STANDARD/NAIROBI
November 27, 2004
Africa�s failed states are moving to a new rhythmn
Barrack Muluka
It�s time Uganda�s president listened to the music and followed Moi and Nujoma out the door
Karen Blixen, a regal lady after whom a whole estate in Nairobi�s suburbs has been named, once infamously wrote these words about Africa: "When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find that it is the same in all her music. What I learned from the game of the country, was useful to me in my dealings with the Native People."
This lady, who owned a significant portion of what is Nairobi and Ngong today, was adept at equating the African to the wild animal.
If ever there was any doubt about what she mean by the words " what I learned from the game of the country was useful in my dealings with the Native People," it is erased when we read
about her cook in her book "Out of Africa".
She says of Kamande � for that was his name � "He stuck to the maize cobs of his fathers.
Here even his intelligence sometimes failed him, and he came and offered me a Kikuyu delicacy, � a roasted potato or a lump of sheep�s fat � even as a civilized dog that has lived for a long time with people, will place a bone on the floor before you as a present."
And so, from this Nordic baroness we are told that the rhythm of our music is the same, whether we be human beings or beasts.
So long as we are in Africa, we are all the same. And of course Blixen (or to use her proper name, Isak Denisen) said worse things about the African person, but never mind.
Be that as it may, do some of us seem to sometimes behave in fashions that would suggest that Blixen and a whole train of others like her were right in their
assessment? There used to be a certain one-man guitarist whose music I loved listening to in Nairobi. He sang mostly in Gikuyu. But I did not mind this at all.
My smattering of Gikuyu indicated that he was singing about some young man in love.
The young man was telling the object of his love that he would take her to her home, and do the necessary things that are done when a young man takes a young lady to her parents.
The guitarist sang with emotion and passion. I thought the song was very romantic.
But when I once said this to some buddies, they burst into wild laughter. "Romantic, did you say?" Indeed, for how could a song in Gikuyu ever be romantic?
That was what my friends were telling me. In other words, romance is something that can only be experienced and expressed in a European language.
Just as Kamande�s Gikuyu food seemed like a
dog�s meal to Karen Blixen, our languages, when compared to English or French, are judged incapable of expressing romance.
And so I have often been chastised when I hum away to a Luo tune or to a Kamba one.
I am supposed to be backward, because of appreciating the Sounds of Nyamwari Jazz Band from the Gusii Highlands, or tapping away to the lyrics of the Kalenjin sisters.
And yet this where I think that, her perversion aside, Ms. Blixen was right.
Once the African rhythm is in you, then it carries you wherever it goes, regardless of whether it is the all-powerful Orchestra Kinshasa of the late Lwambo Lwanzo Makiadi, or Sukuma Bin Ong�aro and his Suku Jazz.
Perhaps you don�t agree. But there is another kind of African rhythm that flies crisply and finds a meeting point, regardless of whether it comes from Mozambique or from Nigeria.
Prof
David Rubadiri most adroitly captures this rhythm when he says in the poem Another Song, "Yet another song, I have to sing. In the early wake of a colonial dusk I sang of fire."
It is the song of the failed African state, which has traversed the continent from South to North and from East to West. In the words of another poet in the anthology "Echoes Across the Valley", this is the song of an old general who wore the slain foe�s shoes and became the new problem.
In recent times, however, the tune seems to be changing again.
In Malawi, we have been witness to the reluctant changing of tune by the late Dr. Kamuzu Banda, who eventually allowed Bakili Muluzi to have a go at the song.
In Kenya, former President Moi eventually got tired of asking Kenyans to sing the same tune as he did and made way for the present dispensation.
In Namibia, Sam Nujoma has
recently picked up the rhythm from Moi and passed the political hymnbook to someone else.
And in Mozambique Joachim Chisano is preparing to pass on the hymnbook.
But is president Museveni of Uganda singing off-key? President Museveni is a great man, who has done great things for Uganda and for East Africa.
It was Prof. Ali Mazrui who once described Milton Obote as "a great man who made great mistakes�.
Is the great man in Kampala about to make a great mistake by pushing for a third term in office when the African song seems to have changed rhythm everywhere?
The writer is Managing Director, East African Educational Publishers
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