“Hasira za nini wee bwana,
Wataka kuniua bure baba…”
Kindly do me this favour and press play on Sina Makosa, then listen to the first minute and a half of this song. Just do it. I know you know the song, but I want you to refresh your memory. The guitar in this song makes me disturbingly happy, it has to be one of the most brilliant rumba melodies to come off our continent. And the horns! Sweet Jesus ! I once read somewhere that the reason the trumpet is such an poignant sound is because it closely resembles the human voice in its tenor and variations, and therefore it strikes a chord deep within. Now this song has both trumpet and sax in an intriguing duet about halfway through the song, and usually at that point I stop talking and just sit back to listen (I have all intention of being done by then). And then there are the vocals. One Issa Juma
The reason I’m waxing lyrical about Les Wanyika
A couple of Mondays back, I inadvertently (and by that I mean deliberately) wandered into a minor brouhaha on Joyce & Fridah's blog concerning people who choose not to get married, or have babies. Haiya! Now in my characteristic foolishness, and acting on impulses generated by my short fuse Susan (yes, I’ve named my fuse, figured I might as well seeing as how she’s around so often, just lurking about and making a nuisance of herself, but I digress), thanks to Susan (and what I suspect was some light baiting from Joyce herself), I thought to respond to comments by one and a half gentlemen who were talking smack, sorry, pontificating on women. And for the rest of the week me and ‘my kind’ were mocked, scorned and mildly insulted for not being good God-fearing women itching to spend the rest of our lives in wedded bliss, and sympathised with and patronised like I’d admitted to suffering a fatal illness, and all because I (we) haven’t found a man, or child, yet. Despite Joyce ’s argument in favour of respecting diversity of opinions, irrespective of personal opinion for or against the same, it swiftly degenerated into a couple of geniuses frothing at the mouth at other people’s business, and everyone else (or possibly just lil’ ol’ me) thinking, “Dudes, and dudette, what the fuck?” (You have no idea how badly I wanted to ask exactly that, but when in the house of believers you clean it up, no?)
How dare you not want to get married? That means you like to have sex, strange animal deviant sex, with many, many strangers, and married men, this to satisfy your unnatural desires. Gasp! How dare you not want to reproduce? You are the last vanguard of civilisation, without your babies all will be lost. The horror! God forbid you take more than two spoons of sugar in your tea, wooiiii… Yes, I’m mocking them. I’d like to do much more but frankly it’s not a fight worth having, I’ll just end up tired and they’ll still be eternally pissed off. Get it? Eternally… Witty, no? No? Moving right along. These buggers need to lighten up, is all I’m saying.
What I want to know is this, why on earth are the ultra conservative, right wing, hyper religious types so damn angry all the time? And why is it that when you don’t conform to their narrow perspective on life, then you are automatically written off as a
What I want to know is this, why on earth are the ultra conservative, right wing, hyper religious types so damn angry all the time? And why is it that when you don’t conform to their narrow perspective on life, then you are automatically written off as a
a. pagan, or
b. whore, or
c. evil bastard intent on destroying the world as we know it, or
d. all of the above?
In the greater scheme of things, whether or not an individual chooses to get married or not, give birth to a child or adopt or have none at all, screw an endless succession of strangers or remain celibate or simply get laid once in a while just because, none of these choices should have any bearing on anyone other than the individuals involved. For someone to stand there and condemn the character of said person is the height of hypocrisy, no? Has he stolen a child, for example, and passed it off as a miracle? Has she grabbed a loose community dispensary? Have they molested children in their care? Because that’s what I consider wrong, nay, evil. Strangely enough, minor transgressions like these, committed by the allegedly religious no less, don’t come up too often when the moral right gets on their soapbox to bang their ‘we are better than you’ drum. Wait, I’m being unfair. The priests and paedophilia saga was brought up and condemned, and then it was used to justify the assertion that, 1. celibacy is unnatural, and 2. sex outside marriage is wrong, and therefore 3. the only way you should have sex is by getting married. Whatever rocks your boat folks…
I think I’ve said this before, I am not even remotely religious. That said, and I’ve said this before too, I have great respect for faith, so I’m not about to start mouthing off about what someone believes, I figure if it works for them then who am I to pass judgement, right? I don’t have any more answers than the next idiot, the only difference between me and the typical zealot is that I recognise and accept this fact. Live and let live, I say. Worst case scenario, we’ll meet at Saint Peter’s gate and they’ll get to tell me, ‘I told you so!’, this as Satan’s minions cart me off to the basement, doomed to spend eternity being slow roasted like a Hawaiian pig. I will, however, be roasting with the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Heavy D, so I’m pretty sure the conversation will be brilliant and the tunes will be jammin’! I’m mocking again aren’t I? Sorry, I can’t help it. I’m going to stop talking now.
If you’ve been listening to the track, or if, as is more likely, you’ve heard the song before, you know that while the song is 8 minutes long, Juma says what he has to say in the first 3 minutes, and the remaining 5 minutes he leaves to the brilliant band to play truly excellent music. The moral? Sometimes, you don’t have to keep talking to make your point. Sometimes, it’s better to just shut the fuck up, and let the music play. It’s not like it’s the end of the world or something...
“…wewe una wako nyumbani, nami nina wangu nyumbani,
chuki ya nini kati yangu,mimi na wewe…”
chuki ya nini kati yangu,
