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Nigerian poet Wana Udobang aka Wana Wana

Beaven Tapureta : Bookshelf

She merges her gift of a powerful voice, witty words, with alternating slow and fast musical beats in the background. Nigerian poet Wana Udobang aka Wana Wana made a surprise appearance at this month’s Sistaz Open Mic held at Pamberi Trust Garden in Harare where she read “Catfish”, one of her inspiring poems. The event took place on Saturday, April 9, 2016.

Defying the chilly and drizzly weather, Wana joined a mixed bag of new local musicians and poets who converged at the Garden to display their talents and express current themes through the power of spoken word.

The session on Saturday confirmed that spoken word is an undying legacy in Africa although it has evolved and adopted new modern styles. Normally associated with ‘resistance’, spoken word has been used to give voice to the oppressed and depressed.

Long ago in African society, poetry was attached to some spirituality; it was used to invoke the ancestral spirits when a mysterious illness or enemy infiltrated a family or village or to celebrate a bumper harvest and give thanks to the ancestors.

With the coming of colonialism which dismantled African tradition, spoken word took a resistance mode. Today, the genre has grown to suit the times. They now call it hip-hop, rap poetry, dub poetry, et cetera, et cetera, but it is all coming from African oral tradition.

Thanks to her Zimbabwean friend named Rutendo who invited Wana to the Sistaz Open Mic session. Nigeria met Zimbabwe in music and poetry, reverberating in well-sustained rhythms and delivery across the garden!

Wana, who three years ago released her poetry CD titled “Dirty Laundry”, had just arrived in Zimbabwe but the spirit of poetry swayed her to Pamberi Garden. Her 8 tracks on the CD dwell heavily on love and the woman’s fight for a certain liberty from different skewed situations in the home, in the community and world at large.

She merges her gift of a powerful voice, witty words, with alternating slow and fast musical beats in the background. The poem “The L Word” is quizzical, it does not openly reveal its subject but each line begins with ‘like’…

“Like the rays of the sun

As it filters through the holes in a blanket

Like the taste of a mother’s milk . . . The poem, repeating the simile over and over, ends hanging on a ‘silky’ thread with the words: Like home/like the first time/Perhaps a beat like love.

“Progress” which sounds powerful and musically well backed, echoes with the idea of rebirth and victory that lies in the new future as depicted in one of the stanzas.

“In this beginning I see no semblance/to who I used to be/as I look forward to the consumption of my future . . .”

This rebirth is emerging from the memory of loss and pain ignited by a reflection in the mirror, a reflection of “scars and incisions”. No doubt that a strand of feminism runs through the poetry, just in some of the performances by the sisters.

On Saturday Wana, who is also a journalist, broadcaster, writer, film-maker, model and curator, read her poem “Catfish” which draws its concept from the way catfish in Nigeria is sold live and killed only when a buyer points at the one he/she wants. From this act came the satirical phrase “point and kill”.

In the poem, an elderly woman, speaking from experience, promises the persona that she will not have to be sacrificed like catfish because some liberating truth has been found. The oracle advises her:

“You must tell your daughters this tale

That they will not be catfish

Point and kill

They will not choose them like they chose me.”

Ammi Jamanda, a fresh product of the Sistaz Open Mic project, was also the emcee and at some point she did her song “Garandichauya” from her debut album “Ndozvidemba” which was launched late last year. At intervals, she picked some memories especially of her early transformative years at the Sistaz Open Mic, how the workshops and seniors such as the late Chiwoniso Maraire, poet Batsirai Chigama and others inspired her.

Poet Chigama was in attendance and she warmed up with a poem “Gather the Children” which is about xenophobia and addressed to Africa. She said she had a performance the following day (Sunday) at the HICC and she had come to draw some inspiration from the ‘source’ and indeed she found the ‘source’ overflowing with poetic liveliness. She spiced her performance with a poem by the late renowned African American poet Maya Angelou.

Poetry and music appeared to be ‘major’ at Sistaz Open Mic as there was a glaring absence of female instrumentalists, comedians or dancers. Almost every performer had to be backed by a gifted guitarist Kuku, real name Tendai Bakasa. However, it was all well with the performers among them some brothers who had come in support of the sisters.

Mutsa Shiripinda aka Rae Lyric affirmed the poet’s job to inspire generations with poetry so dear it cannot be let got easily. “I treat my poems/like they were my lovers . . I am re-writing ancient scriptures/to poetic dictations” she declared.

The four brothers who performed namely Fanuel Murombo, Webster Mangachena Pasipanodya, Paul Makonese and Boas Chitedza each rendered poems about a distrustful society, persistence, and various other themes.

Musical performances came from Marjorie Tairima, also known as Nandi, who did two songs, one of which is taken from her 8-track album “Zindoga” released in 2013, Nia (Nyasha Zengeni) and Hazvinei Zhakata.

Zimbabwe has talent in the spoken word genre but it is sad that a few young spoken word artists have actually recorded and released CD’s and/or have been recognised both locally and regionally. True, quite a number of the young poets have posted wonderful material online but hardly have we heard noise about any new release in the format readily available to our very own people.

Gurus in the industry such as Albert Nyathi and Chirikure Chirikure, Comrade Fatso, and others have laid the foundation of poetry/spoken word and with the talent on Saturday afternoon, we seem close celebrating a new spoken word movement.