Alicios in a Poignant Posa Ya Bolingo

The title of Alicios' poignant song, Posa Ya Bolingo, is best translated, I think, as A Yearning for Love. Bolingo is a commonly-used word in popular Lingala songs. Lingala is a language widely spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Bolingo is admittedly a truly lovely and such a musical word for that lovely thing we know as Love. Even Love itself, as a word, pales in comparison. I dare say that the Swahili words for Love -- Pendo, or Penzi -- are Bolingo's worthy 'rivals'.

Click here to watch the Posa Ya Bolingo video

While Posa... literally means a yearning, a longing or a desire..., I think that after you've read Alicios' account of her family's desperate flight (while she was still a little girl) from the outbreak of armed combat across the DRC, and more specifically in her hometown of Goma in Eastern DRC -- to the relative safety of Nairobi City in distant Kenya -- you will begin to get more complex vibes, and allusions, from her high-emotion but tearless song (which she published on October 2, 2013). 

On the one hand, it is the loss, the seemingly utter loss, of her capacity for love that she moans -- whatever its cause. On the other hand, it is on her male partner she trains her blame for all the misery and the incapacity she feels, seeing all the pain as something he has caused her. Goma and DRC more generally seem to be a profoundly connecting factor, though, whichever way you look.

What we'll have to figure out in our different ways is whether the partner of whom she sings is a real character (personified or 'acted' by the man in the video) recollected from a past love she'd rather forget now, a fictionalized one used only for the purposes of weaving a pure artistic narrative, or the symbol of a real and much more terrifying and existential power she and her family once encountered, there in Goma. 

What is certain, in the meantime, is that Alicios sings of the absence, the loss indeed, of a love she once felt -- and which was love. Confoundingly, she also sings about it, about this pain of loss, in a truly lovely and even loving way. You would have thought that such cruelty as she narrates and such melodic tones and love as accompany the telling could not possibly be twin-products of the same state of mind -- but they are! And, I know for sure, the melody and the tone and the love will endure in our memories; as will the images of Alicios in that video.

READ: Kenya-based Congolese Singer Alicios Theluji Makes a Comeback

ALSO READ: Peter Oduor's "Up Close and Candid with Alicios Theluji..."

CLICK: 1. Posa Ya Bolingo Lyrics (With Swahili Translation)

                2. Posa Ya Bolingo Lyrics (With English Translation)

Nedy Music and Christian Bella, Two Soul Brothers, in a Classic Plea ~ "Rudi"

Rudi is all about heart-wrenching separation, followed by a man's desperate plea for forgiveness from his girl. It is a plea earnestly vouched for by a soul brother. There are no qualms here about pouring one's heart out -- as things have gone truly elephant, we reckon. All that macho stuff about keeping deeply felt feelings, certainly of love and 'loss', under wraps -- all that is out the window. Rudi is thus in many ways a sweepingly romantic narrative -- even if the hard-core of the vexing issues is not addressed, even obliquely. 

The air is full of melody, with (and in) this song. Melody fuses in an endearingly mellow fashion with the harmony of well-toned voices and refined instrumental play to deliver a truly rich aural gift. The words are well-chosen; and the lines, as the ear receives them, are superbly crafted. They project a sincerity which -- if other facts of the contentious case (the source of all the trouble that has thankfully given rise to this beautiful song) are in balance -- should tip the verdict in favor of the "crier", and give us a happy, happy ending.

The Explorer's APK

In my most recent piece, focusing broadly on KAP, I remarked as follows:

"The 'KAP approach' is indeed not immune to this ebb and flow of a puzzle. However, its focus of attention is not directly on the easier path to the knowledge-action space. Rather, the focus is on the (taken-for-granted) flow of effects that one should typically see, empirically if not so readily theoretically, from imparted knowledge, as the starting point, to attitude (a concept which subsumes/ presumes values) and on to behavior or practice. Clearly, however, K is not always the starting point of the great variety of human ventures that we can bring to mind. The explorer's mind-set, for example, does rearrange the KAP sequence into another: APK." 

I want to say something very briefly about APK, making use of the iconic imagery of the explorer. It is that A, the quester's attitude or frame of mind -- the love of the unknown, the wanderlust -- is at the heart of the explorer's "journey." It is the starting point of all that is possible, and all that is venturesome.  

The journey itself, to the destination and back, is the P, fashioned by years of applied attitude. The goal is to bring as much of the destination back to the place of departure. In more realistic terms, it is to bring back the destination's artifacts and, or at the very least, the narratives (embellished or neat) by which those who stayed behind are to apprehend the journey there. It is in this sense that accounts of Gulliver's Travels and Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) voyages are simultaneously forms and narratives -- or blueprints or models -- of practice; and likewise those of Ibn Battuta, Magellan, Columbus, Vasco Da Gama and Stanley.

What the explorer returns with, thus, is the K, in its multiplicities. He or she returns to a world which K has the potential, perhaps, to enrich and to subtly change -- via the retold stories of the going and the return, and of the things seen and unseen along the way, and of the ended journey. All this in turn via the adulation of those left behind and now, with rejoicing rejoined. The explorer returns, indeed, with the memories and the Knowledge -- the sights and sounds, the feel, the tastes, the scents -- of newly known or more widely prized things.

I also said in my earlier piece that other permutations can easily be imagined as well. I imagined the following:

           KPA
APK   AKP
PKA   PAK.

It will take another time to talk about them.

READ: The Apprentice's PKA



PS (March 26, 2016): Just seen this on Twitter: ASK ~ Triangle of Success! Does S stand for P here?

Donald Trump's Political Brand

Donald Trump's brand of politics is at once 'revivalist' and a throwback. Domestically, it revives Barry Goldwater's extremist slant. It will suffer the same ignominious fate. Locally and globally, it is a throwback to the German politics of the 1920s and 1930s, and thrives on the same xenophobic-myopic and demagogic narratives as history amply remembers. He wants a breathing space for America. He wants to grab, grab, grab -- for America. He has an enthralled and uncritical and all-believing followership ready to be led where EVER. But, as before, fall and winter await him. Hillary, knowingly, fixes to meet him in the grim trenches -- and to fix him.

UPDATE 1: Jesse Singal (March 11, 2016) "A Primatologist Explains the Gentler Donald Trump".

UPDATE 2: The Nazi Meme at Trump Rallies.

UPDATE 3: Donald Trump's Chicago Rally Disrupted, Cancelled, March 11, 2016.

MUSIC (SA): Shumaya by Dbn Nyts ft. Zinhle Ngidi + Trademark

Shumaya ranks 40th in Africa's Top 40 ~ Happiest Songs of The Year, 2015. That's no mean achievement. Availed below are  two video versions. The first, shot on location, is the one that was considered in the above ranking. There is another, crispier version, too; which was shot indoors, in a studio or an 'audience-less' auditorium, as far as one can tell. It's the second video which appears below. I prefer the first, though it is the grainier of the two (in which case, shall we say shame on the cameraman, or just let it be?).

In the first video, location, embellished with shifting angles and micro-sets, frees everyone from this potential logjam; and allows the song to have its optimal effect. And the youthful 'actors' (dancers and singers both) obviously have so much more fun delivering what's at once the same song, with the same elementary lyrics, and a wholly different proposition. The viewer has fun, too, 'reading' that decidedly more vibrant and less confined South African narrative. It is a montage in synchrony with Time's perpetual

The second video is too sanitized, too plastic, for one's liking; certainly in relation to the first. Though there is much apparent motion on stage, there is no sense movement one can latch on to in the video, at all, and, consequently, none in the mind of the viewer. There simply is no storyline. One cannot go with a non-existent flow. Time seems to stand still, reluctantly, awaiting a much needed forward movement. The jarring illusion of stillness is made more nagging by the much-repeated and dominant chorus, and the song is itself rendered motionless, in toto, by a lack of consequential movement in the staged dance. Everything is all too one-dimensional, like a stuck record.


First Video (Published, May 24, 2015;YouTube views at posting time = 627,034):

Second Video (Published a little earlier, on May 14, 2015; YouTube views at posting time = 457,235):

Music (Nigeria): "Sisi Jojo" by CJ Mama ft. Dwana

Sisi Jojo, a 'collabo' by CJ Mama and Dwana, is a music video released in 2015. It is a gift of micro-'set-pieces' and tropical sounds all fused into one. 

The visuals are varied but consistent with a nuanced mix of living color and vibrant African (Naija) culture. 

Though I once upon a (recent) time believed that the video degraded the music, I want to emphasize that the whole, as the saying goes, is greater than the parts in Sisi Jojo (as in much of the music that I come upon these days). It's all very moving and totally heart-warming. 

The audio is up-, up-, up-beat. The beat that unifies the audio and the visual ebbs and flows, as the subtle narrative unfolds and reveals itself. 

The whole thing is very danceable; dance, that is, without obligations, and as the spirit moves one to dance.

Upon seeing and hearing this piece, those in the diaspora will, I fear, become severely and inconsolably homesick.
Here, click to play the video -- and, all of you,  mji-enjoy! 

woLOLo

woLOLo = A funky Twitterverse conflation of the slang LOL [= Laugh(ing) Out Loud] with the exclamation 'Wololo!' LOL is an acronym, as pointed out. Wololo is a vernacular (DhoLuo) interjection traditionally used in East Africa's lake region -- with reference to an ongoing event or narrative, or in routine conversation -- to capture an inflection point, a great spectacle or a sudden turn; or to mark a moment of great surprise, amusement or even shock.

The word Wololo has more recently featured in several Nigerian songs, and many fans -- East, West, South and Central -- now probably take it as a part of distinctly Nigerian vocabulary, with practically the same connotation as above. Deep Nigerian roots, which I imagine exist, would of course raise the intriguing question as to where and when, exactly, the 'Twain' did meet -- or split. The first question, then, is: In which region(s) of Nigeria is Wololo most deeply rooted?

Wololo, or #woLOLo, is now obviously an expanding meme -- of undeniable linguistic, cultural and historical interest.






PS: A check on my early tweets will show that I began using #woLOLo instead of (indeed, as a pun on) LOL pretty early in my Twitter journey -- long before stars like Mr. Flavour began inserting it in some of their popular songs.

Updated: July 19, 2015

Twitter Milestones, So Far

The people at Forbes have come up with interesting milestones in Twitter's short life, so far. The chronology and narrative are worth a read. Find it all here> click here.

Twitter, as you know, is a social networking site. Others prefer to see it as a microblogging gateway. I've seen tweets in which people declare Twitter a haiku outlet practically "made in heaven." Certainly, the maximum of 140 digits, punctuation marks and tabs it allows per update does make it look that way. I myself saw the symbiosis early on, and have "updated" (as a blogger I would say "posted") a number of haikus of my own at my Twitter site, which find at: http://twitter.com/MauriYambo.

Tell me what you think: of the site, haikus (generically, mine, others'), Twitter, my (others') tweets, anything really.

Tuonane, eh?