Search of Identity

Don’t pretend: You must’ve heard before

Be proud of your African roots

Cut the western trends

Love your African person…

In music, in dressing, in talking, in values

You’ve heard the booming scream

A scream your ears

Have been waxed off

Your cheers and jeers, sneers and snarls

Have drowned the message

‘we must move with the times’ huh?

“world’s moving, not stationary man’ huh?

And so apart from waxing your ears

Your entire body is striped like zebra’s

Some people said that they are not whipmarks

No! You wanted it that way; you paid for it

Our people have something like that, anyway

After a successful raiding and bloodbath

A ritual, a necessity

Yours looks like a gecko’s on a rough-casted wall!

Hm! The drums, the flute, the adeudeu, the xylophone

‘…are primitive music for the village-folk’, you said

Your manner of talking? In all wisdom Tororot didn’t intend that

For if one can’t breath well and talk distinctly

For if one talks as if he’s being chocked

For if he talks like one about to jump off a cliff

I must say it is not talking, it is stalking my poor ears!

But why should I suffer? Just why?

Everytime I complain I get polite answers:

‘Peace! Loud mouth old fogey!’

Like them, I have waxed my ears too

Against the long unflattering names

Let them pick all flesh and call it decoration

Let them talk with their throats if they like

Let their ears rapture as they capture their captivating choruses

Let them wear their trousers on their knees

As for me

I shall dance to my adeudeu tunes

The music of my soul which shake dullness in my being

I shall talk with the same enthusiasm and steadiness

Will you join me?

C) Lorot Salem 2010