Matatu Raga on Air Force One: Obama's Beba Beba Call to Bill Clinton

WATCH: Sitting President Obama (son of Kenya, appropriately) shouts "Beba beba!", sort of, to former President Bill Clinton (and husband of the next), urging him to get aboard Air Force One rather more pronto than he was inclined to.

Where was all this? Air Force One was revving to leave Israel following the funeral of Ex-President Shimon Perez, that titan of Israeli and Middle East politics. Indeed, of the world. And Bill was bending protocol, some, keeping the sitting President waiting thusly. In full view of the world

Railway Raga: Locomotives, SGR and Bullet Trains

1. Introduction:

This post was drafted in the middle of December, 2015. It is being published today (January 29, 2016) without further ado, almost as it was then 

Bullet trains were very much in the news recently, what with the Japan-India agreement, last December, to build a bullet train link between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. This is a distance of 550 km -- which the new, $14.7bn, investment will reduce from about 8 hours of travel-time to just 2. I just got the urge to seize the moment to share on twitter a few videos of bullet trains in Japan and elsewhere, and to indulge my interest in them. A couple of Japanese train stations quickly wormed their way into the visual array. And then it became necessary to add a historical touch to the whole kahuna, though this required a greater expenditure of time than I thought I should devote to this particular post, certainly right then. So be it. Then I shifted my platform from Twitter (which I will surely pivot back to when this post is done, whenever) to Blogger -- which allows for a more extended conversation with oneself et al. All this because Kenya's own SGR is on the way, so that we're feeling a kindred Ness of spirit with the rest of the high-speed world. So here we are: I thought the visuals would tell a better story of the awesomeness of the trains than any verbal account could.

Here's one of the videos that I tweeted: Video of a Japanese Below-Ground Train Station

Here's yet another: The Shinkansen Bullet Train, Maximum Speed 320 km/h 

History's first passenger train, running on iron rails, was, by default rather than design, launched in Britain in 1830. The initial idea behind trains was not at all passenger travel, but rather the cost-effective delivery of cargo: heavy ware (coal, machinery, parts), or things, of all sorts. Indeed, the first train transport had been launched precisely for the movement of cargo a little earlier, in 1825. But serendipity had gotten in the way and changed the world, and the culture, of travel. Serendipity, in this case, materializing as a potent mix of imagination and a sudden, unprecedented, opportunity-driven urge in the manual cargo handlers on board to become themselves, and perhaps a few joy-rider friends, the very 'cargo', so to speak, that they were handling. The rest is that history.

Let's go back in time a little, in order to more appropriately come up to speed:

Before the fear of flying -- nowadays much remarked upon, since Erica Jong's best-selling 1970s book by that title -- there was in the mix, in earlier days, just as deep-rooted a fear of train travel in some people. Trains in and of themselves invoked existential fear, and not necessarily in those who newly traversed the countryside in them. Thus it is that at least one prominent leader in 19th-century rural America is on record fearfully remarking:

"As you well know, Mr. President....carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by "engines" which in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside ,setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel of such breakneck speed" [Letter from the Government of New York to President Andrew Jackson on the rail roads, quoted in Sir Frank Mcfadzean (1980: 92), "the Entrepreneur in the private and public Sectors" in Israel Kirzner et al (1980) Prime Mover of Progress: The Entrepreneur in Capitalism and Socialism. Lancing, Sussex: The Institute of Economic Affairs.  [Quote also appears in World Economic Journal, Vol.2, 1979 p. 342].

Trains, and Zahara's father's long absences, are the reason she, Zahara, sang that iconic song, Loliwe. They are the reason a decision was made by the colonizer's agents, at the beginning of the 20th century, to locate Nairobi where it is so indubitably located even today. Trains are the reason I and my siblings grew up there/here.

Enough of the commonplace train. Let us now turn our attention to bullet trains.

2. Bullet Train: History and Documentaries:

JUST READ: Time's Brief History of Bullet Trains

3. Japan: Video ~ The Shinkansen Bullet Train (Maximum Speed 320 km/h):

4, European Version of Bullet Trains:

CLICK: A European version of the bullet train.

5. Shanghai, China Bullet Train (Video):

6. (a) Gautrain, Johannesburg (Video):

6. (b) Gautrain, NPRNews (Audio Coverage):

Listen Here


7. READ: Japan's High-Speed Trains Gaining Ground in US

8. Where we are With Kenya's high Speed Train Project?

READ:  Update on Kenya's high speed train project

9. CONCLUSION: 

Still waiting for the bullet (T)rain across the Rift

AFRICAN POP: Oritse Femi's Igbeyawo

Oritse Femi is the undisputed King of Happiness in Africa's music industry. If I have said something akin to that before, without reservation -- as I have -- I happily say it again.

Here, I said this before:
1. Concerning the track Tomorrow, a piece featuring Reminisce
2. In my commentary on Double Wahala Part 2, a truly inspired piece sung -- with joyous mountaintop fervor -- with the irrepressible D'Banj.

And now, this is why we're really here, like this. And now, I wanted to say, Oritse Femi gives us Igbeyawo, a great song, which, I believe, draws one's attention like a magnet from the very first time one hears it. Igbeyawo is a Yoruba word for a wedding (or marriage). Good to know. Take a listen:


Click here to watch the video


READ: The lyrics of Igbeyawo


Igbeyawo is a high-spirited celebration of Love and the (shall I say related?) 'institution' of marriage, as it is lived in real life, which has innumerable versions and various ideal types. This, it so happens, is as apt as the next, or the last.

"Love is a beautiful tin", declares he, in a disarming and sincerest of voices.

Of course, like poets, singers, who are themselves poets and sometimes troubadours too, do have a licence to sing soaring songs without perhaps having to account for the higher truths which their songs urge us all to (up)hold and honor; without, that is, having to live their songs. It'd be nice, 'dough', if dey lived dem truts -- at least some of de time; some of de time dat deir songs continue to be sung, and heard, and such.

That doesn't matter here, though. We're just, we're easily, we're hopelessly caught up in this whirlwind of a tune. This sunny interlude in life's long and episodic journey -- and even magical.

There's a storyline. It's patchy, OK. Yet it allows for a moving wedding-day raga. There are flash-forwards. Some. And so, we hear the voice of The Master sing: "What God has joined together let no man put asunder." Asonder, too! And there is much joy. Much dancing. Early-days love. Lots of smiles all around. Things to eat. Everyone's in hi heaven, long as all the 'choy' lasts, and tru livin intrudes, as it's bound to. A mini-montage of images here. Territorial/cultural tussles with the Queen Mama. Hey, that's my wife's sufuria, there, Oritse! Inexorable forward motion.

Things go up, and they go down, and up again, but it's never, no never, quite a roller-coaster. Luv conquers all in the end -- just so that it can be said, without a doubt, that "Patience is a virtue".

What's never in doubt is Oritse Femi's passionate and finely crafted (tho with a touch of rasp) and entrancing and (oya) bewitching voice. He delivers his lyrics at the highest level of musicality. All that deeply earnest charm and pleading! There is no one, right now, quite like him on this planet.

My ears plainly like the mix of tones and beats and instruments, in full flights of fancy, that they're served by the very one. I like this song because my ears do. And because my eyes savor the colors and the nuances of all the body language implicated here.