Unbury Our Dead with Song

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  UNBURY OUR DEAD WITH SONG

  Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ

  Dedicated to Bezawork Asfaw, Mahmoud Ahmed, Aster Aweke and other singers of the Tizita.

  When Tizita comes down on me,

  I become a stranger to my life

  And I become a vagabond and a wanderer.

  —Mahmoud Ahmed

  One day, I will be dead and gone

  my grave untended

  date of birth and death

  on my gravestone from centuries past

  and only my Tizita will remain.

  —John Thandi Manfredi

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  1

  ‘To be crowned the winner was like being named the singer of Ethiopia’s soul.’

  At the Ali Boxing Club (or the ABC, as we regulars called it), a metallic steel guitar, a kora, a nyatiti, a krar, an accordion, a regally carved antic begena and a masenko were laid out, like weapons on display, on polished three-legged ivory stools in the boxing ring-cum-music stage. There was even a dignified piano, with its black hind legs peering through an expensive-looking gold cloth, at the far-left corner of the ring. In the middle of the ring there were two 1950s silver announcer microphones, lowered from the ceiling to a chair lit by dancing, coloured stage lights. The instruments on stage formed an island, standing tall against the pandemonium of gamblers and bookies in various stages of excited drunkenness, an ocean-crowd of happiness seekers that every now and then ebbed and crashed against its shores.

  Located in the middle of a nowhere that was only five or so kilometres from the city centre, the ABC was a black hole that swallowed us up, destroying our insides with expensive but cheaply priced beer and whisky, only to spit us out in the early hours of the morning. The money to be made was in the gambling, the cheap booze a lubricant between us and our money. It attracted a mixture of been-tos and those for whom Kenya was the land of their exile; sheng-speaking Kenyan bohemian types in permanent transition to adulthood; those from the middle class trying to climb their way up; the affluent and their expatriate friends who came down to slum and burn through money.

  Something ‘serious,’ as we Kenyans like to say, was about to unfold. Tonight, for the first time, Ethiopian musicians were here — they were going to compete, singing the Tizita. The Tizita was not just a popular traditional Ethiopian song; it was a song that was life itself. It had been sung for generations, through wars, marriages, deaths, divorces and childbirths. For musicians and listeners exiled in Kenya, the US and Europe, or trying to claim a home in Israel as Ethiopian Jews, the Tizita was like a national anthem to the soul, for better and worse. As I got to learn more about the Tizita, I would understand why this competition mattered to the musicians — to be crowned the winner was like being named the singer of Ethiopia’s soul.

  Every musician, no matter how talented or popular, had to sing the song at least once in their career in order to be respected. It marked the difference between, say, a Madonna and a Billie Holiday. Or, even more contentiously, the difference between a Michael Jackson and a Sam Cooke. Yes, Michael was the best entertainer to ever live, but put next to Sam Cooke, something was wanting, that extra.

  There was a caveat though; a badly done Tizita could destroy a career. Indeed, many flourishing careers in Ethiopian pop music had withered away after an ill-fated attempt at singing the Tizita. A musician comes along and releases a pop song that does well. He or she feels they have now graduated to singing the Tizita. But not quite. Managers and producers issue warnings, but the pop musician, adored by millions of fans, disregards their advice…. There is no coming back from a bad Tizita.

  The ABC was my favourite spot — you could say I was slumming the slummers — as it was from that perverse energy that I created stories for The National Inquisitor, a Nairobi-based tabloid owned by a major British corporation. At the Inquisitor, we did not run stories about celebs living in sterilised bubbles or politicians taken over by aliens; we were not your typical Western tabloid. At the very core of a story, we worked with the truth — scandalous and salacious, but the truth, nevertheless.

  Say you are the politician who uses public funds to buy diamond-studded sex toys. In real life, I probably saw one dildo and perhaps gold-plated handcuffs, but in print this becomes ten diamond-studded dildos kept in a sex dungeon. We had never been sued — in a court of law and in the court of public opinion. Would it matter just how many sex toys you bought with public funds? And if you are a Catholic priest using church money to build mansions and I tabloid your story, what little boys, now grown men, will crawl out of your cloak as the court case drags on? That grain of truth inside our stories was enough to keep the politicians, the celebs and the priests out of our way.

  But really, if my friends at the ABC were to tell you my story, they would say I am the guy who accompanies the guy with the money and the beautiful woman. The foil guy, the guy in the middle of the crowd telling jokes, beers thrust into his hands; the guy who gets wet kisses from women who go home with other men. The best man at weddings and eulogiser at funerals. That my world was an open universe where people could saunter in and out as they pleased — and I welcomed them as a surrogate, temporary family. I did not mind; that is how I got my stories, being close to the action without being at the centre. So The National Inquisitor kept me close to the beautiful, wounded and violent heart of the ABC, and of Nairobi.

  If you must think of me as I bring you this story about a Tizita competition in an illegal boxing club in Nairobi, picture me with a near-empty beer bottle in hand going up to the bar where I will find Miriam the bartender, and Miriam, without asking, will place two Tuskers in front of me. Picture me, a nondescript guy, two pens comically sticking out of my short but carefully combed afro, following old, dried and fresh blood spots to the front row seats to listen to some Tizita.

  See me sipping my Tusker beer, waiting for some story or, on this night, for the story of the Tizita to unfold. Imagine a familiar feeling of suddenly being unbalanced coming back to me and my wanting to go on until I tipped on one side or the other — of something I do not know yet.

  And then, much later, see me leave. I am going over to my apartment where I might or might not find Alison, my British editor at the Inquisitor, in bed.

  2

  ‘It is like asking who has a better heart, a better soul — how do you measure that?’

  Miriam liked to claim she was 90 years old, but I suspected 70 or thereabouts — when you age too fast, there is some residue of lost youth that remains underneath each wrinkle. I had done a generous story about her called “The Oldest Bartender in Kenya,” and for that she always gave me a few drinks for free. First she had lost her mother to the politically-induced famine — the dictator, Haile Mengistu, had used starvation as a weapon against civilians to punish the rebels. Then, before they could have children, she had lost her husband to the armed struggle to oust Mengistu. That was when Ethiopian anti-Mengistu and Eritrean nationalists wanting to liberate Eritrea from Ethiopia fought their common enemy togethe
r, an enemy whose allegiances to the West and the Russians shifted with his fortunes. Then she lost her sister to the fratricidal war that ensued between the Ethiopians and Eritreans after they ousted Mengistu. Eventually, she was left standing alone. So she made her way to Kenya, in ‘the worst kind of loneliness, of being lonely and the last one standing,’ as she had described it. She had run into Mr. Selassie, and from their mutual despair, the ABC was born.

  ‘Hey, babe, how did they decide on the musicians?’ I asked her as she brought me my two pilsners.

  ‘Nobody tells this old fool anything — it’s serve beer and shut up over here,’ she answered, opening one.

  I laughed and made as if to walk away.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I haven’t heard things though — no wonder you are such a poor reporter,’ she said, shaking her head side to side. ‘You know the Tizita?’

  ‘A little bit — it’s a long story, but I know the Tizita from Boston; there’s a large Ethiopian community there, pan-Africanism, partying….’ I answered.

  ‘The musicians tonight, they are the best of the best,’ she said, pointing at Mr. Selassie. ‘He selected them.’

  I started to laugh.

  It was difficult to reconcile the ABC, and even more so Mr. Selassie, with what amounted to a sad, bluesy Ethiopian song. Never before had I met a man who so perfectly fit a stereotype of who he was — so much so that he begged the chicken and egg question of who or what came first. He was a short, balding man with what remained of his silky, dyed-black hair smoothed over. There was nothing as uncomfortable as seeing those stunted fat fingers jutting out of a short arm in greeting — palms permanently wet from sweat and grease, just like his real self. He was loud-mouthed, vulgar and ate and drank noisily. He wore expensive suits, and so he liked to eat wearing an apron that worked like a child’s bib. It was hard to believe that he once was a promising boxer whose dreams were destroyed by the multiple Ethiopian wars.

  Can Themba — the South African journalist who died by the bottle in apartheid South Africa — famously said that there are some people whose names just do not go with ‘Mister’, like Mr. Jesus. And there are people who go by both their names, like Muhammad Ali. With Mr. Selassie, no one knew his first name, and it just did not feel right to call him Selassie. I guess it was the respect due a man who, even in the quietest or happiest of times, was a bit scary — like the formality would someday pay off, and he would break one of your arms instead of both.

  ‘As my people say, “Just because a man’s fingers are too short to play a guitar does not mean he does not know good music,”’ Miriam said, to my laughter, then moved on to another customer. That was another thing about Miriam: she had a talent for making up proverbs on the spot.

  ‘What is Tizita to you?’ I asked her after she came back to me.

  ‘You are asking the wrong question,’ she said, and waited for me to ask the inevitably right question.

  ‘What is the right question?’

  She high-fived me, laughing as her wet hands sprayed some of the soapy water around us.

  ‘With the Tizita, there has never been a competition; it is degrading to the musicians. It is like asking who has a better heart, a better soul — how do you measure that? That is the question,’ she answered.

  ‘It is human nature — you want to know who the best is. Don’t you agree?’ I asked.

  ‘We shall find out soon,’ she replied. With a wink, she asked, ‘You know the most important invention in music?’

  ‘The electric guitar,’ I answered immediately. Bob Dylan, moving from acoustic guitar to electric — I could not sing or play a whole Dylan song, but even I knew the story.

  ‘No,’ Miriam said. ‘You are wrong — like you are always. Let me whisper it in your ear.’

  I leaned in and she pulled my ear so hard that I jumped.

  ‘What the fuck? Just tell me!’ I cried.

  ‘I just did — your ear. Without the ear, there is no music, no?’ she said, laughing hard enough to need to lean onto the water-filled trough where she rinsed our glasses.

  ‘Well, Miriam, 100 years of wisdom and you give me the chicken or the egg question?’ I rubbed my ear.

  ‘But is that really what you wanted to ask?’ With that, Miriam sashayed to another customer who looked like he could use a beer.

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me?’ I pleaded.

  ‘You know those stories about soldiers stopping a war to carry their dead and wounded on Christmas or something?’ she asked me as she triaged who amongst her customers was thirstiest.

  ‘Yes, I have heard the story of how a Tizita musician stopped the Ethiopian-Eritrean war — many times in fact. But it’s a myth; every major war has such a myth. A beautiful woman walking by, football on Christmas, a white dove — it’s just soldiers getting tired of war.’

  She reached out for my hand.

  ‘That musician, he is here tonight — you can ask him. But my answer, you big, spoilt child, is to listen to everyone, and everything.’

  She jutted her chin towards the dressing rooms.

  Her smile followed my kiss on her cheek as she slipped a fifth of Vodka into my hand.

  ‘That’s on me — you’re going to need it by the time the Tizita is done with you tonight,’ she said, and playfully cupped a warm, wet hand on my face.

  I slipped the fifth into my pocket and took a liberal, or more like a radical, swig from my beer. I did not have time to argue with her about the etiquette of pulling a customer’s ears for a cliché about chickens and eggs — Mr. Selassie was walking into the ring wearing bright red boxing trunks, shoes and a robe with Ali Boxing Club emblazoned on the back.

  3

  ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die.’

  ‘Welcome to the first ever international Tizita competition!’ Mr. Selassie’s booming, slow-motion voice called the crowd to attention as he began explaining the rules. They were simple enough for the musicians and gamblers — winners would take it all. The winner of the Tizita would be whoever received the loudest applause. The purse was 1 million Kenya shillings, and that ‘invaluable street cred,’ as he put it. Finally, there was absolutely no recording of any kind allowed — and with that, disappointed faces put their mobile phones back into their pockets and purses.

  Yes, a million shillings was a good amount of change, but still, why would a successful musician, one considered to be one of the best, come to a place like the ABC? I had heard of successful musicians and bands like Bruce Springsteen and The Rolling Stones occasionally giving up the stadiums and concert halls to play in small neighbourhood bars. A return to the basics, to intimate spaces where they could actually interact with and react to their audience. But that street cred, the million Kenya shillings and playing against the best — was that enough to bring an artist worth their name to a place like the ABC? Or were the musicians slumming the slummers, a two-way spectacle?

  ‘The Corporal!’ Mr. Selassie announced.

  The Corporal, somewhere in his fifties, was tall and thin, with the greying but good hair that we Kenyans envied so much, smoothed back. He was dressed efficiently in jeans, a green shirt with rolled-up sleeves and sandals. His face was confident — gaunt and wrinkling, but still pulled tight by high cheekbones; he could have been an ageing runner or football player. He walked briskly and, using the ropes, he hurled himself onto the stage, picked up a guitar, and finger-picked in a way I had never heard done before — a thudded, muted yet vocal sequence of sounds that felt like heavy raindrops rapidly tapping on a corrugated iron sheet roof. A few seconds of guitar, and he picked up a masenko.

  The Kikuyu people sent smoke from a sacrificial lamb high into the sky; if God was listening, it went up straight as an arrow. The masenko is an instrument of prayer that I imagine sent prayer straight up to God, but in the hands of The Corporal, the low bass buzzing notes as he bowed the one-stringed instrument were the devil announcing his presence, the sweetest, most terrifying sound.

  ‘I have a
lot to miss — but when I die, what I will miss the most is music, because music is life. When I die, I hope to ascend to the Tizita, my final resting place,’ he said and then started to sing his Tizita.

  He sounded like there was sawdust in his vocal cords. His voice, trembling threateningly over the masenko, started to give way to a fear, an almost defiant fear, and several images flashed through my mind — a man at Tiananmen Square standing in front of an armoured tank; Rachel Corrie in Palestine standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer moments before the driver crushes her; Muhammad Ali, with broken jaw against Ken Norton; and, oddly, an old eagle with a stiff wing flying along a swollen and raging river before expertly diving and emerging with a fish caught in its talons.

  He let out a low, long growl that went underneath the masenko, a sound I had never heard before, a voice trying to find footing from a place that was an early memory — the first sound ever made, it felt like — and then he quickly rose above, joined his masenko and closed his Tizita in his soothing falsetto.

  Have you ever suddenly found yourself in the dark of the night? I mean, rural absolute darkness? I once listened to a podcast — some astronaut in space out to repair something described the darkness of space as a complete absence of light, so thick he thought he could dip his hand into it like it was oil. That was the masenko, only it was with sound.

  But The Corporal was not trying to send us into space, to heaven or hell. He kept us here on our terrifying earth. We wanted to break into tears and jump into the abyss — a catharsis, of course, that would allow us to go back to the morning with all the pain and reminder it brought — but the masenko was not an instrument of flight. It was the instrument of reckoning. If you could hear your voice through the judging ears of a stranger — what kind of judgement would you give? No, we had not come to ABC to hold up mirrors. We were there to escape, and he was not letting us.