

As it had happened, Jerri Jhetto shipped to me his latest release from the recording studio, to complement his days of sleepless nights on 'The Jerri Jheto Project: Mangasa', in which one must admit, that hard work pays off, eventually. When I received a copy of the album, I was not sure of what to expect knowing from what had erupted at a time musicians wanted their success commercialized in line to going with the flow and joining a bandwagon that had pursued the rush as pop culture zig-zags with a changing times even though I had looked forward to some 'as usual' reggae beats and kind of vibes people always wanted to hear and dance.  Jhetto came up entirely different and what a master of his craft would do to identify himself.

The "Jerri Jheto Project: Mangasa," amplified in all aspects, takes a little bit of every musical genre, swinging along the typical sound of its African origin with mother tongue, the Owerri dialect, revived in his lyrics and beats to draw from the notable bongo beats of the seventies in appreciation to pop culture as it evolves. In spite of the cuts superbly arranged, and adaptation, Jheto found his way around for authenticity while he kept intact  the originality of his music holding steadfast to the highlife traditions, adding calypso, afrobeat, afrorock, blues and ikwokirikwo to an emerging coinage, Yorima Beat.

For weeks, I drove around glued to "Mangasa" and every beat seemed to be sending some kind of message, either of joyous festivities, merry-making and causes and effects to our troubled times, Jheto took step to put every track into perspective to explain the worthiness of his work as his notes indicates in every category: high pitched Owerri dialect in highlife music from the track 'Umu Igbo,' and 'Udara,' reviving beats of the early seventies bongo in Ala Owerri, combining storytelling and the realities of life. Rap, flowing of  wind instruments and strings can be heard while mixing traditional highlife tunes with mainstream pop culture, hip-hopping in 'Egwu Ndere Ndere'. The request for palm wine, ugba (oil bean) and its concoction, stockfish, culinary correctness and tasty Owerri dishes streams along to identify with his cultural heritage.

Mangasa, no question, is impeccably produced even when it kind of slows down and jumps over again, it's deeply entertaining to listen to as every track is done with perfection. A jam in every track, though my favorite piece here is 'Umu Igbo,' where Jheto remarks his craft, the authentic sound of Igboland and revival of culture. A must collection for every lover of music and good vibes.

Tracklisting:

1. Mangasa
2. Umu Igbo
3. Kanayo
4. Eluwa
5. Onyebiri
6. Uwa Wu Ahia
7. Udara
8. Mama
9. Yorima
10. Eringa
11. Adaugo
12. Egwu Ndere Ndere
13. Tuwarimumi
14. mangas (English)

Beyonce Seizes Moment At MTV Video Music Awards

Beyonce on stage hugs Jay Z and their daughter Blue Ivy as she accepts the Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, in Inglewood, Calif. Image: Chris Pizzello/AP

INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) --They don't call her Queen Bey for nothing.

Beyonce not only stole the show at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night with many of the world's top female pop stars in attendance hustling for our attention, she used the moment to erase the cynical cloud around her family status with an adorable appearance by daughter Blue Ivy and doting husband Jay Z to finish off the night.

"MTV, welcome to my world," Beyonce said near the top of her performance, and for the next 15 minutes it was a complete takeover. The performance was mesmerizing television, from the seemingly endless medley of hits to the extended look at the adorable Blue Ivy, who wore a gold bow in her hair and clapped her hands and said, "Yea, Mommy," after Jay Z carried her onstage while presenting her mother with MTV's Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award.

Here's a close up on the night's most interesting moments. You know, the things we'll be talking about Monday morning, for better or for worse: — Nicki All Night: Much of the focus prior to Beyonce's arrival was on Nicki Minaj — and her booty. She helped open the show with a snake-themed performance of "Anaconda" that included a lot of attention on Minaj's most jiggly asset. Then after what appeared to be an honest wardrobe malfunction during her subsequent team up with Ariana Grande and Jessie J — "We ran out of time getting the dress zipped up," she said afterward — things got really booty-centric when she joined Usher on stage for "She Came to Give It to You." Usher dropped to his knee while playing the bass after Minaj appeared on stage, then banged his head against her rear end in a new version of the bump. He leapt to his feet and gave her a smack before she walked away.

— The Front Row: You've got to feel bad for Riff Raff. The Houston rapper arrived on the red carpet in a Lamborghini with Katy Perry in the passenger seat. But it was clear she was way more into Sam Smith, spending the night with the pop star's arm draped over his shoulder. Other unexpected pairs who spent the night seated together along the front row included Taylor Swift and Lorde, who celebrated their friendship by dancing the night away together. Lorde even introduced Swift's performance of "Shake It Off": "On the surface, this next performer and I are nothing alike. She's tall, blonde and doesn't wear quite this much black. But we both base our art on the things that delight, terrify and confound us, and for that I'm grateful she exists."

— Sam Slays: Perry wasn't the only attendee fixated on Smith. The VMAs have a reputation for over-the-top moments, and there were plenty. But the quiet, commanding performance of "Stay With Me" by the British singer drew the night's first — and most sincere — standing ovation.

— Serious Moments: The VMAs aren't known for political statements, but some of Sunday's most memorable moments came with messages. Common asked for a moment of silence to remember 18-year-old Michael Brown, killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri: "The people in Ferguson and St. Louis and communities across the country have used their voices to call for justice and change to let everyone know that each and every one of our lives matters." The camera showed members of the crowd with heads bowed, including Snoop Dogg, who flashed a peace sign. Later, Miley Cyrus engineered her own powerful statement when she sent a homeless youth named Jesse to the stage to accept her video of the year award. He gave an impassioned speech asking viewers to help as Cyrus tearfully looked on. MTV also paid tribute to late actor-comedian Robin Williams with a short photo montage.

— We Are Family: The tenor of the night changed when Beyonce took the stage and things got worshipful by the end of her set as she led a thousands-strong sing-along on "XO" that included most everyone giddily dancing. And she didn't waste the moment, using it to bat away persistent rumors that her marriage is headed for divorce. "I am filled with so much gratitude," Beyonce said as the crowd chanted her name. She turned to her family and said, "I just thank God for this moment. I love you all so much. Blue, I love you. My beloved, I love you."

Bob Miga, The Vintage Years: A Tribute

BY AMBROSE EHIRIM

Photo Op: The Hykkers. Image Courtesy of Comb & Razor

I had co-emceed the student's day ballroom dance and we had hired disc jockey Alan B. (Onyema O.), who then also announced alongside Teddy Oscar Uju at the Imo Broadcasting Service, the IBS in Owerri. It had been normal harmattan, the dry, dusty windy season when we take the Christmas break and join folks in our enclaves to find out how things could work out as we began to develop and grow, in mannerisms and an in tuned cultural heritage .

It had been a wave of music groups upon music groups and as one is forming, the other is disbanding. They had all emerged after the Nigeria-Biafra War had ended in January 1970; though some of these casts had been around playing gigs before the war broke out.

University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the UNN, is the Eastside higher institution modeled after the American tradition, of higher learning, which ultimately would bring about change in every aspect of society. It was on the grounds of this great institution that Bob Miga, born Valentine Soroibe Agim would storm with a cast of his musician-folks, and where other cats of the day performed and, all around the Eastside.

Just like the three major record labels' (Blue Note Records, Impulse and Prestige) experimental years guided and produced casts of phenomenal jazz players -- Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Billy Higgins, Jimmie Smith, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Lee Morgan, John Coltrane, Curtis Fuller, Wayne Shorter, Kenny Clarke, Donald Byrd, Grant Green, Roosevelt "Baby Face" Willette, Bud Powell, Idris Muhammad, Pharoah Sanders, Tal Farlow, Milt Jackson, Art Blakey,  McCoy Tyner, and as the list goes on and on, which I presented on my Facebook page, and eruption of the crossover era when the experiments overwhelmingly seemed to be accomplished, categorizing patterns of instrumental plays (jazz fusion, smooth jazz, new wave music, etc.) -- Nigeria, in the 1960s developed similar desire as was the case with the three major record labels during the 1950s-1960s experiments; experiments its direction was unknown, which would drive a youngish, curious minded elements, determined, bringing in a new kind of music in adaptation to their foreign counterparts.

The experimental years which had appeared while the bebop, ragtime and swings of the 1930s-1940s waned, and in the 1950s when Blue Notes' Alfred Lions had brought in his friend, Francis Wolf, to capture every image of every event, and at all recordings and jam sessions, it wasn't noticed that Lions had visions and was innovative. Today, the ideal behind Blue Note Records and its sister links, still plays and valid.

In Nigeria's 1960s, though there were other musical genres of note and already coined -- juju, highlife, etc. -- popular music as had exploded in Lagos would take the city and nation by storm, and an adopted name about a coastal city, the "New York of Africa," would melt Lagos in its entirety, burning with an emerged, amazing night life that would rock the land.

A new blend of music. Some new cats and stage names. A style and personalized trademark. A quest that would send a powerful message. Lyrics made raw.

It was during this experimental period that names and groups like Teddy Oscar and the Strangers, Pat Finn Okonjo, Jerri Jhetto, Joni Haastrup, Michael "Micro Mike" Akpo, Franco Adams, Lola da Silva, Paul Nwoko, Victor Damole and uncountable others, surfaced. And the Teddy Oscar and the Strangers Band assumed to penetrate the newly arrived pop scene disappeared before anyone could figure out what had gone wrong.

According to Uchenna Ikonne who will be releasing a book on West African vintage music,  the Hykkers appeared on the music scene upon probably the sudden dissolution of the Teddy Oscar-led Strangers, and though at the brief appearances, Miga may have not been given publicity.

Nevertheless, Miga joined the Hykkers, an army engineered band, alongside Jake Solo, Okonjo, Emile Lawson, Felix Umuofia and Jeff Stone Afam. Hykkers would play jam sessions and entertain the army brass until the base camps at Lagos wanted their attention, the need to go back to Lagos and perhaps keep up with the same flow and same band members.

That would not happen. Miga had a plan. Since his mother was staying in Owerri, he figured there was no need to follow the band back to Lagos. So, he alerted the military commands about other band members' desire to move back to Lagos, which wasn't a good idea, as he suggested; and how to keep the band permanently positioned in Owerri could be beneficial to the military commands, considering the fact that the band had gained grounds in the East, and would not make sense to start all over again by moving back to Lagos.

As it had happened, the military commands favored Miga's stories and strategies which should keep the band intact, in the sense that, Wetheral Road, Owerri, and other hangouts in the hood where the band did their rehearsals, had become established and known, by the locals and fans all around the region, the East. Owerri had become blown to a mega city because of Miga and how he brought pop culture home. Owerri Township and its suburbs, overnight, turned out a sensation with the kind of psychedelic funk, blended with some rock, had been introduced into every home; and thanks to Miga's Strangers. Miga had become a demi-god and idolized anywhere he popped up.

While Miga stayed on top in many of what he had initiated, bands erupted like crazy, and Ala-Igbo would be something else by way of pop culture.

The pop culture revolution had just begun.

The Hykkers, as it would turn out when Miga had succeeded in convincing the military commands why Owerri remains a better spot, in which he was allowed to keep all the instruments while the rest of the band members left empty handed back to Lagos for Miga to regroup. Meanwhile, Eddy Duke who had stayed behind on Miga's counsels did not hesitate to join Miga in the new Hykkers band when Jake Solo (Nkem Nwankwo) and Ify Jerry came aboard from Enugu for scheduled Hykkers gigs, jam sessions and studio recordings. A group now in adaptation to the Liverpool foursome, the Beatles, would rock the East in a similar fashion the Beatles did in Europe and the Americas.

The Hykkers, would, however, record some powerful singles -- "God Gave His Only Son," "Stone The Flower," "Deiyo Deiyo," etc. -- before going their separate ways which was typical of music bands and how the business was run.

Enter the new Strangers of Owerri. There is a new band in town with rules of engagement. After parting the Hykkers and Miga stuck with musical instruments, leaving him with one of two choices: To look for session men, shop around for a recording label, form a new band for gigs, outdoor performances and live studio recordings, or leave the entire business alone and move on for something entirely different and, better.

Miga already knew what show business had been all about; so, making up his mind did not take too much probing to find out there was no other place for him than the only thing he had known from growing up.

With all musical instruments in his possession and a band dissolved with no other band-members around to flex with, Miga hopped on the road again to shop around for a group of session men, or folks willing to form a new band with him. It was in this quest, he bumped into guitarist Ani Hoffner (Eugene Umebuani) and Sammy Mathews and, after talks of engagements in recording and performing contracts, Hoffner and Mathews agreed to participate in Miga's new band, The Strangers of Owerri.

There was a Strangers resident in Owerri and Miga and his band mates got every soul popping. Other music bands emerged, too, and the Eastside never would be the same again. In every nook and cranny, there was a gathering, student union ballroom, family parties, series of scholarly fraternities, social clubs, christenings, cultural festivals, traditional initiations on the rites of passage, and things like that, which overwhelmingly overshadowed the Eastern landscapes, as these musicians entertained.

I had blogged on my Facebook page upon Miga's death just previously and accidentally by posting one of his brilliant project, the single, "Survival," and had sought West African vintage music analyst and blogger, Ikonne's opinion about my view of "Survival" I had thought should be on the one in the list. It was that day that Miga died. A couple of days, to express my condolences, I posted along with commentaries a Stranger-Funkees-local fans photo-op after rehearsals taken in early 1971. As it occurred, the expressions of those who knew about the era, was touching. Some of the comments:

"Sad loss Ambrose! Explains why I was in 'Strangers' mood couple of days ago! Used to hang out at their flat on Wetheral Road, Owerri with my pals as truant kids skipping school playing hooky just to watch them rehearse back then! Their 'music and temperament' was a class act, especially after the loss of the Biafra war, and we were finding our ways back into society. Cherished memories and great contribution! Really sad but thnx for sharing!"

------------Charles Asuzu

"Oh wow. Ambrose, this is rather melancholic for me. I enjoyed these golden days of genial musical band exploits but was too young or maybe too naive to even know the names of the groups. Then as I grew up I faced the sad experience of hearing and listening to artists sing about the passing of the individual talents, starting with my earliest recollection, Spud Nathan. Later in my broadcasting days in Nigeria, I was opportune to interview individuals like Harry Mosco Agada, a couple former Ofege, Osibisa and the rest and those encounters were so memorable. Today the list of the departed icons is growing -- Jake Solo, Harry Mosco, Perry Ernest...Could a memorial event ever be put together for them?"

------------Victor Nwora Aghadi

"Bob helped to create the atmosphere that helped the Easterner on the road to recovery after the devastating loss and humiliation by the power that was. People started to forget for a minute the pains and suffering, whenever the music was presented. Music was the pill that healed the people. May his soul rest in perfect Peace. He played his part very well."

----------- Jerri Jhetto

"May his soul rest in peace. He would always be remembered as a cultural revivalist. One of those who helped the Igbo spirit to re-energize. Is it a surprise that just months after the genocidal war, the Igbo began to rule the music world again in Nigeria with different shades of pop and highlife bands?"

------------ George C.E. Enyoazu 

Like most of the commentaries, everybody just wanted to dance and be happy and put behind what had been Yakubu Gowon's-led genocidal campaign against the Igbo nation. A Reconstruction era and a people just risen like a phoenix. And all the musicians, bands and groups delivered wherever they were called upon to perform. Iyke Peters and Marshall Udeonu, the Founders 15. Lawrence Ebenwa, the Doves. My hommie, Jerry Boyfriend. Lasbry Colon, the Semi Colon. Chyke Fusion, the Apostles. Spud Nathan (Jonathan Udensi), the Wings. The trio -- Jake Solo, Harry Mosco and Sunny Akpan -- the Funkees. Several other bands emerged upon breakups and regrouped.

As the Eastside had become the hotbed of a social revolution, more bands popped up and the Strangers, again, would collapse. Though with some singles released, there would be disagreements on leadership and payout contracts in-between Migas handling of the band and Hoffner's faction, issues folks in the music business encounters regularly especially when its leadership begins to crumble. That was the fate of The Strangers of Owerri Miga had asked Hoffner to join. Hoffner left and took away all his boys to start what would be One World.

Miga, again, was left without session men or a band. He had to rethink his strategies after Hoffner and his colleagues' departure. One World, Hoffner's band would relocate to Warri where they'd be the resident band at Lido Nite Club & Restaurant, exchanging dates at the club with the Lemmy Faith-led Aktion 13.

Like the adage,  "Old Soldier No Dey Die," Miga wasn't  finished yet; he was still kicking and never would give up. This time around, he hustled himself onto the streets of Owerri and elsewhere and, talked enough guys into being session men or part of an extended Strangers after the Hoffner team. Miga collected some folks to help him work in the studio for another release. He had engineered the project, but what had happened was he felled off with his new crew who got away with the master-tape, formed a new band and released a single that had been Miga's idea. The group, Black Children released "Satisfaction," and a Miga's touch was felt in the entire song. Black Children ended Miga's music appeal. Miga would relocate to London where he would sit on the chair of the Nigeria High Commission in London until his passing April 2, 2014.

About four years ago, Miga had told me he wanted to come to Los Angeles and be part of the Summer Jams. I told him I couldn't wait to see him. On March 23, 2012, Miga thought about me and assumed I had information on what was being planned about his homecoming gigs and the revival of vintage music. Miga writes;

"Hi Amby,

I wonder if you are in touch with Ibe Ekeanyanwu and Alan B. I suppose they have commenced some plans for my return gig. I will connect you guys if you are not aware of them. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thanks,

Bob Miga."

In my response which was immediately, I wrote;

"Ok, great I heard from you. I have no such information on your return gig. Keep me posted, please. You must have heard by now of Harry Mosco Agada's death."

Bob Miga and I did not share much correspondence henceforth because of our schedules.

Like I Said earlier, I first met Alan B when my village student union hired him to deejay our event and I had co-emceed. We met several other times including his gig at then College of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt, in 1978.

Miga's era, without doubt changed a whole lot, especially, culture. At a particular time, our parents did not want us to be associated with all the hype, the music and ballroom dances of the time, which as then assumed, depicts every bad behavior that attracts the desire to ditch classes. They were wrong. It was part of the pop culture and social order in development and upbringing as time passed by.

Ironically, with all that as we enjoyed the era and the music of Miga's Strangers and, other performing artists, and as we danced all night long behind closed doors, manned by volunteered bouncers, and we had no more leg strength but crawl back home reciting  Strangers "Survival." No, not that we knew the lyrics; we were blabbing as if we got it in order and nobody figured it out, that we youngsters, had no clue.

In this file photo taken early 1971, Owerri, Bob Miga (C) surrounded by members of The Strangers and The Funkees with some of their local fans after rehearsals. Life had begun anew in the East and pubs and related joints would pop-up everywhere and many new bands would be formed. Miga founded Strangers but fell apart with one of his key partners, Ani Hoffner, who would later be bandleader, One World. Miga died April 2, 2014, in London after a brief illness. He was survived by his wife and three children. Image Courtesy of Comb & Razor

I bid you goodbye, my friend!

(Uchenna Ikonne contributed to this story).