Anansi
Born Yallah Gudencia Mbidde in Kenya and raised in Uganda, MC Yallah has been involved in East Africa's rap scene since 1999. Alternating rhymes in Luganda, Luo, Kiswahili and English, her conscious, poetic and experimental style was slow to creep into Uganda's mainstream. Following a brief but necessary hiatus, she returned to the stage in 2018 with a new lease of life accepting her role as a central component of the Nyege Nyege/Hakuna Kulala family.
"Yallah Beibe" is the fiery follow-up to Yallah and Berlin-based producer Debmaster's acclaimed 2019 debut "Kubali". After her tour plans were cut short as COVID-19 broke out in 2020, Yallah returned to Kampala and started work on her sophomore album at Nyege Nyege's villa. The process was more complicated this time around, developing pointedly from an initial back-and-forth with Debmaster and flourishing as beats appeared from Japanese producer Scotch Rolex and Congolese club maestro Chrisman. The finished album is an international patchwork of futuristic cyber-rap experiments fastened together by Yallah's unforgettable personality and elastic flow.
More charged than its predecessor, "Yallah Beibe" is an apt soundtrack to a challenging era. Yallah is an experienced and versatile MC and channels her layered understanding of the complicated global cultural landscape into 12 stories that skate through trap, dancehall, club and industrial styles. Her authoritative guiding force is never more evident than on 'No One Seems To Bother', a collaboration with Duma's gravel-voiced singer Lord Spikeheart. Trading bars over Debmaster's slippery, bass-heavy rhythm, Yallah and Spikeheart ink an alternative East African sonic landscape, with activated lyrics ("the world is going under, no-one seems to bother") and rasping, death metal-inspired groans.
"Yallah Beibe" is a call to action, a loud siren that's intended to educate the wider world of East Africa's shrouded history and bright future. Yallah's collaboration with rising star Rati Gan 'Bigbung Song' is the best evidence of this, looping Rati's Afro-Caribbean dancefloor flex and Yallah's politicized flow around a twisted bass-heavy beat from Chrisman, joining hands between the DRC, Uganda and the wider diaspora. Tracks like 'Baliwa' and the anthemic 'HERA' meanwhile completely center Yallah's signature lyrical dexterity, playing her tongue twisting raps against Scotch Rolex's pan-global foley-trap splatter. At times, the sounds feel as if they're from their own planet entirely - a fourth world that's rooted in collaboration rather than appropriation.
If "Kubali" re-established Yallah as a force to be reckoned with, "Yallah Beibe" cements her status as one of the world's most exciting MCs, both on record and on the stage. There's nobody doing it quite like her.
Beloved, forgive me, mothers, but money cannot buy love
It’s true, forgive me, fathers, no riches can buy love
It doesn’t touch you for no reason.
By God, one who owns everything
May still be lonely and worrying about life
While a poor person with nothing
Can find the happiness that love brings
I didn’t know that love felt so good
You left me wondering in sadness
I don’t want gold, I don’t want money
Just to know that I am the one that you loveLove, love is like an alcoholic drink and I am addicted to it
Love, love is a disease for which there is no cure
Love, love is like an alcoholic drink and I am addicted to it
Love, love is a disease for which there is no cure everOh my love, take my hand
Don’t leave me, please stay with me
Can’t you see that I’m worried and suffering?
I’m hurting, hurting, I beg you, please
Talk to me, talk to me and reassure me
Don’t listen to what people say about me
Smile at me, smile at me and take my worries away
You know, I am just in loveYou have lit up my life
Now, my heart is full of joy
The world should realise that love
Is more powerful than everything else
And once you taste it
It will change your life foreverLove, love is like an alcoholic drink and I am addicted to it
Love, love is a disease for which there is no cure
Love, love is like an alcoholic drink and I am addicted to it
Love, love is a disease for which there is no cure everI’m hurting, hurting because of love, I’m hurting, hurting because of love! (x11)
Here is the poem in the original Malinke.
Jarabi
Aw y’afama nalu, wari tè kanu sanna
Wuya tè aw y’afama n’falu, nafolo tè kanu sanna
A tè se mòosi ma guansan
Walay fen bèe bè dòfè,
Nk’o siini miirijan de la,
Ali fosi tè mòo min fè,
Jarabi di na o dusu sumaya
Ne tun ma lòn ko diyanye duman tan
I k’an to kini kini le la
N’tè sanu kò, n’tè wari dun kò
Ka lòn ten ko ne kelen dòrònle duman i ye.Jarabi, jarabi ye dòlò le di dunya, ne tè se k’a to yen
Jarabi, jarabi ye bana le di dunya, fura tè bana min na
Jarabi, jarabi ye dòlò le di dunya, ne tè se k’a to yen
Jarabi, jarabi ye bana le di dunya, fura tè bana min na abada.A n’diya, n’bolo mina sa
Kana taa, to n’dafè sa
I ma n’ye hami ni miiri la wa?
Woyiyo, woyiyo n’b’i dari
Kuma n’fè, kuma n’fè, ka miiri bò n’na
Kana n’mina mòo kan ma
Yèlè n’fè, yèlè n’fè, ka hami bò n’na
I ma lòn i diyanye bana le ye n’na.I kèlen yeelen di ne ma
Sisan ne kòni sèwara
Fo k’a ye ko diyanye min ye
A fanka ka bon ni fèn bèe ye
N’i y’a nènè dòròn sinya kelen
A b’i la dinya latè yèlèma.Jarabi, jarabi ye dòlò le di dunya, ne tè se k’a to yen
Jarabi, jarabi ye banna le di dunya, fura tè banna min na
Jarabi, jarabi ye dòlò le di dunya, ne tè se k’a to yen
Jarabi, jarabi ye banna le di dunya, fura tè banna min na abada.Woyiyo woyiyo jarabi, woyiyo woyiyo jarabi (x11)
Sona Jobarteh (born 1983) is a Gambian multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer. She is from one of the five principal kora-playing griot families of West Africa, and is the first female professional kora player to come from a griot family. She is the cousin of the celebrated kora player Toumani Diabate, and is the sister of the diaspora kora player Tunde Jegede.
No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do.
Once, Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) set out to write a memoir. But she found that “it felt too much like stripping in public,” so she abandoned it. Today, all of her autobiographical reflections, all of her overt politics, all of her creative credos come down to us solely through her interviews, now collected in Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (public library).
These conversations are also the reliquary of Butler’s hard-honed wisdom on the craft of writing, which she taught herself and mastered against the odds of her time and place to become one of the most abiding and beloved literary voices of the past century — part prophet, part poet of possibility.
In an interview given just as she was beginning what would become her iconic Parable of the Sower, she offers young writers the pillars of the craft:
"The first, of course, is to read. It’s surprising how many people think they want to be writers but they don’t really like to read books… The second is to write, every day, whether you like it or not. Screw inspiration."More than a decade later, having proven it with her own life, she redoubles her faith in work ethic over inspiration as the central drive of art. An epoch after Tchaikovsky observed that “a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood” and Camus insisted that “works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity,” Butler exhorts young writers:
"Forget about inspiration, because it’s more likely to be a reason not to write, as in, “I can’t write today because I’m not inspired.” I tell them I used to live next to my landlady and I told everybody she inspired me. And the most valuable characteristic any would-be writer can possibly have is persistence. Just keep at it, keep learning your craft and keep trying." "Forget about talent, whether or not you have any. Because it doesn’t really matter. I mean, I have a relative who is extremely gifted musically, but chooses not to play music for a living. It is her pleasure, but it is not her living. And it could have been. She’s gifted; she’s been doing it ever since she was a small child and everyone has always been impressed with her. On the other hand, I don’t feel that I have any particular literary talent at all. It was what I wanted to do, and I followed what I wanted to do, as opposed to getting a job doing something that would make more money, but it would make me miserable."It was not easy for Butler to follow what she wanted to do. She did have to take terrible job after terrible job. She worked at a hospital laundry. She worked as a telemarketer. (“I have a good phone voice,” she says apologetically. “I am told I have a good phone presence, and I actually sold things to people. I’m very ashamed.”) But all along, she was writing and writing. Looking back on the dogged devotion of those early days, that vital time when the foundations of one’s craft and credo are laid down, she reflects:
I remember another writer and I corresponding, and he had dropped out. I said, “Why haven’t I seen more from you?” He said, “Well, I didn’t make anything on my first three books.” My comment was, “Who makes anything on their first three books?” I remember that the time I quit that laundry job, it was to go to a Worldcon in Phoenix… I decided I was going to try to live as frugally as possible, and at that time you really could live very frugally. My rent was one-hundred dollars a month. So if you were content not to drive, and if you were content to wear the same clothes that you’d been getting along on for a long time… and there were other ways of not spending lots of money. I didn’t eat potatoes for years after that. I decided that I was going to live off the writing, somehow. "No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do."When an interviewer relays the apocryphal story of how Bram Stoker spent years producing mediocre writing without anyone’s notice until one day lightning struck him and out came Dracula, Butler immediately refutes this myth of divine inspiration with its dangerous intimation that excellence is the product of circumstance or chance. Having placed at the heart of her Parable of the Talents the question of creative drive, having framed it as a matter of “a sweet and powerful positive obsession,” she insists once again on the immense creative power of simply showing up for the work:
"It’s one of the things that I try to keep young writers from thinking, that you have to wait, that it’s all luck, lightning will strike and then you’ll have a wonderful bestseller. So I think it’s like the old idea that fortune favors the prepared mind. If you’ve developed the habit of paying attention to the things that happen around you and to you, then, yeah, you’ll get hit by lightning."
Thank you very much Kalawa for jazzing me up. This ladies and gentlemen is Mr Bouga Two Shoes, in the place to be, and it go a little something like this:
Wangen’ u-Mr Bouga Two Shoes
Wathul' ukuthi, balele
Haha, wahleka
Abantu laba ngapha bathi Bouga Luv lahlela
Bathu ba bantswela kae?
Ka thula kare nna ke tla mamela
Ha, kea lelemela
De kunutu ke a di tobetsa
Kere, focus otla mesa
Ha, Bouga Luv, wamampela
Haha, ke tsela fela
Bampitsa mamapudi
Ke tlo dlala mapantsula till the day that I die
Ke tlo lahlela mekonko get high
Kuzo kahal' iphihli
Ngithi lathesha, ha, ke tla o etsetsa
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[Chorus]
For as long ngisaphefumula
Ngizohlala ng’gudla
He ngishay' ngesdudla
Haha, yesami les'khundlaFor as long ngisaphefumula
Ngizohlala ng'gudla
He ngishay' ngesdudla
Haha, yesami les'khundlaEkse, balele, balele, balele, balele
He ngizo bavusa
He ngizo bavusaEkse, balele, balele, balele, balele
He ngizo bavusa
He ngizo bavusaLook and see
Kalawa's jazzing me
I'm part o’ the best crew in the industry
What you want from me?
First album platinum plus
U kile wabona kae wena ntho e so?
U kile wabona kae wena ntho e tje?
Kere 7 years later, I’m still getting greater
Onshebe hantle [?] elevator
Ke tlo dlala mapantsula till the day that I die
Ke tlo lahlela mekonko [?] get high
Kuzo kahal' iphihli
Ngithi lathesha, ha ke tla o etsetsa
Ke tla o tobetsa
Kuzo kahal’ iphihli
Ngithi lathesha, ha ke tla o etsetsa
Ha, ke tla o tobetsaFor as long ngisaphefumula
Ngizohlala ng'gudla
He ngishay' ngesdudla
Haha, yesami les'khundlaFor as long ngisaphefumula
Ngizohlala ng’gudla
He ngishay' ngesdudla
Haha, yesami les'khundlaEkse, balele, balele, balele, balele
He ngizo bavusa
He ngizo bavusaEkse, balele, balele, balele, balele
He ngizo bavusa
He ngizo bavusa(It's my house)
He ku kwami la, ningadlaleli la
(It's my house)
Ningadlaleli la, umsindo wenu la
(It's my house)
Ku kwami la, ningadlaleli la
(It's my house)
Ningadlaleli la, umsindo wenu la
(It's my house)Kel' wabona kae wena ntho eso?
Kel' wabona kae wena ntho eje?
Ke 7 years later, I'm still getting greater
Onshebe hantle elevator
Ke tlo dlala mapantsula till the day that I die
Ke tlo lahlela mekonko get high
Kuzo kahal' iphihli
Ngithi lathesha, he Sebetlo lahlelaFor as long ngisaphefumula
Ngizohlala ng'gudla
He ngishay' ngesdudla
Haha, yesami les'khundlaFor as long ngisaphefumula
Ngizohlala ng'gudla
He ngishay' ngesdudla
Haha, yesami les'khundlaEkse, balele, balele, balele, balele
He ngizo bavusa
He ngizo bavusaEkse, balele, balele, balele, balele
He ngizo bavusa
He ngizo bavusa(It's my house)
He ku kwami la, ningadlaleli la
(It's my house)
Ku kwami la, ningadlaleli la
(It's my house)
Ningadlaleli la, umsindo wenu la
This song is for Fire. I was good friends with Fire. So I'd come over and see Fire and we'd have dinner. I'd bring the meat and Fire would cook. But it was a long ways to Fire's house, so I invited Fire to come to my house for a barbecue.
But Fire told me he can't walk, and so to get to my house, I must lay a path of dry bush, and Fire could walk on top of dry bush to the barbecue.
I was married at the time to Ground Dove. Ground Dove wasn't pleased with the idea. "Don't bring that red-haired bastard over here! He'll get drunk, want to come inside, and then pass out!"
I laughed at her. Fire was my friend, after all. So I laid out a path of dry brush, and fire came skipping and jumping down the path to the barbecue. But when he got close, he jumped on me, then jumped on my house, and burnt everything but Groud Dove.
She left me shortly thereafter. What the fuck, Fire? I thought we were friends.
@MHowell asɛnka nni ho! Great read and good points, especially this one:
That tug is the old call of the storyteller - that there is something vital in your words, needed by someone, somewhere, and that alone makes the tale worthwhile to tell.