Caboose

One of the things I’ve been enjoying a lot in Nigeria is the music, even if a few songs do get played just a little bit too much.

On Wednesday we were all (that’s all the VSOs attending the workshop) having dinner in a very busy local chophouse, I noticed a poster for a concert at the NAF Club in Kaduna. It was to be the launch of a local band’s first album but what caught my eye was that Zule-Zoo were playing (they’re one of my favourite Nigerian groups).

The NAF Club is the Nigerian Air Force Club, a hotel, bar and nightclub owned by the air force but run by a private management company. It’s a fairly pleasant place to spend an evening, but expensive.

I got there quite early, had something to eat at the burger place across the road and then settled down with a beer, waiting for Otinu, who’s the sister of one of my colleagues. Of course, when I say early I was actually there slightly after the official start time of 8pm but nobody was expecting anything to happen much before 10pm.

Otinu arrived and the place started to fill up, eventually the MC came on stage and announced that the entertainment would begin with a comedian, calling himself “Osama bin UJ”. It was a real struggle to follow what he was saying, I can understand quite a bit of Pidgin but he was going too fast. The jokes mostly seemed to be about the various tribes in Nigeria, stereotypes of Hausa women versus Yoruba women and so on.

A little bit later the MC popped up again to tell us Zule-Zoo would not be coming as they were on their way to Europe! Nigerian last-minute planning strikes again.

Instead we got various unknown local acts. Some of them were quite good but too many were just imitating American rappers, badly. One guy went up on stage to dance to Zule-Zoo music, a bit later he joined Otinu and I (he’s in the photo below), it seems he also sings and is releasing a CD in January.

Raw Crow (the group releasing their album) appeared and performed one song, then we had to wait while the Managing Director (probably the only employee) of the record company came up so we could all admire him for releasing this CD. It is good to see people doing things like this in Kaduna though, the Nigerian music industry normally revolves around Lagos.

Then it was back to the other local groups and comedians, with an occasional Raw Crow song in between. Their music was OK but instantly forgettable. As usual the sound quality was terrible, everything turned up to maximum and distorted so you couldn’t make out the lyrics.

If you want to see/hear Zule-Zoo you can watch one of their videos here. It was briefly banned by the Nigerian government for corrupting the morals of the youth or something, it’s about a father coming home and his children reporting what their mother got up to while he was away. Zule-Zoo are known for their dancing, strongly influenced by the Tiv culture of their part of the country.