THE POWER OF MUSIC

 

 

 

 

BY JOHN COLLINS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright John Collins 1979

Bokoor House 391 Achimota, Accra, GHANA.

Original manuscript written 1978/9 at

Temple House, James Town, Accra                                             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

CHAPTER ONE                     BAHAMA

CHAPTER TWO                    PODASE TREK..

CHAPTER THREE                UP AND DOWN

CHAPTER FOUR                   THE LURE OF ACCRA

CHAPTER FIVE                    NASHKA

CHAPTER SIX                       BUSTED

CHAPTER SEVEN        SKIN PAIN

CHAPTER EIGHT                 EVERYBODY SCATTER

CHAPTER NINE                   SAYID

CHAPTER TEN                     BASA-BASA

CHAPTER ELEVEN             EBE TIE YE

CHAPTER TWELVE             RECORDING IN LAGOS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN          COLLAPSE 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN REMI

CHAPTER FIFTEEN             NIGERIA TREK

CHAPTER SIXTEEN             ZOMBIE ATTACK

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN      HERE WE GO AGAIN

 

 

 

 

 

Although this novel is based on John Collins’ experiences working in the Ghanaian and Nigerian music scene between  1969 and 1978 all characters in it (except Fela Anikulapo-Kuti) are quite fictitious.

 

 

CHAPTER ONE – BAHAMA

 

          Kojo was worried as he had just been called-out in morning role-call by the headmaster of Koforidua’s Secondary and Technical Commercial College, a small provincial town but an institution that  emphasised its grand name with two white-washed imperial lions that flanked its main gate.

 He knew he was in for more trouble.  A week earlier he and three friends had been threatened with dismissal for instigating a riot over the rubbish food they had been served one evening.   In the rumpus the lights had been quenched and the master present, an ingratiating runt of a  technical-drawing teacher, had had a bowl of the sticky gari the students had been dished out slopped over his head.

           The four of them had been identified and were caned in front of the whole school  gym-teacher hardly six years their elder, but as fit as a fiddle and with a  penchant for corporal punishment. 

I suppose it must be about the fees this time, thought Kojo.

          Inside a shabby office sat the headmaster of this private establishment, eating a large portion of mashed yam and palm-oil. At first all Kojo could only see was the top of his head and he stood and shuffled his feet.  After a few moments the intent eater drained to look up and gave Kojo a penetrating stare through deep sockets.  ‘The principal will be in soon, it’s about your fees,’ he said and went back to munching his breakfast.

          Kojo stood there fidgeting.  He had been trying to weasel school money from his father for some time, but it was like squeezing water out of a stone.  And anyway this wasn’t the first time, so why did he have to see the principal.

          The principal entered accompanied by the faint smell of decay that always hung about him.  He was a small man with an enormous head of unkempt hair, small eyes and wizened face. He spent most of his time driving between his three schools  in an enormous Mercedes that dwarfed him, collecting a fat fortune. He was uneducated but went to some pains to conceal this.

          ‘Look here Mensah’, he snapped, ‘we’ve had enough of you and your trouble making and now you think you can stay without money.  Take your things and go.’

          Kojo hadn’t been expecting anything like this.  It was true that he was fed up with the dry and non-practical subjects he was being taught and had thought once or twice about leaving, but there was his mother to think of, all twenty stone of her.  He most certainly couldn’t go back and tell her he had been expelled, she would squash him flat like a mosquito, and squash his father too if she ever managed to catch up with him.  For his father, who lived in Accra, had an amazing ability to vanish whenever Kojo or his mother went down to collect money.

          Kojo tried to say something but the principal just glared at him with yellow bilious  eyes and started  screaming at him to go.  While all this was going on the headmaster nonchalantly continued to eat his pounded yam as if nothing were happening, indeed he seemed to become more indrawn and phlegmatic with the principal’s volatility.  Koto recalled that the only time he had ever seen the headmaster become excited was when he had once entered the office and found him grappling on the floor with the chief accountant.  The headmaster had long suspected the accountant of fiddling the account-books and by pretending to by busy at his desk had finally caught him red-handed trying to surreptitiously sneak out with an incriminating document.

 The way he’s preoccupied with his eating now, thought Koto as he was leaving, it would be dead simple for anyone to come in and clear the place out without him noticing a thing. 

          Whilst was packing his few belongings in the dormitory Kojo decided it would be better not to go home to his mother, for the time being anyway, but rather go and stay with an old friend of his in town.  I can drop Ma a note and then leave so sharp I’ll dodge her and give  her time to cool down before going back.

          So chop-box on shoulder and after a nostalgic glance at the lions he strode up the hill to Bahama, as his friend Prince called his little corner of a compound house.

          In spite of the exotic name it was only a room plus a veranda and open-air bathroom, but Kojo had spent many happy weeks there during the holidays. So although a bit cramped he knew that Prince would not mind putting him up for a while, especially as he was away half the time, on trek performing with his concert group.         He met Prince in the room surrounded by wood shavings and busily hacking away at a block of wood he was shaping into a classy stacked shoe.

          ‘Ayikoo Prince, so now you’ve become a cobbler?’

          ‘Ya yey, how can I go on stage without high-heels?  It would make me look too small so I’m putting operation self-reliance into practice and making my own guarantee shoes.  Then noticing Kojo’s bags,’ where are you off to?  I didn’t know school has closed.’ 

          ‘Listen Prince, I’m in big trouble.  They’ve sacked me from school and I can’t go home.  Is it all right if I stay here for a bit until things blow over?’

          ‘Sure, but I’ll have to kick you out sometimes.  I’ve got a new girl-friend, she’s a student.  In fact these shoes are for her, mine are over there in the corner,’ he said pointing to a grotesque pair of silvered shoes, standing almost a foot high and suggestive of a set of amputated club-feet.

          ‘But what about Auntie Naomi?’  retorted Kojo, referring to Prince’s larger than life market women friend who lived in the same compound.  ‘Has she stopped your scholarship?’

          ‘No, that’s the problem’ he groaned with  frustration,’ I wish she would.  Instead she keeps spying on me so that I haven’t been able to get Matilda, that’s my girl, past the main gate let alone into bed.  But listen,’ he said brightening, ‘if you’re going to stay here we can pretend in the house that she’s your girl-friend.’

          ‘O.K., it’s a deal.’   Kojo replied a little doubtfully.

          That very afternoon the two friends went to Matilda’s house where Prince explained to her that he hadn’t been able to invite her to Bahama before as one of his relatives  living in the compound was always reporting his movements to the rest of the family.  ‘But if you would pretend to be Kojo’s girl-friend for the mean-time?’

          ‘Who said I want to come to your paradise corner anyway,’ she retorted haughtily refusing to acknowledge Kojo, ‘and you like lies too much.  You’ve already told my dad that you’re a college student.’

          Good God, thought Prince, here am I making her pair of guarantee shoes, I’ve already invested another thirty cedis in her and now she’s bull-shitting me. But he checked the scowl that was forming on his face and with studied politeness asked her to come back with them to inspect the shoes.  She replied that she had to do her hair first but would be round at six.

          ‘Don’t forget you have to ask for Kojo,’ shouted Prince as they left. 

          When the two arrived back at their compound house Kojo was introduced to Prince’s boss, Mr. Gambia, leader of the Super Riches Concert Party, who was supervising the setting-up of the band equipment for the day’s rehearsal in the central courtyard.

          ‘Isn’t your friend the one from the tech?’  he asked Prince.

          ‘Yes, but he’s not there any more, he ran out of money so now he’s looking for a job.’

          ‘Maybe he can work for us as a gungadin,’ replied Gambia jokingly.’  Take the portable generator outside, will you Prince.’

          Prince passed though the dark passage-way and main door into bright sunlight outside carrying the small machine, followed by Kojo trying to untangle the knotted mass of wire attached to it.  As he was fiddling with the junction box Kojo asked him ‘what does he mean by gungadin?’

          ‘Oh, he means a packer, like what we’re doing now.   We need an extra one as we lost one during our last long-trek.’

          ‘What do you mean lost one?’

          ‘Well, he disappeared then.  Gambia gave him fifteen cedis to buy some cable from an electrical store and he never came back.  He chopped the money.’

          ‘I wouldn’t mind trying the job for a bit, what do I have to do?’

          Prince looked at his friend questioningly.  ‘You have to load and unload the bus, help set up the instruments, help at the gate and run errands. That’s how I started, you know.  But Gambia was only joking, couldn’t you see?’

          But Kojo had become excited by the idea now, envisioning a future of stardom, starting as a packer but maybe ending up like his friend Prince Picket, as a soul singer.  ‘Ask him for me will you Prince, let me come with you when you go next on tour.’

          ‘I’ll ask manager  if you really want, but you know we aren’t going on long-trek again until the rains are over next month.  We’re only going on a few local ones – like the one tomorrow to Podase.  I’ll ask him if you can come though.’

          Prince got the little Honda generator purring away and immediately they could hear the guitarists’ tuning-up and the mikes being tested.      When they went back inside the compound was full of musicians and residents and an awning had been thrown across some clotheslines to protect them from the afternoon sun.  Mr. Gambia called Prince over.

          ‘We’re going to practice some of the new highlifes for a while, be back by half past five and we’ll do your pop numbers.’

          ‘I’ll go and chop first then. But listen manager, Kojo here took you seriously when you said you needed a gungadin.  He did electrical engineering at school and was also in the school pop band.’

          Neither of these statements was true, but Kojo kept quiet as Prince was at least  using hyperbole this time in a  good cause. 

          ‘That’s great, we’ll let him come with us to Podase and try him out and  if you like you can let him play clips in your pop numbers as well.  I’ll see you both later but take this for some food’  he concluded handing Prince a two cedi note.

          ‘Let’s go and buy a cedi rice and beans and use the rest for akpeteshie’ said Prince, taking Kojo’s hand and leading him out of the house, ‘now we’ve got something to celebrate.’

          They bought the food that was wrapped in a large plantain leaf from a road-side seller and after eating it seated together on a low wall they ambled down the road and into a small gin-bar.  It was a pokey little place furnished with two rough wooden tables and benches.  Prince ordered a quarter bottle of the cheap kill-me-quick from the small girl sitting behind a grill and swallowed his share in one gulp.  He poured the remainder into another glass and gave it to Kojo who followed suit.

          The two friends sat down and braced by the drink Prince began to expound. ‘Matilda will be surprised when she comes and meets the two of us playing together.  And don’t worry about playing the clips, I’ll show you what to do, just play one way like this,’ he said demonstrating the rhythm drummed out on the table top.  ‘Once you get the hang of the clips I’ll put you on maracas and let you sing  a bit in the chorus. Maybe you can even do some acting in the scenes, what do you think?’

          ‘You mean dress-up like a good-time girl like you do?....no thanks’

‘You don’t have to be a good-time girl, like you do/ …no thanks.’

‘You don’t have to be a lady impersonator, you can be a teacher or a lawyer.  You’ll only have to say a few words.’

          ‘Well, I’ll see,’ said Kojo dubiously, ’but what I really want to do is to play the guitar and be a  singer like you.’

          ‘I’ve been learning the guitar myself from Owusu, so he can teach both of us at the same time if you like.  I’ve got a box-guitar in my room.’ 

          ‘I still have to see my Ma though,’ sighed Kojo after a few moments silence, ‘I can’t go and tell her I’ve left school and joined a band, she’ll kill me. I’d better visit her though, but I’ll say nothing about what I’m doing until I first get some money.  Then if I tell her about the band and give her twenty cedis at the same time she can’t say anything.  As for Dad, he won’t say a word if he knows I’m earning my living.  He’s always been saying school is a big waste of time anyway.’

          ‘Yes, it’s best if you break it to them with cash in hand.  I was lucky as my father was a trombonist in one of those old brass-bands, so he always used to encourage me on the music side.’  He fished out some coins from his pocket, and said, ‘let’s have a last drink.’

          Bringing back the drinks to the table and gulping down his share Kojo became even more  excited about their future plans as musicians together.  ‘You know Kojo, I don’t always want to  be with these concert parties, at some stage I want to go to Accra to join one of the pop bands there.  So let’s work on the guitar together, you can learn bass and then in about six months, or a year at the most, we’ll be ready to split.  I’ll get our bass player to teach you, it doesn’t take that long to learn.’

          Kojo’s eyes glistened when he heard this, partly of course from the gin, but the idea of becoming a pop star was suddenly a possibility and becoming more and more appealing.  In an optimistic frame of mind the two budding stars left the seedy bar for the rehearsal.

         

          Mr. Gambia frowned when they returned as he smelt the gin on their breath.  ‘You’re late so you’d better start right away.  Here take these clips’ hen snapped.

          Kojo was given the two pieces of doweled wood and Prince reminded him of the rhythm he had taught him in the bar, to be used for all the pop songs.  By this time the other musicians who had wandered off whilst waiting for Prince to turn-up had arrived and they started on their first number, an old hi by James Brown.  Kojo found it surprisingly difficult to maintain the beat steadily, especially when he started to listen to his friend singing and to the other instruments.  Several times the manager shouted at him to concentrate as he drifted away from the main pulse.

          In spite of this he managed to occasionally peep at Prince who was stylishly holding the microphone together with a loop of lead, alternately singing and chewing gum.  One moment he would be chewing furiously in time with the music, then suddenly the gum would disappear and he would start singing. Sometimes he would sing with the red piece of gum hanging precariously from his tongue in a nonchalant way.

          After they finished the first number the manager again warned Kojo to pay attention and they started up on a funk number.  Prince was still chewing and Kojo couldn’t understand why his friend didn’t choke, it would only take the slightest mistake.  He was most impressed by Prince.  The third song they practised was a reggae but the clip rhythm remained the same as in the previous ones only this time the concentration was beginning to make Kojo sweat.  Fortunately there was a break when the bandsmen sat down around a small portable record player.

          The musicians listened very carefully to a new soul record over and over again amidst much shouting and noise as they argued amongst each other over the way it went.  The organist was humming his part by the third time round, but the bassist was having difficulty, so the organist sang the bass part using the tonic sol-fa technique that Kojo remembered from school-days.  Only there seemed to be more than the seven notes he had learnt as a boy.  do, re, me, fa he had heard of, but what was mo and ro?  Nevertheless it seemed to work and within a short time the bassist had his melody.

          Prince of course already know the words to this latest hit but the rest of the band started rehearsing the song timidly.  They had to go over and over it to straighten out the rhythm section.  Kojo could hardly stand it after an hour of the same number, and the situation wasn’t helped by the excited and even furious quarrels which kept on breaking out between the musicians. At one point the drummer even refused to play.       By the time they finished it was quite dark and some lights from the generator had to be switched on.

          As they were packing up the instruments  afterwards Prince said to Kojo, ‘you see that stupid Matilda didn’t show up.’

          Kojo had completely forgotten that she was meant to be coming and heaving the P.A amp off the ground he thought it a good job she hadn’t as she would have been bored stiff.  Playing music was much harder work and far less enjoyable than he had anticipated.

          Soon everything was packed away in one of Gambia’s rooms and the compound seemed very dark as the two friends went into their room tucked away in a an obscure corner of the compound-house.   Gambia’s last words to everybody was to remind them that they were going to Podase the next day and should be ready  at twelve o’clock, sharp.

          ‘That means two o’clock.’ interpreted Prince for Kojo,  sitting on the bed lighting a cigarette.

          As Prince lit-up Kojo commented ‘at least no mosquitoes will survive in this room.’  He could hardly see Prince in the dim glow of the smoky kerosene lamp, the mosquito coil and now this.

          ‘Now did you like the practice?’  said Prince through the fog.

          ‘It tired me out.’

          Prince laughed, ‘I know, it makes us all  sweat.  The trick is to make it look easy.  It’s not so bad when you play to an audience, you wait until tomorrow night you won’t feel tired at all.’  By this time Kojo was already half asleep stretched out on a mat.

 

 

          The next morning Kojo went to his mother’s house  on the other side of town, to tell her his school was on holiday due to external exams taking place there - so he was staying at a friend’s - which seemed to satisfy her.

          On returning  to Bahama he found the door firmly shut and he knocked loudly.  After some grunts Prince grumbled in a muffled voice to wait a bit.  Five minutes later the door opened and a rather ruffled and sheepish Matilda came out, followed by Prince wearing a huge smile.  He asked Kojo to lead them to the main gate, taking no chances with Auntie Naomi and Matilda departed without speaking to Kojo.

          ‘Thanks,’ said Prince, ‘I was worried Auntie Naomi had come back by now, luckily she was at  market when Matilda came.’

          ‘So you finally managed it?’

          ‘Yes,’ beamed Prince, ‘it’s taken me long enough.  I’ve spent about two months chasing this one and I had competition you know.   She was moving with a sugar daddy from the Ministries and he was always taking her out in his car.  To rest-houses I suppose, as he’s married.  Anyway, she told me she’s completely finished with him and wants to be my girl.  She even said she would like to come to Podase with us today, she has some relatives there.’

          ‘Will she be able to come, do you think?’

          ‘I’ll ask  manager, he sometimes allows us to take our girl-friends along with us when we’re doing one-night stands.  It would be impossible to take a girl on long trek though, everyone would be fighting to poke her.’

          He went on to tell Kojo an amazing story about one of the female impersonators who had been in the band but was sacked for causing just such troubles.

          ‘He liked to be poked by men, he was just like a woman, so some of the bands-men fought over her………I mean him.  In the end manager had to sack him.  He’s now a market woman.  You can see him any day at the market dressed in wig and cloth.  All the mammies like him and have even accepted him into their association.’

          ‘Are most of the lady impersonators like that?’  inquired Kojo.

          ‘Oh no, they’re usually the worst womanisers around.  That’s why it isn’t safe to take a girl around with the band too long.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO  -  PODASE TREK

 

          By two o’clock, as Prince had predicted, all the actors and musicians had gathered at the house and Mr. Gambia , who had been sleeping all morning, was up organising the loading of instruments onto the bus they had hired for the day.  Matilda turned up too, and Gambia told Prince it was alright for her to come with them as they would be returning immediately after playing in the early morning.  Soon they were off, complete with twenty concert members, a mass of equipment on the roof-rack and slogans painted all over the bus in washing-blue.

          The journey was only fifty miles and as it was a hot afternoon they broke their trip at a village palm-wine bar, made of bamboo and thatch.  Even before they had got out of the bus a man sitting in the bar started shouting at them.  ‘Hey you useless people, is this all you can do, go around playing music.  Go and get a decent job like anyone else.’

          Mr. Gambia became so boiled up at this slight to his profession that ee rushed head-long out of the lorry and attacked the man, knocking the calabash of palm-wine from his hands.  Half a dozen friends of the drunken man, who were also sitting around drinking, got up to menace Gambia.  Before Kojo knew what was happening the whole lorry had emptied, except for himself, Matilda and the driver.  Some of the musicians grabbed stage  machetes and chief’s staffs from the roof and  moved en masse to the bar.  When the palm-wine drinkers saw this realistic weaponry glinting from fake tinfoil in the sunlight they all took fright and scattered, except for the unhappy instigator of the fight who had been knocked down by Gambia.  After giving the man a few more slaps Gambia told everyone to get into the bus fast so they could leave before any more trouble occurred.

          ‘A matter of professional pride’ thought Kojo ruefully as he untangled Matilda who had been hanging onto him during the confrontation.  ‘No wonder you don’t let women come with you’ he said as Prince was re-entering the bus.  ‘You’d better come and cool Matilda down.’

          With much boasting by the musicians about what they had done the bus pulled away.

 

 

          They arrived at Podase in the late afternoon, going straight to the rectangular compound-house in which they were to perform.  Kojo helped unload while Prince and a couple of others fixed a portable amplifier on the roof-rack of the bus and slung two large oil paintings along each of its side that were of striking scenes from the night’s show.

          They were full of bright primary colours even in the fading light of day.  One showed three angels standing over and cursing a devilish creature, the other showed a raggedy girl  sweeping a floor while two haughty women in fine attire  sat by watching and laughing.

          When the festooned bus was ready Prince and two other musicians went off to campaign the surroundings area to ensure a good crowd as no matter how many publicity posters had been spread around the townsfolk knew seeing is believing. Even when they did finally come later to the venue they wouldn’t enter and pay the gate-fee unless they heard the band actually strike up and play for a good solid half hour.

 Matilda had wanted to go with them but Prince became irritated and told her roughly to stay put. ‘He brings me all the way here and then leaves me’ moaned Matilda as she trailed behind Kojo who was laying the generator cable.  After a while she sulked off, telling him she was going to see her uncle.

          By the time the cable, lights and generator were set, night was beginning to draw in and Kojo was beginning to get hungry.  The musicians had already assembled the instruments on the temporary wooden stage and when the generator finally sputtered into life and electricity began to flow lights glowed, amplifiers hummed and the musicians began tuning up the instruments.

          ‘Where’s Matilda?’ asked Prince coming back from almost two hours of touring around the nearby hamlets and villages.

          ‘She became vexed that you just left her like that, so she’s gone to her uncle. You should treat her more gently or she’ll leave you.

          ‘You want to bet’ was Prince’s smug retort  to Kojo’s caution. ‘She thought she could bluff me, now I’m going to turn the tables on her.’ 

          Kojo frowned at this arrogance as he had begun to take  a shine to Matilda in spite of her slightly snobbish veneer.  He was cut short by his stomach grumbling so he changed to the topic of food.

‘Don’t worry’ said Prince, ‘Gambia will come to give us chop money, he’s gone for a siesta at the promoter’s house.’  No sooner had he finished speaking when the band-leader came into the brightly lit compound wearing a cloth. He removed his sunglasses and blinked in the glare.

          ‘Is everything set?’ he shouted to all around him. Giving everyone a cedi each he told them to go and eat, ‘but make sure you’re all back by eight at the latest.’ As  a warning afterthought he added ‘and don’t chase the town girls.’

          When Kojo and Prince returned from their meal of rice and stew bought at a road-side stall conveniently set-up outside the house by a large enterprising women, they found the compound full of earnest small boys, eager to  remain inside and watch the show free. Earnest, because to stay they first had to arrange the benches in rows and undertake other useful jobs.

 The two friends sat down on one of the benches to relax and digest their food, but were disturbed by a clamour coming from outside the gate. Mr. Gambia was in the middle of a noisy argument with the chief and elders of the town.

          ‘How can you expect us to play without drums?’ he pleaded, throwing his arms out at the adamant old men.  ‘Then we’ll just have to leave, that’s all’ the manager shouted with finality. 

      But this comment produced an angry muttering from the crowd that had already begun to congregate around the entrance for the night’s show.  Some  younger men made angry remarks about decrepit old men and with colonial mentalities. Others started to chant ‘we want to dance.’

          The argument soon by-passed Gambia altogether and developed into a heated row between the young men and the old men of the town.

          ‘This dammed Homowo festival’ groaned Gambia to the two friends, ‘my promoter completely forgot about this month’s ban on drumming and didn’t give the chief the customary payment to dodge it. ‘Here take this,’ he said thrusting a ten cedi note into Prince’s hand, ‘go and get two bottles of akpeteshie double quick.’

          In less than five minutes a panting Prince returned and Mr. Gambia was able to force his way through the angry crowd surrounding the chief, holding aloft two bottles of gin.  When the chief and elders saw the bottles their eyes sparkled and they called for silence whilst a libation was poured to pacify the gods. Gambia quickly surrendered the bottles and after much petitioning of various  gods and ancestors to allow the drums to be played  just this once, a little of the drink was poured on the ground by the chief.  A great cheer went up from the crowd and the old men departed rapidly to drown their sorrows.

          After such an exciting beginning there was no trouble in pulling in a crowd and after the band started up the compound quickly became filled up with young and old.  Many in the crowd began to dance in the space between the stage and the front benches.

          It was peculiar to Kojo to be up on stage watching the dancers. Each  whom seemed in his or her private world, eyes glazed and munching P.K. gum to the rhythms.  Most  were dancing completely on their own, except for some of the men who were dancing bone to bone and humorously romancing one another.  Suddenly he spied Matilda behind the dancers, her eyes as large as saucers and  unblinkingly fixed on Prince who was out in front of Kofo and the rest of the band. He was screaming and grimacing into a mike clutched in his hand, oblivious to all. 

Now Kojo understood why Prince had been so confident about Matilda’s love.  She was spellbound by this singer,  who could literally bring James Brown, Jimmy Cliff and Ray Charles to life.  The power of music is great indeed thought Kojo.

          After what to Kojo seemed a very short hour and a half, the ‘souls’ finished and the band made way for the older musicians who were to play half an hour of highlife songs that led up to the play.

          Matilda rushed up to Prince, who was coming offstage in a dreamy state and grabbed him around the neck.  ‘Oh Prince,’ she gushed, ‘you were great, now you’re free so let’s go and dance this highlife.’

          ‘I can’t stand bush music like that,’ he replied off-handedly, unclasping himself from her embrace, ‘Kojo will look after you, won’t you Kojo? He winked at Kojo and whispered in his ear, ‘I’m off for a smoke’ and left.

          By this time the highlife music was swinging away and many of he older members of the audience came to the floor to dance gracefully amongst the energetically gyrating youngsters.  Kojo took the crestfallen Matilda’s arm and led her to the floor.  During one of the slow numbers he held her tightly and noticed she was sobbing quietly to herself. 

          ‘You mustn’t mind Prince too much, Matty,’ he said, thinking of a way to cheer her up, ’you know we musicians  always get like this when we play finish, we go into another world.  He’s only gone out to cool himself down.’

 This ploy seemed to satisfy Matilda who brightened up a bit. But Kojo was sickened by his friend’s unchivalrous behaviour and also by his derogatory remarks on highlife, which anyone could hear was coming out of a much tighter group than the pop band.  He promised himself that he would one-day play with these highlife musicians as well as the pop ones.

          The highlife musicians left the bandstand and everyone left the floor to take their seats. The four most experienced musicians went to sit below the stage platform and started up a lively foxtrot for the opening chorus of the night’s show.

          Kojo and Matilda were sitting near the front row waiting excitedly when a red-eyed Prince shouted over some heads at them, ‘hello you two, I’m in the play, I’m an angel.’ Matilda giggled which made Prince frown. ‘ I’ve got to go to the ante-room to dress-up’ and he disappeared behind a curtained-off corner of the stage.

          By this time the opening chorus had started a scatty dance performed by the three leading actors dressed as two black-face minstrels and a bespectacled women.  After five minutes of acrobatic dancing their place was taken by a crotchety old man who came on stage, hobbling on a stick, dressed in rags and incongruously wearing a rather battered top-hat.  He harangued the young people in the crowd for their loose ways and flashy clothes.  ‘You ought to dress-up respectably, like me,’ he urged, ‘and stop all this immoral dancing.’

          Suddenly the band struck up with James Brown’s ‘Sex Machine’ and the old man began to twist and contort to it.  The song got faster and faster, the old venerable uncontrollably in its clutch, his movements becoming more and more exaggerated and giddy.  The audience went wild with laughter.  All of a sudden he collapsed on stage and the music stopped.  Two actors, one dressed as a doctor in white smock and the other as a priest in a black smock and dog-collar entered on stage. They lifted the ancient relic, who was as stiff as a board, and carried him away as the band struck-up a melancholy hymn tune.

          After this introduction the evenings play began, the story line of which seemed exceedingly long and complicated to Kojo. However, it did keep everyone, including Matilda, in stitches.  In it a  poor orphan girl was being bullied mercilessly by her good-time stepsisters and her witch of a stepmother.  She was finally saved from her life of drudgery by three angels who abruptly appeared when the stage lights were switched off and a curtain behind the stage was pulled aside, revealing them in a ghostly red light. The angels were dressed completely in white: white smocks, white socks and white paper-mache wings and masks. 

Both Kojo and Matilda wondered which was Prince.

After the angels had finished two local hymns with the audience joining in, the back-curtain was pulled back and the main lights went on. There stood the poor orphan-girl transformed by expensive wig, cloth and high-heeled shoes.  Subsequently a rich farmer fell in love with this local Cinderella and started to woo her.  Her evil family on the other hand was struck down with sores. 

The play ended with a soliloquy by Mr. Gambia, who had been  playing the part of the mischievous but loveable family servant.  He warned everyone in the audience against witchcraft, cruelty to stepchildren and the lure of the big cities which spoiled young girls.          Kojo noticed that this made Matilda look quite annoyed and he asked her why.

          ‘He is he only condemning the women when it’s you men who cause all the trouble in the world,’ she complained bitterly.

          Kojo was about to reply when Prince came up to them.  ‘Come on Kojo we have to play again for at least another half an hour before we pack up or there’ll be a riot. Matilda, you’ll just have to hang around until we finish.’

          ‘I’m not going back with you,’ she retorted angrily, ‘I’ve arranged to stay with my uncle here tonight.’

          ‘O.K., I’ll see you back home then,’ shrugged Prince.

          After the short dance session, which was mostly consisted of playing one popular Nigerian Afro-beat over and over again, the compound emptied and the actors and musicians began the long and tiring job of unwiring the place and loading the instruments.  The last part had to be done by hurricane lamp after the generator had been disconnected.

          ‘It’s much better when we’re on long trek,’ said Prince to Kojo as they were hauling an amplifier off the stage,’ then we don’t have to pack until the morning time.  So after we finish we can go straight to sleep on our mats, or if you’re lucky with a girl.  They like musicians and actors you know.’

          ‘I’ve seen that,’ said Kojo as he helped lift up the heavy amplifier onto the roof-rack of the mini-bus.  But Kojo wondered how anybody could think of women in this state of exhaustion.

          It was after three o’clock before they left and Kojo nodded off to sleep as soon as he got in his seat.  The next thing he knew was suddenly waking up to the dawn as they arrived back in Koforidua.  He staggered home after Prince, and both fell onto the bed fully clothed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE – UP AND DOWN

 

          It was afternoon when they awoke and except to buy food they didn’t leave Bahama that day, but spent their time lazing around. The day after this lie-in Joe Pino, the tall lanky bass guitarist, came around with a box guitar and started to teach Kojo some simple chords, bass runs and an advanced version of the  Sol-Fa notation, a more comprehensive version of the do-ray scale  Kojo had learnt at school.  With it Joe could instantly sing the melody of any song given him off-the-cuff using these notes instead of the actual lyrics.  Very useful for working on new songs,  thought Kojo.

          ‘If you continue like this you’ll be playing out within six months,’ said Joe seeing how engrossed Kojo was, ‘as for Prince, he’s not serious at all, he just likes holding the instrument for people to see. He hardly ever practices. But at least you can use it for the time being.’

          Prince burst into the room rather flustered.  ‘That Matilda is just too much trouble, crying all the time. Now she’s trying to get me to give her father a bottle of Schnapps. I literally had to untangle myself from her just now to come here’. 

          ‘But only a few days ago you were the one chasing her,’ replied Kojo puzzled by this reversal.

          ‘I know, I know, but now she wants me to see her father…..and besides I’ve got my eye on another chicken.’

          By now Kojo was getting annoyed.  ‘I didn’t know you liked small girls?  But then I suppose they’re too young to marry,’ he added sarcastically.

          Prince was about to reply when Joe interjected. ‘He’s always doing this Kojo.  First of all the girl is the greatest thing ever, even her bluffing, then before you know what’s happened he turns the situation around gets her in his clutches.  Then he enjoys getting his own back.  Sometimes, Prince, I wonder whether you like women at all.’

          Trying to laugh it off Prince quipped ‘I just don’t like putting all my eggs in one basket. I tried it once and the  girl became an octopus that wouldn’t let go. And anyway what about you?…..Your wife left you and I’ve never ever seen you with a girl’ and with a quizzical look at Joe, ‘so maybe you’re the one who doesn’t like them?’

          ‘I’m through with all that. They just bring trouble and misery,’ responded Joe with a sad and weary look. It’s much better to stay on your own.  I’ve never understood what exactly they want from life.’

          ‘Maybe they just want to be treated as equals,’ offered Kojo.

          ‘Don’t be so simple,’ replied Prince staggered by this remark.  ‘It’s cash and control they want.  If you give them an inch they’ll take a mile.  We men always have to keep the upper hand.’

          ‘Control women’ and Joe laughed bitterly.’ That’s the very way they get you…..you  fool, ‘he ended nastily.

          Kojo realised that a serious argument was about to start so he tried to mediate.  ‘Well….. it’s as I’ve always  said, we have to give and take on both sides.’

          ‘Like in the West?’  asked Joe  glad of this diplomatic diversion, ‘where there doesn’t seem to be much difference between  men and a women.’  Then answering his own question, ‘Of course they’re different, it’s obvious.  The problem is understanding what they want…If I could have worked that one out I would still be with my wife,’ he ended  dejectedly.

          ‘So you married a concert party instead?’ joked Prince, now trying to cheer Joe up. ’No women to worry about there, unless you include the lady impersonators.’

  But this didn’t work and  Joe became even more pained, feeling insulted and hurt by Prince’s whimsy.

‘I think Gambia’s dead right not to allow women to join our group,’ he said trying to hide his feelings with a  spirited retort. ‘Imagine the palaver it would cause?  We have enough of that as it is without women matter coming inside.’

          ‘Maybe we should get Kwerku’s advice on women’ suggested Kojo.

          ‘Because he’s such a terrible womaniser, you mean?’ asked Prince.

          ‘Maybe he is off-stage. You should know. I hardly know him but when I saw him on stage in drag I’d swear he was a woman. So he must understand them, I mean their inner psychology.’

          ‘The only trouble is’ said Joe, ‘is that if you talk to him about these things when he’s dressed up as a woman he just clams up and acts mysterious.

          ‘Just like a woman,’ said Prince.

          ‘Exactly,’ replied Joe, ‘and when he’s off-stage he’ll say he can’t remember or doesn’t know.’

          ‘Maybe Joe he’s only protecting his professional secrets.’ 

          ‘Very funny Kojo, he doesn’t need any protection with all that juju medicine he puts in his face-powder and make-up.’  Looking at his watch Joe suddenly took his leave. ‘I’ve got to go now, see you tomorrow at twelve.  Manager said he wants us to leave for Osoni in time and I’ve got lots to do. Bye-bye’ and he strode off clutching his guitar.

          ‘Is he always like this Prince?’

          ‘Always, and you haven’t seen the half of it.  It’s not only women he has nothing to do with.  He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t drink either.  He used to be a heavy believer but one day he got so high on smoke that, as no doubt he’ll tell you soon enough, the sky fell on his head in waves.’

          ‘In waves?’

          ‘Yeah, that’s how he always describes it. Somehow he managed to find his way to a church and spent hours there on his knees, shivering in a dark corner till he cooled down.  That was about a year ago, now he’s like a sad saint.’

          ‘But he’s a great bassist’ added Kojo.

          ‘Yeah, he’s one of the steadiest around.

 

 

          Osoni is a beautiful small town, fifty miles north of Koforidua, nestled underneath a range of hills. The journey there was a very pleasant one as it took the band through lush green forest country in which the thin ragged ribbon of road seemed dwarfed by the huge trees on either side.

 They arrived early at the Happy Days Night Club and so everyone found shady corners to take an afternoon siesta. Or rather tried to in spite of a din composed of an incessant racket from some ‘jack-pot’ gambling machines, and a tinny juke-box, speaker distorting  at full-blast. Sudden cackles of joy or howls of annoyance accompanied the vagaries of coin casino.

          At four o’clock Prince woke Kojo. ‘I’m going on campaign right now, so come on.’  He pulled a rather miserable Kojo to his feet who stood rubbing the sleep from his eyes and looking disoriented.

          ‘Hurry-up, the bus is about to go,’ yelled Prince impatiently.

          Inside the bus they met  two other musicians. A drummer with a single conga drum between his knees and Osei, the lead guitarist, with his instrument plugged into a battery amplifier.  Kojo, still only half awake, was squeezed up in front between the driver and  Prince clasping a  microphone that was also plugged into the amplifier.

          For what seemed hours the bus jogged along bumpy laterite roads from village to village with Prince making slick talk about the night’s play, or the guitarist and drummer playing a fast dagomba-style  highlife.  As they passed through the villages they had an electric effect on everybody who was within hearing-range of their roof-rack speaker. Youngsters would stop whatever they were doing and start to gyrate. They drove up behind women carrying buckets on their heads who would start to move their backsides to the rhythm whilst keeping their heads steady and forward looking, straining their eyes side-ways to catch a glimpse of the source of the music.  Even crotchety oldsters would get up from their wicker chairs to do a turn.

          Prince’s disk-jockey voice rattled out thirteen to a dozen and the bus was followed by a horde of excited children, who easily kept up with the its leisurely pace.

          After they had passed through, what Kojo thought must have been the twentieth village, with always the same spirited response by everyone, he exlaimed ‘they don’t react like this in Accra or Koforidua.’

          ‘You bet they don’t.  Here there’s no television or cinema and a concert party only comes around three times a year at the most.  They get new songs and ideas from us you know. We’re the trend setters in these bush parts. And no problem about getting women in these places either’ Prince added chuckling to himself.

 

 

          In spite of the chilly weather a large crowd was present by the time the show started and Kojo felt more confident on stage for this session; helped no doubt by an ample dose of spirits he had  just taken.  It had all the makings of a pleasant evening for him, when suddenly a huge black object came whizzing past his head and crashed into the ground near where the drummer was sitting.  One of the singers then kicked this fist-sized object and smashed it up against the back wall of the stage where it lay upside down so that Koto could clearly see it was a gigantuan insect. Throughout their playing the musicians were disturbed by about six of these heavy creatures which crashed onto the stage where they remained too stunned to move and too weighty to fly.  It made Kojo very nervous and he found out later that they were called rhinoceros beetles that live up in the palm-trees.  Usually they never touch the ground as they can only fly if they gain enough initial momentum by jumping from a height, but the bright stage lights had attracted then down that night to their doom.

          In fact insect life in general seemed rampant in that damp forest area.  There were huge velvety brown moths with nine-inch wingspans, lazily undulating a few inches off the ground, too heavy to get any higher.  Kojo also noticed dark shadows around the wall-lamps, which he found on closer inspection to be composed of hundreds of different flying insects, glued to the walls in rings around the nightclub’s electric lamps.

          Kojo spent most of the play itself dozing in one of the ante-rooms behind the concrete stage.  The one being used as a  changing-room was very noisy and brightly lit, so he choose the darkened one and found two other musicians, who weren’t performing, also had the same idea.  They slept throughout the whole three hours of the play, until they were wakened by the band-leader Osei, telling them to get up and play for the finale dance session.         Due to the enthusiasm of the dancers this continued for almost an hour until so exhausted they reluctantly left. The place cleared and the concert members were finally able to lay down their  mats and cloths and get some  sleep.

          Prince and Kojo managed to squeeze themselves into one of the ante-rooms lodging some of the executive members of the group and were just falling to sleep when they were all awakened by a furious row coming from outside.  There was a crash, some angry deep-voiced shouts and women’s screeching.

 Mr. Gambia got up fumbling and cursing, followed by the others and outside the main gate and amazing spectacle met their eyes.  The back door of the bus had almost been ripped off it’s hinges and there was a violent quarrel going on between some of the younger concert members and the driver on the one hand, and a group of about a dozen girls and their escorts on the other.  One of the men rushed up to Gambia.

          ‘You know what your boys are doing?’ he bellowed, ‘they’re trying to take our girl-friends by force!’

          ‘Everybody shut up,’ Gambia yelled above the racket, ‘and let the man speak.’

          ‘As I was trying to say’, the man continued at a lower decibel level, ‘your driver was using this bus as a tro-tro before the show and picked us up from some of the villages around about here.  There were about fifty of us so he had to bring us here in three loads.  They’ve taken one load back already and even then it seemed a bit suspicious to us, as they were all men.  Now he and your boys want to do the same thing again.  Leaving the girls behind to share out among themselves.’

 At this point there was a noisy outburst of support from his friends, especially the girls who were deeply offended by being treated so cheaply.  ‘We were actually inside the bus, all us guys that is, when we realised what they were up to but they wouldn’t open the back door.  So we kicked it open.’  He ended to cheers from the village men and women  who all began to shout that they didn’t want to be segregated but  be taken back home together.

          Gambia had got more and more furious during the man’s explanation and after the cheering died away some of the girls kept shouting hysterically at the bands-men, accusing the musicians of thinking them as  bush-girls who could just  be chopped like that.

A tired  Gambia screamed for silence and started haranguing his people. ‘Are you trying to disgrace our profession?  I’m fining all five of you for this.  You won’t get a pesewa for tonight’s show and when we play at Oba tomorrow next you’ll be on half pay.’  Then turning to the driver, ‘As for your door, that’s your palaver.  Take everybody back right away and don’t ask them for any money.’

          ‘It’s too many,’ moaned the driver, ‘and besides the door won’t close properly.’

          ‘You can use a bit of rope, now get moving!  And you lot,’ he growled t his bands-men, ‘get inside.’

After the bus had gone and the others in the ante-room were asleep Kojo remained awake and nudged Prince, who was besides him on the same mat. ‘Does Gambia often fine us?’ he asked.

‘Yes, we have our rules and regulations you know.  If anyone fights, or gets drunk and disorderly, he’s fined. Sometimes even sacked.’    

‘But who makes the rules?  Is it Gambia?’  whispered Kojo.  

          ‘No, not just him, there’s an executive committee.’

          ‘But how do you jump from being a band-boy to an executive member,’ continued Kojo persistently.

          ‘It’s something like an apprenticeship.  You have to stick with the group for about five or six years, which most of us can’t.  But if you can, then in all probability you’ll end up on the committee as Chairman or something and then you can start making the rules and chopping the money.’

          ‘So it’s they who chop all the money, is it Prince?  I wondered where all the gate-fee went!

          ‘No, no. I was only joking.  I wouldn’t call Gambia a rich man, he’s in the concert business mainly out of love.  It’s the promoters who get it.  Like those two scruffy-looking guys we saw talking with him tonight.  They hired this place and did all the advertisements.  So only a part of the gate-fee went to Gambia and out of that he had to pay that idiot driver.’

          Kojo was about to ask another question but Prince turned away from him and said gruffly, ‘go to sleep for goodness sake, it’s well after four now and we have to be up by seven.

 

 

          Prince and Kojo arrived back at Bahama at midday and found the compound in an uproar.  Matilda had come in the morning to see Prince and had unfortunately asked Auntie Naomi where he was.  Auntie Naomi had demanded to know who she was and when Matilda became reticent and just mentioned vaguely that she was a friend of the two boys the older woman blew her top. She started shouting in a thunderous voice that she didn’t want any cheap ashawo girls coming into a respectable house.

          After this insult Matilda lost her cool and began yelling shrilly to everyone in the neighbourhood ‘who is this old witch who’s so fat and ugly that no man in his right senses would go anywhere near her.’

          To which Auntie Naomi responded that no man in his right mind would touch such a skinny piece of meat.  They started to fight and had to be separated by some of the residents.  Matilda threatened to take the matter to the police station, where one of her father’s friends was a sergeant.  Seeing that the quarrel was now taking a more serious turn some of Auntie Naomi’s friends from the house pulled her away, while the rest calmed Matilda down and begged her to forget the whole thing.  She agreed, but insisted they tell Prince to come straight to her house when he returned.  With that she stormed off.

          The two musicians knew there was something wrong the moment they walked into the court-yard, and this feeling was confirmed when Frisco, a seaman friend of Prince’s, told them the gory details.

          Prince became extremely worried and said, ‘Kojo, whatever happens you must tell Auntie Naomi that Matilda is your girl-friend, else I’m for the high-jump,’ he ended pleadingly.

          Kojo naturally agreed and hardly had they entered their room when there was a loud banging on the door and Auntie Naomi burst in.

          ‘Who was that scraggly little girl who came here this morning, Prince? She roared.

          ‘You better ask Kojo,’ he replied, deflecting  the blast.

          ‘She’s my girl-friend, Auntie,’ said Kojo demurely and then added hopefully, ‘and a student at the domestic science school.’

          Auntie Naomi gave him a haughty look. ‘Then why did she ask for Prince?’

          ‘There must have been a confusion, maybe she asked for Prince’s room, but it was me she came to see.’

          She grunted and then changed tack.’  In that case I don’t want to see her here again.  A student indeed, do you take me for a fool.  I don’t want anymore of these tramps coming here, do you hear me?’

          ‘Yes, Auntie,’ said Kojo humbly.

          With that and  her multitude of cloths flying she majestically swept out of the room, but  turning once to give a parting shot. ‘ And that goes for you in particular, Prince.’

          ‘Phew, that was close,’ whistled Prince, sitting on the bed and fanning himself.  Thanks Kojo.’

          ‘That’s O.K. but tell me one thing, what gives her the right to decide who comes here or not?  She isn’t the land-lady, is she?’

          ‘No, but she takes it upon herself to be the moral guardian of the hose, which is funny when you consider that she got her money to start trading from the ashawo business herself…I’ve seen pictures of her when she was young. In high-heels and wig and hanging on to some rich boy-friend or other. Anyway we’d better go and see Matilda and finish the case.’

          Matilda saw them coming from her window and rushed out to meet them before they reached the house. ‘Listen you two, we can’t stay here, my mother will see us.  Let’s go for a walk.’

          As soon as they were out of sight of the house Matilda spun around to face Prince and demanded to know who the woman was.  He started to stammer when Kojo rescued him by saying, ‘she’s the land-lord’s wife and is very strict about girls.’

          ‘Yes, you’d better not come to the house again,’ said Prince harshly, thinking attack might be the best method of defence.

          ‘So is that how you feel?’ said Matilda in a lost voice.

          ‘Yes, that’s how I feel.  I’ve had enough of this woman palaver, I’m off’ and stated to walk away.  Matilda rushed after him but was vigorously shaken off.  Kojo couldn’t hear what they were saying, although he could see that she was beginning to cry.  Prince cut her short by striding away and Matilda came back to Kojo looking demoralised.

 She beseeched him tearfully, ’what have I done wrong?  He says he doesn’t want to see me anymore.  Kojo, I beg you, talk to him for me.  Tell him I love him.’  And without waiting for an answer she ran weeping into her house.

          Kojo felt very sorry for her and really didn’t understand his friend’s behaviour at all.  But he knew him well enough to know that whatever he said wouldn’t change Prince’s mind.

 

 

          The Super Riches had just arrived at a theatre in a diamond mining area, a smart looking cinema-hall which stood by itself, a mile away from the nearest village. Kojo had been expecting a mud compound  with a temporary stage, but this place was really luxurious. It had high concrete walls, a full-sized cinema screen and cement dance-floor; even its own electrical power supply.  He discovered that the owners of the diamond mines had built the cinema and clubhouse in this isolated spot it was central to their workers who were scattered around about in small villages.

          By eight-thirty the band started playing and because the maracas player had left, being one of the bandsmen Gambia had reprimanded and fined at Osoni, Kojo wad taking over his instrument.  Already a crowd was gathering outside, some of the villagers having walked six or seven miles to see the show.  But no-one seemed to be coming in.  Kojo was aware that there was some trouble at the gate but he couldn’t hear what it was about over the sound of the music.

          Suddenly stones came crashing around, lobbed over the wall by the crowd and Gambia and the concert members outside the  gate all came inside to force the massive doors shut.  But it wouldn’t shut against the crowd, so Gambia began yelling for everyone to come and help After much pushing and heaving the bolts were slid.  He then ordered everyone to grab the instruments and drag them under-cover into the ant-room that had a cement roof.  Within a very short time the single ante-room was full to bursting with instruments and excited members of the group with Gambia explaining what was happening.

          ‘I told them we can’t play for them as they are refusing to pay the sixty pesewa gate-fee.  They say that their chief has made a declaration that any concert staging in this area should only charge forty pesewas.  If we were on our own l would go ahead, but I’ve got the union to think of.  We all decided at the last general meeting that the minimum gate should be sixty pesewas for shows that we promote ourselves.  If we now go and play cheap we’ll set a precedent here and any other concerts coming after us will be cheated in the same way.  So we’ll just have to stick it out until they get fed-up and go home.’

          There was a bit of grumbling, but what could anyone do with rocks flying around and an angry crowd banging on the iron gate. Concerts had to stick together else what was the point of the union?

          It was eleven o’clock before the crowd got tired and the last ones started trudging home, enabling the concert members to creep out of hiding.  Gambia and the driver had become very worried about the bus, which had been parked outside throughout the riot, but they found it was untouched.  Quietly and quickly the group packed the instruments on the bus.

          As the band was travelling away they passed some of their disappointed audience making their way home and were surprised by the cheerful waves and smiles they were given by them.  The reason for these smiles became apparent half-on-hour later when they were deep in the forest.  First one tyre blew and it took them an hour to change it in the dark.  Hardly had they gone another mile when the newly fixed spare tyre went as well.  Some joker in the crowd had put nails into the two tyres including the spare. So they were stranded.

          Everyone piled out of the lorry and a fire was quickly built.  They were hungry so some of them started beating the bush in the hope of finding some small game to eat.   All of a sudden a great yell went up as a bush-rat ran into the firelight and Osei, as quick as a flash, threw his jacket over it.  He then throttled it through the coat and threw it on the fire to singe off the animal’s hair.  It seemed pretty small with no hair, but everybody clustered around as a knife was passed to Osei, who gutted  the creature.  In a short while he had skilfully dismembered it and began to roast the pieces on skewers of green wood someone had cut for the purpose.  The fragrant smell made them all more hungry still, but by the time it had been share around twenty people, hardly any of them got more than two or three mouth-fulls of this-cat sized ruminant, but no-one complained as they went retired to the bus to sleep.

          In the morning Gambia and the driver begged a lift from a passing car and went to the nearest town where they had the two tyres patched by a vulcaniser.  It was nearly midday before the bus left for home.

 

 

          Over a year passed since Kojo had joined the Super Riches and in that time he had progressed from maracas player to second bass player, and then after Osei had unceremoniously left for another band, he had become the only bassist.

          After his first long trek with the band, which had occurred one month after joining, he had gone to see his mother who became livid when she discovered he had given up his studies.  However he had earned sixty cedis from a strenuous non-stop three weeks of  touring the Volta Region. So had been easily able to convince her that music was a respectable profession when he gave her thirty cedis out of it.

          It was now almost Christmas and the concert was yet again on trek.  As during the previous Christmas they were touring the wealthy cocoa growing area of Brong-Ahafo for this profitable harvest season.  However, unlike the previous year’s trip to this region, when Kojo had been a  raw recruit, he now felt himself to be an old hand in the entertainment business.

          They had already performed to ten houses and were now in a small town near Sunyani, setting up their equipment.  Mr. Gambia was complaining bitterly to some of the bandsmen.

          ‘These dammed promoters are chopping all our money.  They’re able to charge one-cedi-fifty-pesewas gate-fee right now and just look at how the  shows are filled to capacity.  Everyone’s got spare cash around now the cocoa harvest is in… But do we get any of it?’. No one responded.

          ‘I’m bonded, that’s why,’ he continued in an exasperated voice, but seeing the puzzled look on the boy’s face he elucidated.  ‘In the rainy season we can’t do many shows, so I usually end up having to borrow money from some of the rich promoters on the promise we will play for them during the Christmas. Even though right now the money’s flowing in they only pay us about two hundred cedis and keep the rest.  Look at last night.  There were at least four hundred people at the place, which makes six hundred cedis.  The hire of the place cost the promoter a hundred at the  most, so he chopped three hundred.  One man mind you!’

          ‘But at least tomorrow’s show has been arranged by our pioneer-man, hasn’t it?’

          ‘Yes’, replied Gambia, ‘but Kofi’s only arranged five shows for us altogether on this trek. All the others have been bonded.  And I’m worried about tomorrow at Sunyani.  There’s a big promoter there who usually manages to bond me, but this year I didn’t borrow from him.  He even came down to Koforidua in August with plenty of cash to tempt me, but I refused him and he became pretty annoyed.  I’m anxious in case he gets up to some dirty tricks. Anyway’ he said with a shrug ‘it’s no use worrying now…I’m going to sleep for a bit. Make sure everything’s ready by seven will you.’

          Prince chuckled and whispered to Kojo, ‘he’s going to bed alright, but not to sleep, he’s got a girl-friend here.  You wouldn’t think he’s a womaniser, he keeps it so quiet, but I swear that he has a girl-friend in nearly every town in Ghana.’

          ‘Well what do you expect after fifteen years on the road’ replied Kojo, ‘I’m sure he must have played at every town and village in the country, several times over.’

          After they had finished helping arranging the equipment for the night’s show the two friends sat down in a quiet corner of the courtyard.  Prince said cautiously, ‘a new pop group has just been formed in Accra and they need a singer and bass player.  One of them came up to tell me just before we started this trek.  I’ve been turning the idea over in my mind for over two weeks now.  But I wanted to consult you too.  What do you think?  Remember we always had he idea of leaving and going to Accra.’

          ‘Tell me more about it,’ asked Kojo.

          ‘Well, you’ve heard of the Black Apostles, haven’t you?.  Kojo nodded non-committedly. ’The owner of their instruments is a guy called Jimmy Addo who owns a nightclub in New York.  He’s been there for years, but two years ago he brought some instruments back and left them with an old girl friend of his to form a band.  So she’s now the manager of the Apostles.  The only trouble was that she made one of her young boy friends the leader of the group and the two of them chopped all the money.  The boy friend even managed to buy a flash car out of it.  Jimmy didn’t know about this as he was in America all the time.  He found out what was happening when he came back last month and went with some police to the Lido Club on the night  the Apostles were playing.  After the show they seized the whole equipment back and he packed them in a bus he had brought along for the purpose.  So now he’s given it all to another girl friend to run a new group while he’s in America.  She’s already got most of the musicians together and it was one of them, who’s a friend of mine, who came to tell me.  And we don’t have to worry about finding a place to stay as Rebecca, that’s Jimmy’s new girl-friend, has got some rooms in her house she’s letting out to the musicians.  What do you think?’  

          ‘Well, what’s the name of the band?’ inquired Kojo.

          ‘The Black Dandies… It’ll be great and we can stop playing all this bush music.’

          ‘But I like highlife.’ Said Kojo.

          ‘Don’t worry, we’re bound to be playing some,’ said Prince hurriedly, ‘but we will be concentrating on pops.’  Kojo was looking thoughtful so Prince continued persuasively, ‘we won’t have to go around on long treks like this anymore…and we’re bound to get more money.’

          ‘How much?’ asked Kojo.

          ‘Afro Davies, that my guitarist friend in the band, told me we would be paid a salary of forty cedis every two weeks, more than we’re getting here.  And we’ll get it from the moment we join, even though we’ll only be rehearsing in the house for the first month.  Do you like the idea?’ asked Prince.

          ‘I’ll have to think more about it.’

          ‘Whatever happens you’ll have to make up your mind one way or the other by the end of this trek as they’re starting rehearsals from next month going.  But don’t say anything to anybody about this.’  Kojo nodded and Prince went on.  ‘I’ve been with Gambia for over two years now and I’ve had enough so whatever you do I’m going to split.  But I want us to stick together like we agreed last year.’

          ‘I’ll let you know by the end of this trek, don’t worry,’ said Kojo.

 

 

          The following day, when Gambia went to the Sunyani police station to obtain a permit for the evening’s show, he was refused it.  The sergeant in charge told him that another concert was performing in a night-club almost opposite the Unity Club where the Super Riches were to play.  The sergeant explained that it was police policy not to allow two concerts to stage too close to one another, as it usually led to trouble.  Gambia knew this to be a bogus excuse and left the station in a rage.  He passed by the Excelsior Night club, at which the other band was playing, and discovered from the posters outside that it was the Jovial Stars concert party, run his old friend J. K. Amponsah, who had been with Gambia ten years before.  He went inside and after a friendly reunion with his old colleague he explained the situation to him and asked him who his promoter was.  It was the same one who had tried to bond Gambia.

          ‘There’s some funny business going on here J. K., don’t you agree?’

          ‘It’s possible, he’s been spoiling your name enough,’ Amponsah replied, ‘he’s been saying your band is too old fashioned and your P.A. system is no good.’  He paused a moment and then said ‘let’s go down to the police station again and I’ll talk to them this time.’

          Amponsah talked to the sergeant for some minutes, but to no avail and the two band-leaders were asked to leave.  They walked away grumbling.

          ‘It looks as if you’re right, Gambia.  He’s obviously been bribed and it’s obvious who did it too.  We’d better go and see Mr. Prah.

          At the promoters house they were told Mr. Prah was not in but they could wait if they wanted.  After about half an hour of sitting in the foyer they left saying they would be back later.  When Gambia got back to the Unity Club he didn’t say anything to his people but let them continue setting up the instruments.  At six o’clock J.K. came around and the two of them went back to Mr. Prah’s house, but were told he still hadn’t returned.

          ‘I think he’s trying to dodge us,’ said J.K.  ‘You’d better wait until we start our dance as by then he’s bound to be at the gate collecting.’

          Gambia waited and it was almost eight o’clock by the time he could hear the other concert starting up.  He told his bandsmen not to start until he came back from across the road, where he met Mr. Prah at the gate with a police man.  ‘What do you mean by blocking my show!’  he demanded.

          ‘Have I blocked your show?’ said Mr. Prah innocently.

          ‘You know damn well you have.  You must have bribed the sergeant as I’ve never heard of a law disallowing two concerts to play on the same street at the same time.’

          ‘I haven’t the faintest idea  what you’re talking about.  If the police won’t give you a permit it’s up to them.  And you’d better be careful about accusing me of bribery.  Isn’t that right corporal?’

          ‘I think you’d better go quick before I charge you with causing a nuisance,’ said the policeman to Gambia and then turning to the promoter, ‘these bandsmen are all the same, bloody rascals…Now go, before I get annoyed!’

          Gambia was fuming but could see that Prah had everything tied up.  He could do nothing for the moment but go and tell his band to pack up and take the night off.  Nevertheless he swore to himself he would take the matter up with the union, at the first opportunity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR  - THE LURE OF ACCRA

 

          Prince and Kojo arrived with their suitcases in Accra and took a taxi to Rebecca’s house in Adabraka.  It was off the main road at the end of a short alley where the two storied house was surrounded by a courtyard with high walls and overshadowed by other buildings.  They dumped their suitcases in the courtyard and were met by Prince’s friend, Afro-Davies, who came out of a door in a line of single rooms running along one side of the yard.

          ‘So you decided to join us,’ he said smiling.

          ‘Yes, but I had a job persuading Kojo to leave Koforidua after we returned from trek last week! replied Prince. ‘He didn’t like the idea of leaving Gambia at such short notice.’

          ‘Band leaders are used to it,’ laughed Davies. ‘He’s probably had half a dozen bass players come for auditions already. Put your stuff in my room for the moment and let’s go upstairs so you can meet Rebecca.’

          Rebecca made an incongruous figure, sitting on a divan in a large and luxurious room, with wall-to-wall carpeting and surrounded by several fans, a television set, radiogram and dwarfed by an enormous fridge at her back.  She was rather plump woman wearing traditional cloth and eating rice and beans from a plantain leaf.  Davies introduced her to the two new members.

          ‘I like all my musicians to call me Mama,’ she said smiling. ‘Now we’re complete so we can start rehearsals in the garage from tomorrow.  Here take this,’ she said handing Prince ten cedis, ‘this’ll help you to get started, but don’t ask me for anymore money, as my brother Sam is going to be in charge of the day-to-day running of the band.  So you’ll be getting your money from him.  One of you can share a room with Davies and the other with Mensah.’

          ‘That’s the other singer,’ explained Davies.  ‘You can stay with him, Kojo.’

          ‘O.K., take them downstairs and make them comfortable and we’ll all meet tomorrow when my brother’s here.’

          They went down the concrete steps to the row of airless little rooms in which some of the Black Dandies musicians were staying.  Davies went into one of hem and came out with a slightly built man who walked with a limp and whom he introduced as Mensah.  Kojo took his bag out of Davies’s room and went into Mensah’s, who was a friendly garrulous person and immediately started questioning Kojo about his experiences with concert parties.

          ‘I’ve never played in one of those bands before,’ he said after listening to Kojo’s story.  ‘I used to be with the Hot Rods before it broke up in sixty-nine.  This is me with them in London,’ he said pointing to a large framed colour photo of himself crooning into a microphone, backed by an impressive looking dance-orchestra.  Mensah went on to give him details of all the places he had stayed at in England and ended significantly,’ I don’t intend to remain here much longer, I’m arranging to join my brother in London, he’s a sound technician at one of the recording studious there. I’m only here for the meantime.’

          Kojo was very excited by the prospect of staying with such an international artist, even for a short while, for the Hot Rods had been one of the most popular highlife bands in the sixties and had made several record albums in London.

          The following morning the musicians went upstairs to meet Rebecca’s elder brother, Sam Amponsah.  He was a rugged, no-nonsense sort of man, full of talk about how he was going to record the band in the future, but for the meanwhile they would have o concentrate on pop songs.  He presented Afro-Davies, who was to be the leader of the group, with a list of songs that he said they must know.  Soul numbers, reggaes, highlifes and pop ballads; many of which they were familiar with already. 

          ‘If there are any you don’t know,’ he said, ‘I have the records so you can study them.  But whatever happens you must be ready in one month.  Then, as soon as you’ve polished the songs, you come out.  We all split profits of each performance so that I take sixty percent and you take forty.

          There was some grumbling over this, this Amponsah continued.  ‘Look I have to pay for the transport, publicity and maintenance of the instruments, O.K.?’ There was a stony silence.  ‘Alright we’ll make it fifty-five percent for me, I can’t be fairer than that.  I’ll pay Davies at the end of every week and he’ll divide the money between you.’

          The Conga player asked, ‘but we heard that we would be paid a fixed wage, so what’s going to happen this first month when we’re only rehearsing?’

          ‘I’m going to give everyone ten cedis a week, but it’s a loan mind you.  You’ll have to pay me back later out of your wages.’

          ‘So you’re going to put us in debt before we even start?’ exclaimed the out-raged congaist.

          Before Amponsah could reply the sax player said contemptuously, ‘most managers maintain their bands while rehearsing, if you put us in debt at this stage you’ll be making trouble for yourself later,’ he warned.  ‘I don’t like this at all, this isn’t what I was told when I came.’

          ‘If you don’t like it you can leave.  I’m taking over the running of this band, as my sister is far too kind-hearted and doesn’t know a thing about the music business.’

          The sax and conga players decided to leave on the spot and there was some rumbling amongst the others, but in the end they acquiesced.  Amponsah’s last word to them before they went was ‘Davies, you’d better see to fetching two new musician right away, as I’m not going to give you anything until you start rehearsals.’

          The musicians went down stairs depressed but Prince said he knew a sax player and drummer, who were old friends of his staying in Winneba.  But they were already playing for another band.  If Davies could get hold of around twenty cedis Prince decided he would go to Winneba and call them.  ‘I need money for transport and a hotel as I’m going to have to steal them.’

          ‘But you heard the manager say he wasn’t going to give us any money until we’re out-doored’ said Davies perplexed by the way Amponsah was blocking the band right from the beginning.  Killing the goose that lays the golden egg, so to speak.  But then brightening when he remembered, ‘you’ve got the ten cedis the Mama gave you, and I can give you five more,’ he said rummaging in his pocket.  ‘Try and make do with this and I’ll pay you back when we start.’

          Prince didn’t look very happy but he agreed, making one qualification.  ‘In that case I want Kojo to come with me as it will be easier for the two of us to persuade them to come back with us.  We’ll go straight away.

 

 

          The two musicians obtained two rooms in a cheap hotel in the old seaside port of Winneba and went out around town to find a chop-bar.  As they were roaming about Prince noticed a wall-poster advertising the group in which his two friends played.  The band was called the Funky Termites and was performing that night at the local Susubiribi Nightclub.   After eating rice-balls and palaver-sauce in a tiny wooden bar they returned to the hotel to sleep for a couple of hours, to be fully fresh for the robbery they were to undertake in the evening.

          They arrived at the Susubiribi Nightclub early, before the dance had started and Prince told Kojo to sit in a quiet and secluded corner while he went to look for a small boy to call one of his friends.  Kojo thought this was being a little too surreptitious, but on returning Prince explained he didn’t want the bandleader to see them.   ‘He knows me you see. We were all in another group together three years ago.  If he sees me he’s bound to get suspicious.’

          It was Jerry, the conga player, who was brought over by the young boy and at first he could hardly make out Prince in the gloom, but when he did recognise him he made a big display of greeting him.

          ‘Be quiet for goodness sake Jerry, I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.  This is my bass player Kojo,’ he said introducing the two.  ‘We’re with a new band in Accra and are looking for a congaist and sax player, so I thought of you and Cliff.’   

          He went on to tell Jerry the details of the Black Dandies and asked him and Cliff to come to the hotel after they had finished playing.  Two bands were staging that night, so Jerry said they would be around at nine when their group, which was playing first, had closed.  With that Prince and Kojo stealthily left the club.

          The two members of the Funky Termites came as promised and seemed very excited by the prospect of joining an Accra band and Prince saw to it that they had an enjoyable evening with plenty of beer.  By eleven thirty Cliff and Jerry were ready to do anything Prince said.

          ‘We’ve got two rooms here, so what you must do is to go straight home now and pack.  Then come back here afterwards to sleep.  We’ll leave first thing in the morning.’

          Everything went smoothly and the next day the four of them arrived at Rebecca’s house where the two new members were given an empty room for themselves.

 

 

          At long last the band could start practising and the first week they spent running through the songs they all knew.  The rehearsals took place in a large, stifling garage adjoining the courtyard, with shocking acoustics.  After a week they were given ten cedis each by Amponsah, who again warned them that it was a loan.  The following weeks were spent learning new numbers, mostly souls, from a collection of scratched singles that Amponsah gave them.  Many tedious hours were spent in trying to copy these records exactly, in spite of the crackling and hissing from the records that almost obliterated the music.  Fortunately Davies was a genius at copying and he would quickly master the various parts and then play them for the other instrumentalists.  Prince and Mensah spent hours trying to interpret the lyrics and reproduce them in a nasal tone that for them represented the American accent.  At one rehearsal Kojo suggested that they should do one or two of their own numbers, or even compose some there and then, but was shouted down by the others.

          ‘We haven’t got time now,’ said Prince in an exasperated voice.  ‘We have to learn these twenty-five songs first before Sam will let us come out.  We’ll have time for out own stuff later.’

          Kojo accepted this but he was disappointed with the repertoire, for it included only a few highlifes and he simply couldn't understand how Amponsah could talk of recordings when they weren’t being encouraged to create their own material.  We can hardly re-record James Brown or Jimmy Cliff, he thought ruefully. 

          Finally after four weeks of intensive practising, they had a repertoire that reached  almost fifty songs.  And none too soon, as Amponsah had been complaining more and more, as the weeks went by, about giving them money.  As it was he had made them wait hours on Sunday morning for the paltry sum he did dish out to them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE  - NASHKA

 

          Their first show was at the Tip-Top Club, where they were playing side by side with the famous Silver Stars dance-band.  The Black Dandies opened the show and all went well thought Kojo, considering it was their first time.  Davies had warned everyone before not to smoke or drink as they had to get used to playing together on stage first.

          Amponsah and Rebecca were pleased with their performance and bought them all drinks afterwards and told them to enjoy the rest of the night’s show.  As the musicians were sitting around a table drinking and listening to the Stars a beautiful copper-coloured girl came to the table and greeted Davies.  Kojo had never seen a more sophisticated women.  She had a huge puffed out Afro hair-style and used make-up in a way no  Koforidua girl knew how.  Davies introduced her as Nashka, an Afro sexy dancer. 

          ‘I’ve danced all over the world,’ she claimed. ‘Paris, London, Abidjan, Lagos. Oh, so many places.  I’m one of the guest artists tonight with the Stars.  Maybe I could be your guest artist sometime, you were great tonight.’

          This pleased them all and soon she was sitting amongst them dominating the conversation with here tales of international travels.  Kojo asked her whether she was Ghanaian and she replied.  ‘My mother is, but my father’s side originally came from Abidjan and he’s half-French.’

  At this point a waiter came over to the table and Nashka, in an imperious voice, ordered ten beers for the musicians.  Then, without touching a drop herself, she swaggered off, saying that it was time for her to change for the show.

          Twenty minutes later she came to the floor wearing spangle pants and bra, half concealed by some diaphanous material and the band gave a crash of drums as she began flitting around the floor.  The band started up an traditional agbadza beat but after the impressive build-up Kojo was rather disappointed by her actual performance.  She danced hardly better than any of the girls who were there that evening, although she did put in a few stunning sexual wriggles.  However, the audience was mellowed by the excellent music and gave a demonstrative applause when she finished. 

          By the time she had changed back and returned to the table, another dancer came to the floor.  He was a young boy of fourteen-called Afro-Sparrow who entered wearing the most incredible psychedelic get-up, with bell-bottomed trousers, flowing gown and gaudy hear-band.  He was so nimble the audience gasped at his antics.  Kojo was astounded that such a frail boy could dance with so much vigour.  Everyone clapped but Kojo noticed that Nashka had become very quiet and her eyes narrowed into slits.  She was as jealous as hell, but to hide this she ostentatiously walked over to Afro-Sparrow and graciously stuck a five cedi note onto his damp forehead as he was gyrating about, and then grandly sailed back to her seat.

          After this several other people came up to him with money and there was a huge roar of appreciation when he finished.  But Kojo became annoyed by a conversation he overheard at the next table in which a man was loudly condemning the young dancer as a hippie and declaring that spoilt young people shouldn’t be allowed to dress and dance in that way.   Kojo gathered he was an army man, for he continued patronisingly, ‘if I had my way I would take him down to the camp and drill the little fool.’  A statement Kojo found particularly obnoxious as the fat and spiteful man was so bloated with beer and good living that he could hardly stand up, let alone drill anyone.

          Kojo asked Nashka to dance with him and they stayed on the floor for a good half an hour. He returned to his seat  in a slight daze and, to everyone’s amusement, completely enraptured by her.  She had likewise taken a fancy to him and they sat together chatting for a time until she was called away by one of the stewards.

          ‘You’d better be careful of her,’ warned Davies good-naturedly,’ she’s not all she seems.’

          ‘Whatever do you mean?’ said Kojo bewildered,’ she’s a famous international artist and she says she’s evengoing to London to perform soon.’

          ‘More likely to join one of her sugar-daddies,’ drawled Davies cynically.

          ‘Where do you think she’s gone now?’

          But before Kojo could answer Nashka returned and apologised, saying that she had been called over by one of girl-friends.  This satisfied Kojo and he continued to dance with her throughout the evening.  Afterwaeds she walked with him some of the way to Rebecca’s house and then flagged down a taxi.  She said she would come to the house the next day to work on some numbers she wanted to do with the group.  Kojo fell asleep dreaming of her.

 

 

          The next afternoon she turned up at the house as promised and as there was no practice taking place that day, she took Prince, Kojo, Davies and Mensah to a little beer-bar instead.  Surprisingly for such a chic girl it was a rather dilapidated place called Broke Night Club, which the owner had tried to brighten up with garish murals.  Some were distorted copies of advertisements and others were cartoons of cars, aeroplanes and beach scenes, all with strangely altered perspectives.  The one that struck Kojo most vividly was almost life-sized picture of a young pale-looking and be-wigged woman, holding a monkey on a chain.  A huge man, wearing a dark suit, was picking her up in one arm and holding a bunch of ten cedi notes in the other.  A balloon caption from her mouth said, ‘Oh, Uncle Joe, you’re too old for me,’ to which his caption replied, ‘Well I might be old, but is my money that old?’

          The owner of the place was standing, or rather swaying, in the middle of the bar and announcing to the world that he was a quarter-lettered philosopher, on the basis of having only a very slight education but a wealth of experience.  He boasted how he had been both a policeman and a criminal in his time, and so knew both sides to every story.  He pointed proudly to a large mural, behind the bar, that vaguely resembled him.  ‘Look at my medals,’ he said referring to the row of ribbons pinned on his portrait, confusing reality and the artist’s imagination. 

          Kojo asked Nashka why she had taken them to such a weird dive.

          ‘It might look a bit rough,’ she replied laughing, ‘but you would be surprised by the big-men who come here.  You see, everybody knows that Kwese Broke is a bit mad, so anyone can speak freely here and air their grievances, without worrying about getting into trouble.  It’s a sort of protected zone.’

          This seemed to be confirmed by the loud conversation that had started up between Kwese and two army officers sitting at one of the tables.  Kwese started to abuse the army regime and the two officers were simply laughing at him.

          ‘I was in the army once too, you know,’ he started, staggering around waving his arms about in stiff military fashion, ‘so don’t think you can tell me anything I don’t know.’

          ‘So you think it’s the army that’s causing all the problems in the country?’ asked one of the officers jokingly.

          ‘The army? cackled Kwese derisively, ‘they don’t know anything except how to march up and down.  The real trouble with this country is cuntialism,’ he shrieked banging his fist on their table.

          There was a silence as Kwese gathered his breath and then he stated to the whole company.  ‘Yes, cuntialism’s the trouble.  Men think they’re running the country, but it’s the women who are controlling the men through  their vaginas.’  He mumbled something about ‘ bottom power’, collapsed onto a chair and fell into a drunken sleep.

          The five of them spent another two hours at Kwesi’s place with Nashka buying most of the drinks from the young girl behind the bar.  Finally she said she had to go and meet someone but as they parted outside she told Kojo she would come around that evening to see him.

          As the musicians returned home they made fun of Kojo’s conquest and pointed out that he was receiving a fine scholarship from the girl as he had not had to pay a single pesewa so far.

          In fact Nashka didn’t come that evening and so Kojo and Mensah gave up waiting for her and went to sleep on the double bed they had to share.  They were woken up at about two in the morning by a frantic knocking on their door and when Kojo stumbled to open it he found a dishevelled Nashka standing there.

          ‘I had a fight with one of the girls at the Golden Cup.  She said I was dancing with her boy-friend.  Anyway I managed to rip her dress, but then a police-man came and took us to the police-station.  I had to give them all the money I had on me to get out.’  She started crying and Kojo put his arms around her to comfort her.  ‘Please ask your friend if he could sleep elsewhere so I can stay here with you tonight.’

          ‘Sorry Mensah,’ Kojo said, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to Enahoru you tonight.’

          Understanding this student slang Mensah nodded, picked up a mat and his cloth and left the place for them.

          The following morning Kojo took Nashka to her mother’s house and on the way she told him that her father was a big-man in the government and spent most of his time abroad or in one of his other houses, for he was maintaining three wives.  They met her mother peeling yams and cassavas.  She didn’t look like the wife of any big-man, being a frail old lady dressed in a faded cloth.  Nashka explained that she was the senior wife her father had married when he was still just a young village boy.

          Nashka seemed to be a little ashamed of her mother for she said to Kojo in English, which her mother couldn’t speak, ‘she’s completely illiterate you know, my father has hardly anything to do with her anymore, but he’s given her this house.’  Sweeping her arms around the large spread out compoun. ‘Except for her two rooms and mine she rents the whole place out.’

          ‘So you hardly ever see your father?’

          ‘Oh, he often comes here to see me,’ she replied emphatically,’ he says I’m his favourite.  I’ve even stayed with him in London a few times.  He’s got a couple of houses there.  Where do you think I get all my clothes from?  He’s promised to take me there again very soon.  Then I can buy plenty more dresses, the ones I have are already out-of-date.  And I need some decent shoes, not those ugly guarantees that absolutely everybody is wearing now.  Did you know that it was I who first introduced   them to this country?’  Kojo grunted and she continued.

 ‘When I get to London I’m going to become a model so when I come back I’ll be miles ahead of everyone.  Maybe I’ll even start my own fashion shop in Accra, my father….’

          This reverie was broken by her mother calling her to come and help.  ‘I’ll see you this evening, Kojo,’ she said, ‘I think Ma wants me to pound the fufu.’

 

 

          When Kojo arrived back at Rebecca’s he found only Afro Davies there and went to join him in his room.

          ‘So how’s your been-to lover,’ he joked, but seeing Kojo’s face cloud he changed tack. ’She really seems to have taken to you.  You know she usually moves with pretty big people with plenty of cash.  And you just a penniless musician.  You’re bloody lucky.’

          ‘You know her well then?’

          ‘I’ve known her on and off since she was little as she used to be a school-friend of one of my sisters.  She ran away from school when was about fifteen and when her father caught up with her in Abidjan she accused her poor old head-master of having tried to poke her.  He almost lost his job over this, but fortunately no-one believed her except her father.  He tried to get the authorities to sack him, but they wouldn’t.

          ‘You mean she lied?’ asked an incredulous Kojo.

          ‘Well, I don’t know if I would say that, but she’s got a very powerful imagination. Maybe the old guy did look at her once or twice. But she has trouble separating her dreams from the real thing.  Look Kojo, I don’t want to say any more as it might upset you.’

          Kojo insisted he continue, for being the eldest and only son amongst six daughters Davies had a vast knowledge of women.  With this head-start and looking just like he’d stepped straight off a Shaft film his only problem with women was that he had too many.

          ‘After she ran away she never went back to school and her father completely spoilt her.  Then she started moving with his friends, almost a high-time girl,’ seeing Kojo’s shocked face, ‘no, no, not a prostitute, she just had a number of boy friends from amongst these rich guys.  Her father didn’t even know about it.  But she must really like you as she doesn’t usually befriend lowly types like us.’

          ‘So what do you advise me to do?’ asked Kojo.

          ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t see her, or anything like that, but don’t be too free with her, be patient and study her character for some time.  Just don’t go and throw yourself headlong into this.  I never put all my faith in just one girl, I like to spread myself around.’

          ‘That’s exactly what Prince says,’ declared Kojo, ‘he’s always accusing me of being too romantic.  Maybe it’s because I never had sisters like the two of you.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX  - BUSTED

 

          Over a week passed and the band was en route north to Kumasi to play the first night at the Pacific, one of the State Hotels and then  the  Kalamazoo the following night.  Everyone in the bus was excited as this was the first time the band had played outside of Accra.  Only Kojo seemed despondent. 

          ‘Cheer-up,’ said Prince, ‘she’ll turn up again, and maybe this time in one piece.’

          Everyone laughed as he was referring to the two times Nashka had come to Kojo’s room in the middle of the night, both times in disarray. The day after Nashka’s fracas at a dance and after  Kojo had said good-bye to her at her mother’s  Nashka arrived at his doorstep not only battered but bleeding as well.  Her version was that she had quarrelled and fought with a major and had come out the worst of it.  That had been late Tuesday night, or rather early Wednesday morning, when she had briefly used Kojo’s place as a first-aid station and hadn’t been back since.

          Kojo was completely confused by her.  The one night they had spent together he had seemed to get through to her. But most times he met her she time she was either having dramatic confrontations with everybody, or else withdrew into herself, creating a vague detached air that Kojo had initially mistaken for cool self-possession.  In fact this self-assurance was rather a mask for a constant inward uncertainty and panic which would suddenly explode outwards on the slightest provocation.  He had recognised this after he had made love to her when, for a short time, she had become like a small girl, clinging to him desperately.  But even then he sensed a great violence in her which seemed to be confirmed by her continual bickering.  He wanted to help her but there was an almost an impenetratable cocoon of frenzied hysterical energy enclosing her.  Maybe the only way to reach her was to break it down by force, but Kojo frowned at this sadistic idea and tried to forget the whole matter for the time being.

          They arrived at the Pacific Hotel on the Friday afternoon.  It was an imposing multi-storied building with a huge flight of marble steps leading up to a flashy glass entrance.  They unloaded their instruments onto the spacious marbled dance-floor and then were taken to the less prestigious Freedom Hotel where they were to stay the two nights.  It was an old stone building that jutted out in the angle between two busy roads.  After dumping their bags in the rooms allotted to them the muscians  went out to explore the surroundings and buy food with the money Amponsah had advanced them.  He, of course, didn’t stay there as it was too seedy for him, he was lodging at the Pacific.

          The night’s performance went rather uneventfully, thought Kojo afterwards; partly because he audience was composed mainly of sedate middle aged couples in suits and evening dresses and partly because of the insipid resident band that preceded them.  This band most certainly lived up to its name, the Pacific’s, for it produced a thin trickle of waltz’s and foxtrots that almost put everyone to sleep.  Amponsah had told his band to tone down their music that night and concentrate on old ballads and smoochy numbers, so the atmosphere never picked up at all.  The grand but rather stark and clinical architecture didn’t help either, it was like playing in a huge railway station with multiple echoes bouncing off all the walls.

          The next night at the Kalamazoo was much more interesting, the place being the complete opposite to the Pacific.  It was an old place built in the thirties and made up of a bizarre collection of disconnected architectural styles.   From, the outside it looked like a decayed Edwardian hotel with an entrance flanked by two rain-worn Imperial lions.   However, inside, down a short dark passage was a salon swing door, straight out of a wild-west film. This impression was heightened when one passed through to the open court-yard, for the building enclosing it was a two story one, with a wooden balcony encircling the second floor.  Kojo could almost imagine  the cow-boy Jack Toronto and his flouncy girl-friend suddenly appearing up there from out of one of the the hotel rooms.  Right in the middle of the court-yard and standing out like a sore thumb was an extremely elongated Victorian pavilion bandstand, reaching up beyond the second floor and covered in flashing psychedelic lights.  The whole place had a dilapidated but cozy and intimate atmosphere.

          The clientele who came to the Hotel that evening, were a rougher lot than those of the Pacific and the dance was a much more spirited one.  The band even managed to get two police-men dancing, who were meant to be there keeping order.  The place was inundated by dozens of good-time girls which also gave added zest to the place.

          Mensah outdid himself that night and near the end of the first half he jumped down from the stage in a frenzy, forgetting about his lame leg and collapsed on the floor.  But that didn’t stop him, he just continued singing into the mike he was clutching and lay on his back spinning and dancing, nonchalantly holding a cigarette with his moist tongue, swallow it and then make it appear again, still lit. He performed this feat several times, managing to swallow and  puff in between bouts of singing, sometimes seeming to be able to do all three actions at the same time.  Kojo had a good view of this from up on the stage and could hardly believe his eyes or ears, for Mensah was crooning superbly. Seeing Kojo’s amazed look Afro-Davies quipped ‘he’s really smoking tonight.’

          During the interval one of the girls, who had been making eyes at Prince during the show, took him, Kojo and Davies up some back stairs onto the roof of the hotel, which was quite flat and covered in tarmac. From it one could look down onto the dance floor.  But a surprise awaited them  up there, for perched along one side of the roof was a line of wooden small rooms, a little hamlet of roughly made dwellings with tin roofs.  Some women were in front of them, fanning charcoal stoves and preparing food, quite oblivious to the events going on below.  The good-time girl, introduced herself as Martha, told them that these ramshackle buildings were constructed by the night-watchmen of the hotel.  A good vantage point, thought Kojo.

          Martha took out a couple of wraps and started rolling the wee expertly, lit it and took a couple of puffs and left it with the musicians, saying she would see Prince later.

          The three of them sat near the edge of the roof, overlooking the dance-floor, enjoying the breeze, the clear sky and the music of Fela Ramsome Kuti that was being played on a record player down-stairs.

          ‘You know Davies, we should play more of his sort of music,’ said Kojo.

          ‘But we do play some of his numbers,’ replied the band leader.

          ‘No, I don’t mean his actual numbers, I mean we should try and compose some of our own Afro-beats.  Get hold of some cultural drums and a wooden xylophone, then we could…..’

          ‘Are you crazy, Kojo’ interrupted Prince, ‘I thought when we left Koforidua we were through with all that sort of music, you want us to end up like one of these cultural groups with twenty-five musicians on stage?  And anyway,’ he added, ‘Fela doesn’t use indigenous instruments.’

          ‘Yes he does, he has two musicians playing local drums, besides the Cuban congas and trap-drums’ said Davies coming to Kojo’s defense.

          ‘You’re not taking Kojo seriously, are you Davies?’

          ‘I’ve always liked the idea of experimenting with more African sounds, but the trouble is it’s the dance-fans who won’t accept it.  All they want is copyright music.  Even if you try and do your own arrangement to a record they don’t like it, they want it copied exactly, mistakes and all.  The only reason Fela’s able to do his own thing is that he has already brought out the records on the market.’  Then turning to Kojo sympathetically, ‘one day we will do what you say, but it will be for recording purposes only.  Only after we can get the fans to accept the new sound on record can we play it out live.  If we just go ahead and play it straight away, they’ll just hoot us off stage.  I should know I’ve tried it before.’

          Kojo didn’t reply, but thought to himself how ridiculous it was, the dance-fans holding back the music.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like pop music. In fact he liked playing some of it, especially soul numbers and reggaes. But he could not see why if they used a highlife or and adowa or kpanlogo beat, which all the dance-fans knew, they couldn’t bring out a new type of music.  He had already been quietly working on a few numbers like this in Pidgin English. But the few times he had suggested at  rehearsals that they should play one of his numbers he had simply been ignored.  He would just have to be patient he thought regretfully; and he couldn’t understand Prince’s narrow-minded attitude at all. 

 

 

          By the time they finished that night and had returned to their hotel, it was three in the morning. Everyone went to the rooms, which were double ones.  Kojo and Davies were sharing and after they had just settled down to sleep they were disturbed by Mensah coming in.

          ‘Prince had got Martha with him so I thought I’d better come here and sleep.  He’s got a real handful there and no mistake.  When I left she was shouting at him that she was a decent girl.  I mean you only have to know her a few minutes to realise that she’s a real hardened case, she said she’s from Takoradi, so she’s probably got spoilt by all those sailors there.’

          Suddenly the girl in question burst into the room, ‘where’s my fucking pants?’ she raved at Mensah, ‘I know he gave them to you to stop me leaving, I want them back.’

          Mensah denied this by pointing out that when he had left the room she and Prince had still been dressed, presumably she had her pants on then.  Either the girl was soddled or stupid because, without replying, she spun round, ran out of the room in a frantic state and charged up and down all the rooms, knocking on everyone’s doors demanding her pants.  After a while her shouting died down and everything became peaceful.  Poor Prince thought Kojo, as he drifted off to sleep.

          The following morning they were returning home so everybody was up early, busy washing and packing.  Kojo saw a sheepish looking Prince followed by prim stiff-lipped Martha.

          ‘Lend me two cedis, will you Kojo?  Or I’ll never get rid of her.’  Then whispering, ‘I had to slap her a bit last night to cool her down but after that everything was fine,’ he ended winking at Kojo.

          ‘Yeah, but your charms seemed to have failed you this morning, if you need to pacify her with money,’ said Kojo sarcastically as he gave Prince the money.

          The lovers left and Kojo went to the room that Cliff and Jerry were sharing with the group’s gungadin.  The room reeked of wee and Cliff was busily ironing.  They joked about Prince’s escapade.

          ‘You know that there was another trouble last night?’  said Cliff who, seeing Kojo’s worried face, hurriedly went on.  ‘It was Tom-Tom, he was quarrelling with some women down the side passage, but don’t know what it was about.’

          Probably wanted to poke her,’ chuckled Ayitey.

          Kojo had been looking out of the window throughout this conversation and saw some army and police trucks pull-up on the street below.  It didn’t occur to him that they were coming into the hotel.  Suddenly he heard shouting coming from down the hall and the door crashed open and two policemen and a soldier burst into the room, shouting out in accusing voices.  They were followed in by a sombre looking plain-clothes detective, who immediately took control of the situation and ordered the uniformed men to search everyone present, and then the room itself.

          ‘You’ve been smoking wee,’ the C.I.D. man said in a threatening voice, ‘We could smell it a mile away.  An army man came here this morning to see a friend and smelt it coming from this room.  So he reported it.’

          After the four of them had been frisked and the room turned upside-down one of the policemen found two wraps under Ayitey’s bed; they charged him and led him away.

            It had all happened so fast.  Cliff suddenly realised that there were two stubbed-out joints still in an ashtray on the table, which had been in plain view during the search, but the police had missed them.  ‘Good God,’ he said pointing in a trembling hand at the incriminating evidence, ‘if they had seen that they would have booked all of us.  Kojo’s bones were like jelly.

          Amponsah came in panting and looking quite grey. He had seen the police and army trucks moving off with Ayitey in one of them.  When the three of them explained what had happened he trembled with annoyance.

          ‘Because of that bloody packer the name of the whole band is going to be ruined.  It will be over all the papers by tomorrow.  Tell everyone to pack.  We’ll all have to go down to the police station in the bus!

          Half an hour later the band was camped out on a lawn in front of the police station, but the police refused to allow them to see the prisoner.  Fortunately, one of the policemen recognised them as the band he had been dancing to at the Kalamazoo the previous night.  He decided to help the musicians and with much gesticulating and arguing that smoking was a common habit with musicians, he managed to convince his colleagues to at least allow the manager and bandleader to see Ayitey.

          They came out smiling, for they had discovered that Ayitey had a brother who was working in one of the timber-yards near-by.  So the police had agreed that if this brother could be produced quickly, they would release the prisoner on bail, the brother acting as surety.

          Amponsah and Davies left in the bus and the rest of the band remained, sitting out on the grass.  By this time the police had thawed to them and several of them chatted with them in a friendly way and described how they had been caught.

          ‘One of your boys tried to poke a certain lady late last night who was staying at the hotel.  Her army boy friend came round to visit her in the early morning and was very vexed when she was told him about it.  By then he could smell the wee, so he went to bring some of his friends from the army.  We were notified so we came with them.  We made it a combined army-police operation,’ concluded the policeman on a proud note.

          As everyone, musicians and police alike, were getting bored waiting around, the bands-men decided to give a show for them, to keep them in a good humour.  So with a box-guitar that Davies had brought along Kojo played some of their songs, with the others clapping their hands, drumming on anything available and singing at the tops of their voices.

          It was three hours before the others returned, together with the brother Amponsah and the police went into closed session and after a while they all came out, including a very subdued Ayitey who gave his friends a weak smile.  The band finally got away.

          When Amponsah was questioned on the way home he answered, ‘well for a start, I’m sacking Ayitey,’ and then with a knowing smile, ‘as for the police, I used gentle persuasion to make them drop the case For the sake of the good name of music …… of course,‘ he added with a grin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN  - SKIN PAIN

 

          Back at Rebecca’s Kojo found out that Nashka had been there three times while they had been away, each time getting more and more frantic about him.  And indeed hardly had they unloaded and packed everything away when she strode into the courtyard shouting and demanding to know where he was.  She entered Kojo’s room, eyes glinting fiercely.

          ‘So is his how you treat me?’ she inquired vehemently, with arms on hips, ‘why didn’t you let me know you were going away?  You could have come around to my Ma’s place and told me.’

          Kojo was extremely surprised by Nashka’s sudden outburst of possessiveness, but before he could reply she went on.

          ‘I suppose you’ve got a girlfriend in Kumasi?’

          ‘Of course I haven’t, we went there to play.  Didn’t Rebecca tell you?  Mensah, tell her.’

          ‘He’s telling the truth, Nashka,’ endorsed Mensah, ‘if he had  had a girlfriend there I should have known as were sharing the same room together.’

          ‘we were too busy to be chasing girls and anyway when we were there something very……..’

          ‘I don’t want to know what else happened,’ interrupted Nashka. She sat down and for a moment Kojo thought she was going to relax, but she worked herself up to another peak of fury.  Don’t think I’m cheap just because I move with musicians, I’m an entertainer so it’s my business.  If you and I are going to continue together I want to know all your movements in advance.’

          ‘Like you tell me?’ said Kojo, beginning to lose patience.  But she ignored this comment and refused to speak to him.

          After half an hour of quietly listening to the radio, with Nashka sitting coldly in a corner, Mensah tactfully retired.

          ‘Are you staying or going?’ asked Kojo bluntly, and had to repeat himself several times before she responded.

          ‘I’m staying,’ she said icily.

          There was another half hour of silence, with the radio playing some Congo music from one of the French stations.  Finally Kojo got fed-up with this stalemate and said, ‘let’s go to bed.’

          In bed it was the same, like sleeping with a sack of yams thought Kojo. Aafter a few minutes he turned over and grunted that he was going to sleep.  But Nashka pulled him back and shouted in his ear.

          ‘You think I’m free and easy just because I’m prepared to waste my time on you…. You’re nothing,’ she sneered, ‘I move with men who have plenty of money.’

          ‘Then why do you bother with me then?’ asked Kojo.

          ‘Bother with you, you think you bother me, ha, what a  joke.’ She began to laugh hysterically so that Kojo had to shake her shoulders to stop her.  Then she started to sob and Kojo tried to comfort her and they began to make love.  Afterwards, as he was about to go to sleep, she commenced nagging him again on the same topic.  This is going to go on all night, he thought.

          ‘Hey, what was all that noise about last night?’ asked Prince as he walked into Kojo’s room the following morning. ‘Sounded like someone was being murdered……. about three times in all.’

          ‘The third time it was nearly true, but the first two times it was just her mad laughter.  I’m sure she actually wanted me to hit her in the end.’

          ‘And did you?’

          ‘No. I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I made her get dressed and somehow bundled her out of the place.’

          ‘You should have slapped her, you know, then she would have been alright.  Martha was exactly the same.  Some girls enjoy it.’

          ‘Well maybe you should take her off my hands then, but I want no more to do with her,’ was Kojo’s caustic reply.

          ‘Talking about her ladyship?’ said Kwame, the group’s organist, coming into the room.  ‘You two kept the whole house awake last night.  I could have warned you about her.’

          ‘Why, do you know her?’ asked Kojo in a sharp voice.

          ‘Oh no, not personally, but I know the type from when I was at the university.’

          ‘But she never went to Legon or Cape Coast. According to Davies she didn’t even complete secondary school,’ said Kojo.

          ‘Maybe so,’ was Kwame’s reply, ‘but she’s that sort.  Stuck-up, comes from a rich family, spoilt by her father.  Most of us wouldn’t touch the girls at Legon.  Those who did we called internalists. The rest of us, most of us in fact, were externalists as we had to get our women

from townYou see, the internalists were the students who had money, they had to if they wanted to move with the Volta Hall ladys.  Of course, occasionally one of them would fall for one of us poor students, but then the gossip in the women’s hall would get so bad that the girl would either call the affair off, or make life hell for the poor guy, out of feeling guilty for slumming.’

          ‘But they can’t all be like that,’ replied Kojo, horrified by Kwame’s cynicism.

          ‘Anyway it’s true, there were exceptions, but they couldn’t do much as most of  the student women paralysed themselves with their hall gossip.  Sometimes some unlucky girl would even get her name in the hall magazine and that would finish her.  On top of that for a fee the hall porters supply records of  girl’s movements in and out of the hall for  a rich boy-friend or her father.  So you see we couldn’t have much to do with them, we just chewed on for the three years.’

          ‘I never thought it was anything like that at the university.  I mean, it isn’t like that in the secondary schools,’ said Kojo, his own problem completely eclipsed

          ‘Yes I know, but at school the boys and girls are roughly the same in number.  At Legon there’s ten men students to every women.  And then as I said before, the girls all come from rich families.  I mean to say, which poor family would bother educating a girl?’ …. So the  result of this imbalance is tension.’

          ‘More like a sex war,’ said Kojo half-jokingly, but Kwame took this up in all seriousness.

          ‘That’s truer than you think.  One time the boys from my hall actually fought a pitched battle with the girls.  It’s a funny story.  You see, we always used to hold our dances at a special time of the year. And there’s an unwritten rule that no two halls should hold their dances within two weeks of each other.  But our Volta Hall ladies went ahead and arranged theirs the very same week-end as ours.  We sent a delegation to them, but they just started to abuse us and call us bush people and the sons of farmers.  They even made a cartoon about us in their hall magazine.  In the end we got so mad that we called a meeting of our hall council and decided o teach the girls a lessen in manners.  There were even some Afro-American students in our hall who gave us encouragement.  They said the girls were belittling the common man.  So we made a demonstration up to the woen’s hall and they barricaded themselves in.  We threw stones at their windows. And you know what they did? Threw boiling water down on us!’

          ‘But you managed to get the date of their dance changed?’ inquired Kojo.

          ‘No.’

          ‘No!’ shouted an enraged Prince, ‘you mean you let them get away with it.  You should have broken in and given them some dirty slaps.’

          ‘Ha-ha, that’s just what you told me to do to Nashka,’ Kojo jested.  ‘I think you’re both crazy,’ and he continued to guffaw at his two friends.

          Davies entered the room.

          ‘Well, after last night’s riot I never thought I’d find you so cheerful, Kojo’ he said and then looking at the blank faces of the other two, ‘well, it must be a very private joke.’

          ‘We don’t know what he’s laughing about,’ snapped Prince, ‘all we did was try and give him some advice about women.’

          ‘At least you seem to have cheered him up. But listen, where’s Mensah?  Sam’s heard a rumour about him having an old alto-sax lying about somewhere.  Is it true?

          ‘Yeah I think so’ said Kojo.  ‘He told me about it once, it’s a remnant from his Hot Rod days.  But I don’t think he keeps it here, I think it’s at his mother’s place.’

          ‘There’s something wrong with our sax, Cliff’s managed to mess it up somehow.  So Sam wants to buy the alto from him.’

 

 

          Two days later Kojo was sitting in his room.  He hadn’t seen his roommate for two days, since Mensah had received a hundred and fifty cedis for his saxophone.  It was rather dilapidated, but Cliff said it could be fixed up as good as new.

          Davies was in the room with Kojo and had brought his new girlfriend along, a slight demure girl who worked as a nurse.

          ‘Where the hell is Mensah?’ asked the band-leader, ‘he should have been at rehearsal this morning.  If he doesn’t come tonight you’ll have to go to his mother’s tomorrow.’

          Twenty minutes later Mensah, himself, came into the room, singing at the top of his voice and clutching a bottle of gin.

          ‘What are you all doing in my room?’ he snarled.  ‘You load of useless people.’

          ‘Where on earth have you been?’ asked Davies ignoring Mensah’s rudeness, ‘We had a rehearsal today, you know.’

          ‘Don’t talk to me about nonsense things like that.  What do you think I was doing?  Spending my money of course. And on much more fleshy things than that scare-crow sitting next to you.’

          Davies became infuriated, got up and seemed to be about to strike Mensah, but his girlfriend, Karle, held him back.  He looked at her shrugged and led her out of the room without speaking.

          ‘You’re a bloody fool, Mensah!’

          ‘Me?  A fool?  … Don’t you know that you’re talking to a man with money.  What have you got in your pockets?  Nothing.  I’ve got plenty.  I’m the king, do you hear?  The king. The king and everyone else is useless.  Look at Prince. He thinks he knows how to sing, but he’s just a mall boy who only knows how to imitate soul records.  He’s a copycat.  But me, I’ve been abroad and have made original records. African music mind you. As for our great leader Davies, he’s so weak he allows us to be cheated all the time.  He’s too feeble.  I should be leader.  You’re all useless, useless….’

          Kojo couldn’t bear to hear any more of these ravings and left the room abruptly.  He decided to take a walk around the area to give Mensah time to blow-off steam.  He felt sorry for Mensah, who at one time had been a star singer in a top band and now spent half his time reminiscing about it.  His repertoire was enormous, he could even sing Congolese music in Lingala and French and everyone knew it rankled him to sing second fiddle to Prince, who despised anything that wasn’t soul or funk.  Unfortunately that was what the dance-fans wanted these days so Mensah’s talents were left high and dry.  Prince sometimes called him an old colonial man and they had almost come to blows once or twice.  But Kojo couldn’t understand Mensah’s broadside at Davies.  It was true that the band-leader was rather retiring and was reluctant to stand up to Sam over the question of money, but at least he forced the manager to include a fair number of highlifes and Congo numbers in the repertoire, which was the sort of music Mensah liked. Anyway, there was nothing I can do,  thought Kojo ruefully, but wait and let  Mensah cool down, or drink himself into a stupor. His money must have run out, else he wouldn’t have come back.

          Kojo passed a cinema with a crowd outside, surrounding a large garish poster advertising an Indian film that  depicted a horde of  demons in battle with a turbaned hero with a veiled heroine cringing behind him.  Huge roars from inside indicated the film was in full swing and Kofo needing a distraction decided to go in and watch it, hoping Mensah would be fast asleep by the time returned.

          But re re-entered the room some hours later to find Mensah still raving, but now his insults were being hurled at everybody in the band, indeed everybody in the world.    The bottle of gin was empty and he was on his back, staring at the ceiling and shouting, but weaker than before.  Kojo told Mensah he wanted to sleep and lay down besides him.

‘They all hate me, Kojo,’ wailed Mensah, ‘the whole world’s my enemy.’

          ‘Well I’m not,’ said Kojo emphatically.

          ‘No, you’re my only friend,’ wept Mensah, ‘but as for the rest of them, they’re all bastards, bastards.’ His voice got louder and louder and he staggered out of bed waving his arms about.  ‘You’re all bastards, do you hear me?’ he screamed at the top of his voice, ‘bastards, bastards, bastards………….!’

          Suddenly the door crashed open and Prince, Davies, Cliff and the drummer Tom-Tom rushed in and threw Mensah to the floor.

          ‘You and your sax are just a load of shit!’ shouted Cliff to Mensah who was thrashing about on the floor.

          ‘If it weren’t for your leg we would beat hell out of you,’ said Prince as Mensah tried to lash out with him with his good leg.

          ‘Fight me then…come on…fight me them…I’ll take you all on,’ screamed Mensah, still writhing on the floor, almost choking in rage over the words and with his spittle flying about.

          Mensah seemed to be having a fit and they all stood looking down at him for a few seconds.  He looked such a sorry sight that Davies said, ‘let’s leave him to his misery,’ and the four of them left.

          This had all happened so quickly that by the time the confrontation  was over Kojo had hardly had time to get up from the bed and was sitting on the edge of the bed  looking down on Mensah.  He got up to help him up but Mensah snarled at him, turned on his belly and using a chair as support, got himself upright.  He picked up the bottle of gin lying on the bed, smashed it on the front step and screamed out more abuse from the doorway, waving the deadly weapon around.  No-one came, and Mensah turned around with such a wicked look in his eye that Kojo thought he was going to be attacked, but Mensah dropped the bottle and threw himself across the room and collapsed utterly exhausted on the bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT  - EVERYBODY SCATTER

 

          They were setting up things at the Equator Hotel, an expensive but underused place, which had become the Black Dandies Friday night-spot for the last month.  Prince and Kojo were heaving amplifiers from the lift onto the open-air dance-floor which jutted out from the building about fifty feet up. Prince was moaning. Since  Mensah had been sacked or rather sacked himself, it was always about the same topic.

          ‘I’m fed up with Davies,’ he complained yet again. ‘I didn’t join this band to be singing old-fashioned colo numbers, but since Mensah left he’s been forcing me to sing those songs.  Why can’t he get another singer who specialises in that type of music?  I’m  beginning to wish Mensah had never left. Imagine him going and joining the army.’

          ‘He’s in as a musician so after a couple of weeks drilling and rifle practice he’ll only be rehearsing and playing,’ replied Kojo. ‘Anyway, I thought you didn’t like him.’

          ‘I know, but forcing me to sing his stupid old songs.  It’s all Davies fault, and that crony of his, Kwame.  If it weren’t for them I’m sure Sam would agree to us being a straight pop band.’

          ‘Well you might like that, but I don’t. I want to get experience of all sorts of music, even the old-fashioned stuff.  If you had your way we couldn’t even play any highlife,’ replied Kojo over what was becoming a bone of contention between the two friends.

          I’m going to have a talk with Sam,’ said Prince darkly, ‘I know how to handle him.’

 

 

          The first half of the evening’s show went uneventfully enough.  It was early and few people were yet around.  In fact when the musicians had explored the place before playing they had found most of the hotel empty.  They couldn’t understand why, as the place was very luxurious, with tiled courtyards, running fountains, wall-

To-wall carpeting throughout and plush toilets.

          By ten however the night-club terrace began to fill up and the tables were soon all taken up with a lively crowd, but few were dancing.  Most of the female crowd consisted of good-time girls and the rest were their pilot-boys and their prey, white and Asian sailors.  For the hotel was situated near Tema harbour.  The biggest catch for the girls were the Japanese fishermen from off the trawling boats.  One of the girls swaggered out past the band, leading one of these Japanese and quite oblivious to the bands-men’s gaze.  She had a huge smug satisfied grin on her face as she let the half-drunk man away.

          Prince did his act with Jenny Lee, the Afro-sexy striptease.  It was a regular part of the Equator’s week-end program, The band had to supply a silky-smooth Latin number as she partially stripped whilst Prince made the most disgusting noises into the mike. His bored and muted cries of sexual passion seemed to sneer at the audience for obtaining pleasure from something that the owner of the voice had already experienced a thousand times before, to the point of ennui.  Whereas the truth was the Prince had tried to flirt with her, but as she was the manager's girlfriend she wasn’t prepared to compromise herself.

          The music didn’t really seem to pull together during the first half and so during the intermission at eleven-thirty, the bandsmen left the building and sat underneath a bush in the park that surrounded the hotel.  They lit up a joint and sat facing the broad eight-story building with all its lights aglow.  The building was very beautiful from where they were sitting with the outside  cunningly lit by searchlights beamed on it from below.  Serenity was rudely disturbed by a quarrel that broke out between Tom-Tom and Davies.

          ‘You were playing with no feelings at all,’ Davies accused the trap-drummer.  ‘You had no power and you played the Congo number, Shama-Shama, like a highlife.’  Tom-Tom knitted his brows but said nothing and Davies went on, ‘Let’s run through it briefly while we’re here.

          The musicians started to play Shama-Shama, clapping their hands and singing the parts of their instruments; all except Tom-Tom.

          ‘We’re  doing it for you benefit, you know’ said Kwame but Tom-Tom just grunted and stalked off.

          ‘Let’s run through it again, anyway,’ Davies said resignedly.

          Naturally enough there was trouble when they got back on stage.  Tom-Tom played half-heartedly and  after two numbers Davies lost his temper and unwisely told the band to play Shama-Shama.  This just annoyed Tom-Tom even more so that, in spite of the appeals of the other musicians, he refused to play.  He just sat stiffly on his stool, ignoring everyone.  It was a very popular number so the audience noticed how badly it was being played and many of the dancers left the floor after having rushed excitedly to dance when the song started up.  Tom-tom absolutely disgraced the band.  But afterwards he played well, and by the end of the show Kojo reckoned the band had played their best yet.  Tom-Tom even did a solo, which matched the great Ghanaian drummer, Kofi Ghanaba, in virtuosity.  It lasted over twenty minutes with the audience sitting spell-bound, except for the working women who continued rushing from table to table gossiping and laying plans, for they weren’t at the club for pleasure.  Tom-Tom’s a funny guy, thought Kojo during the applause, first he cripples the band and now this.  He just wanted to show us he could do it, I suppose.

          As they were packing the musicians became surrounded by a cluster of women who hadn’t been able to find any  partner that night and so were stranded.  Occasionally the bandsman sneaked a girl who lived in Accra abroad.  Consequently one very young and slim girl with an Afro hair-cut attached herself to Kojo and kept pestering him to take her along, but he pretended he was too busy packing to stand around and talk.  She disappeared for a time but came back when they had finished packing and were hanging around, waiting to go.  

          ‘Hello, I see you’ve finished,’ she said politely.

          ‘Yeah, we’ll be going in fifteen minutes.’

          ‘Do you want to go up on the roof?’

          ‘Roof?’ said Kojo looking puzzled.

          ‘Yeah, there’s a way up to roof, it’s flat.’

          ‘I can’t, we’ll be off in a few minutes,’ he replied  evasively.

          ‘Well then, can you take me to Community Seven?’ she asked.’

          ‘But that’s in the opposite direction to Accra!’

          ‘In that case, give me money for a taxi?’

          But before Kojo could reply another young women wearing a heavily lacquered wig and eyes made-up Chinese style, rushed up and spun the younger girl around.

          ‘What are doing with him?  He’s mine,’ she shrieked, towering over the slighter girl.  It took Kojo a few seconds to recall her, he had had a short conversation in the hotel’s bar two weeks previously.  She had told him her name but he couldn’t remember it.

          The two women started to quarrel and insult one another, but after a while they exhausted their stock of well-rehearsed curses and the younger one turned to Kojo.

          ‘So it’s true!’ she said and went to strike him.

          He only just managed to dodge the slap when the other one also started on him.  He couldn’t make head or tail of their behaviour, but they were most certainly in earnest, so he ran into the end of the bus and slammed the back door tight.  The front was locked fortunately, but still the girls tried to reach him through some of the open windows, which he hastily shut.  After five minutes they retreated up the front sweep of steps at the hotel entrance outside which the bus was parked. 

Some of the musicians facetiously knocked on the bus door and told Kojo to open-up as it was safe for him to let them in now.  Both the girls were still cursing him and bandsmen in general, but from a safe distance, so he gingerly opened the door.  He felt more secure when he was surrounded by his friends and the door was locked again, safer still when they drove away.

 

 

          They played again the following day at the Bamboo Gardens in Accra, but the crowd was small as it was in the middle of the month when everyone runs out of their monthly wages.  After they finished playing Sam told them all they were  meet with him the next morning back at the house.

          It was now after lunch and all the members of the band had been waiting for Sam downstairs in the yard of his house for over three hours and they were getting hungry.  The manager always procrastinated when it came to paying out hard cash, so they were all resigned to the situation; except Prince.

          ‘If he doesn’t come down soon I’m going up to see him.  I don’t see why at least he can’t give us our money so we can eat.

          ‘You know he doesn’t like being disturbed when he’s resting,’ said Davies.

          ‘We’re not going to get much anyway,’ said Kwame ruefully.  ‘Passion week’s always the same, nobody’s got any bread.’

          ‘So you want to wait until the end of the month?’ snapped Prince.  ‘I’m going right now,’ and stomped up the stairs.  A few minutes later he came down followed by Amponsah.

          ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting, boys,’ said the manager.  ‘The thing I wanted to tell you about is that next Saturday morning we’re going to a television studio to record for the Music Scene program.  The director’s a good friend of mine.  He says you should do six numbers, but at least four of them have to be soul or reggae ones.  Also you have to play “These  Arms of Mine”.’ He ignored the groans coming from the musicians. ‘It’s just too bad, but it’s part of the agreement that you back a guest artist on that number, he’s the director’s brother-in-law.  So I just want you to polish these six numbers this week.  Davies, here’s the money for last week,’ he said handing over the handful of cedi notes.  ‘It isn’t much as the takings were low and I’ve deducted two cedis from each of you  as I noticed that one of the speaker boxes has been badly torn.  I’ll have to have new leather put on.’

          ‘But you said you would pay for any repairs,’ protested Prince.

          ‘For natural wear and tear, yes.  But this was carelessness,’ the manager, replies curtly.

          ‘How do you know?’ retorted Prince stubbornly.

          ‘I’ve seen the way you guys handle the things.  And don’t use that tone of voice with me, young man,’ shouted the manager, not noticing his sister coming down the steps behind him.

          ‘Now now, Sam.  You can’t expect them to play well if they’re not happy.  Prince,’ she said turning towards him and in a motherly way, ‘apologise to Sam for answering back.’

          Prince became very demure and repentant for he had become the apple of Mama’s eye and wanted to remain so.  ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘leave this to me.  You go on up and I’ll talk to them.’

          After he had gone she carried on.  ‘Now look here boys, while you’re working here with me I like to take you all as my sons.  I know Sam is sometimes a bit hard on you, but he’s a business man.  That’s why I brought him here and put him in charge.  I’m much too soft-hearted to run a band.’  Everyone chuckled. ‘But from now on, if there are any complaints, come and see me.’  She then gave Davies two ten-cedi notes.  ‘Here divide this between you, it will more than compensate for Sam’s fine.  But don’t let on, mind you.’

          She waddled up the stairs and all the musicians thought how much better the band would be with her as manager, for Sam’s tightness with money just kept on bringing confusion.

 

 

          The following Saturday morning the bandsmen arrived at the television station in the band bus and after having gone through the usual security check by armed soldiers at the front gate, they drove up to the studio.  Tension had been building up all week in the band over the choice of the songs which Amponsah had left to them.  Prince, Tom-Tom and Joe, the maraccas player, wanted it to be one of the latest soul numbers on the market, and out of loyalty to Prince, Cliff and Jerry supported them.  Davies, Kwame and Kojo wanted a highlife.  Kwame had had a bitter quarrel with Prince at one of the rehearsals over this issue and had accused him of being ashamed to play African music.  Consequently, Prince had stormed upstairs to Amponsah and Mama and they had backed him against Kwame.

 ‘One has to go by the majority decision,’ was Mama’s verdict, made in all good faith, but Kojo noticed that the manager, whenever possible encouraged dissentions within the band.          His was a conscious policy of divide-and-rule and a disastrous one for the band that day.

 The consequence flared up as they were unloading the amplifiers into the air-conditioned studio.  Kwame and Prince were carrying a speaker box through the outer swing door of the studio when it fell to the ground and Prince blamed Kwame of having let go on purpose.  Kwame swore at him and Prince lashed out with his foot, which caught Kwame a glancing blow on the waist.  The others quickly separated them and prevented things from turning into a full fight, but the damage was already done.

          After they had fixed and tested the instruments the musicians were led to the make-up room,  where they all had talcum powder rubbed into the faces and their hair combed by two young ladies.  They returned to the studio in time to see the Ga cultural group, grouping themselves for their show, which was to be first.  The director was standing some distance away from the cultural musicians, occasionally shouting them an order.  Sitting in a chair next to him, Kojo was amazed to see was Nashka.  He went over to her but she pretended that she hadn’t seen him.

          ‘Have you forgotten me, Nashka?’ There was no reply, ‘What are you doing here?’ But still no reply.

          The situation was becoming a little embarrassing so the director told Kojo that she was to do a floorshow with the Ga group.  Nashka was staring right through Kojo, so after shifting about uncertainly for a few moments he moved away to watch the group moving forward in front of the cameras in single line, dancing, singing and clapping.  When they reached the instruments they took their drums, rattles and gongs and added them to the music without stopping; and the lone guitarist came in  with his battered looking box-guitar which had a pickup plugged into one of the Black Dandies’ amplifiers.  Instead of a bass guitar they used a large frame-drum, on top of which sat a beefy musician who played with his hands and used the heels of his feet to control the pitch.  As this had a microphone at the back it pounded out like an electric bass.  The men were dressed in the white cloths and frilly caps of the Ga traditional priests. The women singers danced, wearing expensive cloths and with their hair made up in plats that convened upwards to a point over the centre of the head.

          They played a variety of highlifes,  sea-shanties and other Ga folk-songs.  In some of the songs they featured a large wooden xylophone and in others a pair of bamboo flutes played in harmony.

          This was the first time that Kojo had ever seen one of these bands.  Of course he had heard records of such groups on radio.  They were referred to as ‘cultural’ groups, to distinguish them from the more westernised guitar-bands, dance-bands and pop bands.  They had suddenly blossomed with the public at large after forty years of obscurity. Kojo felt tingles own his spine, for they were actually doing what he had only been thinking about, they were producing a new sound which could open up new possibilities in the music scene. They were even more African than Osibisa or Fela  and Kojo wondered what  Afro-rock or Afro-beat would sound like played by such a band. His own band on the other hand could only be a weak echo of western musicians. Prince was going up a blind alley, thought  Kojo, one has to be oneself and not another’s shadow.

          Nashka performed her dance gracefully, backed by one of the tightest yet most relaxed drum sections Kojo had ever heard. In his mind he was already  putting the bass guitar part into the music.

          It finished all too soon for Kojo and it was time for the  Black Dandies to play. As  they were going to be recorded they went through a practice number to allow sound engineers to adjust the balance, but after the cultural group their band sounded flat and lifeless. One problem they were having was with the microphones which went straight to the mixer room and so it was almost impossible to hear their singer over the amplified instruments. This hadn’t occurred  with the cultural group as the volume of their mainly acoustic instruments was less and the four singers had enough lung power to be heard clearly.

 Having copied the numbers from records, the Black Dandies had relatively little trouble following Prince, as they all knew the songs by heart. But when the guest singer came  on everything went wrong.  Maybe it was because he knew a different version of the song, but whatever the cause by the end of the number he and the band were completely out of phase and the song collapsed in a shambles. In addition to this Kwame was not pulling  his weight  and when they played the last number, the one the controversy had been about, he played even more atrociously and so sabotaged it. Kojo was miserable afterwards, to have  made such as mess  on a television show – although he wasn’t to know how bad it was  until that evening when he saw the final result on television.

          After they had left the stage Kojo introduced himself to the leader of the cultural group who was supervising the packing of the  drums into  a tro-tro parked outside the studio. Kojo asked him whether such bands ever used a bass-guitar

‘No, I’ve never heard of one,’ replied the leader who was the guitarist and introduced himself as Mr. Addo. ‘We either use the bass gome drum, like we did today, or sometimes the premprensua.’ Seeing the puzzled look on Kojo’s face he elucidated. ‘It looks like a gome but it’s got five metal keys at the front which are plucked – it sounds just like a bass.

‘But can you play different scales with it?’ asked Kojo.

‘You can get a few but it’s a bit limited. That’s why I prefer a gome, it’s got a screw at the back  so we can change the pitch really fast. I’ve thought of using the bass-guitar though, but  it’s the expense that’s prevented me. My box guitar I can play raw but with the bass you need a special heavy-duty amp and speaker. Do you own your bass?

‘No, it belongs to the band.’ said Kojo with a dejected look.

‘If you have a bass and amplifier I would only be too pleased to try you out and see what sort of sound we could get.’ He saw Kojo’s interest and asked ‘do you have a box-guitar?’ Kojo nodded.

‘ O.K. I’ll tell you what, come down to some of our rehearsals with it. We won’t use any amplifiers.’

He proceeded to describe to Kojo how to get to his house in Osu  as he was clambering up onto  his lorry that was full of musicians and drums and ready to go. As they drove off Mr. Addo shouted to Kofo, ‘if you have trouble finding the place just ask anyone for the Ga Manche group.’

          Of course Kwame was sacked for his behaviour at the studio, Prince made sure of it and so consolidated his own power.  Davies couldn’t say anything, although he and Kwame had played together for some years.  Kojo too appreciated it was the only thing to do as Kwame had disgraced the band in a far worse way than had Tom-Tom.  In the drummer’s case it was only one number he had refused to play whereas Kwame has systematically wrecked every song in front of an audience far larger than the good-time girls and sailors who frequented the Equator Hotel.

          For about three weeks after the television show the band continued in a half-hearted and dispirited fashion.  Davies became more and more withdrawn and spent most of his time with his girl-friend, Karle.  Kojo began going to rehearsals at Addo’s place, but didn’t tell anyone. 

          It was this that kept Kojo’s musical spirit up, for the Black Dandies had almost ceased to play African music altogether.  He looked forward to his twice weekly rehearsals with the Mache group and developed a great respect for the leader, for Addo had built up the band from scratch and had gradually accumulated the instruments so that all were finally owned by him.  So there was no money-grabbing manager sticking his nose into the band’s affairs and thus the musicians were able to decide their own repertoire.  In many ways it reminded Kojo of the Super Riches guitar-band, for in both the manager and leader was one of the musicians, helped by a core of mature and tested musicians.  In the case of the Manche group Addo was helped by his wife who was the lead singer and dancer.  The other members were rather like apprentices and knew they had to slowly work their way up by hard work and patience. 

          What a difference from the Black Dandies, where the leadership was divided between Mama, Sam, Davies and now Prince; and anyone else who came along with a big enough ego.  Another difference between the two bands was that Addo gave Kojo room to experiment, for he valued a creative attitude.  Maybe if I was one of his drummers he would tell me how to play, Kojo thought, but as the bass was a new addition to the band Addo gave him plenty of breathing space.  They even worked on a couple of Afro-bets that Kojo had composed.  The only trouble was that there was little money in the band.  The musicians were in it for the love of music, rather than for cash or to catch the eyes of girls.  But the money problem was secondary to Kojo, for if he had a bass-guitar and amplifier he would join them on stage like a shot.

 

 

          As Kojo was returning home from Addo’s he bumped into Davies  arm-in-arm with Karle.  He told Kojo he would be back in a few minutes, after seeing his girl-friend off in a taxi.  Ten minutes later Davies walked into Kojo’s room.

          ‘I’m leaving the band, Kojo,’ he said abruptly.  ‘Sam is making it too difficult for me to run it, and now with Kwame gone…’

          ‘But you just can’t leave us like that,’ interrupted Kojo.

          ‘Prince can take over, he’s more or less the leader anyway.  He’s got more push than me.’

          ‘He’s power mad,’ replied Kojo, ‘and just wants to be a super-star. He’s too immature to run a band.’

          ‘I’ve made up my mind to go Kojo. And there’s another thing as well, Karle and I are engaged.’ Seeing Kojo’s surprise.  ‘Yes I know, I was the one who was always telling everyone not to stick with one women, but Karle’s different.  Also her father wants me to work at his engineering workshop.  If I can learn the ropes…well who knows?’

          ‘But how can you give up playing just like that, you’ve been playing band now for at least ten years.’

          ‘And every time for somebody else…There’s never ever any money in it unless you own your own instruments.  In my last band, it was called the Heavy Hustlers, we even recorded a record album of some of out own songs.  You know how much we each received all-told? Thirty-seven cedis!…Oh yes, plus the twenty cedis they gave us for transport to the studio, But mind you, I’m not going to completely stop music, you wait and see.  But I must get a decent job and then later I’ll come back to the music scene, in my own way ands not working for a fool like Sam again.’

          Kojo was sorry to hear this and it showed on his face.  ‘You’re sort of leaving me on my own,’ he said dejectedly, ‘I know I came with Prince but now he and I don’t agree at all.’  Kojo went on to tell Davies about his rehearsals with the Manche group.

          ‘Well, don’t go and do anything rash, like leave the Black Dandies before you have something else definite fixed up.  You might end up hungry.  I haven’t taken my decision lightly as I’ve been thinking about it for some time now, it’s just that I never told anyone. I finally saw Mama and Sam about it this evening and I’ve already packed, so I just wanted to say good-bye to you. But you wait, I’ll be playing again.’

          They shook hands and as Davies went to go he said ‘by the way, Kojo, I nearly forgot, my sister told me that Nashka’s in London.’

 

 

          Two weeks had passed since Davies left and his place was swiftly filled by the best of a flock of young guitarists who descended on the yard for a series of auditions.  Princes, of course, became leader and subsequently there was no question of composing their own original songs.  It was all a mad-long rush to learn the latest pop numbers.

          It was a Saturday evening at the Sun Night-Club, everything was ready for the night’s performance and Kojo was sitting musing at one of the still empty tables that ringed the open-air dance-floor.  Only a few people so far had trickled in.  The first band playing was the Rock Acid Stars, a large army dance-band from the nearby Burma Camp.  But they hadn’t started yet and all was still quiet, Kojo’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a familiar sounding voice.

          ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Mensah grinning and looming over him.  ‘I was looking for you everywhere, what are you doing in this dark corner all on your own?

          Kojo retained his glum look but was inwardly pleased to see his old friend.  He became more cheerful when Mensah told him that The Rock Acid Stars was his band and so he would be singing in just a few minutes,  ‘Mind you Kojo, I won’t be with them much longer.  I was meant to be joining my brother in London last month, but there were some last minute delays.  But now everything is fixed-up at his end so I’ll be leaving any day from now.’

          Kojo, gave him a knowing smile and said, ‘you’ve heard that Davies has left us?’

          ‘Yeah, someone told me he went and married that girl…and then joined the Seventh Day Adventists.  Now he’s the leader of their church band.  Playing gospel songs, hymns and all that stuff.’

          ‘Good luck to him I’ll say.  He’s lucky to be out of our group.  As for the rest of our band…’and he went on to tell Mensah all the troubles that had occurred since he had quit.

          ‘Just a bunch of small boys,’ was Mensah’s comments, ‘but if you think that you have troubles wait until you hear my story. I’ve been in the glass-house for two days. That’s military prison… And I’ll have to go and spend another day there when we finish this show.’ 

          Kojo was flabbergasted.  ‘Did you try and mutiny or something? Or desert?’

          ‘No, no, nothing like that.  It all started last Wednesday when we were playing at the university.  As you know I’m fairly good conga player.  The conga player of the band is also a good vocalist and so for a few numbers we swapped around.    The band-leader, he’s a sergeant, didn’t even notice at first, but when he did he went wild and told us to get back into line.  Then the next day he gave me and the other guy three days solitary for breaking military discipline.  We still have one day to go, but he had to let us out for the show tonight!

          ‘It’s lucky you weren’t drilled for three days.  Are they always so strict?

          ‘It’s a peculiar system they have.  When you first join the band they do drill you around for a few weeks and show you how to use a rifle, though I got out of it because of my leg.  Then the full-time rehearsals start.  And if you think Sam’s rehearsals are tiring you ought to come and see us sometime.  Six hours everyday, in full uniform and in the blazing sun.  we’re not even allowed to rest for a moment and if we show any sign of slackness the leader can punish us.

          ‘How can you stand it?’

          ‘Well, for one thing all the practice makes us a very heavy band, as you’ll see in a moment.  Then there’s no problem about whose the leader.  Also we get reasonable and regular pay and we don’t have to use any of it on rent.  And if you really do want to leave it’s not too difficult, you don’t have to desert.  I’ll stick with them until I go to the U.K.’ then seeing Kojo’s knowing smile again… ‘or until something else turns up. There is one main trouble with this band and that is they never record, and as you know I’m really a recording artist.’

          Kojo proceeded to tell Mensah how he had met a cultural group at the television studios and  had been rehearsing with them.  ‘The only problem is that they don’t have any heavy amplification, or a bass guitar,’ he concluded.

          ‘You know who you ought to go and see?’ suggested Mensah,’ go and see Mr. Sayid who runs the Ebi Tie Ye Night Club in Adabraka.  He’s been working along the lines that you’ve just described with his resident band at the club. They’re called Sankofa.  They don’t use any European drums, only indigenous ones.  But he does use the lead and bass guitars.  It’s a show-band with snake-dancers, fire-eaters, acrobats and so on.  Very soon they’re all going to Europe with a Nigerian musician, so Sayid wants to form another band for his club.  He’s starting auditions for it next week.  It would be a really interesting band for you to join and you wouldn’t have to worry about a place to stay as he’s got rooms at the back of the club.

          By this time the music had begun to start up and as Mensah got up to go he said jokingly, ‘I’d better go quickly or I’ll have to spend more than the next day in the cells if the sergeant notices.’

 

 

          A week had passed by since he had seen Mensah and Kojo had taken his friends advice and gone down to the Ebe Tie Ye one evening to watch Sankofa.  It was, as Mensah had described, electric guitars plus African drums. Plus an assortment of rattles, gong-gongs, a wooden xylophone and even a water drum made of half calabash, convex surface uppermost, floating in a giant calabash of water.

The band played in a small open-aired court-yard and there were several shows that night.  An agile limbo dance wriggled his way under a series of lower and lower bamboo poles, ending up managing to squirm underneath one resting on just two beer glasses.  After this he did a fire dance and bathed himself in and swallowed the flames of a burning torch.  Later two young women came to the floor wearing raffia skirts and covered in white clay.  One of them was carrying a large black pot on her head from which she took two snakes that she started to dance with in time to an agbadza beat.  Sometimes she would thrust the snakes at some of the audience who would squeal with fright and excitement.  One young man who wanted to show off to his friends made a grab for one of them and pulled it out of the dancer’s hand so that the snake fell to the ground.  He boasted to all around that the snakes were not real, but when it hit the ground it spun around madly and chairs flew over as people tried frantically to back away.  By stroking the serpent gently the dancer managed to calm it and pick it back up.  Everyone thought it a great act and Kojo suspected that the young man might have been part of it.

          The band played  wide selection of African music; Akan folk-songs and  highlifes, the agbadza of the Ewe people, local renditions of Afro-Cuban pachangas and Nigerian  Afro-beats. Many  of the songs Kojo had never heard before as they had been written by the band.  Sometimes during a song a large obese man, with a copper complexion and wearing a garish velvet blue suit and the colourful knee-length leather boots of the northern  Dagomba people, would get up from a table and ostentatiously give the band directions.  Once or twice he picked up two bent sticks and started beating out on the pair of talking drums that were standing at a forty-five degree angle on a stand in front of the band.  His banging was quite furious but it seemed to give the band some encouragement as they would visibly heave and strain when he was with them. 

          The band finished playing at one-thirty in the morning, after which people stayed on into the small hours of the morning at a discotheque situated in the air-conditioned interior of the club.  Kojo introduced himself there to an affable Sayid and told the club manager how impressed he was with Sankofa.  Sayid bought him a drink and Kojo went on to tell him about his experience with concert-bands, pop-bands and cultural groups.  Sayid suddenly cut him short and became very excited and telling Kojo that it was his intention to combine African music with pop and create a new international music.  He stopped  abruptly when someone called him away by, but before he went he told Kojo to come to the audition the following week.

          Back at Rebecca’s the following day there was trouble waiting for Kojo, for Prince had discovered that he had been rehearsing with the Manche group on the sly.  He was absolutely livid with Kojo.  ‘We’ve been together all this time and now you go and do this behind my back, planning to leave me in the lurch,’ he shouted. 

          ‘But I have no intention of joining them, I just went there to learn their way of playing…and besides I’m getting fed up with our boring old songs,’ he added defiantly.

          ‘What the hell do you see in that sort of music?  I don’t know why you bothered to leave Koforidua in the first place.  You’ll never get anywhere with that music…and you think the girls will follow you if you dress up in a cloth and play old-fashioned junk,’ he sneered derisively.  ‘You have to keep up with the times.’

          ‘But all sorts of people are getting interested in this music these days.  The leader of the Manche group has told me that even some of the university people have contacted him about making records.’

          ‘Records that’ll be kept in some university library.’

          ‘Not al all.  They say that this music is catching the interest of people overseas and there would be a good market for it there.’

          Are you crazy?  What do a bunch of stuffy old university people know about music, stuck out there in Legon,’ said Prince astounded. ’And how can anybody do modern dancing to that music?’

          Kojo would like to have explained his ideas of using the bass guitar with such a band to make it more danceable for young people. But what was the point, his friend had a one track mind.

          But before he could say anything Prince said bossily, ‘I don’t want you to go to anymore of those practices or else I’ll report you to Mama and Sam.  And also I’ll be keeping this from now on,’ he said snatching up his guitar that had been kept in Kojo’s room since they had arrived at Rebecca’s.  He left the room in a fury.

          Kojo’s mind was made up.  He would go to the audition at Sayid’s place on Wednesday and pray that he got the job.  But he wouldn’t say anything until then, as he had nowhere else to stay.  He promised himself that the day he got the job he would just walk out of the Black Dandies with no warning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE – SAYID

 

Kojo arrived outside the Ebe Tie Ye with his suitcase and for the first time really saw the place, as the previous time he had been so worried about the audition he had hardly noticed his surroundings.  The club was a two storied building, surrounded on all sides by a courtyard with high red walls.  Built into the side of the house was a tower which over-looked the place and which winked a green star at night.

          Kojo had to knock on the massive iron gate several times before an unwilling doorman came to open the smaller door built into the gate and asked him curtly what he wanted.  Kojo told him he was he new bass player for Zanoo Sounds and the gate-man reluctantly agreed to go and see the manager, told Kojo to wait and firmly locked the door.  Ten minutes passed by before the gate-man returned, let him in and took him across a large open yard.  To his right the courtyard had been roofed over with thatch and he was lead into its dim interior.  When Kojo’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom he could discern a multitude of small rooms, like black holes, leading off the from the main one.  Beyond this and out in the sunlight again was a tiny courtyard which embraced a pond and fountain and contained a number of round stone tables and benches.  The courtyard was backed by a yellow wall and they passed through an opening in it. The place was a bit of a maze

          Up to then Kojo had seen  one else in the whole place, but beyond this opening there was plenty of activity with half-a-dozen guys washing and ironing their cloths.

          ‘This is where you’ll be staying,’ said the gate-man a gruffly, pointing at a row of single rooms, which some of the men were going in and out of.  ‘These are the quarters and that tall guy with glasses is the band leader, Ringo.’ He left abruptly.

          ‘I’m the new bass player’ he said introducing himself to the lanky Ringo who was holding an iron.  He put it down and shook hands with Kojo.

          ‘Yeah, Sayid said we should expect you.  The others only moved in two days ago, after the Sankofa people left for England.  I was originally with them, but Sayid wanted me to stay and lead this group.  There’re six of us here, with you making seven.  Only one room is left so you’ll have to take that end one,’ he said pointing the room on the extreme right, next to the open-air bathroom.  ‘I’ll go and get you your key,’  went into his own room and came out brandishing the key that unlocked Kojo’s.

          ‘Have you seen Sayid yet?’ said Ringo as they went inside.

          ‘No, the gate-man brought me straight here,’ replied Kojo behind him.

          The room appeared tiny as Ringo threw open the wooden shutters.  ‘He’s probably asleep, he doesn’t usually get up until around eleven or twelve.

          Kojo saw that the window opened out onto the back wall of the club, only three feet or so away.  It let in an awful stench from the open gutter that ran between the wall and the row of rooms, but Ringo didn’t seem to notice it.

          As they went to leave Ringo said amiably, ‘let me introduce you to every one.’

          After the introductions Kojo asked Ringo, ‘have you started rehearsing yet?’

          ‘No, the others only met Sayid briefly yesterday.  He said he didn’t want to talk to us until we’re complete.  The only guy who’s been around is that bastard on the door.  Calls himself Scar-face.  Because there’s so many new guys around he’s getting swell-headed.  Even though I was here ages before he came he pretends he doesn’t know me. And he’s been keeping the others waiting outside for sometimes for half-an-hour, before he’ll let them in. He’s one of Ali’s brothers,’ he’s concluded laughing and looking and at a very black complexioned member of the band who was sitting on one of the door-steps, his face a mass of scars.   

          ‘He’s not my brother, as well you know.  He’s from Tamale and I’m from Bolgatanga.’

          ‘Ali is the best calabash player around, isn’t that so, Ali? Ringo said with a trace of patronage in his voice.  Ali refused to comment but sat proudly looking into space.

          ‘He made a record with some modern jazz group from the States,’  Ringo told Kojo.

          ‘Oh yes, I’ve heard of him.  I remember reading about it in the paper last  year,’ replied Kojo and then turning to Ali ‘but I thought you went to America with them?’

          ‘The Art Institute wouldn’t allow me to go,’ said Ali bitterly, ‘I was on a two year contract with them and even though I met the Americans through them they wouldn’t release me.’ Ali now looked totally wretched.  ‘They completely spoiled my chances.’

          Scar-face came back to the narrow courtyard in front of the rooms and imperiously told everybody to follow him.  When Ringo asked where to Scar-face turned around and glared at him.  The all followed him out of their narrow compound, turned right at the opening in the wall and accompanied him up some stairs in the main central building. This opened up onto a marbled veranda where they were told to wait.

          They waited for almost an hour in comfortable arm-chairs before Sayid came out from an inside room.  He looked the worst for wear, yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.  He glanced at every one with a mean look, but said nothing.  He spluttered, coughed and spat the phlegm over the veranda wall.  He looked almost grey, thought Kojo as Sayid lifted up a pet monkey in his arms and started fondling it.

          Get me my stuff quickly,’ said Sayid to Scar-face, who scurried off and returned in seconds with a small parcel, Sayid grabbed it and opened it, revealing a pile of yellow Indian Hemp leaves and a packet of cigarettes.  He opened the packet and took out one of the ready rolled joints.  He was about to light it when the monkey tried to snatch it.  Be became so furious with the small creature, he slapped it twice and threw it bodily against a wall, where it remained cowering in a corner.  Sayid took a few puffs on joint which seemed to unloosen his tongue.

          ‘I’m only giving you one week to get ready.  By this time next week you’ll have eight songs polished, so that you can start playing at the club.  You’ll be starting off with some of Sankofa’s numbers.  Ringo knows them and I’ve also got them on tape.  Later, we’ll all work on some completely new songs.’  All this was barked out as a series of staccato sentences.  After he had finished he relaxed and offered everyone a smoke.  Most of them accepted.

          ‘The Sankofa people will be away on tour of Europe and the Middle-East for three months, that’s why I want another band.  I’ve sent them with Danny Okoro, he’s a Nigerian friend of mine.’

 By this time the monkey had nervously come back to Sayid and he was fondling it again.  He noticed everyone watching him and roughly threw the monkey down, as if embarrassed to show any sign of gentle feelings.  ‘Bastard animal, one day I’ll hang him by his balls,’ he said in a guttural voice and everyone laughed politely as they were rather intimidated by Sayid.  Scar-face was all the time standing behind Sayid’s chair, looking like a bull-dog with his bald pugnacious head and small but powerfully built body.  Sayid told him to call Jimmy.

          ‘Jimmy’s my secretary,’ he told the musicians, ‘he’ll be looking after you.  He’ll take you down-stairs where we keep the instruments.  You’ll start rehearsals there this afternoon.’

          ‘Can we use the air-conditioning, Sayid?’ said Ringo ingratiatingly.

          ‘No., it’s good for you to sweat at rehearsals, it gives you more feelings…,’ then pausing.  ‘Look, if it gets too hot for your sensitive skin, Ringo, you can open the sliding door.’

          Jimmy, a small nervous looking man sporting a goatee beard came onto the veranda.         He waited until Sayid spoke to him ‘Jimmy, these are the new boys who you’ll be looking after.  Give them ten cedis each will you.’  Jimmy pulled out a thick was of notes and gave each of the musicians a  note.  ‘I’ll be paying you twenty cedis a week,’ Sayid continued, ‘but that’ll be only when you start playing…O.K. you can go now.’  And the musicians were dismissed.

          Jimmy led them down-stairs into the gloomy club and switched on the hidden lighting.  It was poky place with a low false ceiling made of stiff blue canvas and the wall covered in glowing psychedelic posters.  The bar and stage were at opposite ends.  As they moved about there was a flurry of movement above the false ceiling.  ‘Rats,’ said Ringo to the others.

          ‘I’ll open the screen,’ said Jimmy producing a huge bunch of keys and with much pulling and panting slid apart the concertina doors at the back of the stage, which opened out onto yet another courtyard.  He went out for a few minutes and came back with a cassette tape-recorder, by which time Ringo had adjusted the public address amplifier.  He placed one of its microphones on the speaker of the tape-recorder and switched on.  The eight songs that they had to learn boomed out through the P.A. speakers.

          ‘That last Afro-beat was written by Sayid,’ he told the others, after the tape had finished.

          ‘I didn’t know he was a musician,’ said  remarked Cornelius, a heavy-set musician from the Volta Region.

          Ringo and Jimmy looked at each other and chuckled, but didn’t elucidate. 

          The band played three of the numbers that afternoon.  Ringo played the gong-gong, upturned calabash and bass drum, seated on a stool.  This combination of percussion instruments replaced the trap-drums in the band but like them was played with drum-sticks.  He also sang and could play the bass guitar a little and so was able to show everyone their parts.  Cornelius played the maraccas and bamboo flute.  There were two conga players.  One was Tetteh who had an incredibly deep voice and came from a family of famous Ga fetish drummers. He had huge knurled hands and played with great power.  The alto congoist was completely the opposite, a small beady-eyed man called Kpakpoe, who played with such a light touch that he was told by Ringo to use sticks.  The lead guitarist, Frank, was a tall thin nervous individual who played his guitar very gingerly.  Ali played or rather shook the northern calabash, the one with the beads inside, rather than netted on the outside as with the maraccas.  He had to work hard to fit his Fra-Fra rhythms in with some of the southern rhythms the band was playing, such as the Ewe agbadza.

          Half-way through the rehearsal Scar-face stormed  in and demanded the tape-recorder from Jimmy who was sitting in a corner listening.

          ‘And make sure you give me the keys afterwards,’ bellowed the burly security man swaggering out as if he owned the place.

          ‘Don’t mind him,’ said Jimmy nonchalantly to the musicians who had stopped playing, ‘all of Sayid’s security-men are like this and none of them last very long.’

          After they finished at five o’clock Jimmy told them that they should rehearse everyday from twelve to five; not any earlier a Sayid would be disturbed by the noise, his bed-room being directly over the stage.

          ‘When the club re-opens next week’ Jimmy continued ‘you’ll be up to four in the morning every night except Mondays, so probably you won’t want to get up too early anyway.’

          After the rehearsal the seven musicians went outside to buy rice and beans from a roadside seller and returned to eat it on the stone tables in the small courtyard.

          After they had eaten and drunk from the tap near the fountain Ringo brought out two joints. ‘I knicked these from Sayid’s packet when he wasn’t looking,’ he said gleefully.’

          As they were smoking a midget came into the courtyard, waving his arms around and making grunting noises.  ‘Meet Tago,’ he told everyone, ‘he’s the deaf and dumb mascot of the club. He’s also a pilot boy on the sly.’  He mouthed the word pilot-boy to Tago who got into such  a temper that he began  jumping up and down in a miniature rage. He could obviously lip-read.  Ringo then tried to introduce him to the others but Tago kept jumping around and seemed intent on punching the band leader who laughingly parried his blows.

          ‘You’re not allowed to sit here,’ shouted Scar-face, suddenly descending on the group.  ‘Get behind the wall where you belong.’

          ‘But the club’s closed down so how can it matter?’ whined Ringo. 

          ‘Sayid told me that you boys aren’t allowed to sit anywhere in the club, and this is part of the club.  You’d better move or I’ll report you all to him.’  By the end of the tirade he was screaming and showering spittle all over the table and over the cringing Ringo in particular.  Ringo led everyone away leaving Scar-face scowling at them with red eyes and arms akimbo.

          ‘He’s just annoyed because he’s been put on the gate.  The other one was sacked last week.  Being the security man of the place, he thinks he’s too great to be a mere gate-man’ commented Ringo.

          They rehearsed for four days, only catching an occasional glimpse of Sayid upstairs on the balcony.  But they often heard his voice bellowing out orders.  Jimmy was always around as he stayed in a room downstairs in the club; as did Scar-face.  Jimmy was a helpful type in a rather detached and preoccupied way.  He was always rushing off somewhere or other on vital business errands.  Scar-face also became a little more reasonable after a young compatriot of his had taken over the main gate duties.

          On the fifth day Sayid and Tago came in during a rehearsal, followed by a tall, graceful man with a fluffy Afro hair-cut.  Sayid waved his hands and the music stopped.

          ‘This is Paris,’ said Sayid introducing the man, ‘he’s a fashion designer from New York.  We’ll be doing a fashion show in the club next week and you’ll have to supply the music for the models…  Now let’s hear what you’ve been doing.  Play my Afro-beat first.’

          They did so and Sayid stood watching with a proud smirk on his face. ‘And now the slow agbadza.’

          They had hardly started when Sayid let out a piercing scream and rushed up to Kpakpoe and three inches from his nose shouted, ‘who the hell is this mother-fucker?  Is he living or dead?  I said play you bastard.’

          They started off again but Kpakpoe had become so unnerved that he began shaking like a jelly and couldn’t take his eyes from Sayid’s enraged and pig-like eyes.  Sayid rushed up again and pushed him away forcibly and grabbed the sticks.  ‘Play man, like this,’ he said to the thoroughly frightened and confused Kpakpoe.  Sayid proceeded to bash out on the drums a raucous and crude approximation of the complex cross-rhythmic beat the rest of he band was playing, which of course completely confused them.  Everybody halted, not knowing how to continue.

          ‘You’re all a load of shit. I want you to rehearse the numbers all day and if by tomorrow you’re no better I’ll sack the lot of you.’  And with that Sayid left followed by the diminuitive Tago and the tall willowy Afro-American.

          ‘Good God, is that how he is!’ Kojo exclaimed.

          ‘How are we meant to follow him  when he plays basa-basa like that, it was complete pandemonium,’ said Tetteh who had been unable to make head nor tail of Sayid’s absurd playing.

          ‘Sorry about that Kpakpoe, I should have warned you,’ said Ringo to the unnerved conga player.  ‘He’s always like that, especially with new people, but you’ll get used to it.  Whenever he waves his arms or tells us to stop, he’s just giving signs.  He wants us to stop for a break, but doesn’t know where exactly.  It’s up to us to stop at the right place. If just follow his instructions blindly it will mess up everything, like what happened just now.’

          ‘But I thought you said he was a musician?’ Kojo asked.

          ‘Well…in a way.  We play the song and he shouts a bit, then we re-arrange things.  That way he thinks he’s arranged it.  That’s why I call him a by force musician.’

          ‘But he was playing that agbadza rhythm backwards’ said an incredulous Tetteh, but Ringo just shrugged.

          ‘What about the Afro-beat?  He said he wrote it,’ asked Kojo.

          ‘We were messing about jamming one day and he heard us upstairs and rushed down stoned out of his mind.  He liked the song so much he arranged it there and then, and then did another one.  So he did make the arrangements.’

          ‘A bit one way if you ask me,’ said Frank.

          ‘All his songs are like that, if we try and put in a middle break he says people can’t  dance to it…  We have to all keep cool and be diplomatic with him.  At least he’s trying out some new sounds, which is more than can be said for all the other music promoters around.’

          They rehearsed well into the evening, until Scar-face came down and told them Sayid wanted them to stop as he had visitors from the press.

          The following day Sayid came to listen to them again, this time in a more friendly mood.  He joined in on the talking drums for one song, thinking he was giving them encouragement.  He most  certainly added power to the music but his beat was hammered out in an incessant and repetitious way.  During another song he picked up the bamboo flute and played.  His melody had little resemblance to the song as he was simply going up and down the chromatic scale.  Frank tried to put in a small guitar solo and Sayid turned to him and told him nastily to keep to a straight beat.

          ‘We’ll do this number when we open on Wednesday,’ Sayid said afterwards to the musicians who groaned inwardly, ‘that is if you can keep a steady rhythm.  Let’s try again.’

          Sayid’s relationship with the band’s music reminded Kojo of the times he had sat in a tro-tro in a lorry park.  Sometimes the next lorry would pull away and for a moment he would think it was he who was moving.  Then with the lorry gone, he would find himself still stationary.  That’s how Sayid was with the music.  He would play a simple one-way beat, or a vague melody, whilst the other musicians would propel the music by weaving  around him.  But Sayid would loose his sense of perspective, as in the stationary tro-tro, and think it was he who was spinning and moving the song.  Everyone just humoured him.

          After playing with the band for almost two hours Sayid became tired and seemed satisfied. ‘Come upstairs at eight o’clock,’ he told them as he left.

          When they arrived upstairs that evening Sayid was sitting with Paris, Tago and a young man whom he introduced as the music and fashion reporter of the Daily Voice.  Sayid waved the musicians to sit and continued talking to the press-man who was taking down everything in a note-book.

          ‘That’s right, we’re re-opening the club on Wednesday at eight o’clock with a fashion parade by Paris.  And these are my new band-boys.  You know Ringo already, he was with Sankofa, but I kept him back to lead Zanoo Sounds.’

          Sayid gave Paris and the press-man some drinks.  Tago made a sign that he too would like to drink but Sayid started to punch him in fun.  Tago snarled and made some peculiar noises and brought his arms up in Kung-Fu position, so Sayid slapped him a few times, hitting harder each time.

          Tago was becoming infuriated but Sayid forgot him when the door opened and in came his cousin Salim, who  showed more Syrian blood in his face than did Sayid.  They were very good friends and were doing business together, running a musical equipment store and a number of jack-pot gambling machines.

 They had much to talk about, but Tago, with his back to the door, hadn’t seen the new arrival and so continued struggling and grabbed Sayid’s leg as he got up to greet his cousin.  Sayid had quite forgotten the midget, until he tried to cross the room and found him hanging on grimly to his leg.  Annoyed, Sayid picked Tago above his head and dropped him on the bed.  The poor little fellow was completely dazed.  The two cousins laughed uproariously, Paris gave a hollow troubled laugh and Ringo sniggered.

          The jack -pot machines at the Golden Cup have been tampered with again,’ said Salim becoming serious, ‘there’s hardly any coins in them.’

          ‘O.K., we’d better discuss it later,’ said Sayid, ‘come and meet the new band.’

 Salim greeted everyone with gusto.  He was a rather short but well muscled man in his middle thirties, about ten years younger than Sayid.    He even tried to cheer Tago up, who was sitting glumly in a chair, by ruffling the midgets’s Afro hair-cut, but Tago would have none of it.

          ‘Sankofa will be in London now,’ said Sayid to the eager young press-man.  ‘they’ll stay there for three weeks, then go on to Holland and Germany for another three weeks or so.  Danny Okoro’s got plenty of contacts in West Germany, so after another month of touring the middle-east they’ll probably go back to Germany before finally returning to Ghana.’

          ‘Can you tell me more about Danny Okoro?’ asked the pressman.

          ‘He’s a friend of mine from Lagos.  He does cabaret shows at top nightclubs there.  He composes, sings and dances.  He does his dance routine with two Afro-sexy dancers who do the fire-dance.  They came and stayed with me about two months ago when we first arranged the tour.’

          Sayid gave the reporter some photographs of the Sankofa group with the three Nigerians and pointed out one of them to him.  ‘Print this one,’  he ordered, picking out one in which he was featured in the centre of the group wearing a possessive and conceited smile.  ‘I also want you to give publicity for the jam-session nights we will be holding every Thursday, starting the day after the fashion show.  Zanoo Sounds will be playing, but anyone is welcome to jam with them…  And make sure you bring a photographer on both nights.’

          The music reporter got up to go, Paris nimbly leapt to his feet and gave him a silken good-bye and then Sayid saw the journalist out.

 Salim began to chat in a friendly way with the musicians and asked them about the various bands they had played with before coming to the club.  He discovered that Tetteh and Cornelius had never played with  modern bands before, having been cultural musicians, whereas Frank and Kpakpoe had played with some of he larger  dance-orchestras.  Ali of course told him the sad story about the Arts Institute and the American jazz musicians.  Kojo was able to tell Salim that he had played with both guitar-bands and cultural groups, and was interested in combining the best features of both. 

          ‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to do here,’ interrupted Salim in an excited voice.  ‘A few years ago Sayid and myself were running the student pop band competitions.  Soul, rock ‘n’ roll and all that imported stuff…but now………’

          ‘Telling them  how we started?’ interrupted Sayid coming in and immediately becoming the centre of attention again.  ‘There’s absolutely no money in copy-right music.  What I want to do is to make this place into an international tourist spot with creative African music and shows.  We’ve even thatched the outside courtyards and put in bamboo furniture.  I got the idea after seeing the popularity of Osibisa and Fela with foreign audiences.  Foreigners hardly want to come to Africa just to hear  copies of their own music…  Lagos  has got its African Shrine, so we we’ll have ours in Accra as well.  When I first started this idea I was just using local cultural groups with floor-shows, but the sound wasn’t heavy enough, so I added bass guitar.  That’s how I started Sankofa. The name means “go back and retrieve” as I want my bands to project the African heritage.’

          ‘That’s what we were trying to do in the Manche cultural Group.  I was putting the bass inside,’ said Kojo passionately.

          Sayid raised an eyebrow, as if disbelieving anyone else could have an  original idea.  ‘I want my band to be one stage more African than Osibisa,’ he continued, completely ignoring Kojo’s remark.  ‘Maybe later we will record…but not yet.’

          At this point there was a discreet knock on the door and Scar-face came in like a boxer on tip-toes, swept a haughty glance across the musicians and announced that three ladies were outside the gate saying that they were expected.  Sayid told him to let them in and asked the musicians to leave.  Tago was asleep on a chair with his head thrown back and so Sayid with a devilish glint in his eye, went up and poured ice-cold water down the unsuspecting midget’s open mouth.  Tago awoke with a splutter and a enraged look, but when he saw Sayid looming above him it turned into a weak grin.  Sayid pulled him roughly from the chair and booted him out of the room, so that he went scuttling after the musicians in his tiny guarantee shoes.

          ‘I didn’t think he’d better stay,’ cackled Sayid to Paris and Salim. He can hardly reach up to a girl’s waist.’

          As the musicians were passing down the stairs, followed by Tago, whose large head seemed to wobble on his diminutive body, they passed Scar-face leading three smart woem up.  Ringo greeted one of them, but was ignored.  However when the girls saw Tago they made a big fuss of him and one of them put her arms around him.

          ‘You’d better be careful, Beauty,’ said the tall slim northern girl, whom Ringo had greeted as Fatimah, ‘or he’ll spark.’  The women disappeared from view laughing coarsely.

          ‘He knows how to screw, don’t you Tago? said Ringo making obscene motions with his hips to Tago who was seated with the others in the small courtyard.  Tago dived at him but Ringo dodged out of the way.  Still laughing Ringo continued. ‘But it’s true.  When Sankofa was in Kumasi he be-friended one of the bar-girls.  I suppose she felt sorry for him.  He didn’t turn up  until ten o’clock the next morning.  He held us up for almost two hours.  And you should have seen the grin on face. Isn’t that so Tago?  He mouthed these last words at Tago who glowered back at him.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TEN - BASA-BASA

 

          It was opening night, the sliding doors had been thrown open and they were about to play to an opulent audience seated around tables underneath palm-trees lit-up with coloured bulbs.

          ‘These people will vanish after the fashion parade.  You just wait and see,’ said Ringo knowingly to Kojo on stage, ‘they’re only here to get their faces in the papers. Afterwards the place will fill-up with hustlers and good-time girls.’

          They only had to play the eight numbers they had been rehearsing then, after a break, back the parading models with a slow  agbadza.  They had rehearsed so often that Kojo had no worries, but a few moments after they started, he knew that there was something drastically wrong with the tuning of Frank’s guitar.  After the first number, during which Frank’s instrument dropped even more in pitch, they tried to briefly stop to retuned – which annoyed Sayid who wanted them to rush on to the next song without a pause.

          But the same thing happened again, they started off in perfect pitch, but Frank gradually went off-key.  They had to tune up once again, with Sayid getting more furious, but again they went out of tune.  Kojo realised what was happening, but couldn’t stop.  Frank had put on a new set of strings just a few minutes before playing, but forgot to over-tight them to take out all the stretch  before the final tuning.  After the third song Kojo asked Frank to pass over the guitar so that he could fix it properly.

Sayid saw them stop again and with Frank in the act of unslinging his guitar he mouthed at them in a  hoarse whisper so that none of the audience could hear, ‘carry on you bastards,’ over and over again. Kojo was unable to explain that he could solve the whole problem in less than a minute as Sayid’s growlings were getting louder and louder.

          In a rage, and with his back to the audience, Sayid grabbed the talking drum sticks and beat out a fast-rhythm, so the musicians had to start up.  Everyone around politely clapped, not realising what was happening. The band began following Sayid’s rabid drumming with a highlife, played at least as twice as fast as usual in order to keep up with him.  They also started off out of tune, so by the end they were in a complete mess.  Even the up to then passive audience was beginning to squirm in their seats.

          Before they had time to start on another song Sayid was on stage announcing through the microphone that there would be a short intermission before the main event.  There was a little subdued clapping and  flashlights popped.  Sayid led the musicians through the sliding door partition into the club, where there were just a few people drinking at the bar table.

          ‘Are you trying to disgrace me, you were perfectly all right this afternoon,’ said an exasperated Sayid.  Kojo explained what had happened and Sayid lashed out at Frank for his incompetence, who literally seemed to shrivel up.  He grabbed Frank’s guitar, handed it to Kojo and told him to tune it so it wouldn’t slip anymore.

          They played reasonably well for the fashion show, although Frank was so timid he played for the whole half an hour facing his amplifier and with his back to the audience.  Paris was the compere of the  show giving details of the various designs he had created as each of the five models pirouetted around the floor in turn.  He had trained them all himself and had chosen only the slimmest and most striking young Ghanaian men and women.

          After they had finished and as Ringo had predicted, the worthy audience melted away and was replaced by a much younger set, including a few Europeans.  The sliding partition was closed and the club’s disc jockey started up the record player in the dark gloom of the now fully air-conditioned club, the only light coming from the bar and the disc jockey’s recess in the wall.

          ‘Isn’t that one of the girls we saw going upstairs to Sayid’s?’ Kojo asked Ringo, who was sitting at a table drinking a beer.

          ‘Yes, but don’t bother her now, she’s on business.  Later, if she doesn’t manage to find anyone, she’ll be more friendly.  You must remember that in the club we are the lowest of the low.’

          Kojo went outside to where the jack-pot machines were being played by determined looking men and women, watched by a crowd totally absorbed in the results.  As he was standing there a hand tapped him on the shoulder and a voice drawled out, ‘hey, aren’t you one of the musicians?’  He turned to find a heavily built and bearded Afro-American grinning at him. ‘I saw your difficulties out there tonight, hasn’t your guitarist ever changed a set of strings before?’

          Kojo thought for a moment and then replied in all seriousness, ‘no, you see Sayid bought us a new sret specially for the show. A  complete set now costs more than fifteen cedis and so we usually change them one at a time. So he probably hasn’t.’

          The American said, ‘well, I like what you’re trying to do, but who was that crazy idiot who was messing you around with his drumming?’

          ‘ That’s Sayid.  He’s the manager of the whole place…and of the band.  But he’s too by heart.’

          ‘By heart?’

          ‘I mean he’s too wild, does things without thinking…I suppose you would call it spontaneous.’

          ‘If you stretched a point you could call his behaviour spontaneous,’ said the American looking rather doubtful, ‘but in New York, that’s where I’m from, we musicians encourage a different sort of spontaneity.  Have you heard of free-form jazz?’

          ‘No’, replied Kojo.  

          ‘I used to play that sort of music a couple of years back.  There’s no rules, everyone plays what they want so that we put together a musical mode.’  Seeing Kojo’s blank expression he went on to explain.’  Yeah, a mode. It’s a sound that  creates a certain spiritual mood or emotion.

          ‘It has power inside, you mean?’ and the American nodded.  ‘But you must use some sort of rules or it would just be a horrible noise, like what Sayid was doing.’

          ‘No, we don’t.  We play in any key and in uneven rhythms.  Ever heard of five-four or nine-eight time?’  Again Kojo looked blank.  ‘Hell, we even used to play in those all the  time.’

          ‘Then you must have had the rules already inside you before you started up,’ said Kojo.

          ‘No, we were just a bunch of guys who decided to come together as a band.  We were all like brothers.’

          ‘Well if you treated each other as brothers then that’s the same as rules.  It means you had an understanding in the band.’

          ‘But we were completely free when it came to the music.’

          ‘But how can you separate them?……I mean the music from the understanding you had?……’

          The conversation faltered at this point and so the Afro-American introduced himself as Franklin James, or Olu as he preferred to be called.  He explained to Kojo that he and another American friend had just arrived at the Legon campus to study traditional African drums at the African Institute.

          ‘We heard that this place was experimenting with African drums,’ he elucidated.  We’d already been to a few regular dances in Accra but we don’t like all this nineteen-fourties sounding highlife they play. And the pop bands here are crap.’

          ‘What about guitar-bands?  Have you seen any of them?  Kojo inquired.

          ‘No, we haven’t.  What are they like?’

          ‘Plenty of percussion. Congas, bongos and trap-drums, plus guitars and electric bass….oh yes, sometimes a bass drum.  There are dozens of bands around like this. In fact out band is a type of guitar-band, although we use African drums instead of the traps.’

          ‘Yeah, I was impressed by the way you use the traditional drums,’ commented Olu.

          ‘Tomorrow is jam-session night so why don’t you come down here and play with us?’

          ‘Sure, that’ll be great, but let me buy you a drink, you probably feel like one after that work-out.’

          They sat down and drank a beer but after a short while Olu said he wanted to go as he wasn’t interested in canned disco music, preferring live music anyday.

          It was getting late, around two-thirty in the morning, and most of those left were women  who hadn’t managed to pick up a client.  As Ringo had said they got more friendly and Kojo noticed he, together with  Kpakpoe and Cornelius, were sitting  at a table in a dark alcove with some of the girls who had given up for the night.  Ringo was still drinking and Kojo wondered where he got the money.

          ‘Hey Kojo,’ said Ringo calling Kojo over, ‘you know what Beauty’s been telling us about Fati, you remember the tall dark one.  Well, the hospital authorities came and took her away a couple of days ago.  She’s got TB and she was meant to go into hospital more than a year ago, but she refused to go and changed addresses.  But in the end they found her place and took her for treatment by force.’

          ‘It’s true,’ said Beauty, ‘it was my flat she was staying at, but I didn’t know anything about her being sick.  They dragged her away screaming.  And then the doctor said everyone in the flat would have to be injected against it.  Look,’ she said proudly showing everyone a miniscule elastoplast stuck on her left fore-arm.

          As she had been speaking Ringo had furtively put his arm around her, but as she was showing everyone her injection she noticed his intimacy.  ‘What do you think you’re doing,’ she said as Ringo was on the point of burrowing his face in her bosom.  She pushed the drunken musician away and he looked at her meanly through glasses all eschew.

          ‘Stop drinking my beer then,’ he replied spitefully, ‘I’ve seen you often enough let some big-man touch you up after buying you a few drinks.  So why not me?’

          She started appealing to her friends and as they all started shouting Kojo slipped away and went to bed.

          The next day Said sacked Frank and Kojo wasn’t unhappy to see him go as he was a timid player.  He tended to face his loud-speaker, a musical mirror so to speak, and so only produced a thin trickle of sound, often disconnected from the thunderous rhythms of the rest of the band. Occasionally he was brilliant.  Ringo had to rush out and bring back a friend of his, called Lamptey, who wanted to play guitar for the band but had been sick when the audition had taken place. 

 Lamptey came and rehearsed with them that very afternoon and they discovered that he could play practically every instrument in the band. He was a well-built, square-jawed man, who came in wearing a simple flowing African gown and knee length leather boots.  Kojo took an instant liking to this guy who seemed to know exactly what he was doing.  Even that first day he had them doing one of his own compositions an agbadza sung in English he called ‘Africa Awake.’  He was completely opposite to the retiring Frank and even Sayid must have been impressed, for he didn’t blast him as he usually does new people.  He just told Lamptey, after he had finished singing the song, that it would need a little arranging to make it commercial.

          The jam-session that evening turned out to be very interesting, for as they were playing some of their numbers, Olu and his white friend came in and both of them took spells on the congas.  Then a sax player from Broadcasting House came and jammed with them.

          At one point, when they were really cooking the session got so exciting that a white woman started dancing about wildly in her bare feet.  She crashed into several tables so that bottles broke and scattered about the floor.  She just continued dancing, not noticing that she had cut her feet on the broken glass, so that she began to skid around the empty dancing area, watched by amazed onlookers.  She seemed to be completely mesmerized by the complex cross-beats created by the Ghanaian and American musicians.  Her friends had to stop her when they noticed she was sliding around not in the spilt beer but her own blood.  In spite of his she insisted that she wanted to continue but her friends bundled her out dripping blood .

          There was a break after this while the dance-floor had to be cleared and sponged down, then a trio composed of a trap-drummer, saxophonist and bassist took over from Zanoo Sounds to cool the place down with some nostalgic old highlife and swing numbers.

          Olu and his compatriot, whom he introduced as Adam Bernstein, were sitting at a table with the Zanoo musicians when Sayid came over to them.

          ‘That was some heavy playing,’ he said, ‘I never thought I would see Americans play like that.’

          Kojo explained to Sayid who they were and the manager asked them to come down to the club for some rehearsals so that they could work on a few numbers.  Olu said he would do so but Adam said it was impossible.

          ‘I would like to, but I can’t.  You see I have to go up to Yendi to do my field-work on Dagomba drumming, so I won’t be staying in Accra much.’

          The Zanoo musicians were fascinated by the tales the two conga drummers told them. Adam described how he had lived in a Cuban and Puerto Rican area in New York and had played with Afro-Cuban bands there.  He explained that this was what had started him on conga drums.  Later on he had gone to Haiti to research into music that had originally come from Africa and this in turn had brought him to West Africa.

 Olu, on the other hand, told them that he was a professional musician and that he had come to Legon, not so much to do research as to learn different styles of African drumming.  He had done session work n recording studious with many famous American musician like Aretha Franklin and Miles Davies and had just been  on tour of Europe with Nina Simone.  But now he wanted to study traditional drumming so he could utilise the rhythms for recordings he was going to do with a jazz combo he would set up when he returned home.  The two drummers had been friends in New York and had planned the visit to Ghana together.

          ‘Did you bring any conga drums, I mean proper ones made of fibre-glass?’  asked Kpakpoe hopefully.

          ‘No,’ said Olu, ‘neither of us did.  Adam knew he would be travelling a lot and I wanted to concentrate on pure African drums.’

          The musicians were disappointed by this, for although their band had two sets of wooden conga drums, the fibre-glass ones were almost impossible to get hold of in Ghana.

          Ringo said, ‘it’s funny to see a white playing African drums like you did tonight, Adam.  It would never have happened in the old days.  The early missionaries even tried to stop us playing them.’

          Olu and Adam laughed and Olu said, ‘they even have courses now at American Universities in African music, but it wasn’t always like that in our country either.  When jazz first started-up the government tried to prevent whites from listening to it as they thought it would contaminate the youth.’

          ‘Now we’re all contaminated,’ joked Adam.

          ‘Politicians are always like that,’ Olu went on, ‘they hate to see anything that unites people, they’ll always try and crush it.’

          ‘Or buy it off.  Tin Pan Alley and all that over-commercialised crap,’ added Adam.

          ‘ There’s never been much discrimination in music here,’ said Kojo.  ‘It’s true that at first the missionaries thought our music barbaric and tried to force hymns and classical music down our throats, but later on many of the Christian churches started to use African drums.  Like the Pentecostal and Apostolic churches.’

          ‘We have those in America too, you know,’ commented Olu.

          ‘It’s interesting what you said about contamination though,’ said Lamptey to Olu, ‘because something like that has been happening here in the last few months.  Some of the big-men have been condemning pop music in the newspapers and at speeches.  They say it’s spoiling the youth with ideas like romantic love and lack of respect for the elders. They absolutely hate to see Afro and psychedelic fashions.  They’ve even decided to ban school dances altogether in the Western Region.’

          ‘That’s a funny twist,’ said Adam.

          ‘You see divide and rule again,’ Olu said.  ‘No, we musicians must all stick together and not get boxed into corners by out leaders.’

          The trio, members of the Radio Orchestra, finished and it was time for Zanoo Sounds to play a few more numbers.  Again Olu and Adam jammed with them and again there was plenty of scintillating energy from their overlapping rhythms.  Afterwards an excited Sayid came up to the Americans and forced Olu to commit himself to come to rehearsal the following Tuesday.

 

 

          The band played again on Saturday night, but there was no jam-session as this was the busiest night, especially for the working women.  Ali did a floor-show at the end of the first half with his calabash.  He stepped off-stage onto the court-yard and, backed by drums, gave a ten minute virtuoso performance on his calabash, bouncing it off various parts of his body while he danced and sang.  He even raised his leg and threw the calabash through it and across his back, all the time keeping perfect rhythm.  Everyone was enthralled by this northern display of musical acrobatics.

          During the break some of the musicians were sitting down when Sayid came up to them. ‘That was a very nice performance, Ali,’ then noticing he hadn’t any beer on the table, ‘haven’t you got your beer?’

          ‘I don’t have money for beer, manager,’ replied Ali.

          ‘What do you mean, Ringo is meant to give you all a mini-beer each, after every performance, it’s on the house,’ Seeing Ringo squirming in his seat and not wanting to get involved in an internal band quarrel Sayid said, ‘Oh well, it’s your palaver,’ and left.

          ‘So that’s why you always seemed to have so much beer! shouted Kojo.       ‘What sort of bandleader are you to steal from your own musicians?’ and every one at the table started denouncing Ringo.

 Attracted by the noise Freddie, the disc jockey, came up to them. ‘So they caught you out at last, Ringo?’ he said chuckling, then speaking to the others.  ‘Now the cat’s out of the bag there’s no harm in telling you what he’ been doing with your beers.  He drinks as many as he can and he ones he can’t force down his throat he sells back to the bar-man -  and they split the money between them.’

          ‘Then why the hell didn’t you tell us before?’ Lamptey demanded angrily.

          ‘It was none of my business,’ retorted the disc jockey disdainfully. 

          This disgrace, rather than humbling Ringo, rather did the opposite and during their second performance he kept cursing everyone on stage.  In the middle of one song he got up from his drums and turned down the level of Kojo’s amplifier, screaming at him that he was playing too loud.  During another song he really upset Ali who was, as usual, in front of the other bands-men with his calabash.  Ringo told him to get back and not to always be trying to do a floor-show all the time.  After the song Ringo muttered aloud, ‘you bush people are all the same, once someone gives you a chance you don’t know where to stop.’  He was so furious that he had  been found out that he decided to make the bands-men pay for his guilt.

          Ali didn’t reply but played the next number quietly with his thin melancholy face even more drawn than usual.  After the song he murmured to Kojo. ‘How can this small-boy be a band leader, he doesn’t respect himself at all.  In my village I’m the eldest son of the chief and I have two wives and three children.  How many children does he have to be speaking to me like that.  I’m going to complain to Sayid.’

          But Kojo advised him not to, reminding him that Sayid, for some peculiar reason, had a soft spot for Ringo.  To try and cheer-up the forlorn Ali Kjo said, ‘don’t worry, I’ll talk to Ringo for you.’

 

 

          The following Tuesday afternoon Olu came as promised and met the band already being rehearsed by Sayid.  Sayid had been treating the band gently for once, but the moment he saw Olu walk in he turned the practice into a drill, with himself as sergeant major.  I suppose he wants to impress this international American artist, thought Kojo dolefully.  Sayid asked Olu to sit down and told the band to back him on the flute.  Sayid was an awful flautist but blamed everyone else for his mistakes.

          After this grotesque performance he sat down with Olu and offered him a joint and boasted about his two bands.  Then he asked the Afro-American to play the wooden alto congas, 'the same song you did last week, the one that drove that white chick crazy.’

          Olu got up and started to hit out a rhythm and Sayid told the others to follow him.  It was a six-eight Cuban beat that Olu began was playing and soon they created an exhilarating rhythm together, although Olu’s tight and staccato playing subtly contrasted with the heavier and much looser playing of the agbadza drums by  the Ghanaian drummers.

          ‘The bass…..the bass, you fool’ shrieked Sayid at Kojo, who quickly fitted in a bass line and shouted out the key to Lamptey.  Lamptey put in a Santana-type of solo.

          Sayid was almost beside himself with excitement.  ‘That’s it, that’s it,’ he roared, getting up and joining in on the talking drums.  They played a couple more numbers, with Olu setting up the initial rhythm and everyone, especially Sayid, working themselves up to a fever-pitch.  The third one was particularly frenzied and when they had all exhausted themselves on it Sayid announced, slightly out of breath and perspiring freely, ‘we’ll call that one pandemonium,’ and then sat down.

          But he couldn’t keep still and after a few moments he was up again and told them to do the last number again.  They were just about to start when Scar-face staggered in, muscles almost bursting through his tight shorts and shirt.  He whispered something into Sayid’s ear and looking very sorry to leave the rehearsal Sayid told Olu he would see him at the jam-session night.

          Kojo suggested that as Olu had given them some new ideas they in turn should teach him some of their numbers.  But apparently Ringo wasn’t happy with this, for after two songs he abruptly ended the afternoon’s rehearsal and whispered to Kojo, loud enough for Olu to hear.  ‘I don’t want him to learn our songs.  I know these Americans, they come here to lean from us and then make money from the songs back in the States.  Why do you think Sayid never allows a tape-recorder in the club?’

          Olu was livid at this, ‘why you mother-fucker, you’ve think I’ve come here to exploit you, you small-minded bastard!’

          Everyone was shouting angrily at Ringo, but the damage had been done and Olu wanted to leave.  ‘Let’s get out of re, Kojo,’ he said.  ‘It’s early yet, why don’t you come down to my place.’

          Lamptey also wanted to go, so the three of them left, the two Ghanaians apologising for Ringo’s behaviour.  ‘It’s just because he has no ideas of his own that he’s like that,’ said Lamptey.  ‘He even puts us down when we have new ideas.  All he’s good for is asking orders from Sayid.’

 

 

          After a half-hour journey in the packed tro-tro they arrived at Malindi, where Olu was staying; a township conveniently near the University.  ‘Adam and I didn’t want to stay on the campus,’ he explained to Kojo and Lamptey who were sitting besides him on the bus’s wooden benches.  ‘I mean, what’s the point of coming to a new country and living exactly like you do at home.  So we rented a small bungalow here.’

          Malindi was a one street town with buildings sprawling out on either side and full of newly arrived job-seekers from the country-side.  It had originally been planned as an over-spill for some of the slum areas in Accra during the Nkrumah period.  But after the 1966 coup the idea had been shelved an it had become a migrant town instead.

          After dropping down from the bus the three musicians walked to Olu’s bungalow which was a quarter of a mile from the main tarred road.  Outside his house the two Ghanaians saw, what they thought was a tall wooden fetish object guarding the entrance.  It was an intricately carved pole, surmounted by bits of metal, glass and beads and with slivers of mirror hanging from threads attached to a cross-bean and rattling in the wind.

          Olu laughed when they mentioned the word fetish.  ‘No, it’s a mobile…’ seeing that they didn’t understand, ‘it’s a work of art. I made it myself.’

          The inside of the housed was almost bare, except for a profusion of drums, rattles, calabashes and two massive wooden xylophones.  The main room had more of Olu’s strange artistic creations hanging from the ceiling and in the centre was a mat with cushions around it.  This is presumably where we sit, thought Kojo.

‘Don’t you have any furniture?’ he asked Olu.

          ‘Oh, we make do with mats.’

          ‘You mean you even sleep on the floor?’.

          ‘Yeah.’

           I’ll sleep on the floor if I have to, thought Kojo, but not from choice.

          ‘Where’s Adam?’ Lamptey inquired.

          ‘He’s at the university library.  He has to hand in a thesis proposal before he goes north,’ replied Olu.  ‘Let me play you some of the music I was doing in the States.’

          He turned on a battery tape-recorder, for there was no electricity in the house.  The strangest music Kojo had ever heard came out of the two stereo speakers.  It was something like jazz but every instrument seemed to be on its own and it was impossible to pin-down the beat. 

          ‘That’s the free-form jazz I was telling you about.  Can you hear me on the congas?’

          Kojo could, but couldn’t for the life of him work out what rhythm Olu was meant to be playing.

          ‘See how it creates a spacey sort of feeling?’ Olu asked.

          But the only feeling it gave Kojo was one of inadequacy.

          Lamptey, meantime had been browsing through a pile of books.  ‘I’ve read this one, it’s one of a series,’ he said picking up a book on Bhuddism.  ‘But what’s this one?’  He asked picking up another, which was called, ‘This Spaceship Earth.’

          ‘It’s all about instant communication and world pollution,’ replied Olu. You can borrow it if you like.’

          Lamptey thanked him and Olu rolled them some ‘jays’ as he called them.

          ‘How do you find the way we’ve been playing together at the club?’  Olu asked them.

          ‘Well…there’s plenty of power inside,’ said Kojo tentatively.

          ‘Yeah, it drove Sayid nuts this afternoon,’ declared Olu,’ and that white girl… too.  It had plenty of energy but…’

          It was too basa-basa?’ suggested Lamptey and on seeing Olu’s puzzled look  elucidated.  ‘I mean the rhythm was too rushed and giddy.  That’s why Sayid called it pandemonium.’

          ‘It’s the sort of sound he likes,’ added Kojo, ‘It fits his character.’

          I just couldn’t find the main emphasis of the beat,’ said Olu.

          ‘You mean the inside rhythm?  ‘Lamptey said, gazing at a window in which there were two pieces mosquito netting that overlapped. Its like those two nets that are crossing each other’ he said pointing to the double thickness of wire mesh.  ‘Move your heads from side to side and what do you see?….shifting patterns of rings,’ he answered  himself, referring to the interference patterns that constantly shifted and pulsed across their eyes as they followed his instructions.  ‘Basa-basa occurs when say the two nets are two different people with their own specific  ideas.  When these overlap and criss-cross they create that moving effect of jumbled energy.  Now keep your head still’, instructed Lamptey ‘see how the patterns remains constant?  You can now study its shaped easily.  That’s the inside pattern or rhythm.  You can only appreciate it when you are bokoor, when you keep still and  cool.’

          ‘That’s a neat way of putting it, Lamptey.  I like the laid-back approach myself,’ said Olu.

          ‘The trouble is that Sayid always tries to prevent us reaching that state,’ continued Lamptey. ‘He always rushes us so we can’t anchor ourselves in our music.  He wants us to play basa-basa while we’re trying to play bokoor.’

          ‘Yeah, I noticed the way he was messing up your vibrations,’ commented Olu.

          ‘How’d it go? said Adam coming in through the door and clutching a bag.

          Olu told him about the trouble they had had with Sayid.

          ‘Sounds the impresario type to me’ declared Adam. ‘Wants to make money out of the musicians but is as  jealous as hell of them at the same time….’  Then waving a sheaf of papers about that he pulled out of his case he shouted jubilantly.  ‘I’ve finished it at last.’

          ‘Is that the thesis?  Olu told us you were writing one.’  Kojo asked.

          ‘Yeah, it’s on the need for participant observation in studying the music of foreign cultures.  Learning by doing.’

          ‘Is there any other way?’ said Lamptey.

          ‘Well, some of the musicologists who come here to study traditional drumming hardly bother to learn to play.  They just bring down a machine which they use to record the sound, and print out the drumbeats on graph-paper.  Then they take this back to America and put it through a computer.’

          ‘What for?’

          ‘Well, they put thousands of these graphs into the computer, from different parts of West Africa and then the computer can work out the distribution of them and can even determine which rhythm came first and how it spread.’

          ‘That’s very interesting,’ said Lamptey thoughtfully.’  That means you can get back to origins.’

          ‘Yes… but the point of my thesis is the need to play what you’re studying, so that you can get the right perspective.’  Then looking at Olu, ‘and you have to play it in the right setting.’

          ‘He means not like I am, in the comfort of the university,’ chuckled Olu.  ‘All I want to do is to follow the drumming and xylophone course.  I don’t want to write any great theses.’

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN – EBI TIE YE

 

          A month had passed since Lamptey and Kojo had gone to Malindi, but they hadn’t seen much of Olu who had burrowed himself into the university course.  The band was steadily improving, for if Sayid did one thing it was to keep them on their toes.  During the month they had done another fashion show with Paris, who had then gone off to do the same thing in Lagos. On another evening a couple had fought in the clubroom while they were playing.  The woman had jumped up on stage to escape her boyfriend who had chased her so that the two of them managed to knock almost all the musicians down in their rampage.  Only Kojo, who had been standing off stage was able to remain playing and he had to keep the music going until the others picked themselves up. 

            Sayid has just sent Scar-face downstairs to wake all the bands-men up and call them upstairs.  He was absolutely livid and was waving a letter around.

          ‘You know  what that bastard Danny Okoro has done?’ he bellowed showering spittle on the seated musicians as he paced up and down.  ‘He’s recorded Sankofa in West Germany.  He’s tricked me.   We never made any agreement about recordings.  Just let him dare come to this country again…I’ll block him.  I’ve phoned for some reporters to come here later.  I’m going to blast the whole story in the papers.  Top Nigerian star comes to Ghana to cheat fellow Africans.  By the time I’ve finished he’ll never dare show his face here again.’

          ‘Here I am,’ he continued, ‘trying to push the country forward musically and all I get is sabotage…..I can’t trust anybody.’ His rage suddenly turned into self-pity.  ‘What other promoter in Accra is prepared to sacrifice like me, he whined.  But I won’t give up on the international African music, Copy-cat music will be finished here in a few years, you just wait and see.’ He cooled down and poured himself a whisky.

          Salim, who was sitting with the musicians, gave them a wink.  Nobody spoke for a few minutes.  Then Sayid, who had sat down briefly to drink his whisky, got up again and looked dreamily into space.

          ‘I’ve decided hat you are going to record within a month,’ he stated.

          ‘You have enough material now for two LPs, so next week I’ll go to Lagos and make arrangements to book the eight-track studio there.  We’ll be doing my two flute numbers as well,’ and looked at everyone for some sign of joy at this announcement, but everyone remained very quiet.  ‘That only trouble is the vocals,’ he continued after an embarrassing silence.  ‘None of you are good enough for recordings.  We need a top-rate singer, and I don’t mean one of those teenage soul brothers.  I need someone who can sing African songs…Listen to this.’

          He went over to the record player and put on an LP.  ‘This is the newest release by Remi Ukoli and his Black Power.  He used to be with Fela but now he’s going it alone.’

          The record had a rhythm modelled on Fela’s Afrobeat but with highlife and juju music phrases added by several guitars.  The combination of a heavy, relentless beat with the finger-picking licks and shrill glissandos of the guitars was very successful and everyone in the room became absorbed in the music.

          ‘That’s what I call an international release,’ said Sayid after the record had finished. ’Even the record sleeve is up to international standard,’ he declared, waving the glossy cover around.  ‘A bit different from what we’ve got in Ghana, isn’t it…..?  With our one track studio built during the colonial times.  You ought to see the place they’ve built in Lagos. The same company mind you.  And look at these record sleeves,’ he said picking up some Ghana releases from a huge pile of records.  ‘Rubbish, I’d be ashamed to take these to Europe.  The whole record companies think they can get us cheap because we haven’t got oil.  But highlife originally came from Ghana and even Fela was popular where before Nigeria.  He used to come here when nobody would listen to him in his won country…So Danny thinks he can come here to cheat and trick us; like we don’t know anything about modern life.  Well, I’ll show him.  I’m going to make Ghana the centre of West African music again.  I’m going to have my own sixteen-track studio built right here in Accra.’

          He stopped this heady talk abruptly and left everyone hanging excitedly in the air.  Then Sayid came down to earth, looked at everyone an said, ‘but we still need a good singer.’

          After a pause Kojo mentioned Mensah’s name. ‘he used to be the lead singer for the Hot Rods and recorded with them.  He’s now with the Rock Acid Stars at Burma Camp.  He can sing just about anything, highlife, kara-kara, pachagas, the lot.’

          ‘O.K. call him for the day after tomorrow.’

          Two reporters were ushered in and Sayid offered them drinks.  Then he went through the whole story again, using almost the same words and the same gestures.  He’d make a good concert actor, thought Kojo.  After he had told the reporters his plans for the studio Sayid dismissed everybody, telling them that he was going to the Casino.  His last word, as the musicians were leaving, was to remind Kojo about bring the singer.

          The excited musicians congregated downstairs in their courtyard.  Kojo was very impressed by what Sayid had said, and so was Lamptey for he declared ‘I’ve been looking for a promoter like him since I formed my first band when I was fifteen.’

          They were all sitting around the stone tables, except Ringo who had been held back by Sayid.  He came to join them after a few minutes, grinning and rubbing his hands together.  I wonder what Sayid said to him, thought Kojo, he looks mighty pleased about something.  

‘He wants us to sign an agreement,’ said Ringo, noticing everyone was looking at him expectedly.  ‘An international agreement. We’ll become famous and then just let him wait and see, we’ll turn the tables on him’, he ended gloatingly.’ 

          Kojo quite liked Ringo, who was a complicated and tortured soul, but he couldn’t stomach Ringo’s submissive manner to those in authority. So he was surprised by his venomous tirade against the manager.  It was true that Sayid often treated them like dirt, but Ringo was always the first to humble himself.  The furthest Ringo over got to opposing Sayid was to surreptitiously steal some of the big-man’s cigarettes and give his fellow musicians a look that seemed to say, ‘aren’t I the most rebellious devil.’  Sayid knew about this petty thieving all the time of course.  That’s how he controlled Ringo. But even the worm can turn.

          ‘As soon as we can we’ll do what Sankofa did,’ Ringo went on.

          ‘We’ll have to see the agreement first,’ said Lamptey, ever prudent, ‘then if we find he’s trying to trick us we’ll mess him up.’

          Ringo smiled weakly at Lamptey in acquiescence, for he knew Lamptey was strong willed and always seemed to know exactly where he was going and what he was doing.  Even Sayid recognised his charisma and had made several attempts to turn  Lamptey’s head with promises to build him up into a super-star. But Sayid  wanted Lamptey to be his own creation,  a tame pop-star.  Lamptey understood all these machinations and played cat-and-mouse with the manager so successfully that he  always managed to give the impression that he was only with Sayid because he happened to be going in the same direction, for the time being at least.

 

 

          It was jam-session night and Kojo, Lamptey and Mensah were sitting at a table with Olu, who had re-emerged after a long absence.

          ‘This is Mensah! said Kojo introducing him to Olu.  ‘He’s our new singer, he’s been with us a couple of weeks.  He had to desert the army to join us.’

          ‘Didn’t you get into any trouble?’ Olu asked.

          ‘No, Sayid fixed up my release’, replied Mensah.  ‘Kojo and I used to play together in another band before this.’

          ‘It was a pop band,’ Kojo expanded. ‘It drove us both nuts.’

Mensah and Lamptey spied a couple of women they were interested in and wandered off after them, leaving Kojo and Olu at the table.

          ‘How’s Adam?’ inquired Kojo.

          ‘I hardly ever see him.  He’s only comes down once since he went to the north. He’s already speaking the local language and can’t understand why I’m not learning Twi.’

          ‘He has to learn to speak Dagbani up there, as a lot of them don’t know English.’

          ‘Yeah, I guess so. My problem is I’ve become lazy in learning  as everyone in Accra speaks English…..  And which language should choose?  Twi, Ga, Ewe?  All I really want to do is to learn the drum language.  Anyway I am learning a bit of Ewe.  I’ve got a girl-friend whose from a village in the  Keta area. She’s a seamstress who lives near me.  She’s got her own electric sewing machine and I gave her some money to buy a kiosk.  And you know what happened……..?

she got permission to put it out on the road from a town-council man after paying him for a certificate and then found out he was conning her.' 

          ‘You mean he was bogus?’

          ‘Yeah, and then the real town-council people came and started to chop the kiosk down.  So I had to pay them to stop them.  And after that I had to pay thirty cedis for the repairs. Then everything was alright for a week, until all the nearby kiosks were ordered off the main street by the council in a city clean-pup operation.  So we had it moved by horse and cart to about three hundred yards away.  And then guess what happened?  It fell off the cart.  They took the corner too sharply.  I saw the whole thing from behind in slow motion.  That cost another forty cedis.  Now all she wants to do is to get rid of it and go back to working in her room.  and after me paying a total of four hundred cedis.  And all we’ll get for the kiosk now is around one hundred and fifty cedis, as the town-council order is resulting in everyone selling their kiosks at the same time. Sop they’re dirt cheap’

          Kojo looked really glum after hearing this sorry tale and so decided to change the subject.’  But your studies are going on all right?’

          ‘Oh  yeah, I’ve learnt to play kpanlogo, adowa, agbadza.  But I must admit I find it difficult to get into highlife.  It reminds me too much of church music and the dance-band variety is too much like the big-band sound that went out of fashion years ago in America.’

          ‘That’s the colo Highlife.  But there’s plenty of modern highlife bands around.  Like the African Brothers here and Osadabe in Nigeria.  They play a really funky type of highlife.  In eastern Nigeria they’ve also been influenced by the Congolese type of guitar playing from the Cameroons.’

          ‘I really like that Congo sound.  It’s almost like Latin-American stuff.’

          ‘You ought to join a band, Olu.  It would give you a lot of experience and you could add a lot to the music scene here.’

          ‘I’m finding it difficult enough as it is keeping up with my studies at the African Institute.  Everything takes such a long time and a lot of energy to do here.  It’s like living in thick porridge.  It’s absolutely impossible for me to add anything else to my present itinerary.’

          Kojo didn’t say anything after this categorical announcement, but he was disappointed that Olu hadn’t wanted to join up with Zanoo Sounds.  The American was brimming over with ideas as had been apparent during their jam-sessions together.

          Olu saw how Kojo was feeling.  ‘You know I’d liked to have joined your group, Kojo.  But I planned only to be away ten months, just enough time to do the one year course in drumming.  You see in New York I’m a session drummer and if I stay too long it’ll be difficult for me to get back into circulation.  And that’s how I make my bread, including  even the money I’m using to finance my stay here. Also I haven’t got a proper set of conga drums so I’m losing my chops.  You know that old saying amongst musicians?  “If you miss one day’s rehearsal you notice it, if you miss two days your girl-friend notices and if you miss three days then everyone begins to notice.” ’

          It was quite obvious to Kojo that Olu was a top drummer who had come to Ghana for very definite purposes.  He had a stubborn nature and wasn’t going to be swayed from his path. But it was a pity al the same.

          ‘You’ll be jamming with us tonight, though?

          ‘Yeah, of course.  I dig your band.’

 

 

          Olu indeed played with them and as was usual, when he was around, there were plenty of sparks flying.  Unfortunately, after the first couple of numbers, the musicians high spirits were dampened when Sayid decided to play his flute numbers that he had been rehearsing all week with them.  Sayid had the end of his bamboo touching the microphone so that  its amplified sound drowned out everything else; consequently the musicians had to play louder to be heard. It was quite insane. 

          No-one could dance to the song, but everyone clapped afterwards, as they could hardly object to the manager doing his own thing in his own club.  The second flute number was a slow as the first was manic.  The manager was oblivious to the effect this was having on the audience, until afterwards when he became aware of a stony silence in the club.

          To repair the damage he announced a floorshow and sent Tago, got up in miniature Afro gear, to dance a soul number with the band.  As Tago was deaf the band let him start up first.  There was little correlation between the band and the tiny dancer. Then Tago reached up and took one of the microphones and managed to make some grunting noises into it as he moved his hips.  Everyone thought it was hilarious and Sayid quick to divert attention from his own abysmal performance, got up from his chair and shook his fat hips in spiteful mimicry. ‘Africa’s answer to James Brown,’ he shouted.

          One of the good-time women must have felt sorry for Tago for she came up to the stage and stuck a five-cedi note on his moist fore-head and gave Sayid a brooding look before disappearing back into the gloom.  Sayid  got up again, wiggling obscenely and shouted at Tago, ‘so, is that your wife?’  But with the note fallen over his eyes Tago couldn’t see a thing and just continued his act in seventh heaven.

          After they had finished playing for the night the musicians sat at one of the tables outside.  As they were drinking their beers Sayid came up to them with a slim, gaunt man who was wearing a blue shirt, blue trousers and blue boots.  ‘This is Jack Amartio.’  He said by way of introduction.  ‘He was a student at the London School of Economics.  His father’s an old friend of mine who used to be a Minister in the government.  Jack’s a great organist.  He even played with Osibisa  for a time.’

          ‘Hi everybody, Sayid wants me to play with you for the recordings’ said Jack in a strong London accent.  ‘I’ve brought over my Hammond organ and Leslie speakers.  Sayid tells me it’s the only one in the country.  But I want to check if it’s alright with you guys first.’

          ‘Hey Jack, you don’t have to ask them.  I make all the decisions.  Anyway now you’ve asked them, what you think, Ringo?’  Sayid said looking threateningly at the leader of the band.

          The manager was frowning so much that Ringo wasn’t sure which way to read his face and remained silent, so Lamptey got up and shook Jack’s hand.  ‘It’ll be great.  It’s true, yours is the first Hammond organ in the whole country.’

          Sayid, seeing that Jack wanted to talk further with the musicians pulled him away like a jealous hen.   ‘We don’t want to leave your father on his own, do we?’ he said to Jack.  But before he was dragged away Jack managed to tell the musicians that he would see them later.

          The new doorman came over to the musicians and told them that someone was asking for Kojo and Lamptey.  They followed the boy, who, although he had only started a few weeks previously meekly enough, was now swaggering around in a way identical to Scar-face, who is turn copied Sayid.  Outside the main gate they saw Olu shouting at Scar-face who was sitting at the table just inside the door.

          ‘Hey, you guys,’ shouted Olu at them, ‘tell this jerk that I don’t have to pay to come in as I’m playing.  He wants to see my ticket.  I just went outside to eat some rice and stew at the night-market.’

          ‘It’s alright Scar-face,’ said Kojo ‘he’s one of the musicians, a guest artist.’

          Because of this palaver a number of people who had been held up trying to get in were beginning to complain and push.  But Scar-face wouldn’t let a single person pass in though the narrow gap between the table and the door; indeed it was only with great reluctance he let anyone out.  It was an impasse.

          ‘And don’t call me a white-man,’ shouted Olu standing well back in the road.  After much argument and with threats to call Sayid, Scar-face finally let everyone in.

          ‘Phew!  Does he usually behave like that?’ Olu asked.

          ‘That’s how Sayid trains them’ replied Kojo.  ‘He always gives his door-man complete power over their little empire.  Then they usually spoil and start to abuse their position, thinking the club is for them as it is they who decides who is to come in or not.’

          ‘Don’t mind him, Olu.  It’s just the usual door game,’ added Lamptey.

          They went back to their seats and Jack came and joined them, followed by a reluctant looking Beauty.  The musicians introduced Jack to Olu.

          ‘Are you Ghanaian?’ asked Olu, puzzled by Jack’s accent.

          ‘Yes, but I’ve been in England since I was fourteen years old.  I went to boarding school there,’ Jack replied.

          ‘So when will you start rehearsing with us?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘Sayid says I should bring my stuff tomorrow.’

          ‘But what is this Leslie speaker you said you used?  I’ve never heard of that before,’ inquired Lamptey.

          ‘It’s a speaker box in which the speaker spins around inside on a motor.  It gives a sort of warbly under-water effect.  It’s perfect for the Hammond sound.  I’ve also got a phaser, reverb, waw-waw and fuzz for special effects.’

          They were all impressed by his technical knowledge, for the only one of the gadgets that the Ghanaian musicians had heard of was the waw-waw pedal.  They could see now why Sayid was giving him special treatment.  He was a real professional.

          ‘How did you first get interested in music?’ Kojo queried.

          ‘My father made me learn piano and at school and I joined the school band.  When I was at L.S.E. I joined an underground pop group, complete with psychedelic music, stroboscopes and light-shows.  I never finished my degree as I went professional.  That was about four years ago.  Since then I’ve built up my gear.  But I had to sweat to get the Hammond.  It cost a fortune…….  Then my father wanted me to come back to help with his business at this end.  I agreed as I thought the time was ripe to form a really top-rate international band here in Ghana.  Trouble is I didn’t realise how difficult it is to find musicians with their own instruments.  I was hoping to form a band where everyone owns instruments, so it would be a co-operative venture with no leader.  That’s the way we ran our student band at L. S. E.’

          ‘They don’t have bands like that here.’ said Olu cynically, it’s all big-men hiring out band-boys.’

          We used to have something like that in the old days, though,’ interjected Kojo. They were called sharbo-sharbo.  It was a combo where, after the show, the musicians shared out the money equally.  But these days with all the heavy amplification it costs about fifty thousand cedis to set up a band and only a rich man can afford it.  I don’t even have my own bass-guitar.  It would cost over six hundred cedis for a new one.’

          ‘Three hundred pounds!  That’s ridiculous.  You can pick up a good second-hand one in London for less than fifty pounds’ exclaimed Jack.

          Jack laughed hollowly and continued. However it’s no joke being a musician in that place.  There’s literally hundreds of ace musicians around.  You have to be really good and really lucky to get anywhere in London…..  And anyway the music scene is beginning to open up now in West Africa, it just takes a bit of organisation.’

          During this exchange Beauty had been getting more and more fidgety and in the end she got up and let Jack away.

          ‘See you guys tomorrow,’ he said a little sheepishly.

 

 

          Jack had been rehearsing with them for two weeks and his sound added a lot to the band, especially to the Afro-beats.  However he was finding some difficulty with highlifes and agbadzas, particularly when it came to playing solos.

          ‘Trouble is, countrymen,’ he said to Kojo and Mensah who were sitting in the club  waiting to play for the evening’s performance, ‘is that I’ve never played African music before.  Of course I used to hear a lot of highlife, even in England, as my father sometimes brought back from Ghana piles of those old 78 records’s: Kwaa Mensah, E.K. Nyame, Onyina, Kakaiku and all those elderly  musicians.  But I’m afraid I was much more interested in Jimmy Hendrix, the Rolling Stones and Cream.  Now all I want to do is to get back to our music.’

          Beauty come over, gave Kojo and Mensah a dirty look and pronounced to Jack ‘Sayid says we should come upstairs and eat.’ They left.

          The band had been playing for almost an hour and the place was packed out when the lights fused and the place was thrown into utter darkness.  The whole electrical system went, lights, air conditioners and music.  The people who were inside the club panicked and came streaming out of the door and over the stage, falling over themselves in their haste.  Kojo and the other musicians stayed where they were, flattening themselves against the side of the stage to let the crowd pass.  They could hear Scar-face bellowing outside in the yard.

          Jimmy, Salim, and Sayid came downstairs with torches, cursing.  Jimmy had a look at the fuses. ‘There’s nothing wrong here’  he declared after pulling out and checking the fuses by one by one them. The fault must be from the junction-box outside’

          There was more and more shouting coming from outside so the three of them rushed into the yard to find out what was happening. 

          Some of the local area boys, who usually hung around outside the club doors were holding a prisoner. They had seen someone go into the junction-box, which was in a little barbed-wire enclosure on the other side of the street from the club.  He had gone into the small building that contained the junction-boxes just before all the lights had blown. When the  area had been thrown into darkness, as the junction-box supplied the whole block, they had chased the man down the gloomy street and brought him back. 

On Sayid’s orders the unlucky man  was beaten mercilessly by Scar-face, the door-boy and Jimmy.  They forced him to produce the junction-box keys and Jimmy went to switch on the electricity again.

          With the two security men holding the man’s arm and Sayid slapping him repeatedly across the face they discovered that he man had at one time been a worker at the Electricity Corporation and had been paid to sabotage the club.  But he refused to name the instigator.  Finally a couple of C.I.D. men came and took the man away and Sayid arranged to have a police-man placed on duty outside the club at all times.

          ‘He didn’t have to tell me who it was,’ Sayid bellowed, ‘I know who it was and I’m going to get the bastard!’

          The club was almost empty by this time so Sayid invited those who were left to come upstairs for drinks.  Everything was functioning again inside and when they went upstairs to the veranda they met Jack and Beauty.  They had seen the whole thing from the balcony that over-looked the street.

          An enraged Sayid began shouting and cursing. ‘So now they’re trying to sabotage me, but I’ll get them.  This isn’t the first time.’  Then becoming slightly more coherent.  ‘They tried it before, planted a whole bag of wee in my garden…..but I had the evidence removed from the police-station,’ he chuckled.

          He ordered Scar-face to give everyone drinks.  ‘You see how it is, Jack?  If you ever try and do anything great in this country people will pull you down.  It is not like this in Britain, I bet?’

          But before Jack could answer there were two loud explosions from the yard and someone came rushing up the stairs.  A Lebanese man waving a still smoking pistol came in and looked wildly at everyone.

          ‘I heard you had trouble, so I came straight around,’ he said looking at those present with blood-shot eyes, as if the culprit was amongst them.

          ‘It’s O.K. now, Henry, they tried to sabotage me again.  I want you to…….’ Seeing everybody was listening intently, ‘let’s go into my room.’  Then turning to everyone, ‘I’ll be out in a minute, help yourselves to drinks. 

After ten minutes he came out onto the veranda again, followed by a very grim looking Henry who left without saying  a word.  Sayid relaxed in a chair.

          ‘On Friday I’m going to Lagos to book the recording studio and arrange hotel accommodation for you musicians.  I’ll be back on Saturday around seven in the evening…..  But one thing, I’ve decided to make Jack the leader of the band,’ added Sayid taking everyone by surprise. ’I’ve already discussed it with him.’

 Jack didn’t look as if he had been consulted and tried to laugh the idea off. ‘Hey Sayid, we never said anything like that.  How can I run a band when I’m only just beginning to get the hang of the music?’

          Sayid frowned and looked at Jack as if he were a fool.  ‘You’re a professional musician, you know the business,’ he answered Sayid in a furious voice, as he never liked to be contradicted, especially in front of his musicians and staff.

          ‘I’m not ready to run a band yet, Sayid,’ Jack stated flatly.

          ‘Well, it’s up to you,’ Sayid responded with a shrug that seemed to imply a great weakness in Jack’s character.  ‘I’m not going to give you another chance,’ he ended in a tone of voice that dismissed Jack from further serious consideration.

 From that point Sayid’s  attitude changed markedly towards Jack.  Up to then he had been dealing with him as an equal, but after his  refusal to become leader Sayid began to treat him in an off-handed manner.  This first became apparent the following day at rehearsal.  Sayid didn’t go as far as to blast him while playing, as he did the other musician, but he treated Jack as if he were of little consequence and kept giving him pitying looks.   Half way through the rehearsal, after having cursed the band for not playing what he thought was correctly, Sayid looked at Jack and said, ‘you musicians think you are too great.  This band is for me I could sack the lot of you right now and get new people by tomorrow.  Musicians are cheap, your like water, I can turn you on and off, it’s only the management that counts.’

          After the rehearsal Sayid called Jack over to him and said sneeringly, ‘Beauty tells me you can only fuck for five minutes.’

          Jack’s reply to this stupid insinuation was ‘Yeah, that’s right.  The first time five minutes, the second time ten, the third twenty and so on in geometrical progression.’  But this humour was quite lost on Sayid.

 

 

          When Sayid returned from Lagos on the Saturday evening  Salim and the musicians decided they would meet him  off the plane. Salim gave the musicians money to get to the airport and he and Jack went in Sayid’s Mercedes, dropping off at several night spots on the way.  Salim wanted to be seen by as many people as possible driving this flashy car.

          They all congregated in the airport bar as  arranged, except for Lamptey, who was late.  When he did turn up their eyes nearly popped out of their heads, for Lamptey nonchalantly walked in dressed as a fetish-priest complete with white cloth, animal vertebrae necklace, white clay and matted hair.

          ‘What are you staring at?  he asked. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a traditional priest before?’

          Everyone in the lounge was looking at him but he didn’t seem to mind. Kojo knew that Lamptey had a rather spiritual bent of mind, being a vegetarian, a teetotaller and always reading books about the  Third Eye, but he never thought Lamptey would go so far.

Looking at Kojo, Lamptey winked and said laughing.  ‘I’ve studied Christianity, Mohammedism and Bhuddism  so now I’ve decided to go back to our own religion.’  Nobody could argue with that.

          Salim went off to buy everyone beer, except Lamptey who said he wanted plain water.  Jack sat down between Kojo and Lamptey.  He looked rather miserable and Kojo commented on this.

          ‘I’m having second thoughts about working with Sayid,’ said Jack in an anguished voice. ‘Working with him completely goes against my grain.  I don’t think that musicians should be treated as exploitable raw-material by a manager.’

          ‘But at least he’s doing something great,’ responded Lamptey, ‘pushing African music forward.’

          ‘But in this way?  You think that Fela, or the Osibisa guys, or Victor Uwaifo would put up with this sort of treatment?’

          ‘We have to be patient, there’s no alternative for us at he moment,’ said Kojo quietly.

          Sayid finally came off the plane, twice as large as life and wearing a garish purple velvet suit.  He was very happy to see everybody and this was reciprocated.  He sat down with them and ordered more drinks and some pop-corn.

          ‘Is that your new gear,’ he said noticing Lamptey.  ‘It’ll look great on stage.’

          ‘Oh, I can’t wear this on stage, it’s part of my religion.’

          Sayid laughed at this and then told them they would be going to Lagos in three weeks time and stay there for three or four days.  ‘I’ve also arranged for you to do a show at Remi Ukoli’s club in Surelere…………… Oh, by the way I’ve brought you all some presents.’  He handed out to Jack an the eight musicians gold chain bracelets with the words “S Promotion” etched on them.  Everyone was very pleased and started talking excitedly.  All except Jack, who sat in a corner glowering at the bracelet with his mouth drawn tight.

          After they had finished their drinks and were preparing to leave  Jack said he didn’t want to return in the car, so Sayid and Salim took  some of the 0others instead.  Lamptey made his own way home, for he didn’t live at the club.  Kojo decided he would accompany Jack home, who by this time looked really quite sick.

          As soon as everyone had gone Jack groaned, ‘how could he do it…and how could you accept those trinkets like that’ and he flung his bracelet into the waste-paper bin.

          Kojo was horrified and said, ‘but it’s only a present.’

          ‘Don’t you realise what he’s done?………….  He’s bought you with gold………..  and it’s not even real.  Look,’ he said grabbing Kojo’s arm and showing him where the gold-plate was already coming off.  ‘Don’t you see what he’s done?  He’s put you all in chains. He owns you. You’re his little nigger boys.’

          Jack became quite distraught but Kojo thought he was making a mountain out of a molehill.

          ‘How can I work with such a band,’ he groaned.  You’re all his slaves and you’ve got your chains…….and all you do is thank him for it.’

          ‘But how does this change anything, Jack?  You’ve known all the time how it is with Sayid.  That he has to be in complete control.  How does giving us this present make it any worse?’

          ‘It’s symbolic of your situation,’ Jack replied cryptically.

          It was a perplexed Kojo who accompanied Jack home.

 

 

          That evening they were to play, so Kojo had to leave Jack’s house at nine o’clock and arriving at the Ebi Tie Ye he met Olu sitting with a plump African-American women at one of the tables.

          ‘Ah, there you are Kojo.’

          ‘You’ve come a bit early,’ replied.

          ‘I know.  I wanted to see Sayid about Emily jamming with the band tonight.’

Olu introduced the two of them together and then continued. ‘Emily came her to do a three week crash course in African Studies.  She’s a great flute player and jazz singer.’

          ‘I’ve been at the campus studying the whole time I’ve been here, she explained. ‘But the place is so dead in the evenings. I’d just about given up any idea of playing until I saw Olu.  In fact I was beginning to get really depressed.’

          ‘When I went around to see her this afternoon she was in bed languishing away.’

          ‘That’s right.  I got so fed up the last few days that I just went to bed and I wasn’t intending to get up at all until I left the country tomorrow.  Fortunately Olu came and said he could arrange for me to play tonight.  I haven’t played a thing in three weeks.’

          ‘I’ll tell Sayid you’re around’ said Kojo helpfully.  ‘He’s around somewhere…… By the way Olu, how is Adam?’

          ‘Oh, he’s fine.  He came down a few weeks ago as thin as a rake.  They locked him in a dark room for three weeks as part of his initiation ceremony into the drum-cult he’s studying.  He had to fast. But he’s gone back now.’

          Sayid happened to be passing so Kojo called him over and introduced him to Emily.  ‘She’s jazz musician and flute player.  She’s going back to the States tomorrow so she would like to play here for her last night.’ 

          ‘Well, it’s not jam-session night this evening, but it’s O.K..’  Then turning to Emily he said in a boastful voice, ‘I play the flute too you know.  The African one.  I’ll play it tonight and afterwards you can jam with the boys.  I’ll see you later,’ and he left.

          ‘He fancies himself, doesn’t he?’

          They all laughed and Olu said to Kojo, ‘I’ve already given her the low-down on Sayid.’

          After Sayid had played with the band, which fell rather flat as usual, he introduced Emily Black as an international jazz star from the United States.  She got up from the table and went over to the band and Kojo could now see how huge she really was, almost as large as a market woman.  She had already discussed the number she wanted to play with the bandsmen.  They had decided it would be an Afro-beat in the key of A  and she would put in some jazz solos. After playing for a few minutes and getting the rhythm of the song together  Emily came in on flute and the power of the woman was a wonder to hear.  I suppose it’s because she’s been so bottled-up at the university for the last few weeks, thought Kojo.

 She danced, gyrated and screamed into the mike and lifted the band sky-high with her energy. Kojo could see Sayid’s face at a nearby table  and noticed a green mist forming over his head and   his face changed from initial pleasure to spitefulness as the song proceeded. She out-classed the manager on the flute a thousand times over. The miasma descended into Sayid’s face and for the first time Kojo understood the meaning of green with envy.        

  Finally the song came crashing to an end and Sayid got up.  Everyone was cheering and shouting for encores. Sayid was forced to shout that she was great.

          ‘Then let’s start up again then, boys,’ she cried excitedly.

          ‘Oh no, you have to finish now’ whispered the jealous manager coming up close to her.

          ‘Fuck you,’ mouthed Emily and they were off again.

          Sayid made some more attempts to stop the music, but it was impossible as Emily kept staring at him and was blowing full to bust.  Then, just to annoy Sayid more, she lay on her back on stage, pulling the microphone on top of her and singing into it.  Mensah had to hold the mike over her as she started playing her flute getting more and more wild all the time.  Sayid was beside himself with anger and began screaming that she should stop.  But she just looked over at him wickedly and continued more crazily than ever.

          In the end Sayid grabbed the mike from Mensah and started shouting into it.  ‘That was the great Emily Black from New York,’ over and over again, until the band ground to a halt.  Not to be outdone Emily, with the help of Mensah, staggered up from the floor and raised her hands up like a victorious boxer and everyone cheered.  She was simply magnificent.

          Afterwards Sayid made a big show of praising her and various club members came to congratulate her on her performance while Sayid stood by with a patronising look on his seedy face.  Only the bandsmen had seen the envy and malice in Sayid, the audience probably thinking his antics had been part of the show.  Sayid in an ostentatious way then ordered a bottle of whisky and ice for Emily’s table and left them to lick the wounds to his pride.

          Emily, not to be outdone, bought all the musicians beers and said to them, ‘I really got my spirits back with you guys.  I’ll never forget this evening, it’s made my stay in this country……..  And I hope I annoyed your manager.  I’ll have to go now as I’m leaving first thing in the morning.’  She said good-bye to everyone and she and Olu left.

          Jack came up to the table.  ‘I’ve just come from seeing Sayid.  I only had to mention Emily’s name and he flew off the handle and started talking about Americans coming here to rip-off the country. ‘He was in a really filthy mood. And then I put him in a worse one.’

          ‘How do you mean?’ inquired Lamptey.

          ‘I told him I was leaving the band.  I made up some excuse about my father wanting me to go to Kumasi.  I’ll come around tomorrow and collect my gear.’  Seeing Kojo’s crest-fallen face Jack continued.  ‘I just can’t work with him anymore.  I’m fed up with the whole place. The girls, the security man, everybody is bluffing everybody else.  It’s not you guys, you know that.  I’m going to form my own band here later, after I’ve come back from England and brought more equipment.  Maybe then you guys could join me?’

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE – RECORDING IN LAGOS

 

          Three weeks later the musicians were congregated outside the club.  It was in the early hours of the morning and they had just finished playing for the night.  They were leaving for Lagos immediately afterwards and a mini-bus was parked outside waiting for them.  A libation of gin was poured on the ground by Sayid to ensure success and then the eight musicians and Tago and Jimmy piled into the bus and they finally got off at two o’clock in the morning.  Sayid was flying the next morning and would meet them in Lagos at the City Hotel that same evening.  Salim was left behind to look after the club.

          The musicians arrived at the Togo border at six in the morning, but due to delays, which involved Jimmy having to duplicate some papers, they didn’t get into Lome until ten o’clock.  By eleven they had passed through Togo and had no trouble at the sleepy Dahomey border Republic.  In fact the border guards seemed very pleased to see musicians and gave them no trouble, only asking that they should send them a copy of the LP.  It was a surprising country as, unlike in Accra, bicycles were extremely common. In Porto-Novo they were amazed to see women riding mobilettes.  The musicians had never seen a woman ride a motorbike before and cheered as they passed a woman driver carrying a male pillion passenger.   They stopped at a night-club in the town owned by a Lebanese friend of Sayid and were given food and drinks there.

          They arrived at Idoruku, the Nigerian border post, just before four and the place was bustling with activity and armed soldiers.  The soldiers seemed dis-inclined to believe hat they were musicians at first s they were carrying no instruments on the roof-rack, but after pulling a couple of acoustic box-guitars and explaining they were going for recordings they were let through.

          The remainder of the journey to Lagos was uneventful until they arrived at the outskirts of the city during the rush hour.  It wasn’t until eight-thirty that they arrived, completely exhausted, at the City Hotel in Surelere, a distance of only about seven miles.  They had never seen traffic so dense before and the drivers took incredible risks when overtaking.  Several times they had been overtaken on the inside lane by some impatient madman.   Kojo felt sorry for the motor-cyclists he saw dodging in and out of the traffic, they seemed terribly vulnerable.

          Sayid was waiting for them at the rather run-down hotel. ‘You’ll have to eat and change quickly as you’re playing at Remi Ukoli’s club at ten o’clock,’ he told them.

          They were shown their rooms upstairs, two to each.  After quickly unpacking and bathing they  went downstairs to the restaurant where they were served heavy dollops of ebba with agushie stew by surly waiters.

          They took the bus to Remi’s club, where everyone seemed to know Sayid, for many people shouted out his name as they walked in.  They were led to a special table reserved to them and Remi waved at them from the stage.

          His band was a pretty large one, comprised of three guitarists, a trap and conga drummer, an organist, a tenor saxist with Remi on trumpet flanked by the maraccas player.  There were also four girls at Remis’s back who sang in the chorus.  When the Ghanaians came in the band was playing an up-tempo highlife and the whole floor was packed with dancing people.  After this Black Power played a long Afro-beat reminiscent of Fela’s music and during of this song the conga player  featured pumping his arms to play a solo on the squeeze-drum. 

          After finishing Remi made an announcement that there would be a short break and then the Ghanaian super-group, Zanoo Sounds, would play next.  He came off stage and went up and greeted Sayid warmly, for the two men had been friends for some years.  Sayid told his musicians to go up on stage and balance their instruments.

          It took a while to get the instruments adjusted to their liking, but finally they were ready and began with an agbadza.  At first no-one danced but just sat and watched.  The second song was a fast Dagomba highlife. Still no-one dance so Remi ordered his girls to go  the floor and dance, and then everyone took to the floor. 

They played very well that night.  Ali freaked out on the calabash and Lamptey played some long and exciting guitar solos.  During one of the songs Remi jumped up on stage and started jamming with them on his trumpet.

          After their last encore a bunch of music reporters came around their table, asking thousands of questions.  They praised the performance as heavy African music and wanted to know all about how the band had started and where Sayid had got his idea of mixing indigenous music with rock-music.  When they questioned Ali, he proudly told them he was chief in his village.  The reporters also though very highly of the two guitarists and this made Kojo very proud.  They could have continued chatting with the press-men all night but Sayid said they had to go as they were recording early the next day and so needed all the sleep they could get.

          The following morning the bands-men awoke early, picked up Sayid who was staying at the flashy Excelsior Hotel and went to the recording studio in the dock-land area of Apapa.  It was an eight-track studio so the musicians were placed in small isolated sound-proof cubicles.  They could see each other through the glass but had to use earphones to hear each other.

          Sayid had booked the studio for three days, during which time they only had one-and-a-half days to do the recordings of twenty-four songs.  In spite of this limitation Sayid made them spend over four precious hours on just his two flute numbers.  They went over and over these two songs,  so that by the time they had finished it was one o’clock.  Some sandwiches and coffee were brought in and they had a short rest, after which they had to rush through the other numbers.

          As promised Remi came in at two o’clock to help with the balancing, but in fact this technical side of the work was being quiet adequately dealt with by the studio’s sound-engineer.  But Sayid was hurrying everyone so much that many mistakes were made, which he didn’t bother to correct, claiming that he could iron them out in the mixing.

          Ali had great trouble with one of his songs.  During live performances he always played calabash and sang at the same time. But in order to get what he thought was most out of the multi-track recording Sayid wanted him to play the calabash fist and then dub his voice on top.  But Ali was incapable of separating his voice and his instrument in this way, for he had never had had to do this before and so kept making mistakes.  So the song which could have been done in two takes kept dragging on and on.

  Sayid, who was sitting behind the large window of the control room, became more and more irritated and asked Emmanuel, the sound engineer, to turn up the volume in Ali’s earphone.  Sayid started shouting into the microphone, which must have almost deafened Ali as he was trying to sing.  Naturally Ali went to pieces.  He became completely paralysed and Sayid started raving at him so that Remi, who was also in the control room, lost his temper with Sayid.

          ‘How dare you treat a musician like that, as if he’s a bloody monkey.  How the hell can you expect him to do anything with you screaming at him?’

          The musicians were amazed by this our-burst, which they could hear coming through their own earphones, for they had never heard anyone ever criticise Sayid like that before.  But Sayid’s reaction to this was rather strange.  He just started to giggle.  That Remi was serious couldn’t penetrate his self-centred skull.

 When Remi saw Sayid’s reaction he shrugged his shoulders and started laughing too, for he knew the manager well enough to know how thick-skinned he was.  So he let the matter end with laughter.  But he did get Sayid to agree to let the still sweating Ali play and sing as he always did.  And the song was recorded with no difficulty.

          They worked up to seven o’clock. Two hours beyond the allotted time so that Sayid had to pay the sound-engineer and staff extra money.  But even by seven they still had ten numbers to do the next day.

          Sayid dropped the musicians at their hotel, gave them five naira each and told them he would be back later.  The musicians went upstairs to wash and then downstairs to the restaurant where again they were served eba and stew. This was served up with a lot of shouting in pidgin English by the young waiters treated the musicians like dirt, and provincial dirt at that.  But they got as good as they gave, especially from Tetteh, Ringo and Ali who had picked up this bellicose tone of speaking almost instantly on arriving at the hotel.  So amidst screamed orders for ice water, cutlery and heel-dragging service Kojo tried to eat his food.

          Whilst eating  Ringo and the others discussed what they should do with the money.  The consensus was to go across the road to a dingy beer-bar to drink agogoro and pick-up some women.

          ‘They only cost a naira for short-time,’ said Ringo knowingly, ‘and we can take them up to our rooms so we won’t have to pay for a room.  It’ll be really cheap.’

          ‘Is that all you came here for?’ asked Lamptey, who was quite satiated by the swooning affection an Afro-American women had given him at Remi’s club the previous evening.  ‘You’ll all get sick.’

          ‘Oh no we won’t,’ replied Ringo unequivocally.  ‘Don’t you know that all the good-time girls in Lagos have their own union called the National Association of Prostitutes, or N.A.P.  They all go to the union doctors every week for a check-up.’

          ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘Segun, one of the waiters, told me.’

          ‘He’s probably one of their pilot boys, so he’s only encouraging you as he knows he will get his cut from the girls.’

          After they had finished their meal all the musicians, except for Lamptey and Kojo, left for the bar.  Jimmy also decided to go with them but Tago stayed as they  began to pull his leg when he tried to leave with them, telling him he was too short for sex.

 So when Sayid and Remi came and saw nearly everyone had disappeared they told the three remaining to come with them, as Remi was going to in his car to Fela’s place.

          It took them almost an hour to travel the short distance between Surelere and Mushin as they were held up in several traffic ‘go slows.’  Traffic never seems to stop flowing in Lagos, thought Kojo. Even deep at night he had heard it thundering down the highway near the hotel.  If it hadn’t been for Remi’s skilful but hair-raising driving, and at one point a sudden U-turn when Remi realised they were heading into yet another go slow, they would have never reached the place in time.

          They screeched to a halt outside Fela’s Kalakuta Republic, a white two-storied house surrounded by barbed wire slung between ten feet concrete pillars.  There were scores of people hanging around the main gate and the small group of Ghanaians led by Remi had to force their way through to get up to the entrance, which was surmounted by a winking red police light and guarded by a couple of toughs sitting just inside.  They recognised Remi but had to check whether the others would be allowed in.  After a few minutes the guard came back opened the gate up a few inches for them to squeeze through.  A manic monkey tied to the gate–post made a grab for their legs as they did so.

          They were ushered into the front waiting room as Fela was asleep.  It was a yellow room and they all sat down on the plush lounge chairs that surrounded a white bear-rug.  The sound was deafening in the room as a stereo unit was blasting out one of Fela’s records and outside, near the window, a noisy crowd was watching a colour television.  Two girls were somehow managing to sleep amidst all this, on an upholstered divan. 

There were half a dozen paintings hung up on the walls, depicting Fela and his friends.  One was a beautiful college made of broken shells and coloured stones.  Another was a very striking reconstruction of an attack by police on the Kalakuta.  It showed a large group of riot police hacking down the wooden barbed wire posts. Presumably this was before Fela had concrete ones put in, mused Kojo.  Other police in the picture  were firing tear-gas grenades up at roof of the house on a group of defiant people were throwing down anything they could get their hands on, stones, bits of roofing and furniture.  The painting had a slightly opaque quality which Kojo thought must represent the thick layer of tear-gas that would have permeated the whole area.  Remi noticed Kojo studying this painting.

          ‘Once Fela had a case with the police, so about sixty of them came one morning and attacked him with tear-gas.  But in the end they had to let him off,’ said Remi laughing.  ‘I was there at the time.  And see the photograph?’ he said pointing at a photo of Fela singing into a mike with his arm in a sling and a bandaged head.  ‘That’s what they did to him and within three days he was singing again.’

          In came a huge shaggy Alsation dog.

The whole place is full of animals thought Kojo. First the monkey at the gate and whilst watching television in the room he had caught a glimpse through the window of a donkey. And now the gigantic  but placid dog.

          ‘This is Wokola’ commented Remi playing with the friendly animal. ‘It means go and find prick.’ Everyone laughed

          A women wearing a black dress  came in. She was completely bald and had masses of blue eye-makeup and a red slash of lipstick. She roughly shook one of the other women sleeping on the couch, a skinny little thing with  her hair done up in coils and beads. The bald women started shouting at her in Yoruba and the younger one got on her feet in no time at all.  In so doing she let out a tirade of abuse but Kofi could only pick out the words “old mama”. With these words venomously directed at her the older women beat a hasty retreat and the slim one went back to sleep as if nothing had happened.

          After sitting around for half-an-hour the Ghanaians were called to meet Fela and passed down a short dark passageway into a tiny room filled with cushions. At the far end there was the only chair and next to it a record player and a huge pile of records. The wall was covered in a collage of photographs in various stages of decay. Fela wasn’t to be seen. But his voice came out from behind a thin cloth  hiding a toilet that faced directly into the room.

          ‘I’m just having a shit’ Fela shouted through the partition and told them to wait as he let out a huge fart. After a few more he came out wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks and sat down in his chair. He greeted Remi and was introduced to everyone

          ‘Yeah, I read about your band  in the morning papers, they gave you a good write-up,’ he said to Sayid. ‘I like what you’re doing there in Ghana.’

          ‘You Nigerians are way ahead of us, but now we’re going to catch up,’ replied Sayid.’ We’ve been saturated with imported copyright music for too long. All those foreign record companies selling us their stuff, but they never sell any of ours abroad. And we still don’t even have a decent multi-track studio in the whole country.

          ‘I know and it’s crazy as Ghana has always been the heaviest place for music. I remember as I used to go there a lot in the sixties. The foreign  companies don’t mess around with us here like yours and we’ve got plenty of good studios here in Lagos. Even Ginger Baker has just help set-up  a sixteen-track one here . He often hangs around here with me. There’s a picture of us above you.

          They craned their necks to look at a photo of Fela and the drummer Ginger Baker sitting  and drinking around a table. The famous English rock-star looked on the verge of collapse.

          A very worried looking man suddenly burst into the room and without as much as a glance at anyone else he went straight to Fela and announced ‘They won’t publish it, Fela.

‘Ba…..astards. Then we’ll have to publish it ourselves. Give it to our Young African Pioneers guys’

          Fela then introduced the man to everyone as his closest friend J.K. or Al Hadji. He was a light complexioned man who wore a small muslim cap. He explained the situation to the Ghanaians.

          ‘We’ve just heard the Lagos City  P are being issued horse-whips to curb our bad drivers.. Instant and on-the-spot justice….beatings.  But we here don’t like this as this is an international city. What are the tourists and visitors, especially Afro-American ones, going to say when they see a black man whipping a black man on the streets of our capital city? So I wrote an letter  to the newspapers that the government should quench the whole idea.

          ‘And what exactly are the Young African Pioneers’ inquired Sayid.     

           ‘The Yaps’ replied Fela, is a cultural organisation that encourages our youth to advance the African heritage. They have their headquarters here at the Africa Shrine.’ Then turning to J.K., ‘we’ll bring it out as a broad-sheet.

          Slowly the small room began to fill with people. Some attractive women drifted in  and settled down without saying a word to anybody. Fela introduced the Ghanaians to the leader and drummer of his Africa 70 band, Tony Allen - and to a red-haired guy from Nigerian Broadcasting called Segun. Then a Frenchman came in carrying a large round wicker basket. He was a snake collector and showed everyone the pythons inside and claimed he had come all the way across the Sahara to see Fela.

          ‘He wants me to take one to use on stage,’ said Fela chuckled.

          Suddenly two of the women present, one of the them the bald-headed one, erupted into violence and ad slapped and grappled with other in the cramped space, treading on several of the visitors as they did so.

‘Court’ bellowed Fela and the two froze in mid-action and there was absolute silence. ‘O.K. what is it now’, he asked one of the combatants, a beautiful Fulani women whose face was criss-crossed with  ceremonial scars.

‘Mercy says I tore her dress’.

‘It’s true Fela, she ripped it yester……’ interrupted the bald women.

‘Shut up, this is a court’ and then turning to the Fulani. ‘And did you. Tell me the truth now’ he asked threateningly.

          ‘No Fela, I swear. She hasn’t got a single witness and she’ been going around abusing everyone one of us dancers  since you made her sweep the  yard last week.’

Fela paused for a moment. ‘Have you got a witness, Titi?’

‘No, but I saw her going to my………”

‘Bastard. You think I haven’t noticed how you’ve been behaving the last few days. Go out back and put yourself in the Kalakosa for six hours.

‘Oh no, Fela’ cried the deflated Mercy and the herself at Fela’s feet.

‘I don’t want you here. Now go’, he barked.

Titi was pulled up by some of Fela’s minders and was escorted screeching out to the back-yard where she continued to make a huge racket.

Fela put on a record to drown the noise and more people packed themselves into the increasingly smoky room. Some came in just briefly and whispered in his ears and he gave them various instructions. At one point he shouted for Sonny and an athletic young man bounced in with a he leather pouch hanging from his waist. Fela took out a handful of ten-naira notes from it and gave them to the solemn looking man he had just been talking to.  The whole place was a bustle of activity with Mercy’s non-stop moanings and cursings getting louder all the time. Fela finally lost patience.

‘Let’s go’,  he a staff went out to the dilapidated

back-yard that Kojo could see a corner of from where he sat. People began bellowing ‘Kalakosa’ throughout the house. He got up to get a better view.

          He saw excited house inmates pouring into the cemented yard Mercy’ shouting was coming from a tiny ramshackle wooden shed that’s door was wide open. She came out gesticulating and the crowd surrounded her in a circle. The crowd began to clap rhythmically as she insulted them and the whole event took a  more melodramatic turn when Fela and J.K. began entering the circle to tease the women and she replied spiritedly.

           Slowly, and Kojo was never sure at what exact point, the whole confrontation became a song with the crowd clapping out the beat and Fela and Mercy abusing each other in call-and-response Kojo found this transition bizarre, if not disturbing, with at one moment Fela and the women raging at each other and the a musical dialogue taking over.

          Finally the show-case punishment broke up and the exhausted Titi went back inside the tiny Kalakosa prison. Someone tied the flimsy door shut with string. The crowd melted away and Kojo quickly sat down as  and some of them came back to the conference room talking excitedly as if they’d just seen a thrilling action film.

          Fela came in singing the song he and the reluctant Titi had improvised. He  went back to his chair but offered no explanation to Remi and the four Ghanaians as to what had taken place. It’s probably an everyday occurrence here, thought Kojo.

          After everything had settled down Fela went into a long diatribe against his recording company which he believed was being controlled by a foreign multi-national. But Sayid had to cut him short by explaining that  Zanoo Soundz  had  half their recording  to finish the next morning so they needed to leave to get some rest.

          ‘I’ll be playing tomorrow evening so you and your boys are welcome to come, replied Fela.  ‘I’m going to openly yab about my recording company trying to stifle my lyrics.

          ‘My musicians are leaving for Ghana straight after the recording but I’m staying around to do the mixing, so I’ll be at your show.’

          As the Remi and his guests four got up to go Fela shook hands with the four Ghanaians and told them, ‘I’m  always happy to meet musicians from Ghana. It’s my second home. You know, even my mother was a good friend of your first President.'

          In the car going home Kojo asked Lamptey his thoughts on the strange ?’

          ‘I don’t think so, unless we had the same dream. Lamptey responded. ‘I think it’s one of the way Fela taps his powers……by turning palavas into music and drama’.

          It’s true, everyone seemed to be acting out a part. Trouble is I couldn’t  tell where reality stopped and drama took over.’

‘Maybe Fela makes no distinction, great artists often border on the fantastic.’

‘Fela’s court  surprised you two, did it? broke in Remi as he was driving. ‘You see, a lot of the people who hang out at Fela’s are real hustlers and delinquents. I don’t mean the musicians, but the hangers on and even some of the girls. So Fela has to be strict to deal with them. It’s the only way he can keep control. And anyway, the Kalakosa isn’t a real prison. A person’s  free to walk out of it at any point….but of course they’re out of the house for good’.

‘I think I’ll have to start making  court at the Ebi Tie Ye’,  guffawed Sayid.

 

 

The following day the musicians arrived at the studio fresh and early and were able to record the remaining ten songs in a rather rushed fashion. About half-way through the session they were  joined by Remi who was accompanied by a fair-coloured women he introduced to Sayid as Emily. A session-singer. Sayid instantly started showing-off in front of this beautiful artiste by pretending he was in complete technical control of the complex recording console that had been operated by  Emmanuel. Sayid went behind the unsuspecting engineer and pulled off his head-phones. The quick thinking though bewildered Emmanuel diplomatically vacated his swivel seat and allowed Sayid to sit down in it. Fortunately Remi and Emily soon left so that  the efficient Emmanuel was able to take over and the band was able to finish at one-thirty in the afternoon.

Immediately they had finished the musicians piled into their bus which was parked outside the studio and was ready to, for they had already checked out of the hotel and put their bags and equipment in the vehicle and on its roof-rack.

Sayid handed some money to Jimmy and as the engine started warming up he gave them their last orders. ‘This should be enough for your petrol to get back. As for your  chop money over the next couple of days, you can use some of the money you make at the show at Cotonu. The cultural centre’s manager will also give you somewhere to sleep. I’ll come back the day after tomorrow by plane, after I’ve done the mixing’.

After the usual delay at the Idoroku border-post they arrived at Cotonu at seven in the evening and drove straight to the National Cultural Centre to see whether the band they were meant to be playing alongside with was already there. The lavish building  was deserted and there was absolutely no one around. Indeed, the whole town was strangely quiet.

They were hungry and so they shared so dry loaves of bread that Jimmy had luckily brought along and which they ate outside the imposing frontage of the building. Still no sign of anyone. Then tey briefly saw a cheering crowd in the distance waving green branches around, but they suddenly disappeared down a side-street. Finally at nine-thirty the Ghanaian Ambassador and his driver arrived in a Mercedes and told them that because of the marxist revolution celebration  the whole town had gone to the festivities at Abome, the capital of the old Kingdom of Dahomey where the traditional religious shrines were situated. Kojo guessed the new marxist leaders were keeping their local religious options open.

So no show and no money. Furthermore, because the night-watchman had finally come to lock up the cultural centre for the night the all had to sleep cramped up in the bus parked outside the building.

Early the following morning, after a breakfast of more bread, they left   for Accra. As the Ghanaian government had just accused the Togo one of encouraging the smuggling of cocoa and petrol there was a long immigration hold up by the annoyed immigration officials on the Togo side of the  Togo-Ghana border. So they arrived home hungry and tired late in the evening.

When Salim was told how they had fared  he sent out for a huge dish  of rice-and-stew from the night-market which they are in the courtyard whilst Salim went back to long party he had been having in the main building for three days. The musicians weren’t invited and anyway they were too exhausted, so despite the merriment and drunken noises emanating from the upstairs balcony they went straight to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN  -  COLLAPSE

 

They all slept late  but in the late morning their washing, ironing and other ablutions were interrupted by Sayid’s voice roaring over the compound. The musicians went to investigate in the dark unlit night-club whose doors were thrown open to give the place an airing. Sayid had just arrived from Lagos and he was screeching at Salim, Scar-face, the doorman, the cook and the various stewards and waiters.

          ‘There’s over a thousand cedis worth of beer unaccounted for’ he raged, ‘ and one crate of whisky. You bastards…….look at this place. And it’s the same upstairs. You cleaned out the fridge and freezers, broke my record player and smoked ten cartons of my cigarettes.’ Seeing the musicians peering into the gloomy interior he appealed to them ‘look what these mother-fuckers have done while we were busy in Lagos.’

          Except for Jimmy and the musicians everyone one sacked on the spot, including Sayid’s own half cousin Salim. When he proceeded to turn Scar-face out of his room Sayid found dozens of stolen articles  that had mysteriously disappeared one-by-one  during the security-man’s tenure, including two microphones  that Sayid had accused the bands-men of stealing. The police were called in and Sayid gave Scar-face a number of dirty slaps before he was taken away. He got a two year jail sentence.

          Sayid had to quickly find new staff and that very day he produced a new security guard: a shaven-headed ex-boxer who was as polite as could be, to start with anyway. Emily, whom Sayid had brought back from Lagos , was put in the spare room upstairs that Salim had had to quit. Henry was put in overall charge of the club.

          Henry was most certainly a different kettle of fish from Salim, for the new second-in-command was a dour middle-aged Lebanese man who had been keeping himself in trim for as long as he could, but was now just beginning to let himself go and enjoy the bloated luxury of the rich and well-fed.  This changed from athletic young man to obese middle-age was causing him some considerable anguish and thus he was often in a bad humour.

          Emily, whom the musicians for some time thought was a Jamaican, never ever spoke a word at them at all, but would look down at them disdainfully.  Behind everyone’ back she gossiped incessantly to Sayid about the staff and musicians of the Ebi Tie Ye and was constantly inflaming his volatile temper and goading him to drastic measures to deal with the supposed laziness and stupidity of the staff.  She forgot that servants have ears.

          Sayid had brought her to the club to sing with the band and so they rehearsed together several times a week.  She could sing well, even had one or two songs of her own, but it was her arrogant character that the musicians couldn’t stand.  She was always complaining about Ghana, the heat, the food and behaved as if she were a member of the aristocracy.  The bands-men discovered after a while that she was half English and half East African and had been brought up in London.

          However the main problem facing the musicians wasn’t Emily, it was Henry who wanted to eliminate the musicians altogether and turn the place into a discotheque.

           ‘Get rid of these band boys,’ he said to Sayid in the privacy of the upstairs room.  ‘They bring down the tone of the whole place………and get rid of those cheap good-time girls as well while you’re at it.’

          ‘But what about my recordings?’

          ‘Just use the musicians as session musicians to back Emily and yourself, but stop them playing in the club. In fact close down the club for a couple of months, redecorate it and them open it up as a high-class place and make it members only.  That’ll make sure we’ll keep all the rubbish out.’

          Sayid was torn in two by this idea.  On the one hand he liked the prestige and the money that would come with a classy place, but to stop being able to play with the band whenever he felt like it was a great sacrifice.

          Emily decided to make one with Henry on this issue.

          ‘It’s a good idea, Sayid,’ she said, ‘you’d make plenty of bread.  Forget the musicians.  Aren’t you always saying that they keep disturbing your peace of mind.  We could do something like a cabaret together, with me on my guitar.  That’s what I used to do in the club’s in London.’

          So slowly but surely life got more difficult at the Ebi Tie Ye for the musicians.  First they were told that the rent for their rooms, which up to then had been free, would be deducted from their wages.  Then Sayid, who had promised them money for the recordings, told them that they owed him money as back-payment for the rent.  So no session fees for the recordings.  They had been expecting to also get some of the composer royalties but the documents were still with the lawyer and Sayid was talking about writing a new one altogether.

          Kojo was really getting fed up, almost three months had passed since the recordings and now Sayid was claiming that there was a shortage of plastic in the country so there wouldn’t be a chance of the records being released for at least another year.  On top of all this, that very night Kojo had had to play guitar  on three strings as Sayid had refused to give him the fifty cedis for a new set. Kojo was sitting on a low wall near the main break during the band’s intermission looking very dejected.

          ‘Cheer up,’ said Beauty coming up to him.

          Kojo looked up and saw her standing above him.

          ‘Here, have a cigarette,’ she said smiling at him. ‘I can see you’re fed up with the place.  It’s not like it used to be.’

          ‘That’s very true. You know we don’t even get beer anymore after playing. Henry’s orders.’  And he went on to tell her all the problems the bands-men were facing.

          ‘It’s the same for us.  They kick us out unless we buy one drink an hour….and now it’s two cedis just for a mini-beer!  We working girls are all going to move to another spot and then they’ll see how quickly this place will collapse.  He’ll loose all his tourists.  What does he think they come here for?  No, we’ve decided that we’re all going to move out,’ she concluded on a grim note.

          ‘Why don’t you get out of the business altogether?’ asked Kojo.

          ‘Ha ha,’ she laughed merrily.  ‘I like it for a start, partying all the time, meeting new people……and anyway I’m trying to save enough money to get my hair-dressing saloon off the ground.  Two years ago I went to West Germany with this business man friend of mine and I brought a lot of the stuff back with me.  You know?  Electrical curlers, hair dryers and all that.  I’m building the shop now on some of my father’s land in Osu.

          Kojo was impressed by this hidden serious side of Beauty’s life.

          ‘You think I intend to continue the night-life business for the rest of my life?’ she said laughing bitterly.  ‘I might not look it but I’m older than most of the girls here.  I’ve got two kids who are staying at my mother’s.  So I don’t have time to waste ………like on that been-to friend of yours, Jack.’

          ‘But he wasn’t trying to waste you time.  In fact he told me that he liked you a lot.’

          ‘Well ….. he was a gentleman, I’ll give him that’, she reluctantly agreed.  Not like that bastard Sayid who will order one  of us upstairs at any time and poke us just like that.  The trouble with Jack was that he hated to give me money…and I knew he had plenty.  He was forever saying that he disliked to give actual cash to his girl-friends Instead he used to take me to expensive places and buy me plenty of presents.  But if I want to become completely independent I need the money….. Now!  I wouldn’t have minded if I had known he had no money, then I could take him or leave him, depending on whether I liked him enough: which in fact I did.  But he was insulting me, behaving as if he were broke.  The other girls started to make fun of me.’

          A waiter was passing and Beauty paused to order two drinks and then continued. ’But I think you should get out of this place too.  You’re different from the others.  I’ve noticed it for some time.  The only other one I like is Lamptey.  Look at the way Ringo acts, he doesn’t respect himself at all.  Always troubling us girls..…and with no money in his pockets.  And as for that Mensah friend of yours, he’s a complete drunkard.  The way he was behaving tonight.  Shouting and throwing his arms all over the place.’

          He was also singing out of tune, Kojo added under his breath and then aloud.  ‘Where would I go?  Sayid is the only one at the moment doing this sort of experimental thing.  so I have to stick it out.’

          The beer came and the two of them sat sipping it quietly.  Ringo came and told Kojo they  were on again so he gulped down the remaining beer.

          ‘Bye-bye Beauty, thanks for the advice,’ Kojo said as he hurried away.

          ‘Maybe I’ll see you afterwards?’ called Beauty.

          Kojo did see Beauty after the show and in fact went home with her that night.  The taxi pulled up at a small flat in Labadi which Beauty told Kojo her Swiss boy-friend had rented for her.

          ‘I hope he doesn’t catch me here,’ said Kojo as they were at the door with Beauty fumbling in her bag for the key.

          ‘No way,’ she replied adamantly. ‘He went back about six weeks ago but paid the rent for one year.  He said he’ll be back here next year on business and wants to know where to find me.  He even fitted the place out for me so I’m quite comfortable.’

          The place really was luxurious. Wall-to-wall carpeting, a fridge, ceiling fan, electric sewing machine and television.  She proudly showed him around.

          ‘It’s taken me a long time to get a place like this together,’ she said.  ‘I’ve made the ashawo business in both Abidjan and Lagos but was never able to save any money in those places.  It was just too expensive.  But now with my Swizz sugar-daddy everything’s O.K. I can even choose whose my boy-friend now,’ she added looking mischiefly at Kojo as they went into the bedroom.

          Three days later the professional women  were sacked when  Sayid told them and the  bands-men that he was closing down the club for three months for renovations.  The musicians would still, howeveer, be able to stay in their room at the back of the club and  were to rehearse five times a week with Emily, but there would be no shows.  He was therefore reducing their salary.

          Mensah left in disgust and went back to the army.  Fortunately for Kojo and Lamptey, Remi came down to Accra.  After seeing what was happening at the club, which he didn’t like, he told them they should come to Nigeria with him to join his band.

          They agreed and when Kojo told Beauty of his plans she became  very upset and warned him about Lagos being a rough place and life there a real struggle.  But after seeing Kojo was determined she changed her attitude and told him in a motherly manner that it would be a good experience for a young man. There love-making was intense that night.

          Kojo and Lamptey already had passports and health certificates from the previous trip, so all it needed for them to do was a visa for Togo, Dahomey and Nigeria.  Remi fixed up the Nigerian visa.  All this was done behind Sayid’s back, of course.

          So one morning Kojo and Lamptey quietly packed and surrepticiously  left the Ebe Tie Ye and went around to Remi’s hotel. They left within the hour together with Remi and his tough looking security man in a Range Rover.  As the two Nigerians had been going constantly up and down they knew all the border officials and so they were in Nigeria by the afternoon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN  - REMI UKOLI

 

          Remi drove fast all the way from the Nigerian border to Lagos. Being a skilful driver and using several short cuts he even got them easily through the go-slow between Lagos airport and Surulere, so they made the club in good time.

          Remi had explained to the two Ghanaian musicians on the journey that his Club Africa would be closed down for about four weeks for repairs, but the band would re rehearsing every day for two weeks, after which they would go on tour until the club was ready to re-open.  They  would be paid two naira a day for chop money, whether they played or not, and would receive more when they were out performing.  Remi was friendly and garrulous but Sullie, his security man, hardly said a single word during the whole trip.

          As they pulled into the open court-yard of Remi’s club dozens of people poured into the place and surrounded the car.

          ‘Are these the new guitarists?’ asked a short cheerful looking young man who was wearing a leather jacket and was introduced  to the Ghanaians as Lekan, also a guitarist.

          He was peering in at them and wanted to ask more questions but got no chance as several of he girls forcibly pushed him back and started questioning Remi whether he had brought them anything back from Ghana or Togo. Sullie sat looking at them disdainfully.

          The travellers managed to force the door open and get out of the car and a tall thin man came up to Remi, wearing spectacles and with a hurt look on his face.

          ‘Let me take you bags, Remi,’ he said thrusting forward a bandaged wrist in front of the band-leader.

          ‘What the hell have you done now, Playboy?’ asked Remi.

          ‘Well Remi……..somebody cut me with a piece of broken mirror.’

          ‘Go on.’

          But before Playboy could reply a petite girl with a very short Afro hair-cut interjected.  ‘He’s always trying to poke me, but I won’t agree.  So he’s been going around telling everyone that I’ve got gonorrhea.’

          ‘It’s lies, Remi.  It wasn’t like that at all…’

          ‘Shut-up!  I’ll deal with this later’.

          The two protagonists  kept quiet but continued looking daggers at one another. ]

 With everybody else following them in procession, Remi led Kojo and Lamptey through the club to the back wall behind which was a two-story building, then through a small opening in the wall down the side of the building and into a back-yard.

          ‘Wait here,’ said Remi to the Ghanaians, pointing to some battered and weather-beaten chairs. ‘Playboy go and………  No you can’t, your hand………. Titty, go and make sure their bunks are clean,’ he ended chuckling to himself mischiefly.

          Titty, the petite girl, didn’t think this funny at all and refused point-blank to go.  ‘It’s not my job.  Send Nepa or Sullie,’ she retorted defiantly.

          ‘So you think you’re too good?’ and Remi snatched up a broom, ‘Then take this and sweep the whole yard……an the wash-room…..and the toilet.’  He threw the broom down at her feet in a fury.

          Titty started screaming protests louder and louder until Remi went up to her and shouted ‘do it’ at the top of his voice only two inches from her nose and then walked into the house, followed by a sniggering Playboy.

Titty then began to cry out in a hoarse, powerful voice and worked herself up into an ecstasy of self-pity, not really caring whether anyone was listening or not, being so preoccupied with her own wounded pride and misery.

 Suddenly a bucket of water landed on her from the balcony above.  She stopped her wailing immediately, picked up the brush and started sweeping like a maniac whilst dripping water around.  Everyone scattered and pulled the unsuspecting Ghanaians away.  But she still successfully managed to sweep quite a bit of filth over Lamptey and Kojo in her malicious fury.  It would be about half an hour before it would be safe for anyone to go into the yard again they were told as they were taken upstairs to their room by Playboy.

          It was so tiny that there wasn’t room for two beds side by side, so they were arranged as bunks, one on top of the other.  The first thing they had to do was to change and try and clean off the muck from their trousers and shoes.

          Lekan bounced into the room after they had cleaned themselves up and he took them to a larger room next-door, that housed four bunks. 

          ‘This is Big Friday, he’s our organist, used to be with Tony Benson’s,’ he said introducing them to a huge shaggy musician who was sitting on one of the bunks working his way through a packet of biscuits.  ‘And this is Amaboo, he’s from the east.  Used to be with one of the highlife bands there.’

          ‘What do you mean?  one of the highlife bands.  I was with Rex Lawson,’ retorted Amaboo rather pompously in a pidgin English far more like the Ghanaian than the Yoruba version.  ‘I suppose you’ve heard of him?’ he inquired of the two Ghanaians.  ‘He died about ten years ago during the civil war.  After that I stayed on with his Seagull’s band for a bit and then joined Stephen Osadabe……..  You haven’t heard of him either I suppose…………..  After that…………’

          ‘After that he became the ace drummer for Black Power,’ interposed Lekan  mischiefly, cutting short Amaboo’s long-winded biography.  ‘He’s the assistant leader of the band.’

          ‘And who’s the leader?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘The sax player, Maurice.  He’s the only one of us who has his own room.  Bye the way there’s one other guy who stays in this room.  He’s also from Ghana, so maybe you know him.  He’s our soul singer, Wilson?’

          But the two Ghanaians had never heard of him and so Lekan continued.  ‘The other two musicians in the band, Moses and Shegum, share a room on the other side of your room.’

          ‘What about the Sullie, Playboy and the girls?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘Sullie has a room downstairs, next to Remi’s, as he’s the body-guard.  Playboy, Nepa our electrician and Yemi, the driver, share a room up here, further along the corridor.’

          ‘And the girls?’ asked the persistent Lamptey.

          ‘They’re downstairs, next to Sullie and Remi, so don’t get any funny ideas,’ warned Lekan light-heartedly.

          ‘Don’t worry.  After the way that small one behaved there’s no fear of that.  We like the peaceful life,’ Kojo replied.

          ‘Let’s go down and I’ll introduce you to the others,’ and  Lekan led the two downstairs, leaving Big Friday to his food and Amaboo reading a tattered book called, ‘How Jesus can help you in Life and Love.’

          In a comfortable lounge on the ground floor they met Maurice, who greeted them politely enough, but made it obvious that he had no intention of talking to them at any great length.  One of the chorus-girls was relaxing in a deep comfortable armchair holding a glass in her hand and she welcomed the two new-comers in a sleepy but attractive way.

          ‘That’s Patience,’ said Lekan and then more quietly, ‘she’s pissed out of her mind.’

          ‘You must be the two new guys,’ said a lean looking Afro-American entering the room and extending his hand to them.  ‘I’m J.S. I’m a good friend of Remi’s and the band.’

          They all sat down and Lekan turned down the volume of the record player that was blaring out the band’s latest LP.

          ‘I’d really like to visit Ghana,’ said J.S. ‘I’ve been in Nigeria almost six months now, most of the time in Lagos.  I just live around the corner.  I was intending to go to Ghana, but Lagos is just too heavy a city to leave.  There’s so much happening and so fast.  Just like New York.  So I’m sticking around here for a bit.’

          ‘What do you do?’ asked Kojo.

          ‘Oh, this and that,’ answered J.S. vaguely. ‘At the moment I’m helping Remi with some ideas’.  Then turning to Lekan he asked, ‘is he in his room?  Good.  O.K., I’ll see you guys later.’

          ‘Is he with the band?’ queried Kojo after the American had left the room.

          ‘He’s a musician.  Plays the piano.  But he’s not actually with the band as he doesn’t play any African music.  He’s trying to get Remi to do some Jazz numbers.’

          They settled back in the luxuriant armchairs and Kojo studied Patience, who struck him as a remarkably beautiful girl.  She had a natural Afro hair-cut, hardly any make-up an was wearing a long tight-fitting black dress with a silver chain belt.  She looked back at him in a friendly but rather dreamy way.  Maybe she is drunk he thought.

          ‘At least she’s a bit more decent than that crazy Titty,’ Kojo mentioned quietly to Lekan.

          ‘Don’t be fooled’, replied Lekan.  She’s just having one of her peaceful days.   She’s even worse than Titty.  You know what she once did at the airport when we were going to East Africa?  She pissed in the middle of the crowded main lounge. Just dropped her pants and urinated all over the carpet. The officials raised hell and then she had the cheek to start abusing them, yelling at them that she wanted to go to the toilet but the place had been full up with a queue waiting outside.  She told them that a modern airport should have more toilets.  She caused Remi a of trouble that day and almost delayed our departure.’

 Looking at her Kojo found it hard to believe.

 

 

          That evening Remi called a meeting of the band, introduced the two guitarists and told everyone that rehearsals would start the next day.

          ‘But I’ve got to give you girls a warning,’ he said.  ‘You’re taking advantage of the fact that I’ve made it a rule that the boys should never hit you….  Now you think you’re so great that you can do whatever you want.’

          ‘We don’t need any rules to protect us from these small boys,’ burst out Titty in a defiant tone.

          ‘So, that’s what you’re thinking now, is it?’ fumed Remi.  ‘Playboy go and give her one dirty slap.’

          Playboy went over to her and slapped her face once, with his good hand and she started screaming that she could take on anybody in the room.  Everybody was laughing except for J.S. and the two Ghanaians.

          ‘So you think so, do you?’ said Remi in a menacing tone.  ‘Alright then, we’ll settle this right now in the yard.’

          Everyone got up and went to the back yard with Kojo and Lamptey trailing behind.

          ‘We’d better pick someone your own size,’ said Remi to Titty.  ‘Yemi come here.’

          Yemi who was a small, compact guy was told to start slapping her and everyone else made a circle around him and Titty.

          ‘But no fists, mind you.’ Remi warned Yemi.

          Yemi didn’t look as if he really wanted to fight and so Sullie pushed him into Titty and she lashed out and clouted him.  He saw red and started punching her.

          ‘No fists, I said,’ shrieked Remi.

          Titty managed to rip Yemi’s shirt but she was getting the worst of it.  Suddenly another of the dancers, a tall very black complexioned girl, stepped forward and said, ‘she’s too small, Remi.  Let me take over.’

          ‘No, I want her to apologise on her knees.’

          Titty stated shouting a refusal to do this and so Remi grabbed her by the shoulders and said, ‘if you won’t kneel then go and spend the night in the latrine.’

          Titty gave him an insolent look and walked over, unassisted, to a dirty looking corner of the yard that contained open-air bathrooms and urinals.  Sullie followed her at a safe distance.

          ‘The whole night, mind you,’ shouted Remi to Mercy and then turning his attention to the main group,’ alright Sola, finish off the matter.’

          Sola made a few half-hearted lunges at Yemi and then knelt down and begged his forgiveness and the forgiveness of all the boys in the club.  Everyone sheered and Kojo was impressed by the way she had defused the situation as it had been quite obvious that Titty had had no intention of giving in which would have resulted in her receiving a severe beating.  Sola, on the other hand, was a good six inches taller than either Titty and Yemi and could have probably won the fight if she had wanted to.  Everyone  seemed very pleased by the way the matter had been dealt with as Remi led them back again into the main room where he told Sullie to hand out jumbos to everybody.  Sullie brought ten huge joints from his leather bag and distributed them around.

          ‘Don’t forget to give one to Titty,’ Remi told Sullie, she’ll need it to cover the stench of that place’.

          The place filled with smoke and people sprawled round.  A serious looking young man came in carrying a briefcase.

          ‘Did you do it, Dean?’ asked Remi.

          ‘Yeah, it’ll come out in tomorrow’s music page.’

          ‘Did you mention the new Afro-jazz sound?’ inquired J.S.

          ‘well..…I mentioned that the band was bringing out a new sound when the club reopened, but I didn’t actually mention the word jazz.’

          ‘But Remi,’ appealed J.S. in a perplexed voice, ‘I thought you said that they should mention this in the article?’

          ‘Look J.S., we’ll have to do much more work on your ideas before we can bring them out…………..and anyway, now we have to train these two new guys first.

          J.S. looked a bit upset but said nothing.

 

 

          The following morning they started rehearsals in the club, amidst piles of timber cluttering up the stage and it’s half completed extension.  Kojo was surprised that the first rehearsal mostly consisted of going over copy-right numbers he already knew.  They only played two of Remi’s numbers.  Remi explained that they would need the copy-right songs for the tour, as the band would have to start off an evening’s performance with an hour or so of pop music, before Remi came onto stage.  Kojo and Lamptey already new the two songs by Remi, which they had often heard on record and so had no trouble learning them, although Remi had to tell Lamptey several times to play correctly.

          ‘Just stick to the main rhythm and don’t try and improvise,’ he demanded of Lamptey.  ‘In my band everyone has to know his part exactly, I don’t want anyone freaking out.’

          J.S. was also hanging around but they didn’t play any of the songs that he had been working on with Remi.  During the practice he looked so lost and forlorn that immediately after they had finished, which was midday, Kojo and Lamptey went over to keep him company.

          ‘I’m from Detroit,’ the American told them.  ‘I’ve really been around in my time.  Just about done everything.  I was even in prison cone, for two years. I was caught looting during some of the riots.’

          Kojo was extremely astonished that someone should tell him such personal things on such a short acquaintance.  ‘I’ve read about these American riots.  They seem to be happening all the time’, he replied.

          ‘Yeah, it’s because of the oppression in the ghettos.  The honkies have everything so whenever there’s thing boil up the brothers just go and take what is justly theirs from the shops.  They caught me with a two thousand dollar stereo set.’

          ‘Then what happened?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘I was lucky.  I had some qualifications and so managed to get a job in the prison library.  I persuaded the authorities to let me set up a course in World History for interested prisoners and I ordered some books by Marcus Garvey, DuBois, Nkrumah and other radicals, amongst all the crap books on western democracy and the American Constitution.  The prison authorities were so stupid they didn’t realise what these books were about.  So I started running these educational classes for the prisoners, mostly brothers of course and the wardens never caught on to what I was doing all the time I was there.’  J.S. started chuckling to himself at this reminiscence.  ‘But your Kwame Nkrumah is my greatest hero, the way he kicked out the whites.  One day I’ll definitely go to Ghana to see how it is there.  The first African country to get Independence.  Ghana must be the greatest!’

          ‘Was the greatest, you mean,’ said Segun sourly, who was sitting nearby with Amaboo.  ‘We’ve overtaken them now.’

          He left abruptly after making this statement and Amaboo remarked, ‘don’t mind him, he just doesn’t like Ghanaians.  Some of his family were kicked out during the; Alien’s Order.’

          ‘How can they be aliens?’ asked J.S. in a perturbed voice, ‘I thought Nkrumah only kicked out the whites.’

          ‘The Alien’s Order decree wasn’t made in Nkrumah’s time, it was after he had been deposed,’ explained Lamptey.  ‘It was the Busia government that carried out the decree that all non-Ghanaians were to leave.  So thousands and thousands of Nigerians, Togolese, Liberians and people from Upper Volta were sacked and they were only given two weeks notice.’

          ‘Some of them had been in Ghana all their lives,’ added Kojo.

          ‘Some of Segun’s family were among,’ said Amaboo.  ‘His uncle had a night-club in Accra but he had to leave and the place was confiscated.’

          ‘I just can’t believe it,’ said JS in an astounded voice.  ‘Whites and Lebanese I can understand, but to send…………….’

          ‘Anyway some of the rich Lebanese were also sacked,’ interrupted Kojo.

          ‘But they were just a few,’ qualified Lamptey.  ‘It’s the fault of the politicians, you see J.S.  They always want to divide the people against one another.   Divide and rule.’

          ‘But I only thought that happened before Independence?’ croaked a confused J.S.  ‘Wasn’t that the policy of the colonial politicians?’

          ‘They’re all the same the whole world over’, responded Lamptey.  ‘That’s why I’m a musician.  It’s one of the few things that unites people.’

          ‘The world can only be united through the love of Jesus Christ,’ cried out Amaboo emotionally.

          ‘Good grief,’ commented J.S.

 

 

          A relatively uneventful week of practicing passed by, except for one night when Lekan and a white friend of his came in a bit the worse for wear.  Lekan and Peter, a young English cook at the grand Hotel, had got into a fight with some soldiers in a bar.  They had referred to the soldiers as ‘Zombies,’ and had been beaten for their cheek.  Remi seemed to think the incident a big joke.

          During that week there had been much speculative talk by members of the Club Africa, about the big wrestling match that was comibg up between the famous Power Pete of Nigeria and the notorious Sinbad from Egypt.  After much wheedling Remi finally agreed to take the whole lot of them, about twenty people, to see the contest which was being held at the indoors sport stadium at Surulere.

          They arrived at the place around eight and found a mass of people jostling each other for tickets.  Remi told Sullie, Moses and Big Friday, the largest of his entourage, to force their way through the crowd and the rest followed in their wake.  By the time they had squeezed and fought their way to the ticket-office the crowd was packed as solid as sardines.  Pick-pockets were everywhere and Kojo was glad he had taken the advice not to carry anything.  None of the thieves tried anything on Sullie though, who was clutching the money bag to his chest and looking around ferociously at anybody who came near him.

          Finally they got in and were directed to some fairly close ring-side seats.  It must have set Remi back a hundred naira at least, thought Kojo.  The place was packed to its capacity of six thousand, and more were trying to get in.

There was a huge cheer when Power Pete came in, and a equally loud boo for the dusky Sinbad who followed him, with his long lank hair tied into a pig-tail.  They were heavy-weights so the fight took some time to warm up and the crowd only really came to life when Pete grabbed Sinbad’s pigtail during the fifth round.  Up to then Pete had been loosing.  After this everything went the Nigerian wrestlers way and in the thirteenth round he bloodied Sinbad and in the fifteenth got him into a strangle hold.

          As the fight was going on a dozen or so small boys who had sneaked into the stadium had  managed to get  vantage points from the small ventilation holes high up in the walls, near the ceiling.  Kojo was amazed how they were able to wriggle their way up there.  As the fight had progressed and got more exciting these small boys had forgotten to keep hidden and stuck their heads right out of the shafts to see better.  One boy had even wriggled his body through.  This was too much for the police, who became annoyed an started shouting up at them, so a head would disappear from one ventilation shaft only to reappear, a few moments later, at another.  Throughout the climax of the fight the children were being continually shouted at by the police. Two of them even tried to catch the boys, but the burly policemen  were too large to squeeze into the narrow spaces and so had to give up.

          The fight finished with a victory for the Nigerian so everyone was satisfied and began leaving.  Remi’s group was halfway out of the auditorium when Kojo first smelt a sickening scent that made him want to retch.  He turned around and saw that the police were throwing tear-gas around, either to remove the children or to clear the audience more quickly.  Whatever the reason, it was touch and go at one point whether there would be a stampede.  A wave of panic overtook the crowd, but fortunately the main doors d had been thrown wide open and so the crowd was ejected like pips from a squeezed orange.  One moment Kojo was on the verge of hysteria in the middle of a mob and the next he was clear outside in the fresh air.

          Remi and the others were laughing about the whole thing, but Kojo thought it rather dangerous to use tear-gas in an enclosed space and he made a comment to this effect.

          ‘The police just wanted to enjoy themselves,’ guffawed Remi, as if the closing incident rounded off a pleasant evening.

          It was a highly animated group that piled into the Mercedes Benz bus and the driver, Yemi, was so excited that he turned right, without giving warning to the man driving behind who was trying to overtake on the inside lane.  The car driver was almost driven into a ditch and everyone in the bus started laughing.  However the bus was then stopped in a go-slow just after it had turned the corner, which gave a chance for the infuriated driver to jump out of his car, cut across the corner and rush up to the front right window of the Mercedes and start punching Remi. But he  forgot that the driver was on the other side. So as the bus started to move off  everyone on the right-hand side of the bus stuck their fists out of the windows and all struck the man in succession across his head.  The last Kojo saw of the rash man was him lying in a daze at the side of the road.  Everyone in the bus was bubbling with self-righteous joy.

          ‘I’m not sure I want to stay with this band,’ said Kojo to Lamptey that night as they were lying in their bunks.

          ‘The tear-gas freaked you?’

          ‘No, it’s not that.  It’s all the fighting that goes on here.  In the club and outside.  Everyone pushing and shoving like mad.  How can I play with these vibes around?’

          ‘That’s how Lagos is.  It’s a rat-race.  Even J.S says it’s  just like New York.  We’ll get used to it and I’ve been told it’s not so bad once you get out of Lagos.’

 

 

          Another week passedby which time the two new musicians had become proficient at Remi’s numbers.  J.S. had attempted on several times to get his numbers rehearsed, but each time Remi had put him off.  At one of the rehearsals, when Remi hadn’t been around, J.S. took over the organ from a reluctant Big Joe and tried to get the band to play one of his songs.  But it just wouldn’t gel and Kojo simply could not work out the bass-line. 

          ‘It’s a blues, not an Afro-beat,’ shouted J.S. impatiently to Kojo, ‘a sixteen-bar blues.’  Then in an exasperated voice, ‘Look, if you want I’ll count then for you’. He did so, but Kojo got lost again.

          Lamptey wasn’t mush better and just fiddled around on lead guitar. Amaboo on trap-drums, was the only one who seemed to know what he was doing and it was he who finally said, ‘you’ll have to change the bass-line, J.S.  Our old bass player had exactly the same trouble with this your song.’

          ‘I’m not going to change a fucking thing,’ shouted J.S., ‘I know hove it goes and…..…’

          He was cut short by Remi who had come to rehearse some of his new numbers.  ‘Look J.S.,’ he declared in a tired voice, ‘you and I will work on your numbers when we come back from tour, O.K.’

          The following day it was Patience’s turn to spend time confined to the urinal area for coming back so late from a night out that she missed the rehearsal.  Lekan and Peter also got into trouble again.  This time it occurred when Peter was driving Lekan around on his Honda, both of them without crash helmets.  A traffic policeman had caught them at the crossroads he was directing and started yelling at them.  Lekan impulsively told the policeman to go to hell and the realising they were caught by the lights told Peter to drive on.  The policeman managed to get one lash across Lekan’s shoulder with his whip, but Lekan was protected by his leather jacket and Peter roared off to the right before any more blows fell.

          That evening Amaboo took Kojo and Lamptey out to a seedy juju bar.  He wanted o show them some of the night-life and as he had a little cash on him he decided to introduce them to, what he called, his ‘regular spot.’

          It was a pretty rough place, an ugly looking doorman took the fifty kobo entrance fee and they passed down a long corridor, dimly lit by red lamps.  As the windows on the left were all barred-up it reminded Kojo of a prison.  At the end of the corridor they entered a stuffy and almost pitch-block room, the only light coming from the stage where the band was blasting out.  They groped  their way to an empty table, sat down and Amaboo ordered a round of drinks and they were soon surrounded by a group of girls who all seemed to be on intimate terms with him.  One of them sat down at the table but Kojo could hardly make out her features.

          The band looked exhausted.  Most of them were sitting down, which struck both Kojo and Lamptey as odd.  They were all sitting on chairs behind their amplifiers, except for the bass player who was propped-up against a pillar with his eyes closed and holding his guitar vertically upwards in front of him.  The music was slow and heavy with dancers just shuffling about.  However, sometimes the musician who played the squeeze-drum would take a solo and the dancers would be provoked into a short, vigorous burst of display.

          ‘Do you want to dance?  She’ll call some of her friends,‘ asked Amaboo.  They declined and Amaboo got up to dance.

          ‘I thought Amaboo was a puritan.  Isn’t he an official in the Cherubim and Seraphim Church?’

          ‘Yeah,’ replied Lamptey, ‘he showed me robes last week, even tried to persuade me to come with him……….  But Big Joe tells me that he has more girl-friends than anyone else in the club, except for Remi of course.’

          ‘He’s a strange guy.  Speaks like a Minister.  You know, throws his voice out and speaks really clearly.’

          ‘So it’s easy for him to boss the girls,’ laughed Lamptey.

          A scuffle developed on the dance-floor and a girl began to shout.  Amaboo suddenly came back.  ‘Stupid bitch didn’t tell me she had come with her boy-friend.  Let’s get out of here and go somewhere else.’

          They drained their beers and left the dingy club with the band still playing the same number as when they had come in, almost an hour before.

          ‘No wonder they have to sit down to play,’ commented Kojo to Lamptey as they went out.

          They were taken to another equally dingy bar where again they were surrounded by a group of eager good-time girls.

          ‘You seem to know them all,’ remarked Lamptey.

          ‘Well, a lot of them are from my part in the east.  During the Civil war many of the girls lost their families or couldn’t find husbands, so they came to Lagos.

          Amaboo danced with one of them for a little while and then came back to tell the two Ghanaians that he was going out with her for a few minutes.  He told them to wait and ordered them another two beers before leaving them.

          ‘He must be loaded with money,’ Lamptey commented, but Kojo only nodded as he was getting slightly drunk and was beginning to enjoy the spacy and drawn-out juju music the band was playing.  The singer’s voice purred.  Several times Lamptey tried to start up a conversation but Kojo was floating with the music and only grunted or anwsered in monosyllables.

          After about half and hour Amaboo came back, looking slightly flushed and ordered another round of beers.  Kojo’s reverie was broken as people began to drift over to their table.  Amaboo most certainly knows how to enjoy himself, thought Kojo to himself, for wherever he goes he attracts people.

          Soon their table was surrounded by various friends of Amaboo and the conversation was dominated by his loud-mouthed humour.  At one stage he lights dimmed and the music faded away and everyone began to shout ‘Nepa,’ the initials of the Nigerian Electrical Power Authority, which broke down so often it had become a standing joke amongst Lagotians.   When, after a few minutes of indecision, the lights and the music came on again a great cheer broke out.

          More drinks were brought and Amaboo got so talkative and funny had his cronies almost in tears with laughter.  Both Kojo and Lamptey were quite drunk and were slowly passing into a stupor.  Occasionally they would start when the crowd cackled at one of Amaboo’s numerous anecdotes.   I wonder where he gets the energy, thought a dazed Kojo.

          Finally Amaboo roused them and told them it was time to go and they started walking home at one in the morning.  Traffic was still flowing at an undiminished rate.

          ‘Doesn’t Lagos ever go to sleep,’ asked Kojo as he staggered along.  They passed a discotheque with a group of boys and girls standing outside, underneath its neon lights.  Some of them greeted Amaboo and asked him when the Club Africa would be opened again.

          ‘Do you want to go inside?’ asked Amaboo, turning to the two Ghanaians; but they balked at this.

          ‘It’s not like the other dives.  This place is smart,’ he continued trying to persuade them.  But they were adamant.

          ‘Can you find your way back from here?’  They nodded.  ‘O.K., I’m going in.  I want to check for somebody.  See you later,’ and he disappeared through the flashy entrance.

          On the way back Kojo managed to fall into a shallow open-drain.  One moment he was walking besides Lamptey and the next he was up to his ankles in filth in the ditch.  He was surprised as he had felt no descent.  Lamptey pulled him out and he had to wash his stinking feet under a tap as soon as hey got back to the club.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN  - ON TREK IN NIGERIA

 

          Three days later they left for Abeokuta as they were playing at a hotel there on the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.  Remi drove them all there as Playboy, Nepa and Yemi had gone ahead in the Range-Rover.  He was in a good mood and was joking around on the road by allowing cars, especially Mercedes saloons, to come up behind and try and overtake him; but as soon as the other car was in the act of overtaking Remi stepped on the gas. It them became a race to the finish with the two vehicles neck and neck at ninety miles an hour and often as not a lorry coming in the other direction.  Remi did this many times, never once giving way, for everytime the bigmen in the Mercedes saw Remi’s gleeful look and the name of the band painted on the side of the bus in psychedelic colours, they would gracefully retire.  The first time Kojo was rather scared, and the second and third, but by the tenth dice with death he was as exhilarated as the rest and like them was even urging Remi on.

          In a cheerful mood they arrived outside the hotel at five o’clock in the evening. It was on a main road and situated under a great rock surmounted by a white cross.  They were to play that very night and would be staying in the second-floor rooms until Sunday, when they were to tour Benin and the east for two weeks. 

          Remi and J.S. took single rooms and the rest divided out into the other less grand rooms.  The hall-way leading to their rooms was baking hot as, for security reasons,  the air-conditioners, instead of being on the outside of the building, were lined up inside along the hall pumping out heat.  In fact it was so hot in the corridor that the air-conditioner only just managed to keep the rooms tepid.

          After they had dumped their luggage in their respective rooms all, except the chorus-girls, went down to the lorry and the instruments were quickly unloaded into the dance-hall, where Yemi, Playboy and Nepa set them up.

          A little later food was brought up to them all on the second-floor balcony, which ran from the busy front of the hotel to the quiet back and was overlooked by the famous Abeokuta Rock.  Everyone was shouting imperiously at he waiters and waitresses, who in turn were making it quite plain that they weren’t used to such riffraff coming to stay at their hotel.  The bands-women, who had changed into fresh clothes and were heavily made up, were in a  petulant mood. They weren’t satisfied with the cooking and  complained in peeved voices that it wasn’t up to Lagos standards.  Amaboo and Playboy kept getting cold stares from the young waitresses they were leering at and lusting over.  The waiters conspired together and brought all the wrong dishes at the wrong time. They brought no ice-water at all so Remi was forced to call the manager who came panting up the stairs with a worried look on his face. 

          Trying to ignore all except Remi he apologised and said he would talk to his staff who, he explained, were new and a bit bush and didn’t know how to treat customers properly.  As he was talking his eyes kept  wandering about distracted by what must have seemed to him a very peculiar bunch of people.  The women were all wearing long slinky dresses, had vivid blue eye make-up and garishly roughed cheeks and mouth.  All had their hair done up in elaborate plats and some of the bands-men had platted their hair too.  Lekan was jumping up and down like a court-jester, wearing a pair of trousers that had a zip that went all the way round and if completely unzipped neatly divided his trousers in two, an operation he demonstrated several times.  Moses was all the time hovering over Remi like a huge protecting hen, full of gracefully coordinated energy.  He was the band’s maraccas player and on stage and off constantly shadowed Remi about.  Remi was the centre of all these bizarre sights, dressed in a yellow skin-tight suit and wearing yellow head-band to match. With a huge impish grin on face he tried to listen to the manager seriously but occasionally had to turn and shout to his band to shut up.  The manager left this mad crowd as soon as he could and within a few moments the ice-water arrived and the musicians were able to finish their meal.

          The show started at nine without Remi as he liked the band to warm up first with some cover versions of popular numbers.  By eleven o’clock the audience were becoming impatient to hear the band’s own compositions and gave a big cheer when Remi chorus women finally made an entrance. Backed by his flimsily dressed women who sang and gyrated at his back they were a sesnation and  played until two o’clock in the morning.

          Kojo and Lamptey, who were sharing a room, rose late the following morning as they had nothing to do until the evening.  They went on to the balcony to order their break-fast but got a dirty look from one of the waiters who told them that break-fast had finished.  So they ordered lunch and sat down.  J.S., Dean, Remi and Sullie were sitting at a near-by table where Dean and J.S. were arguing.

          ‘But his image is derogatory to the black cause.’ declared J.S.

          ‘But I remember reading somewhere that he has given money to the cause,’ replied Dean.

          ‘And so what?’

          ‘So you can’t say that Sammy Davies works completely for the white American establishment,’ retorted Dean.

          ‘You know he was a good friend of Nixon’s, supported him on his election campaigns?’

          ‘Is that true?’ asked Remi who, up to then, had kept out of the quarrel which was getting rather heated. ‘Then the guy must be a bastard,’ and no more was said on the topic.

          Playboy walked in with a foaming pot of palm-wine and Remi poured himself a glassful, took a gulp and spat it out on the floor.

          ‘This has had sugar-water added,’ he exclaimed, wiping his mouth.  ‘I said you were to get the palm-wine straight from the tree….Come!’

          Playboy went forward and received a slap across the face from Remi, but the palm-wine was soon finished by everyone in spite of the adulteration.

          Remi’s table went back to discussing politics, this time about the Angolan Civil War which was a major topic in the morning newspaper.

          ‘They ought to shoot the two South African prisoners,’ said J.S. referring to the two white South African soldiers caught by the M.P.L.A. and sent to prison in Nigeria.

          ‘At least we shouldn’t give them food.  I don’t see why we should have to feed them,’ said Dean, for once in agreement with J.S..

          ‘In fact all the whites in South Africa should be shot,’ said J.S. vehemently.

‘What about our friends?’ asked Remi.

          ‘What white man is a friend?’ replied JS.

          ‘well in southern Africa the Cubans for a start…………and the Russians.’

          ‘But the Cubans aren’t whites,’ declared J.S.

          ‘Some are blacks but some are of Spanish descent,’ said Dean. ‘And anyway even in South Africa there are whites who are in prison for supporting our struggle.’

          ‘They’re just a bunch of liberals.  We have those in the States.  But it’s not right for a black man to expect help from a white, anywhere,’ J.S. stated categorically.

          ‘Of course it’s up to us,’ said Remi getting a bit annoyed.  ‘But what I’m interested in is making Nigeria, and all of Africa for that matter, a modern society in the international scene.  We can’t live like our forefathers as those days are gone.  The whole world is one now and we have to have industry, science and everything they’ve got in the West.  We have to catch up and if anyone wants to genuinely help us, wherever they are from, we will accept……….  There are some heavy whites around.’

          J.S. squirmed at this last remark and replied in an exasperated voice, ‘but Nigeria is the biggest and richest country in black Africa, how can you work with whites?’

          ‘Maybe because they never really conquered us,’ replied Remi.

          There was silence for a few minutes and then J.S. began to talk about the situation in the American ghettoes and how he had helped set up a community self-project  in one of them. 

Remi was impressed by this and stated ‘we should be setting up such  projects  in the poor areas of Nigeria. As  things are  the rich men are chopping all our wealth. They are leaving nothing for the down-trodden sufferheads’.

          ‘And they don’t even run the country properly,’ he added.  ‘Look at Lagos harbour.  Two hundred ships waiting to unload and some of them getting attacked by pirates while they are stuck there. Then there are traffic go-slows  all over the place and now they are issuing the police with whips.  And corruption in high places…..take the civil service for example.’

          ‘But it was the whites who set that up’ interrupted J.S.

          ‘But it’s not them who are running the country now.’ Replied Remi with finality.

          There was a pause and then J.S. went back to talking about corruption in America and Kojo, who had finished his breakfast became restless.  Not that the conversation was boring, but it was always impossible to get a word in when Remi was around, except for J.S. who never seemed to stop talking.

          So he wandered over from the back balcony to the front where he leaned over the wall looking down at the busy street and the small stores on the other side of the road.  A van with a loud-speaker blaring juju music pulled up and parked in a quiet side street opposite the hotel and a small crowd gathered around.  The driver remained inside talking rapid Yoruba into the microphone while another man got out an started performing acrobatics.  First he span cart-wheels and then tied himself into knots. After this he took a long bench and balanced it on his forehead and his chin.  He even picked it up with his teeth.  When he had collected a large crowd he went into the van and came out with some charts which Kojo was able to see clearly.  They were large anatomical diagrams of the penis and vagina.  Kojo could make out the words ‘gonorrhoea and power’ coming from the loud-speaker.  The man with the chart then pointed to his own penis and started wriggling and thrusting his hips about much to the audience’s delight.  Finally the driver came out from the van with a tray of bottles containing a dark liquid and the throng rushed forward to buy them.  A few minutes later the van was on its way.

          All the band members were up by this time and as the women were complaining of boredom Remi suggested that everyone should go off in the bus to visit Abeokuta Rock while he went to see a friend of his.  J.S. was very enthusiastic about this and said he would take his expensive German camera along and snap some photos.

          Only about half the members went as the others were too lazy to do any climbing.  It wasn’t much of a climb anyway, although at the top there was a narrow and tortuous fissure to squeeze through.  As the Abeokuta people used to flee up this hill in times of trouble this fissure formed a natural and easily defensible gateway for them.  On the way down this natural fortress J.S. stopped every now and again to take pictures of the group.  Lamptey tried to get fresh with Doris, the oldest of the dancers, by offering her a helping hand as they were climbing and descending and by putting his arms around her as they were posing for the photos.  She enjoyed his attentions so much that Playboy had to tell Kojo to warn his friend to leave her alone as she was one of Remi’s girl-friends.  Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the outing.

          They all left Abeokuta in convoy on the Sunday but Remi was in a fowl mood as he hadn’t been paid as much as he had expected.  His humour wasn’t helped when the bus had a puncture less than a quarter of a mile from the hotel.  Poor Yemi was slapped a couple of times for incompetence

as the spare tyre was also flat. After jacking up the vehicle he  was sent off to a vulcaniser in the Range-Rover to repair them both.

          Things were finally fixed and as they were passing out of Abeokuta a traffic police-man was unfortunate enough to make a rather vague stop signal to Remi, who was driving the bus.  He had already gone past  the police-man when the man shouted to him.  Remi became so furious that he reversed the bus up to the police-man, stuck his face out of the window and began shouting in the man’s face, eyeball to eyeball.

          ‘Who are you?  You don’t know what you’re doing.You could cause an accident.  Foolish man.’

          ‘Who are you calling foolish,’ cried the amazed policeman.

          ‘I’m calling you a foolish person and probably you’re corrupt as well.’

          The policeman was so surprised that he could only splutter whilst Remi who was holding a joint blew a puff of marijuana smoke right into the man’s face and roared off.  They left the man waving his arms about and screaming something about God and punishment.

          This incident put Remi into a good humour, that is until they pulled up at a garage half way to Benin, to fill up with petrol.  For some reason as Remi got out to stretch his legs he jokingly called the young petrol attendant a monkey and the boy made a grab for Remi’s testicles.  Sullie jumped down and pushed the boy away, who promptly rushed into the building and came back brandishing an iron bar.  By then the other petrol attendants had seen the band name on the bus and tried to cool the boy down by telling him it was Remi Ukoli he was attacking and that he had only been joking.  Remi, who had smartly jumped back into his seat, shouted out from the safety of the bus that he hadn’t meant to cause any insult and everybody laughed except for the boy who was still fuming and clutching the iron bar as they pulled out.  To Kojo the confrontation seemed to be totally unnecessary.

          They arrived at the Joromi Hotel in the early evening, where they met Yemi and the Range-Rover already there before them.  Remi went into the centre of town to find Victor Uwaifo at his Club 400 where the band was to play.  Victor’s Joromi Hotel, where they were staying overnight, was name after his smash hit of that name that rocked West Africa in the mid-sixties.

          Victor came back with Remi, to make sure everyone had rooms, and after everyone had washed and eaten they went in the bus to his club.  It was smaller than they had expected being a discotheque rather than an open air club like the Joromi.

          Victor played first and the musicians from Lagos were amazed by his versatility of flute, organ and guitar.  He had a spectacular way of playing the organ and doing acrobatics at the same time, like spinning around or playing with his feet or chin.  He also did a trick with his guitar which he was able to swing up and down on a hinge attached to his belt.  His guitar solos were some of the best Kojo ever heard and he mentioned this to Lamptey who snorted a derogatory reply about highlife no longer being the in thing.  Two midgets played clips and maraccas for Victor’s Melody Maestros. At one point in the show Victor and the maraccas player danced together  with the small man occasionally darting through Victors’s legs, which created a huge laugh from the audience. 

          ‘That’s King Pago,’ Remi told his people, ‘he used to be with Bobby Benson in the fifties.’

          After The Melody Maestros had finished Black Power gave their show, although it was in rather cramped conditions for the club was overflowing with fans coming to hear Remi Ukoli live.

          The next day they were going to Warri, but as they weren’t playing there until the Tuesday they hung around Benin until the afternoon.  Victor took them all down to Camp Davies, a chop-bar and palm-wine bar situated in a copse of palm-trees with a rich sweet-smelling black soil.  They ordered stock-fish, agushie  soup and pounded yam whilst the palm-wine was tapped for them straight from one of the trees.  A radio was hanging from the branch of a nearby tree and the music of the African Brothers band was blaring out of it. It surprised  Kojo to hear Ghanaian music, for in Lagos all he had ever heard was juju music or Afro-beat.  He mentioned this to Victor who told him that although highlife was no longer very popular in Yorubaland, as most of the highlife musicians there had been from the east and had therefore left during the civil war. But it was still the most popular music in the eastern part of Nigeria and in the Benin area as well.  After they had eaten the band members went back to the town and drove around a bit. 

Benin City struck Kojo as being rather like a small Ghanaian town, slow moving and provincial. ‘It’s just like Koforidua,’ he said, expressing these thoughts to Lamptey who was sitting next to him.  ‘It’s much more peaceful than Lagos.  I swear if I ever come to live in Nigeria I’ll come straight here.’

          ‘It’s a damn sight cheaper than Lagos too,’ added Lamptey.

          They left at three o’clock in the afternoon, arranging to come back to play at the Club 400 after they had returned from their two week tour of the east.

          They played one night at Warri and then went on to Onitsha, Calabar, Aba, Port Harcourt and  Owerri where Kojo saw the littered remains of tanks and planes from the Civil War. Finallythey  back to Benin for one night before returning to Lagos.

Besides playing at the big towns on this tour they also played at some small villages, some without electricity and these reminded Kojo of the days he had been with Gambia.  The people in the east were very friendly and both Kojo and Lamptey were struck by the similarities to the rural areas in Ghana.  Even the highlife music was similar and the band had to play plenty of this music while they were there.  Noisy and brash Lagos seemed far away.

The only bad vibrations for the band during the tour came from within the group itself, for in spite of the peaceful setting the skin-pain inside the band went on unabated.  Indeed, if anything it increased to compensate for the quietness of the surroundings.  Patience and Titty kept on quarreling and fighting all the time over an obscure point of honour that Kojo was never able to fathom.  Playboy and Yemi kept on getting slapped more often for the stupid mistakes that they were always making.  Once or twice Kojo felt like slapping them himself.  Several times Kojo and Lamptey were cursed on stage by Remi for making errors, but as they were new he went no further. 

But some of the other musicians weren’t so lucky.  Shegun was drunk one day on stage and kept spoiling his drum rhythm so that in the end Remi pushed him over in a fit-of-peak which also knocked Shegun and his conga drums down.  This happened in the little village of Orlu, where the audience took it as part of the show.  Lekan was repeatedly warned about his ‘lazy guitar’  as Remi called it, and was fined each time. It must have knocked a considerable hole in his wages as Remi fined him five naira the five or six times it happened.  Even Big Joe was fined once.  When they were at their most easterly point on the trek Wilson quarrelled with Sulley and disappeared the same day.  He probably went over the border to the Cameroons to continue his extensive wanderings of West Africa, for good soul singers were much sought after in the French speaking countries.

          When they arrived back at Lagos they found the changes in the night-club almost completed and with the stage much enlarged.  Dean was told to start up a publicity campaign for the re-opening of the club the following week.  Remi also bought a brand new set of musical equipment to go with the expanded stage and was selling off his old and rather battered stuff.

          When Kojo found out about this he asked Remi for how much he would sell the bass guitar, Remi said a hundred and fifty naira but agreed to reduce it to one hundred and twenty for Kojo.  So Kojo gave him seventy naira out of the eighty he had earned on the three week tour and said he would pay off the rest in instalments from his wages.  Lamptey thought Kojo was crazy.

          ‘What do you need a bass for?  It’s no good without an amp and they cost over a thousand naira.’

          ‘Well, it’s a start,’ replied Kojo,  ‘I’ve never owned a guitar before.

          ‘I’m going to use my money to buy myself a new pair of boots, fancy leather ones……..and some new clothes.’ stated Lamptey.

          ‘So what’s happened to all your beliefs about the spiritual life.  you used to say it was the inner beliefs not the outer garb that made a man,’ asked Kojo.

          ‘Well, I’m still a vegetarian,’ was Lamptey’s lame reply.

          Kojo didn’t say anything for he had noticed a change in Lamptey since coming to Nigeria.  His voice had got much louder and aggressive and he was fast becoming a favourite of Remi who made no pretence to hide that he thought him a better guitarist than Lekan.  Lamptey was thus getting swollen-headed and had on several occasions belittled Lekan in front of people.  Kojo was getting increasingly worried about his friend for exposing himself to the in-fighting of the band.  Kojo himself shied away from this whenever he could, if anything became more retiring than he usually was in Ghana: partly because he didn’t speak the Yoruba language and partly because he couldn’t adjust to the over-dramatised life of the group.  Everyone in the club lived almost on top of one another and the resultant friction was always causing arguments.  It seemed to give them some sort of release from the tensions as everyone obtained deep satisfaction from the rows.  They were so volatile that he could now understand why Remi ruled with a rod of iron, but he found it difficult to accept.  There must be another way of organising things, he thought.  The strange thing was that no-one seemed to want to leave even when they were punished.  Remi’s music wove a spell around them…..and himself too it seemed.  The power of music is great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN  - ZOMBIE ATTACK

 

          The Club Africa re-opened on the Saturday night and the place was packed out from early on in the evening.  The band started off with a medley of pop songs and juju music, but they only played for an hour as the audience was shouting out for Remi.  He came on stage and gave the clenched fist salute and the crowd responded wildly.  He sang some of his hits and was able to come right into the audience on the stage extension that jutted into the dance-floor.  The place was so jammed that only a small part of the floor was available for dancing, most of it being filled with crowded tables.  The chorus girls also now had plenty of space to dance behind Remi.

          Remi ended the first half with the new song he had be rehearing with the band the previous week.  It was called ‘Horse Whip’ and condemned the use of police whips on Lagos motorists.  The song was very successful with the audience and afterwards Remi talked to the audience, who by then were in the palm of his hand.

          ‘In the colonial days the white man used to whip his black slaves,’ there was huge roar of anger.

          ‘Now we have independence,’ followed by a cheer. 

          ‘But what do we see?’

          The audience responded ‘tell us Remi, tell us.’

          ‘We see black men whipping black men in the streets of our capital city.’

          At this point the crowd erupted into shouting, some of them standing up and waving their arms about crying ‘colonial mentality,’ and ‘zombies.’

          ‘We have no argument with the Nigerian government, but the army major who thought up this idea should be demoted.’

          The band broke for the interval and when Remi came off  stage he was surrounded by fans, reporters and television people.  As Kojo came off stage Dean approached him with another man who came up and shook Kojo’s hand.

          ‘I’m Danny Okoro,’ he said.  ‘Dean tells me you were with Sayid?’

          ‘Yeah, I was with Zanoo Sounds, that’s the group he formed after Sankofa split.’

          ‘What did he say about me?’ asked Danny.

‘He said………..’Kojo was rather embarrassed but he went on.  ‘He said that you stole the band from him.’

          ‘What a laugh…….I’ll put you straight.  You see we had agreed to go half and half on the tour.  I paid for the flight out and spent about another two thousand pounds on them in Europe.  He was meant to be sending out another four thousand pounds to finance the rest of the tour bur we never got it….or should I say he never sent it.  I was flat broke at one stage and got stranded in West Germany with the musicians, so when a friend offered us a record contract with a decent advance we jumped at the chance.  Some of the band split after we did the recordings and they got money in their pockets, from the session-fees and also getting money from shows my friend arranged.  Others stayed behind in Germany.  Two of them even married  German girls.’

          ‘So you never made it to the Middle-East?

          ‘No.  That four thousand was meant to have got us there, but that bastard was too tight.’

          After sitting and drinking with Danny a while longer it was time to play again.  They kept at it until two-thirty in the morning and as they were packing up Lekan and Lamtey began to quarrel and then fight.  During the show Remi had fined them both and this annoyed Lamptey as he claimed the fault came from Lekan.  Lekan hotly denied this and before anybody could stop them they were rolling around on the stage floor.  Fortunately the audience had left by then.  Some of the musicians tried to separate them but found it too difficult.  Finally Remi and Sulley came and; Remi simply started kicking them as they had knocked down a microphone in their tumbling around.  He ordered Sulley to take Lekan to the urinal.

          ‘Tou’ll sleep there tonight,’ he shouted and turned on Laptey who was sitting on the floor rubbimng his wounds.  ‘You’ll sleep there tomorrow.’  He glared at Lamptey who wouldn’ look at  him.‘If you don’t like it say so now and I’ll pay you off so you can go.

          Lamptey who was bleeding from his nose mumbled that he didn’t want to leave and staggered off with Kojo and Big Joe helping him.  Although he was bigger than Lekan, Lamptey had got the worst of it as Lekan was an expert fighter.  Kojo was very bitter about the whole business and swore to himself that if he were ever ordered to sleep on a dirty cement floor he would leave the club on the spot.

          The following weeks the shows continued to attract large crowds and Remi kept up his criticism of the ‘barbarous law,’ as he called it. One night some of the soldiers from the local barracks tried to come in, but in spite of not wearing uniform they were recognised by the door-men.  For a time it looked as if a punch-up was going to start on the street between the soldiers and the door-men, supported by a crowd of rough hangers-on who usually hovered around outside the club listening to the music from outside, as the didn’t have enough money to get in. It was pretty obvious that the soldiers had come to wreck the place but as there were only seven of them they left swearing  they would get even.

          On Friday evening, during the intermission in the show, Kojo received a message from the door that there was someone outside who wanted to see him.  He went out and found a very bedraggled Ringo waiting for him. Kojo told him to come in.

          ‘He hasn’t got any money,’ complained the door-man.

          ‘It’s all right, he’s a friend of mine and Lamptey.  He’s a musician.’

          ‘I suppose it’s O.K. then,’ said the door-man reluctantly, ‘but I’ll have to search him first all the same.’  Since the soldiers had attempted to get in Remi had got a bit paranoid and insisted that everyone should be searched for weapons before they were let in.

          Ringo looked half starved so as soon as they were inside Kojo bought him some fried chicken and rice which Ringo wolfed down.  Lamptey came up and greeted Ringo.

          ‘That’s better, I haven’t eaten properly for about two days,’ said Ringo peering at his two Ghanaian friends with short-sighted eyes.

          ‘When the hell did you come?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘About a week ago,’ replied Ringo.‘I was meant to be joining a band here but when I got to my friend’s place he told me all his instruments had been seized.  Since then I’ve been staying at his place in Mushin.  It’s terrible there, he’s got no money and neither have I.  Then last Wednesday when I was walking back to his room late at night some ruffians stopped me.  When they realized I was from Ghana one of them said “so you’re a Ghanaian, are you?” in a horrible voice and started slapping me.  They told me to empty my pockets and when they only saw coins they got more annoyed and started beating me properly.  When I got up I found they had taken my shoes, my watch and even my glasses.   I just daren’t stay in that area anymore and I knew you and Lamptey were here, so………’

          ‘You want to stay here with us?’ said Kojo.

          ‘For the time being. I’ve got nowhere else to go.’

          Kojo looked at Lamptey who nodded and then Kojo said, ‘O.K.  But listen we have to play in a few minutes so I’ll take you to our room an you can sleep there.’

          After they had finished playing and went back to their room the two Ghanaians saw Ringo fast asleep on Kojo’s bunk.  They felt so sorry for him that they hadn’t the heart to wake him so left him where he was so Kojo slept on on a mat on the floor.

          The next morning they brought a large break-fast of beans and rice to the room and gave it to Ringo who began to eat it greedily while they went down to ask Remi if it was alright for Ringo stay with them for a few days.  Remi agreed and when they returned Ringo had eaten the lot and looked much better.

          I forgot to tell you last night Kojo,’ said Ringo, ‘I saw Mr. Addo just before I came to Lagos and he told me he’s getting some new equipment, so he’s looking for a bass player.  He asked me to tell you that he’s keeping first option open for you.

          ‘You wouldn’t go, would you?’ asked Lamptey.

          ‘I’ll have to think about it.  To be honest I don’t think I’m fitting into this place very well.  It’s only the music that’s keeping me here.’

          ‘But this is one of the heaviest bands in Africa.  How can you even think about going back and joining a bush-band?’ asked an incredulous Lamptey.

          ‘I didn’t say I am leaving.  I only said I would think about it, that’s all,’ Kojo replied.

          ‘Well it’s up to you, retorted Lamptey as he went out of the room to wash.

          ‘You have to know people or be bloody rich to stay in Lagos,’ said Ringo bitterly.

          ‘Yes I know,’ replied Kojo.  ‘But it’s not so bad when you get out of the city though.

          ‘So you don’t like it here in Lagos either?’

          ‘No, not really.  It’s an exciting city, but it’s as you say.  You have to be rich to enjoy it. In the band and in the club people are always quarrelling…and as for the band girls, they are absolutely deadly.’

          ‘Talking about girls, that reminds me.  I saw Beauty and she said I should greet you for her and hopes you haven’t forgotten her with all these sophisticated Lagos chicks around you.’

          ‘Ha ha, what a joke,’ was Kojo’s only reply.

 

 

          That night the show started off as usual, but during Remi’s song ‘Horsewhip’ all hell broke loose.  Suddenly the place was thrown into darkness and people began to fight.  Thirty people broke through the main door carrying electric torches and iron bars and joined up with some of their colleagues who had come in earlier as members of the audience.  They too produced torches and it was they who cut off the electricity from the main fuse near thr entrance.  The soldiers, for though not in uniform that is who they were, then proceeded to break up the furniture and the new stage.  The place emptied rapidly as Sulley had the good sense to open the side doors as soon as the trouble started.  The attack only lasted ten minutes or so, but it seemed much longer to the musicians who were forced to cower behind the stage.  They pulled Remi down with them as he had started to shout curses at the attackers and had had a bottle thrown at him for his troubles.  He was badly cut.  Quite suddenly the attackers left and the lights were switched on by Nepa.

          The place was an absolute wreck.  Tables and chairs had been smashed and so had the stage extension.  Fortunately, except for the public address speakers and microphones which, being at the front of the stage had been knocked over, the other instruments were untouched.  The attackers hadn’t touched the back of the club where the house waslocated  but the club was a shambles.  On the pavement outside were twenty or thirty people who had been injured, some were bleeding, including Lekan and Moses who had valiantly grappled with the attackers.

          ‘I got some of those bastards,’ said Lekan proudly showing a bleeding wound on his back.

          J.S. had also been hurt, as he had been sitting near one of the soldiers who had come to the show in cognito before the assault.  When the lights had gone off J.S. had fought in the dark with the man but he had been htd over the head with a torch.  Sola had also been injured and so had all the gate-men who had tried to prevent the soldiers entering.  Th soldiers had even beaten up some of the audience.

          An ambulance came and the more seriously wounded were taken away including J.S., Lekan and two of the door-men who all needed their wounds to be stitched.

 

 

          After trying to clean up the place a bit and packing the instruments away for safety there was not much else anyone could do so the club members went to sleep.  The following day Remi called some lawyers and made individual charges against the soldiers that they had been able to identify.  Then on the Monday the authorities made an announcement that the club would be closed down indefinitely until an investigation committee had completed an inquiry into the whole affair.

          Kojo realised it was time to go home and went to see Remi.

          ‘Yeah, I think it’s a good idea for you to go…for the time being anyway,’ said Remi sporting a huge plaster on his fore-head, ‘there’s not much we can do for the moment except attend the court-case.  You’re not a lawyer by any chance?’ he added laughing.  ‘It’s better you go to Accra for a bit.  God knows when they’ll allow us to open the club again.  Lamptey ought to go as well.  This attack is a great chance for me to put forward my ideas in public.  Have you seen today’s papers?’ he started to wave some around.  ‘A lot of them support me.  But for the time being I’ll have to stop music and concentrate on the case.  Here take this’ he added, giving Kojo eighty naira, ‘I owe you for this month.’

          ‘What about the bass, Remi? I haven’t paid for it yet.’

          ‘Take it with you.’

          Kojo packed his things and then went to say good-bye to all the musicians and workers at the club.  He told Lamptey that Remi thought it would be a good idea if he too returned to Accra but Lamptey said he wanted to stick around in Lagos for a bit.  So Kojo left for Ghana, taking Ringo with him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN  - BACK HOME

 

          Kojo decided to go straight around to Beauty’s spacious flat.  When she first saw him with his suit-case and guitar, accompanied by Ringo, she was overjoyed, especially when he gave her a soft black leather hand-bag he had bought for her in Lagos.   She interrogated him closely about the Lagos girls and inspite of his denials she remained certain that he had a special girl-friend there.  Ringo only stayed one night and the next day went back to Sayid, something that Kojo had no intention of doing.

          The first thing Kojo did after settling down at the flat was to go and see Mr. Addo, whom he discovered had obtained two fifty-watt amplifiers from a rich patron.  He already had a PA amp and microphones so when Kojo arrived with his bass guitar Mr. Addo was very pleased and started him straight away at rehearsals, which included some of the songs that Kojo had composed.

          Mensah heard that Kojo was back and came around to the flat one morning and gave Kojo all the latest gossip including that Jack had decided to go back to England to form a band.  He also told Kojo he was still with the army band, ‘at least it’s a secure job.’

          Kojo in turn told Mensah about his adventures in Nigeria and how the soldiers had treated Remi.

          ‘Lagos is a fantastic place,’ Kojo went on, ‘with it’s go slows and dangerous driving.  You know that the drivers are so unruly that the police have been issued whips.’  He then showed Mensah a copy of Remi’s new record album ‘Horsewhip” and played it on Beauty’s expensive stereo record player.

          ‘But it’s only like that in Lagos,’ Kojo continued as they were listening to the music.  ‘Once you get out of there are no whips and everything is more reasonable.  In fact Benin city reminded me a lot of my hometown and in the east it’s very much like Ghana…..even the music.  So Lagos doesn’t give you the correct impression of the whole country.  But I learnt a lot there, especially about the music business.  Imagine a musician so popular and radical that the authorities have to close down his club. They even  banned this very record from the radio, but I’m sure all this won’t stop Remi.’

          ‘So you want to do the same thing with Manche group?’ inquired Mensah.

          ‘No, not exactly.  For a start this isn’t Lagos, things are a bit cooler here.  But I’ve seen how music must be for purposes.’

          ‘What sort of purposes?’

          ‘Well……aimed towards the future, not slavishly copying what has already been done, or what is already past. It’s like that old  proverb about the Sankofa Bird that marches forwards whilst looking backwards to draw on the past’

          ‘You mean you’re going to play cultural music?’

          ‘No, that’s our musical heritage that we should build on.  I mean not copying Soul and all the stuff that’s already been recorded in the West.  That’s why I like guitar bands, they concentrate on local highlifes and proverbs.  That was the one trouble with Remi, he was always saying that highlife is colonial music because the name High Life means music for rich people whom he called black Victorians.  Maybe that’s how it first got it’s name but these days the word ‘high’ has quire a different meaning.  Now it can mean high in your head with feelings and spirit.  So maybe it’s not such a bad name after all.  The  Afro-Americans say their music gives them Soul, so ours makes us High.’

          ‘I must say I never thought about the name like that before.  Nkrumah tried to change it once to an African name, didn’t he?……… Osibisaba wasn’t it?’

          ‘Yeah, but there is no need to Africanise it because we’ve Africanised the Englishe language instead.

          ‘How?’ asked Menash.

          ‘This Afro-American in Lagos call J.S. told me that the expression to be high came from them, especially from the black American jazz musicians.  There are thousands of words and expressions in America which either come from Africa, like the words O.K., funk and hip or have had their meanings changed by blacks in America.I mnean whnever J.S really liked something he called it bad’.

          ‘It’s a fantastic idea.  We’ve been taught King’s English by the colonialists and now their descendants are having their language  changed by Black Africans.  So we meet somewhere in the middle.’

          ‘Yeah, and it’s the same with the music.  Black music goes to the West and is taken up by the whites.  Then we copy the whites who are copying us.  Look how they tried to bring their Classical music here but it never stuck, only Jazz, Afro-Cuban Rumbas and Soul did, and we fused this  into our highlife music.  So now we’ve come full circle and should start concentrating ways of developing our own music.’

          ‘And have nothing to do with western music?’

          ‘That would be impossible because with all our music going backwards and forwards across the Atlantic it’s already an international music.  What we have to do now is to concentrate on developing what we have here.  This will give us the direction to create new styles, which are likely to become popular internationally like Jazz, Funk and Reggae have become.  I saw this in Nigeria with Remi’s music.  It’s very popular with the whites and he sells thousands of records overseas.’

          ‘You really seem to be looking into the future,’ commented Mensah.

          ‘It’s logical.  J.S. and Olu explained a lot to me about the origins of jazz and how the authorities in the West at first tried to stop whites listening to it.  When they couldn’t stop them listening they watered down the music or had it sung by whites...like Elvis Presley.  But now it’s beyond their control and the blacks are now leading the young whites, like the Pied Piper of Hamlin.’

’But why are following African music when for hundreds of years it was they who were trying to brainwash us?’ asked Mensah.

          ‘I don’t really know.  Maybe it’s because Classical music’s too old-fashioned for modern tastes.  And look at the new music that they do have, like this electronic music.  You have to be a Doctor of Physics to play it.  I read about something like this in Paris where they have built a musical computer and you have to sit in a special room to list to it.  It cost millions.’

          ‘So you can’t dance to it?’

          ‘No.  That’s probably why so much of their dance-music originates from us.  This young English cook in Lagos told me that the most popular dances at the moment amongst the kids in England are Disco, Soul and Reggae, or a revival of old Rock and Roll of the fifties.  In other words they’re either borrowing from blacks or re-cycling old stuff. And they don’t have live folk music to fall back on like us here. So they’re not inventing any new dance-music for themselves,

          ‘And we are?’

          ‘Yeah. We’re lucky as we get the best of all worlds. All the latest  dances and fashions from abroad, our own home-grown highlife and Afro-rock blends  and on top of all this  we can always re-connect with our cultural music which is still up and kicking’.

 

 

END