Caboose

Last night I joined Monique, Kristel and Marion at Gamji Gate Auditorium for a free concert organised by the British Council and the Centre for Hausa Cultural Studies. They’d brought over a Muslim hip-hop group from the UK, Mecca 2 Medina, who were collaborating with a group of young traditional Hausa musicians from Kano, Arewa. The whole thing was called “Cultural Rap Rapture” and also included several local musicians.

Like many Nigerian events there was a carefully-timed programme, beginning with “7:00 Audience arrive”, which was wildly optimistic, even for an event organised by the British Council. In the end it didn’t get going until closer to 8pm. A few local musicians who had turned up on the night had a chance to perform at the start, some of them good and one or two quite bad. There’s something painful about watching someone on stage who is putting all their effort into a performance when the audience just isn’t enjoying it.

Next up was Buzun Kaduna, who was doing a mixture of rap and reggae. He was much more popular with the audience, getting people out of their seats and in some cases dancing up on stage with him. They tried to explain what the name means but I didn’t quite get it, something about “Buzu” being a name for Tuareg people. Looking at an online Hausa dictionary it seems that it’s an adjective related to hairiness!

Arewa came on to do some traditional music by themselves, which I enjoyed despite the (usual) terrible sound setup. The poor sarewa (a kind of flute) player was completely drowned out by the amplified lead vocalist and kukuma (fiddle). It’s always fun trying to pick out the odd word I can understand, one of the songs kept mentioning a donkey in Zaria (I think). Arewa were also repeatedly interrupted by the MC, who is apparently some kind of local film bigshot.

When Mecca 2 Medina finally came on they weren’t exactly inspiring, beginning with what they called “a cappella” but seemed more like just shouting. The poor sound quality didn’t help there either. Once they got warmed up a bit things improved, although the lyrics were a bit over the top, with the usual zeal of the religious convert. They seemed to be going down well with the Kaduna crowd and once Arewa came back on the combination of Mecca 2 Medina with the Hausa musicians really worked.

Unfortunately I had to leave early, it was approaching 10pm and once it gets too late it’s difficult for me to get transport back to NTI. The main routes in Kaduna are quite easy, buses keep going up Ahmadu Bello Way very late. The cars from Kawo to NTI stop running when there are no longer enough passengers, which can be as early as 9pm.