(Maestro with a Thousand Masks)  

                                    I

The last time we met
        Our laughter rang through the concert hall
The evening was young, with you readying up
        For a long expected show

Your crowd was large and young and old
        But their ageless longing
Rode the crest of the wind as you
        Swung and swayed in your purple moments

You sighted me from a distance
        Ploughed through the fold
To meet me in the threshold of
        Of a wide and busy door.

A warm embrace, then our customary question:
        “When shall we have the collabo?”*
A cryptic code over thirty years old
        Born when Songs of the Season

Made its first few outings
        On the tabloid platform
“A-niyee, those are good poems-
        We must aid their spread

With collaborative performance”. . . .
        The Generals’ iron grip undid our plan
But “collabo” survived with its conspiratorial abbreviation
        Now, alas, my Collabo Maestro has taken his last bow

                                    II

The Total Artist that you were/are
        That voice and the divinity of its honey
Its surprise-studded soprano
        Its clear command of reverence

The supple fluidity of your body
        When talkative drums sent
Your legs on errands and your hands
        Ruffled the rafters in their tender places

The smoothness of your motion
        The magic of your movement
When your maestro wonder burst the chart
        And Onilegogoro** roared into the clouds

That was when Highlife was high life
        And all Stars knew their niche
In the galaxy of celestial Lights
        Before the blinding blackout by Eating Chiefs

Then stage-centre
        In the measured melody of The Chattering
And the Song; Ovoramwe, regal victim
        Of imperial hubris; Elesin’s boundless bravura

And the deadly twilight of Kurumi’s*** uncanny courage….
        Light on, fade out, and black out
Your masks were many, the stage was your home
        The cyclorama loomed large behind your shadows

                                    III

Music and purposive mischief
        Talent and its tempting torture
That impatience with settled laws
        Which painted Liberty in lurid letters

You argued with the clock
        Queried old songs with new stanzas
Tutored ancient drums with daring steps
        As if your leg was the chosen stick

On their patient membrane.
        You chanted folklore into folklaw
Pressed idle Memory into busy banter
        Converted sleepy legends into urgent summons

Your eyes always on the young
        Who pampered ignorance into trendy fancy
Torturing native names into meaningless appellations
        Swearing in the temples of foreign gods

Songtime
        Storyland
How so valiant your striving to mend the leak
        To call on our Past to address our Future

Farewell, Olujimi Omo Solanke
        Tell the Langbodo forebears**** over there
Our feet are set on the increasingly steep climb
        Our eyes on the prize still beyond our gaze

—————-

* Three times Jimi and I tried to meet and plan the collaboration, but our effort was thwarted each time by disruptions caused by the military juntas that had Nigeria in their stranglehold in that period.

** A chartbuster highlife record by Roy Chicago in the sixties. Jimi Solanke was reputed to have authored  the lyrics.

***  Reference to four important plays that had Jimi Solanke as main feature: “The Chattering and the Song”, a stupendously lyrical play by Femi Osofian; “Ovoramwen Nogbaisi” and “Kurumi”  by Ola Rotimi; “Death and the King’s Horseman” by Wole Soyinka.

**** Langbodo forebears: the late D.O. Fagunwa and Wale Ogunyemi: the former’s fiction gave us Oke Langbodo, while the latter used it as both trope and title for a pan-Nigerian, pan-African epic drama.

Niyi Osundare, one of Africa’s foremost poets and academics, is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English, University of New Orleans. 

PT