TEN TAKEAWAYS FROM THE SHATTA MOVEMENT FAMILY'S SHOW IN ALAJO

It’s now 2:50 am in the morning. I am now entering home after the Lord answered my prayer to make my deeply-slept sister Ruwaida pick my call and help me with the locked gate. That prevented me from using the burglar approach of jumping the wall which I usually do. With my Quran chapter 12 on replay and my Zesta Plantation Fresh Strawberry tea in my jug, I decide to make my observations from the Shatta Movement Family show staged in Alajo dance to Rudeboy Ranking’s “Dan Banza” on my monitor.

1.     I hate a duicker called Shatta Wale. On the other hand, our elders say we should never fail to acknowledge its swiftness no matter how much we hate it. Never will I forget how his presence helped in unearthing musical talents in Nima-Maamobi and its environs. He has succeeded in awakening the giants in the youth albeit some of the noisemakers who claim they are also doing Dancehall.

2.     Rudeboy Ranking is a man from another planet. His performance at the show was the tour de force of the entire programme. He has succeeded in winning the hearts and souls of the Dancehall aficionados in town. I was left wondering whether I was not in town since I found myself numb when everyone was singing along when he was on stage. A consistent diligence will see him ripping off the musical charts and placing him on a high musical pedestal in few months to come.

3.     The 2011 VGMA Reggae-Dancehall artist of the year, IWAN,  has suffered a real dip in his hitherto fine run in form. On a different angular look, IWAN could just be facing the music of life which is full of vicissitudes. He is still cutting out positive and conscious-minded lyrical songs which show his class as a force to reckon with the Reggae-Dancehall industry.  After all is said and done, IWAN will bounce back. That I believe. If you are in doubt, be reminded that there was a Bandana now Shatta Wale as a reference point.

4.     Mr. Logic and his Shatta Movement Family are doing well. However, they could be more effective in their ambitions if they cast themselves off the insults and calumnies they heap on Shatta Wale each time they grab the microphone. I don’t see the youth kowtowing to their hackneyed story of bringing Shatta Wale to the lime-light and he usurping their Shatta Movement from them and bla bla bla bum bum bum.  And so what? They should just concentrate and move on. The youth have their ears clogged when it comes to bad-mouthing Shatta Wale. They won’t listen to anything save his good music and positive side.

5.     Vibrant Faya should do a thorough self-introspection to find out if music is really what he can do.  With all the money and resources being lavished on him by the Shatta Movement Family, all he could come out with is the “Mampi” tune that he has continuously tried to push down through our olfactory lobes? The guy should be serious if he wants to go far.

6.     And if there’s anyone one whom the organizers must get on the knees and thank fervently, then it is the New-Town boy Bastero. That guy’s performance was a terrible mystery on the night. He brought the show back to a heightened sense of vitality after a couple of clowns mounted the stage to give us gibberish noises. Bastero is full of energy and should work very hard.

7.     Our people from the Zongo should exercise restraint and learn how to settle issues patiently.  The fighting and belligerence will not take us anywhere. And the Juede guy should be mindful of the fact no matter what there will be misunderstanding in such enterprises and never should he bring out a gun no matter the atmosphere.

8.     For once I thought I was in a furnace considering the cloud of ganja smoke that was hovering around the whole place. The youth smoke beyond reason in modern day Ghana.  A serious step must be taken to stem these iniquitous acts. The nation cannot have its youth engage in wanton smoking bouts.

9.     Ras Kuku should move past the eccentricity he wants to be known with and come out of the cemetery he is noted to be living in. His is too talented to be lagging behind. Puom must also be seen and heard more massively.

10.                        Dancehall is still having its field day in Ghana music. If you don’t know  what Dancehall is, you surely know Reggae. Well, “Dancehall is a rough , immensely scratchy  ‘street’ style of Reggae.”

Inusah Mohammed.

NB: The writer is a National Service Person with the Graphic Communications Group Ltd.

BEYOND THE HORIZON OF FRIENDSHIP LIES BROTHERHOOD

Today, 8^th December, 2014 is a very special day to me.  It is an august day because it coincides with the anniversary of birth of a very great friend of mine. And he has this to say about friendship which I will let out when I talk about the power of friendship. I crave your indulgence to begin like this;

In the Holy Quran, friendship was chronicled in a chapter that is 110 verses long. The Chronicle basically highlights how seven friends, the eighth of which was a dog left town to distance themselves from the iniquities of their people. They therefore sought refuge in a cave in order not incur the wrath of their wicked king and his subjects whose indescribable debauchery and ignoble deeds have reached a fever pitch high. This bond led them to their miraculous martyrdom in the cave. A company formed for service to Allah. That is the power of friendship.

My short stint with Christianity in the early nineties has imbued in me a strong sense of this weak and fragile in skin yet strong and formidable in spirit thing called friendship. My Sunday schools at Bishop Charles Agyin Asare’s Word Miracle Church now known as Perez Chapel led me to the story of David and Jonathan. Their story captured in the Book of Samuel of the Hebrew Bible is a story in which some medieval and Renaissance theorists described as Romantic love and a true representation of homosociality; same-sex relationships that are far from sexual activities. A story filled with heightening sense of suspense.

Friendship over the centuries has proven to be a very vibrant and viable force, a defier of all odds, a harbinger of hope and a purveyor of a gale of love that is more powerful that all hurricanes that have caused massive destructions to the world lumped together.

To see how powerful this thing called friendship is, let’s consider some statements made about it.

 Imam Ali (as) stated: "Two true friends are a single soul in different bodies." The same Imam Ali also stated “Friendship transfers a stranger in to a relative."

In his book “Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian life”, Henri J.M. Nouwen said this “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Of all the statements made about this great abstract noun, I love the one made by a friend the most. Before I unleash this poignant statement made by him, I’ll love to first make him known to the world.
This friend was born in the early nineties. We met last two decades and the bond kept increasing as the days unfolded. He is named Hamza Ayub. Presently there is a third name added to it to make it Hamza Hajj Ayub. In the school in which we met, I was then in class two when he was in class one. We had a special interest in him due to the fact he rode a bicycle and as young as we were, fascination was an understatement of how we felt when he rode past us. Another reason was that he is the son of one of the foremost scholars we have in Nima. As fate will have it, we found ourselves in the same class because I had to repeat the class due to the severity of my truancy by then. And that’s where the spirit of comradeship started till today as I make the letters on my keyboard dance on the monitor.

Now to the beef of all this needless description, this friend has the cardinal aspect of what friendship entails; brotherhood. He is kind. He is generous to the point of negligence. He never loses touch of a friend in need or a friend in despondence.

All friends will attest to the fact that he has what it takes to also offer his thoughts on the subject matter of discussion. And he has offered it aptly and rightly.
After considering the bond that led the seven friends to the cave and the same bond that kept David and Jonathan together and other references in the dim recesses of history, he came to a very powerful conclusion. And this is it:

“Beyond the horizon of friendship lies brotherhood.”

Happy earthday Hamza Hajj Ayub. I wish you more birthdays because “Statistics show that those who have more birthdays live longer.”

NB: The writer is a National Service Person at the Graphic Communications Group Limited.