A Nigerian Love Affair: How Art Knit Us Together

It was Nigeria first. :) I was on the phone with Christine a few weeks ago when she asked me, What is it with you and Nigeria, and I had to think back... back to 2010 when--finally--I'd gathered enough nerve to post my very first public blog entry. I had no idea if anyone would even read it. It was just a notion, an act that I felt had to be completed because writers write, and I hadn't written or performed anything creatively for a public audience in some time. I was newly married and a new mother in a new country, and it was hard to get oriented. What can I do, I thought. There was only one option... I had to write something down.

The first entries were non-fiction, semi-autobiographical. I suppose that was my attempt at exorcising whatever frustrations I felt as an artist and a person, but even now I find those entries quite dry and unappealing. When I put down my need to be dignified and just wrote whatever I felt, something interesting began to happen: an audience. And it wasn't just any audience. It was an audience composed mostly of Nigerians. 

I had never been to Nigeria, neither had I ever met a Nigerian face to face... it baffled me that despite my intention to reach my home country, I was a full 5600 miles off with no reference for how to feed the psyche of the people. Why are you reading me, I thought. I have nothing to offer you.  

From here, let's step back an additional nine or ten years into the year 2000... the first time I held Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart exposed me to a cultural history that put the world into perspective. After all, it was one thing to read the historical documents and another thing to see into the hearts and minds of an affected people. Through his brilliant storytelling, Achebe reinforced in me all I inherently knew about circumstantial evolution. I knew what that was about... when you were raised in New Community in Newark (before they blew up the high rises), you understand how socioeconomic and political circumstances can and do require change.

Finally, let's spring forward... to 2012... the first time that I asked myself, What is with you and Nigeria? My love for art stretches far beyond the few things I say about this or that in blog pieces, open mics and online broadcasts. It all moves me: visual arts, dance, music, literature... protest pieces... all of it. So, you can't be surprised that on some day in 2012, which day I can't remember, I said to myself, I wonder what their music is like. And who did I find first, climbing the Nigerian charts as a fresh face to the world? Flavour N'abania and Blessed.

Nigeria, if you are offended that I found Flavour first, don't be. You know I'm in America and all they play on mainstream radio is rap music from three or four cities. 

If you know me, you may think I was listening to Black is Beautiful, but it was actually Ada Ada that turned my attention to what I felt was a deeply rooted honesty in Nigerian music. My late husband sat beside me in the car one day listening to it, and he looked at my curiously. Where did you find that song? I had simply found it by accident on YouTube, but for years after that, we were listening to it on occasion, driving back from Savannah, GA, playing it on the way to one of our 8:30 p.m. dates. Shake confirmed for me that despite the distance, Nigeria and I were connected. That's just the right thing to be listening to on a Tuesday afternoon, I don't care who you are. 

This is the story of a Nigerian love affair, a relationship that spans a full twenty years without me setting so much as a foot in the country since I first began interacting with her people. Today, the USA has finally caught up to Nigeria in my blog audience page views, but I won't ever forget that it was Nigeria who loved me first. I don't know why she did it, but I appreciate it. Whatever I can do for her, I will.