The Quality of Mercy…

THE 21st CENTURY EXECUTION

Let me start by stating that I am opposed to the death penalty. I always have been. Understanding that justice is at times imperfect because it is administered by human beings is something of a given. All the more reason to eliminate the opportunity for the gravest error in the dispensation of justice. The action to execute someone for a crime is irreversible – it’s effect is as permanent as ones gender or racial assignation. The possibility of such an error is one I personally refuse to see as an acceptable by-product of a practice some might think of as acceptable, consequence be damned. The recent execution of Troy Davis in Georgia provides us as a society with an opportunity to revisit this de-basing and scandalous practice. If we retain it, I suggest ultimately that we put aside the charade of justice seeking and call the death penalty what it is – revenge. While we are at it why don’t we just make a blood sport of it and call it a day. Sounds ridiculous… well we might not be far off from it if you are to judge by the response from a crowd attending the Republican debates in California to a question asked of candidate Rick Perry about the death penalty in Texas. A similar crowd in South Carolina cried for blood in response to a question about emergency health services for a hypothetical uninsured young man laying in a coma, the kind of crowd that heckled a serving gay soldier who had a question for Rick Santorum about the now abolished “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy at the latest debate in Florida. The rule of the mob witnessing a spectacle reminiscent of The Holy Roman Empire. Yeah, why don’t we just go ahead and make executions a blood sport. The state could charge an admission fee to spectators and make the event public theater. They can even do so in the name of closing their budget deficits. If you think I am being ridiculous, just remember it wasn’t all that long ago that public lynchings of black men and women in America were a spectator sport, a family outing that authorities turned a blind eye to. A sick picnic.

My position on the death penalty stem primarily from the view that, contrary to the much advertised effect of deterrence, the death penalty does not deters offenses which are classified as capital crimes. I freely acknowledge that a state has right to legally sanction certain behavior and exact a penalty for non compliance, but the idea that a penalty in and of itself deters crime is not borne out by the fact that our jails in America are filled to capacity. Unless you believe that every potential criminal walks around with a copy of the penal code in their back pocket when they are in the process of committing a crime, then the notion of deterrent effect is always up for debate. To the best of my knowledge the difference between a high felony and a misdemeanor or between a capital offense and a non capital offense is the farthest thing from a criminals mind. A career criminal who is no stranger to the justice system might be able to make those distinctions, but it is far from the universal pathology of a would be criminal. “If I rob the grocery store I’d be better off being caught with a knife rather than a gun…”, I hardly think a criminal is pondering the downsides of the enterprise at the moment in question. In my view criminal penalties are more likely to act effectively on the mind of a person who has little or no criminal disposition to begin with. Even in crimes of passion, the thought of consequence seldom ever enters the equation – actions are typically out of desperation in such cases.

In addition to my reservations about efficacy of the death penalty as a deterrent, the very real fact that in our society we operate a two tier system of justice, one in which matters of race and prejudice come into play, cannot be discounted. We should all be well aware by now of the disparity in prosecution and sentencing for drug related crimes, for instance, that owe themselves to racial and demographic distinctions between the user or dealer and vice versa. Harsher sentences for drug offenses committed by poor folks and persons of colour contrast noticeably from that for more well to do offenders and caucasians generally. The same applies to the criminal code that proscribes such behavior in the first place. The result is an imbalance between the who that commit drug related offenses and the who that eventual serve time for them and how much time they tend to serve. Legal representation in criminal trials affects very heavily the chances of conviction or acquittal. In essence the deeper your pockets are the greater the likelihood you avoid the heaviest of sanctions based on the level of representation you can afford. This state of affairs applies also, and maybe more so, in capital offenses. Add to that the political pressure to vigorously prosecute and secure a conviction that usually accompanies such cases along with a genuine desire on the part of law enforcement to seek justice for their fallen comrade. These factors can sometimes lead to short cuts in building the prosecution’s case against an offender, not to mention a greater likelihood that the defendant’s representation will face obstacles that may not occur in other kinds of criminal prosecutions. Unless the justice system is able to strike a just and fair balance in the disposition of prosecution, representation and sentencing, there will always be a significant risk that a given defendant will be found guilty for a crime they did not commit.

Capital offenses tend to be reserved for crimes the society considers particularly heinous or despicable. Examples of this would be the murder of a child and of police officers, add to that treason. Fair enough. It seems as a society though we are quite susceptible to or receptive to the tough talk of a politician who demands the ultimate sanction, while any other position is viewed as pathetically soft on crime. What I find interesting is that a person who would murder a police officer faces a capital prosecution in most death penalty states, however if the positions were reverse, the outcome would be completely different. Especially in a case where a cop maliciously kills a citizen, the best one can hope for is a manslaughter convict. The irony of this, one could argue, is that while such a crime represents the ultimate abuse of power, the greatest exhibition of criminality as it were, a wanton killing at the hand of one sworn to protect us, the likelihood of a conviction let alone the death penalty is as remote as a sunny moon. The list of citizens who had died at the hand of the police in the callously indifferent execution of their “duties” or outright murder is long, and even when convictions are obtained which is rare, the sentencing is mild to say the least. One not commensurate to the willful taking of a life. So much for the argument of deterrence. If one could get into the head of the Officer Mehserle who killed an unarmed, prone and pinned Oscar Grant on an BART subway platform in 2009, one would probably find that the penalty he should otherwise have faced was the farthest thing from his mind, a mind basking in the smug cloak of reassurance that is a by product of the uniform he wore on that day. Mehserle served just two years for this crime.

In Troy Davis’ case my sense is one of prosecutorial overzealousness due to the fact that the victim in question was a police officer. This is the kind of malpractice that happens routinely even when the crime isn’t murder. Witnesses are badgered and cajoled into false testimony either because they have a checkered past, simply don’t know their rights or have no access to a lawyer who can appraise them of those rights. Eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable in the first instance, much less so when the killing of a police man is involved and the prosecution seeks a speedy resolution to the crime. If the penalty for murder was life imprisonment there would be no question about the ability to reverse a possible injustice as would be the case with Troy Davis in the event that he was able to prove his innocence. That option is not available to him personally any longer. It’s bad enough to take years away from a person who is innocent of a crime, but to legally murder him without him “having his day” in court diminishes all of us. It is ironic that Charles Manson is alive and gets to go before a parole board periodically seeking release on parole. He seems not only proud of his crime, but unrepentant to this day. The fact that the death penalty does not apply consistently across the country means this anomaly will continue to be a part of our justice system as long as we have a death penalty.

One last matter and that has to do with the purpose and execution of the death penalty. As I stated earlier, since I don’t believe it has the deterrent effect claimed by politicians, law enforcement and the justice system, I think we ought to own up to the fact that the death penalty is simply a matter of revenge. The loss of a loved one to a brutal murder is a very personal thing and hardly an abstraction, so I am willing to acknowledge in anyone who has so suffered, the existence of the sense of a need for vengeance. It seems however that the execution of a felon never brings real closure to the persons who suffer such a loss. One of the racially motivated murderers of James Byrd in Texas in 1998, was executed on the same day as Troy Davis. As revolting as that crime was, James Byrd’s son, Ross, asked that the life of his father’s murderer be spared as he was not seeking closure in the taking of another life. There have been similar such positions taken by bereaved family members with respect to the death penalty. Of course not every family views it the same way and that’s fair. Arguably though, if the affected families have the capacity to resist the impulse for “revenge”, surely we the indirectly affected can accede to their wishes or find it in ourselves to spare a life. Better yet it would not be an issue if the death penalty was done away with altogether.

On the matter of how executions are carried out, it has long been established that while the state has the right to take a life, it must strive to do so in a manner that does not rise to the level of cruel and unusual. So society transitioned away from hanging to the gas chamber and find ourselves today administering lethal injections. What a ridiculous spectacle it appears to me that we shield ourselves from our societal hypocrisy by virtue of merciful killing. Kill with as little pain as possible in furtherance of the concept of an eye for an eye. If that’s the case let’s cut the charade and return to firing squads. If you live by the gun then the method of execution should be at the hand of a gun, or a knife or poison, or what ever implement of death the convicted employed on their victim. How does the saying go – revenge is a dish best served cold? If that’s the case then we should be proud to embrace the old testament underpinning of our thirst for revenge and dispense with the charade. Otherwise we ought to seriously consider disposing of the death penalty all together. It will not bring Troy Davis or any other innocent or unjustly executed human being back, but it would signal a new beginning for us. One that truly distinguishes us from the shouting mobs asking for blood that we see more of in much of our social discourse today. Such an act of conscience would put us squarely in the company of most of our western brethren on this particular issue. But then that would make us as ordinary as everyone else and Americans can’t stand to be ordinary, can we?

Confessions of a semi ex-patriate Nigerian (Pt. 1)

LINGUA FRANCA
Since her independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, Nigeria’s official language has been English. For most countries without the complex make up of ethnicities of a Nigeria, the idea of one language as official seems straightforward enough, but on the streets of Lagos, Ibadan, Benin, Enugu, Kaduna, Jos or Kano, you’d better have a little pidgin english in your repertoire if you want to be understood. Pidgin english is a patois that mixes english with bits and pieces of native languages including yoruba, igbo, hausa, edo, ijaw and so on. Even the english component of pidgin is a corruption in itself. Pidgin will also serve you well in some of the other ex colonies of the British on the West African coast, like Ghana and Sierra Leone. In fact the population of transplanted Sierra Leoneans in the southern part of Nigeria, a well entrenched community over the past century, has sort of made pidgin an indispensable method of communication in the former capital of Lagos.

As best estimates tell, there are over 500 languages spoken across Nigeria. The languages that cover the largest demographic are yoruba, hausa and igbo. You are off to a good start if you speak one of those, but that still depends on where you are in the country. Your ability to communicate depends not just on your multi lingual capacity, but that of the people you encounter as well. Yet it is a little more complicated than that. Let’s just confine the confusion to one language – yoruba. If, like my father, you come from the Ijebu-Ode area (western Nigeria), your native dialect of the yoruba language is quite a bit different from someone who comes from say Ibadan slightly to the north, which in turn will differ from the yoruba spoken by someone from Oshogbo further to the north. And you haven’t left yoruba-land yet. I remember hearing conversations between my grandmother and my dad in which she used yoruba words or sentence constructions you wouldn’t hear used by yoruba speakers in Lagos for instance. I might be able to explain it better if I had been alive for the last five hundred years, because I am pretty sure a lot of it has to do with the changing predominance of kingdoms that have encompassed western NIgeria over that many years. Apparently some of the words my grandmother used were common to descendants of the ancient Benin Kingdom in the mid (south) west of the country.

Given the mass of confusion that arises from all these languages it is little surprise that more people communicate in pidgin english than any of the aforementioned languages, including english. The average nigerian is a trader of one kind or another. Aside from those who sell their professional services, most nigerians sell something else for their livelihoods. They sell agricultural produce, imported goods, locally manufactured goods, they sell domestic services and a plethora of other goods. If it can be sold, nigerians are sure to be selling it. A lot of that selling is impromptu and revolves around the daily movements of people. Trading embraces mobility, mobility brings people into contact with one another who might not otherwise make contact. Traders are drawn to large population centers. If your native language is hausa and you find yourself trading in Lagos, then you’d better have some pidgin english in your back pocket. Communication is everything. It improves your chances of a sale. To the best of my knowledge pidgin english is not something you are taught, but rather something you pick up. If your circumstance requires a knowledge of pidgin, then the faster you pick it up the better. I was surrounded mostly by english speakers growing up, so pidgin was a little slow in coming for me. The bigger your world gets, the more imperative it becomes to pick up the language wherever and however you can.

Lagos is a city of fifteen million people today. When I lived there the population was roughly two million. Population migration accounts for a lot of the difference in number. People come from all over the country to reside in Lagos for their slice of that marketplace of fifteen million. Those who don’t trade, come to sell domestic services to a city that is relatively well off compared to the rest of the country. When the federal capital was moved from Lagos to Abuja in 1991, it was thought that the move might alleviate the population explosion. Hardly! It will take several Abujas for that to happen, but even if it does, the need for pidgin english will always remain in a country of such diverse ethnicity and mobility.

One last word on pidgin english. As a lingua franca pidgin english was an indispensable part of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s arsenal. Fela’s creation of Afro Beat as a musical genre to fill the void between various native musics and high life music required a language that was commonly used and understood by the masses of humanity to whom and about who Fela spoke in his songs. Fela did his earlier work in yoruba and in english, but the sharpening of his focus on social issues required a language more widely understood than either of those. The beauty of this meant that a well-to-do business man being driven around by his lowly paid driver understood, when a Fela song played on his car stereo, that he was being called out for his part in a rotten callous system in front of his driver, and they both understood full well what was being said. That was Fela’s main aim as an artist – to create that level of discomfort for those who embraced inertia in Nigeria’s development.

Pidgin english is a language of necessity for a country like Nigeria. I wonder where she would be without it.

A failure to communicate…

As I listen to media reporting Stateside, of the tragic assault on Norwegian tranquility and psyche, I am supposed to be frightened of a “mad man” who disrupted and took the lives of everyday ordinary Norwegian people. But a “mad man” runs out of bullets eventually or his homemade explosive devices fail to detonate or he is caught before he can act. His victim count will be limited by these facts and his own dim vision of the world and his own sorry life.

I am more afraid of “men in suits” whose weapons are their briefcases, the stock market and the politicians they keep in their pockets. You can add the “mad man of Oslo” to the arsenal they possess. Because of him new security contracts will be awarded to keep us safe from mad men. I fear these men in suits who don’t leave their victims dismembered or in pools of blood streaming through the streets, but rather leave them like the walking dead – still standing but hunched over under the strains of their nefarious scheming and manipulations, their livelihoods and wellbeing in the balance while these men in suits buy new mansions and yachts.

These are the men I fear, these men in suits. These are the men who really are mad. These are the people we really need protection from.

My thoughts and prayers are with you Norway.

Louis Armstrong remembered but slightly dismembered…

JAZZ PERSPECTIVES
I never consult the New York Times book reviews or other such material when it comes to books on jazz. I am more likely to be guided my feet, fingers and eyes when I am in a bookstore with a decent selection of jazz literature. I go with my instincts and mood. It is in some ways as it should be since we are talking jazz here. I am not particularly discriminating either when it comes to who wrote what (I can generally find something worthy in most jazz books, even anecdotally) as much as I am with the approach and perspective from which the writer attacks his or her subject. Some books are straight ahead documentary in nature, while other books betray the specific inclinations of the writer and that includes autobiographies.

I had never read any works on or by Louis Armstrong when I came across this book at Barnes and Noble and I just happened to be in a “Louis Armstrong state of mind” at the time. Louis Armstrong had written a couple of volumes during his lifetime, but I felt that it might be a nice primer to read something written by a remote hand first. I have my own fairly strong impressions about Louis Armstrong. These impressions come from listening to him, his music (some of that via movie clips from his earlier in his career) and trusting my ears (and eyes) to pick up what might be otherwise found on a page in a book – or not. I found myself reminded of that after I got done with this book.

Terry Teachout’s book feels like a self assigned rescue mission to restore or salvage the image and reputation of Louis Armstrong. He probably knows better than I about the state of Armstrong’s place in jazz, but he seems to think that reputation is more than a bit lowly. Before anyone gets the wrong impression, I did enjoy reading the book for what it was worth, but it felt like someone writing to clarify Armstrong’s own words while claiming to appreciate the intent and the parochial manner of expression Armstrong employed in his own writings and speech. The through line for me in this work is a contest between the authentic and the inauthentic Armstrong. The writing is at times appropriately sympathetic and at others wholly apologetic about a man who was not particularly apologetic about his own life or what he did with it. I was ultimately a bit confused about the perspective from which Teachout was writing.

The sense I get is that in most academic circles virtually all of what Louis Armstrong recorded prior to 1939 was for the most part unimpeachable. It is as if for many of these scholars, Louis Armstrong died in 1940 – a casualty of the Second World War. Teachout attempts in his book to convince us why that is not so as he navigates in depth Armstrong’s recordings post 1940, with a good deal of sympathy and a sometimes fresh perspective. He wades through the various iterations of The All Star Band that Armstrong keep going through most of his working life as well as the popular recordings of the 1960s that brought Louis Armstrong even greater recognition at a time when his prowess as a trumpeter has been laid waste by excessive use. The two biggest such hits being “Hello Dolly” and “What a Wonderful World”.

Having embarked on a noble mission Teachout, in my view, commits the very sin he sets out to correct, albeit in some ways small by comparison to others and perhaps unconsciously so. He discusses Louis Armstrong’s various collaborations with other musicians outside the umbrella of his All Stars Band, and it is here that I detected a disconnect. He devotes a discrete amount of ink exploring Armstrong’s work with Duke Ellington with a fair amount of praise for the outcome, but becomes very stingy when it comes to Armstrong’s work with Ella Fitzgerald. To be precise a paltry page and a half in a volume of three hundred and eighty-two pages. Furthermore none of it attempts to ascribe a value to that collaboration in the way he does with the others. Obviously he sees little or no value in that particular association. This makes me wonder how truthfully the writer has embraced his subject. I happen to own both sets of collaborations and as much a fan of Duke Ellington as I am,
I find the work with Ella Fitzgerald in which they explore Gershwin tunes and other jazz standards, the more compelling of the two. The former reads to me like a parody of the Armstrong of yore – a throwback of sorts, while the latter reveals for me a fresh side to Louis Armstrong compared to some of his earlier classic works.

My earlier observation about appreciation for Louis Armstrong through listening rather than scholarly dissertations, comes into play here. When I listen to the collaborations of Louis and Ella I hear tenderness, mutual respect and admiration, cheekiness, sassiness, fun-loving-living and a desire to speak in unison whether the vocals are hers or his. We certainly know how much Ella dug Louis by virtue of her adoption of scat vocals as a permanent part of her repertoire way before they ever collaborated and I am can only imagine that was not lost on Louis Armstrong. For my money – at the very least – there was a unique human connection in this pairing that was left totally unexplored in this book and this causes me to scratch my head.

If Louis Armstrong is a three hundred and eighty-two page book, then for me he is a chapter short to the extent that Ella Fitzgerald merited less than two of those pages all told.
PS:Terry Teachout is a writer and a musician. I am neither. I am just a listener, but I do have strong opinions of my own when it comes to jazz music and literature.

PPS: Happy Birthday Ladi

The Stolen Hearts Club

Somewhere between the heavens and the deep blue sea, in the “Land of the Goddesses”, a mystery of sorts rages on to this day. It began a while back when a goddess went missing. You see, despite their powers and charms, their kingdom is governed by certain rules. A log of all goddess activity and assignments is kept and their whereabouts are known at all times depending on whether they are on a mission or in repose. On one particular day, Contessa, whose job it was to keep track of these matters consulted the log only to discover a blank entry alongside the name of one particular goddess. A roll-call was immediately initiated that confirmed there was one less goddess in the realm. Contessa visited her quarters and discovered it empty, save for a pair of diamond studded slippers. A lot of hysteria and handwringing followed this revelation among the goddesses. How indeed could she vanish into thin air considering they all needed permission to do their work or to be absent but not AWOL. Was she in some kind of danger, held captive somewhere by some strange force or forces. Had she been seduced by the gods… gone to live among them? What had become of the goddess the others had nicknamed affectionately “The Thief of Hearts“. Out there, it is “the missing goddess case” for this age. One that remains unsolved to this day in the gap between the here and there, between the known and the unknown, the tangible and the intangible.

I could answer that question for them if I knew how to communicate with that other world or had the inclination to spoil a good tale of the goddess living among the humans. The wayward goddess who took on an assignment of her own design. I know because I had my heart stolen by “The Thief of Hearts” a while back. The first time I saw her, she was the face on the cover of a magazine. Back then she was better known as a style icon than she was a singer, but her star quality was unmistakable. That pretty face with it’s distinctive features and a Nigerian name! The one that turned into a voice that melted hearts. In an instant my heart was stolen by the missing goddess of hearts. The goddess who was away without leave, living among us melting and collecting hearts along the way.

SADE as we know her, has had one of the most distinctive careers in modern music. Always lingering some place between the blues, soul and jazz, sometimes accessible and other times totally elusive. No contemporary singer tweaks me the way she does. Other singers that do have long since returned to the lands from whence they came. She is singularly above compare, such is the niche she has carved out for herself. Her stylings do for me what Duke Ellington unaccompanied does for me – opens me up wide in a way that leaves me simultaneously fulfilled and emptied, leaving me needing a refill. Too much of a good thing and yet never enough. I guess that’s what it feels like to have your heart stolen and yet not want it back.
 
 
I am not sure when my dear friend Kevin Ladson had his heart pierced the way mine was. Sade is an essential part of the epoxy in our long time friendship, as life would have it. I have been indulged in my weakness for Sade by Kevin like no one I know. I have seen Sade perform live twice now and both times it happened courtesy of Kevin. The first time was over a decade ago at Madison Square Garden. The second time was this past June at the Citizen Bank Arena in Philadelphia. Each time Kevin procured two tickets for us and gave me plenty of advanced notice. At the first show I sat through a staggering performance, one in which Sade hit more high notes than her detractors would ever give her credit for. It was a masterful one in which Sade’s role as band leader was all in evidence. It was also a bittersweet performance however, because the seat next to mine – Kevin’s – remained empty for the duration of the show. Kevin was unable to make the show. This was before mobile phones became common place and a text message would have kept me abreast of his movements. I later found out that Kevin was at the hospital with his mother.

This time around Kevin and I sat next to each other to experience what it was he missed the first time we were to meant to experience Sade together. Sade fans know to expect her prolonged absences from the music scene, so catch-her-while-you-can is a mantra we all share. This show was a fiesta of music and visual imagery par excellence. I’m pretty sure anyone who has seen this tour knows I exaggerate not one iota when I say that. Alongside a band she has performed with her entire career and a visual presentation assembled with her longtime collaborator Sophie Muller, this show surpassed the one I saw all those years ago without my friend at my side. Whether Kevin appreciated it or not, this time around the emotional significance of this outing, the cycling through life’s challenges, was not lost on me. And I am guessing for Kevin who better to have shared this bond with than a barefoot goddess – the one who left her diamond studded slippers in the realm of the goddesses to come and walk among us here and a friend whose heart she stole a long time ago. The goddess whose whereabouts remain unknown to her fellow goddesses. The once empty seat next to me has been filled again. The heart that was broken over a decade ago is filled again to brimming.

I come from a family of males so I have little want for any more brothers, but I have often told Kevin that what room I have left in my heart for another brother belongs to him. Thank you Kevin… Much love always!

PS: To anyone reading this who speaks to goddesses,forget what you read here so we can continue to keep Sade AWOL here among us.

(Dedicated to Mary Ladson)

Thelonious Monk in the third dimension…

Jazz literature:

So far I have read a half dozen books about Thelonious Monk and by far this book is the most robust, thoroughly researched and well delivered of them all. I have taken my sweet time savouring all that it has to offer, so much so that I found myself in a sullen mood as I approached the end of it. The fourteen years of work that Robin D.G. Kelley put into shaping a three dimensional portrait of Thelonious paid off handsomely. I am reminded of a similar effort by Farah Jasmine Griffin whose handsome volume on Billie Holiday: IN SEARCH OF BILLY HOLIDAY – If you can’t be free, be a mystery, puts the P in person. She explores the soul of Lady Day where most other works concentrate on the sensational. Like Griffin, Kelley sets out to sketch a portrait of a real person, not the misshapen ‘character’ that too easily gets passed off as the real thing. The source material takes up almost one quarter of the book. I shall be pouring through that section in the coming days.

Jazz bios when well written contain a healthy mix of information. Details about live performances, recording sessions, family history, controversy, context and so forth. All of this is nectar for readers of jazz music, but the thing that gives it it’s flavour, the light that gives it colour tends to be hidden in nuggets that a caring writer decides to illuminate with respect to a given individual. I include here the excerpt below as an example of the kind of thing that for me is in someways more important than who played with who and when.

In context, Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell shared a special friendship throughout their respective lives. Powell had been living in Paris for quite sometime and had befriended Francis Paudras – or was it the other way around. Upon his first visit to New York since leaving, Bud and Francis stopped by to visit Monk at this home for the first time in many years:

Since Paudras had no phone number for Monk (he never thought to look in the phone book; in 1964 it was listed), they dropped by his house one afternoon. Thelonious answered the door. Both men stood there, staring at each other and not saying a word. Paudras was about to break the silence when Monk suddenly declared, “Come on in, I’ll do the airplane!” It was all incomprehensible to Paudras, but he knew enough not to try to analyze everything. Thelonious led them to the piano and using a combination of keys, pedals and his entire body, reproduced the sound of airplanes flying over head. The quivering stack of dishes on the piano added to the effect. The trick sent Powell into hysterics.

This passage speaks of people of music who are accustomed to communicating without words, not just with each other but with their audiences. It speaks to the legendary friendship between two piano greats, of love and caring and the humor that sustained it. Great pianists both of them, but just regular folk made of flesh and bones. Robin Kelley takes great pains throughout his book to make sure we don’t forget that.

Those swirls at the corners of my mouth…

So… as co-axial rotations spun our planet around to face the new sun, a new day and a new year, some pretty spectacular explosions over the skies of Sydney, Dubai and London were on display to greet the occasion. I sat patiently at home in New York waiting for our proverbial turn. Moments ticking by were made simultaneously joyful and thought provoking as I listened to the music of Bob Marley and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. These two legends who came from robust and influential cultures an ocean apart, probably share common ancestors – some of Jamaica’s people must have originated from some of the same real estate as that of Fela’s kin folk… or so I am told. I’ll leave that to historians and cultural anthropologists.

While strangers were kissing each other in Times Square, I was swimming upstream with my inner Nigerian, Fela’s beats and rhymes as my soundtrack and the kinescope that was my childhood living in Lagos, flickering away in vivid color.
I am guessing it’s not entirely accidental that I was in this mood. Just before christmas my dear friend (ore mi gan gan) John Adeleke, who was visiting New York, shared with me a copy of a special issue of Time Out (Nigeria): Celebrating Nigeria at 50. It was diligently and beautifully put together under the watchful eye of Anita Ibru in association with The Guardian (Nigeria) newspaper. Included in this issue are fifty interviews with some very interesting people wrapped around snapshots of elemental Nigerian culture and society. Very well worth a read. Nigeria’s gems are scattered across the four corners of the earth and continue to shine brightly. They write, they paint, they play sport, they sing, they explore and they make scientific discoveries. In the context of celebration, for all her challenges I would say there is a lot to look forward to in Nigeria’s future growth. I will be keeping a keen eye out for developments especially given that general elections will be held this year.

In the course of my Fela-bration and on into this new year, I have found myself scrolling through my archive of pictures for those I had seldom looked at from recent trips to Nigeria, some of which are shared here. Just as importantly, as if through a conspiracy of circumstance I have been keep solidly alert in my review by something mein freundin in Deutschland Inez Templeton brought to my attention. It would appear that Nigerians have been anointed the happiest people on the planet. Actually the poll conducted by Gallup aserts that Nigerians are the most hopeful people in the world in terms of their outlook for their wellbeing in 2011. This finding has prompted communication back and forth between us as to why this may indeed be so. In a tongue in cheek way I suggested to her that the absence of an entrenched system of credit may be responsible for that. Joking aside there may well be some truth in that statement. The formula for happiness is not something that can be bottled or harvested in a laboratory some place. So in some ways it is less important why Nigerians are the happiest or most optimistic people on the planet, it only matters that they are according to this study.
(Kids in a fishing Village just outside of Lagos)

So just as I was in the process of detaching myself from wandering through the photo alley, I find myself sucked in even deeper. This kind of thing – this reoccurrence of a singular matter or subject – usually means I will have reason or occasion to engage Nigeria in a very meaningful way this year although I have no earthly idea what form this will take. Have-camera-will-travel, so I reckon my waltz with Nigeria will be professional in nature. Whatever it turns out to be, I welcome it, especially since in some very real ways I owe the swirls at the corners of my mouth to Nigeria.

Happy 2011 to you all.
(Market stalls at Lekki Market, Lagos)(Okada navigates traffic on Ikoyi Street, Lagos)(Ajibike at a roadside market on trip between Akure and Lagos)(Bogobiri House – an excellent boutique guest house in Ikoyi, Lagos)(Apprentice carpenter in Isolo, Lagos)

Discovering Brooklyn…

Brooklyn in my view is New York City’s greatest curiosity. It possesses the most essential ingredient required for nationhood. It’s citizens are fiercely proud and defensive of their borough – patriots, in the tenderest sense of the word. It doesn’t take long for a transplant to Brooklyn to sing it’s national anthem, so imagine how it is for native born Brooklynites. Even when they move on, the former native and transplant alike will continue ferociously to claim Brooklyn as home. Like a family crest that indicates lineage into the future. Paradoxically, despite this borough wide solidarity, Brooklyn has more distinct neighbourhood characteristics than any of New York City’s five boroughs. Nations within a nation within a nation. The Republics of Brooklyn if you will.

Manhattan may be the borough that the world thinks of when you mention New York City, but a New York native knows that Brooklyn is more of the real personification of New York than anywhere else in the city. It is nativist in the way you would want a place to be if you were seeking it’s truest essence.
I live in Queens, so I am not flying a flag for Brooklyn. I am just calling it as I see it.

Brooklyn is a place to be discovered if you are not from there, maybe as much so if you are. So I responded with enthusiasm when my dear friend and old college chum Miranda suggested that we explore COBBLE HILL in Brooklyn. A four legged journey of discovery. No Niña, Pinta or Santa Maria. Just her two feet and mine – albeit aided to our rendezvous point by eight wheels and a mild dose of vehicular frustration. Our designated meeting spot was a boutique called BURLAP on the appropriately named Henry Street. Burlap is a narrow-bandwidth (in the best possible sense) store with a delightfully eclectic line. Smart move for such a store that could very easily suffer an identity crisis if it attempted to overreach.
Unlike most of my male friends, I love clothes shopping with women. I am fascinated by the minutiae and intricacies of the clothing choices they make. There is almost always a loud altercation that occurs in my head on such occasions. One between the man who stands by watching a woman sashay down the street in all her finery and the man who wonders what’s happening in the mind of the woman turning all those heads, mine included.

With the Burlap affair concluded, Miranda and I caught a bite a couple of doors down on Henry Street at BOCCA LUPO, complete with our usual conversations about the attendant details of living and meaning. Delicious food and drink kissed by the sun streaming through the windows around us. It was a beautiful day out so we eventually embarked on a calories burning walk about the neighbourhood. I was struck by how relatively intact the ambiance of this gem of a neighbourhood remains in an otherwise rapidly gentrified Brooklyn.

It’s a neighbourhood of timelessness – one in which the new mimics the old without the slightest hint of apology. No new shiny glass and chrome facades as can be found in some other newly reworked Brooklyn communities. It’s a haven of wood, ceramic tiles and picture windows. In a fast changing New York real estate market, this area of Brooklyn possesses more of the feel of a European city where most things happen on the ground floor. It looks and feels like a clock-stopped Europe, but with all the essence of it’s Brooklyn tribe.

To walk through Cobble Hill is to excite all the senses. Pastry shops, butcher’s shops, ice cream parlors, pizzerias, fruit and veg stores, vintage furniture and stationery stores, all with the glow of entrenched family ownership. It is still a low rise neighborhood as yet unencumbered by the presence of a Home Depot or a Walmart, not yet succumbing to the dictates of new fangled interlopers. We walked and sat and sat and walked, soaking in all there was to be inhaled in the process. I saw paintings where we paused and saw a neighborhood intact when we moved. I enjoyed this view of Brooklyn. This distinct profile. It is an identity I swam in, one I pray weathers the storm of transformation into hip nondescript-ness.

Brooklyn has a vast array of personalities, some of which are under serious assault. I am curious to see what Cobble Hill looks like ten years hence. My guess is it will put up quite a fight against being made over in some place else’s image.

More views from Cobble Hill:

Words empty of meaning…

How imperfect is our language or the art of it, that tolerance is the best we can come up with. Tolerance is a word I have loathed for quite sometime now for any number of reasons.
Tolerance… Tolerate…. and then what? It’s a high sounding word with very little meaning, especially when used in the context with which most of us are acquainted.

If what you do is tolerate me – put your stamp of approval on me – then I’d simply rather be ignored. Just let me be. Please don’t do me any favours, I am too proud for that. If that is what you are doing then spare me your magnanimity.

How often do we think in context how self serving that word is or rather how out of context, given it’s usage, it really is. In a world in which our political and sociological discourse is so vacuous, it is no wonder that we attach so much meaning to such empty usage of an otherwise innocent word. Tolerance is a band-aid pretending to span a chasm where there should be none at all. Tolerance is a by product of the exercise of governance by fear and pandering. To keep the gears moving and unchanged we tap into the lubricant of fear and xenophobia and then thrust tolerance to the fore as some kind of panacea, as damage control. If we are to be honest what tolerance does for it’s proponent or practitioner is to paper over the cracks, to leave unaddressed real and entrenched issues of power, privilege and inequality. Tolerance is a device of the status quo – it is an opiate. If tolerance is the best we can do with 60,000 years of human history then I fear we have failed miserably as a species. We would be better served by huge doses of child like innocence – a world in which tolerance is unnecessary because we haven’t develop the self serving motives behind ascribing dead weight to things over which people have no control, things that are in the jurisdiction of biology.

In it’s proper context, for tolerance to apply, I have to know something about you in order to decide what to get hung up on and what to let go of – what is appealing enough about you to make me “tolerate” the things about you I do not like. It’s the kind of thing we do every day as it is. That being the case how can I possibly tolerate you if I don’t even know you or know anything about you. Used in the context that it is, so frequently and unthinkingly used, how can I justly employ what is an appropriate gauge of individual traits to members of a “group”. It is only possible in a society that is so vested in group identity and fails miserably to see the individual despite it’s protestations to the contrary. If tolerance was such a powerful tool them maybe we should trade places for a while, with you on the receiving end of my tolerance.

I can think of four letter words with more substance. The stronger the emotion the more dependable it is. So if you hate me I know where I stand. If you love me then I know where I stand. If you tolerate me then it’s possible you still hate me, except that hatred is now perfectly concealed behind a mask. If you can’t love me then I think I’d be better off being ignored. Just leave me alone.

In the final analysis the day may come when you realize it is I who has tolerated you all along.

Post script: If I were the word tolerance, I would be asked to be released from this ridiculous obligation.

The gospel according to John Legend…

“I can’t write left handed…“
Original sermon delivered by Bill Withers in 1973 and updated by John Legend in 2010.
View it HERE