Mum implanted artistic eye in all of us
By JAMES EZE (jameseze1@yahoo.com)
Sunday, December 18, 2005

• Okechukwu Warigbo Iweala Photo: Sun News Publishing

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His laughter is like the clanging of cymbals: boisterous, infectious but brief. No sooner has it begun than it has ended. His voice is deep, rich and furious like the rush of the wind through a cornfield. It carries a hollow metallic ring that is so reminiscent of the smooth and enticing delivery of rap master, Big Daddy K. But my friend and colleague Mike Jimoh has a different opinion.

Mike hears in that voice, the doleful decibel of a jazzist. He’s probably right. But it’s just a difference of opinion really. You couldn’t run into Okechukwu Warigbo Iweala without walking away with an impression of your own.

As we listened to his boom-boom voice weave a fascinating story on his dual heritage as a Naija-American in his remarkable new single titled Brother-Sister, a long cord of silence snaked into the newsroom and slithering, yoked us together into an enthralled and entranced bunch.

Oke’s voice was seesawing through the heavy beat of Fela’s African Woman and even some colleagues who thought the worst of rap all along were moved to positive comment. Not even the Assistant Editor, Pat Asonye, with his well known contempt for rap, could resist the swirl of good feeling that ensued from the music. Soon as the song ended, somebody requested that he should do us some freestyle in the tradition of true exponents of the rap game.

Musician turned journalist, Tony Erhariefe quickly improvised a beat with his desk and again the house was wrapped up in his magnetic voice as he made a song about his visit to The Sun, falvoured in ryhmes and inflections to earn our instant applause.

Oh well, perhaps I am a little late in the telling, but I am actually introducing Okechukwu Iweala, the second son of the honourable Minister of Finance, Dr. (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who has been hit by the rap bug. Oke is an undergraduate of Harvard University and a key figure in the Washington DC underground rap scene.

“It’s funny you know”, he says in that peculiar baritone of his in reaction to your curiosity, “I guess my voice got deeper in the last 3 - 4 years. I’ve been rapping since I was 9 and I have always been fascinated with poetry and readings. I always enjoy creating sounds and listening to myself. I used to do a lot of poetry in DC. I joined the poetry group in DC in my first year in secondary school. People always tell me ‘your voice is deep’.

But it doesn’t really sound that way to me. I keep saying that my voice is my voice”. He is dressed in a simple, almost ordinary sky-blue shirt and jeans shorts with a fez cap to complement his outlook as a hip-hop performer. Oke represents the hip-hop culture to the fullest: the attitude, the ease with people, book wisdom, expansive worldview, strong opinion and all. As he settles onto a seat beside you in an empty hall in the premises, you ponder over this sweet curiosity. Here is the son of the federal minister of finance whose father has earned a name as a neurosurgeon and who has decided to hew out a different path for himself.

“My family has been extremely supportive of my musical career”, the voices booms in assurance. “In fact they helped fund my recording when I was much younger and have come out to shows that I have done in Washington DC and in New York. I actually was sitting down with my mother the other night, breaking down the lyrics to one of my mix tape songs, Guerilla Ministry, trying to explain to her how rap was a form of ministry and teaching in the great tradition of oral ministry”, the young man says, his enthusiasm bubbling over.

Listening to Oke Iweala, one thing shines through: his depth. Oke has drunk fairly deep from the cup of knowledge, not necessarily because he is studying Social Studies, which in Harvard is a special interdisciplinary course that allows students to combine history, philosophy, economics and sociology but because he and his novelist and medical doctor siblings grew up on a diet of great books. And perhaps more importantly, he has been able to internalize what he read.

Consequently, rap in his hands becomes a lot more than a musical platform for blazing brazen misogyny, hurling curses, promoting mindless acquisitiveness, the gun culture or gratuitous violence. “Rap is one of the most beautiful ways of self expression and meditation on the world. The gift of words and learning can be translated directly into teaching and there’s a strong legacy of that in my family (his grand parents are renowned university teachers).

I always feel that the creation of a song is an opportunity for me to entertain and educate. I think that is one of the most critical things we combine in African oral tradition. So I try to combine teaching and music and promote a sort of critical consciousness in people. I try to push them across the wall whether it is in Nigeria, America or Brazil, to really say ‘what do I do about my society to make it a better place?’

That kind of consciousness is my orientation and I am down with it. Now, music is one way of doing that. You can write a book – a sociology book”. Well, writing books is not out of character here. His immediate elder brother, Uzor, who has been his major influence has written one – Beasts of No Nation, which has garnered critical acclaim from coast to coast.

All the same, it seems a little curious that Oke Iweala has taken to rap. Rap is a protest music popularized by society’s dispossessed in the ghettos and projects of predominantly black hoods in the US. Rappers like 2pac, Nas Escobar, Chuck D of the Public Enemy crew, Ice-Cube and even the Notorious BIG talk about privation in their lyrics. Iweala has led a sheltered life on account of the station of his folks in society. Could he sincerely be said to represent rap? “I wouldn’t say I have lived a sheltered life. I would say that I have lived a privileged life. I’ve been privileged to have wonderful parents and a wonderful family who have all encouraged and supported my siblings and me.

But they also encouraged us to see the world, to think and reflect on it, to always be aware of people from different economic and environmental backgrounds and to recognize those who are hustling and struggling. Growing up as a black American, one has to be aware of the way racism obstructs so many black people’s opportunities in life, from blatant displays like police brutality and flat out discrimination to more systemic things like lack of access to healthcare, broken down schools that don’t really teach black cultural/historical studies.

These are things you have to be aware of especially when they affect you and your friends and a whole group of people that you are a part of even if in the most immediate of your circumstances you have some type of insulation. Here in Nigeria, we see the struggle that so many people are facing in their daily lives. I can’t be a human being and not feel solidarity, awareness and need to try to move for positive change in these respects.

I’ve been rapping since I was 9 and have been influenced by all of hip-hop, from KRS-One and Poor Righteous Teachers to Nas, 2pac, Jay-Z and Biggie to Talib Kweli, Mos Def and Immortal Technique…and hip-hop itself wouldn’t exist without the whole black oral tradition from spirituals to great resistance movements fuelled by orators like Malcom X, King and Kwame Ture. It’s true. I am repping hip-hop to the fullest wherever I go and will continue to stay, bringing the real. Hip-hop has carried me to Dakar, Senegal where I built with some of the realest cats I know, like KT and Omzo and 2Pac(named after the great), changing the political landscape of that country with their music in 2000, inspiring youths to vote and think about their government, to Brooklyn, to San-Francisco and to many places to come”.

Young Iweala, 21, is evidently informed. The above response is a fulsome, intended to offer an insight into his mind. Funnily, he resists labels on his brand of rap. “I rebel against using only labels as a quick way to categorize music”, he quips. But his lyrics are charged with social consciousness. He embeds imageries and philosophies in his songs like he did in the song Drop Something where he says: Rising up a fraction of my delf understood/I am with my peoples and we chillin like the brotherhood/imagining another hood/In Africa where others would be scrapping just to make it to the comfort they since should have had/…talking ‘bout Dyson or Wole Soyinka/Envisioning my life as a social thinker/But for now with my dreams it’s lists though/After all me and dou is cruising on a Crisco/ Mixed with Mazola, the engine ‘bout to hold up/and I’m ‘bout to collapse and fold up/…And now it’s looking like Nigerian roads/Where people transport themselves in anything that rolls…The song’s actually a tight little tapestry, woven like a mesh of fireflies in fluttering flames crisscrossing Washington DC and Lagos, Nigeria. “So, you can see that in the lyrics, I’m talking about life in Africa where people are hustling to get things that they already should have like electricity and water.

I talk about Soyinka, the great and his inspiration as one to follow intellectually, I talk about an experience driving with my great friend Amadou in DC when his car broke down and we had to fill it with Mazola corn oil to get it started again. The experience reminded me of Nigeria where people don’t stop no matter what the situation, no matter how much they are suffering, no matter what they are facing, they find a way out. Where you see people driving cars that you didn’t think could move. Life is a cultural tapestry. I just try to reflect it”.

With one year left at Harvard, Oke Iweala has sounded a note of warning on his lyrical offering. He has written over 50 songs, a sample of which will make up his debut album, The Official, due for release in 2007. But his Single, Brother-Sister, a fast-paced lyrical omelet served on the bassy rhythm of Fela’s African Woman is set to rule local airwaves. But how does he cope with society’s low esteem of rappers? “Rappers are some of the most misunderstood people in society”, he agrees.

“That’s why I’m really moving to bring on a world scale, the recognition that rappers deserve as great artists, intellectuals and philosophers. In fact, right now, my senior project at Harvard is a thesis that shows the power of oral philosophy and investigates the ways that great artists like Nas and Mos Def, KT from Senegal and other artists I’m meeting embed revolutionary philosophies and commentaries in their music.

If you really listen, you will see how much knowledge historically, sociologically and spiritually is integrated in their works. Mos def has a song with Talib Kweli called Hidin Like Thieves talking about the state of the American society with a chorus drawn from Toni Morrison’s novel. They are encouraging people to read through this. Talib Kweli has a song called A Thousand Seasons that took its title from Ayi Kweh Armah’s great novel. I actually read the novel because I heard the song. It’s truly beautiful and Harvard is recognizing this as well. It has a newly founded center run by Lidet Tilahun at the Du Bois Institute just for hip-hop research.

So, one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning is getting on board. I think we should give more credence to orality as a means of intellectualism and philosophy – the Western tradition always looks down upon the oral domain like conversation, proverbs, spoken poetic performance – as not being on the same plain with the written text. But here in Africa, we have such rich oral traditions of learning and I think that rap is just another manifestation of that. Why are youths all over the world turning to hip-hop? Look at Cuba, Brazil and Palestinian hoods where Tupac rules in graffiti murals. It is because there is a special voice coming through the music. I would encourage people to just listen to rap and find out why and what people like about it”.

Another fulsome you might say, all right? But certain responses are better left that way. Oke Iweala sure has a mind of his own. He is not bothered that he is traveling a distant and different road from the conservative career paths of his parents. “I think people should move beyond the typecasting of professions and the people practicing them”, he counters when reminded of that.

“My mum and dad are two extremely creative people. My mum loves paintings and works of art and truly has implanted that type of artists eye in all of us and it takes creativity to deal with a nation like Nigeria.

My dad is a pianist and loves music of all types from Bob Marley to classical, and being a doctor is one of the most creative of all types of professions on the planet. Secondly there’s this social theorist, Max Webber that talked about the rationalization of society and how in the modern world people tend to just end up in these mechanized bureaucratic styles of living, especially professionally and I think that a lot of people are falling into that trap of simply categorizing people by what they do.

But the beauty of life is creativity”.
Oke Iweala offer curious perosnality mix, but it’s all good. With his big laugh, big voice and big ideology, the young man from a little village outside Umuahia, the Abia State capital is set to keep heads ringing. He thinks highly of local rap act Sound Sultan and the local branch of Grassroots Artists Movement Office (G.A.M.E) and already, entertainment hawks, Kennis Music are encircling him.