First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly
Strange article, but we live in strange times. I sat by my radio set listening to contemporary Nigerian music when a bolt of realisation hits me. The mainly young male vocalists sang like anatomists. In quick succession all five of them sang about the female backside. Now, once could be chance and twice is equivocal, however, five is a trending phenomenon. Female buttocks are trending in Nigerian dance music.
Now, this is not a vulgar rant. I am licenced to study every region of anatomy by the powers conferred upon me by the University of Benin, Nigeria. Yes, I hold a diploma in Medicine and my certificate was signed by the then Vice Chancellor, the distinguished Professor Grace Alele-Williams (the first female vice-chancellor in Nigeria). I am sure she would not be very pleased with women being referenced in Nigerian music as nothing but the custodians of posterior quivering adipose moulds, aka lady lumps, aka bum-bum.
What happened to songs like ‘Sweet Mother’? That was Prince Nico Mbarga proclaiming the virtues of the Nigerian mother. Chris Okotie sang, ‘I need someone’, pining for love and Jide Obi wanted a ‘Sweet suicide’ in ‘Kill me with Love’. Men of a by-gone era sang of love, romance and loyalty. Today’s men bark out instructions thus – “Put it down on me!”
So, as one licenced to study bum-bum and to study the effects of a bum-bum-obsessed male cohort on their attitudes to women, I hereby tell you that it is dangerous to sing about bum-bum. It is dangerous to listen to songs about it and finally to sing songs about it.
It is universally known that you tend to attract what you focus on. You also tend to be hyper-vigilant about things in your environment that you had previously been oblivious to the minute it catches your attention. We have all experienced that phenomenon where you buy a certain car and suddenly start to notice that same brand everywhere the next day. Well, the same goes for bum-bum. Every lady has one but you don’t go looking. However, the minute you look, a life of distraction begins. You get hypnotised, mesmerised and enticed away from your primary assignment in life as bum-bum observation creeps into your subconscious to say the least.
A hypnotist swings a pendulum before the eyes and is able to send strangers into a trance to a state in which they become pliable and open to whatever is suggested. Gazing upon that to and fro swinging circle at the end of a chain does things to your brain. So it is with gazing at a rotating, revolving, swaying and fibrillating bum-bum beautifully suspended at the bottom of a curvilinear spine. If you look long enough, you would do the bidding of the possessor of the said bum-bum as if under a spell. A man and his woman can get as hypnotised as much as they want. But the danger is when a man is hypnotised by another woman he might change his address or even change his name. Those who say looking means nothing should ask why a woman that really wants to get a man gives him something to look at and it is usually not her stamp collection.
Singing about bum-bum just creates a breed of randy male youth with too much nyansh-consciousness at a time they should be using their energies to develop their body, soul and spirit. It is actually derogatory to women to view them as mere carriers of ‘junk in the trunk’. Now, while some ladies say that ‘ikebe na money’ and they don’t mind being judged by the size of their bakassi, rather than the content of their brains, I believe that the vast majority of women have unique characters and virtues which should be reflected in urban culture.
Ikebe-centricity is a state where the bum is the focus not the spirit or intellect or anything else. It is a state of mind that eats into discipline – that attacks all the naturally occurring powers of self-control and reduces a man to the level of an animal. He becomes an instinctive lump of protoplasm that reacts to sights without any recourse to cognitive functioning. It produces people who are geared up for lewd action at the drop of a hat for they are under a subliminal oath to worship the bum, the whole bum and nothing but the bum. It creates men who view all ladies as potential twerkers. Nyansh is mind-altering. In the intro of the song ‘Army Arrangement’ by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, he asserted that Nyansh is a wonderful material property. Who can dispute that claim? It can wreak havoc on your dreams, your health and your finances. The music video producers know what to do to hypnotise you.
Traditional Nigerian history of bum-bum
Most Nigerian traditional dances are heavily flavoured with waist and bum-bum gyrations. However, within those same traditional cultures are codes of conduct. No girl was deemed an anonymous ikebe, be they single or married. They were all known by their family name so when a waist gyrates it is a family name and honour that gyrate and there are men in that family that will shed blood to uphold that honour. No man who gazed on the coral beads on a lady’s rotating waist in antiquity would dare to touch what he had not paid a bride prize for. Thus, even in the face of profound gravity defying waist revolutions that break all of Newton’s laws, the traditional ladies of antiquity were protected. But colonisation and modernity hit Nigeria and things fell apart. Lagos once had a magazine entitled Ikebe Super, a weekly comic for the young centred on buttocks. Why not a – cerebral hemisphere super – magazine? Now in parties, girls turn their backs on their dance partners. Whatever happened to communicating face-to-face?
Thanks