Unexpectations

I have a lonely ticket sitting in my room, for the Hugh Masekela concert that was supposed to take place on Saturday. Took the folks out to celebrate the fact that they have now been married almost as long as this country is old. Besides, it was Hugh: only the man that God had in mind when She invented the trumpet. All around, I was poised for a stellar night of serious jazzical entertainment. I had my bourgeoise on, knowwhati'msayin?

But I only got a third of a night of excellent jazzical entertainment. Props to Sauda Simba who frontlined for Hugh- nice selection of standards, and I would be interested to hear her personal take on a few more of the classic tracks. But by 9:30 the songstress was done and the concert that was supposed to start at 8:00 was beginning to look a little flaky. Then the rep from the main sponsors strolled up to the microphone and told us that the concert was cancelled. Haha, we responded. So funny, joke yes?

Not so much, no.

The concert, which was full to capacity with people who had forked over between 50,000 TShs and 100,000 TShs (that's real money, folks), had been summarily cancelled. Just like that, my lifelong dream to see Hugh perform live, my deep pleasure at the thought of listening to him riff while enjoying the cool breeze off the Indian Ocean, the anticipation of treasuring that memory forever- pouf. Up in smoke.

Yeah, I was disappointed. Even worked up a modicum of anger. Some more cynical friends had held off their excitement with the argument that they would believe it when they saw Hugh on the stage. I spent weeks in a fever of anticipation. Guess who had it right? But I wasn't nearly as disappointed as I thought I would be, and finally figured out why: this is Bongo. Everyone expects to get swindled at some point by a service provider. Because it happens. All the time. With this particular producer, I believe I still have a ticket for Freshly Ground hanging about that I did not get a refund for... knowwhati'msayin'?

Anyways, listened yesterday to the EA drivetime show where the DJ was explaining what happened and sort of asking the audience whether it was Hugh's fault or the producer's fault. First up: DJ couldn't pronounce the man's name. How can any working African DJ in East Africa not know who Hugh is?! Second, half the callers thought that Hugh came from Zambia or Uganda or some such nonsense. Made me want to kill myself.

But most importantly: Soweto String Quartet: mishandled. Freshly Ground: mishandled. Hugh Masekela: manhandled. We seem to be earning a reputation here, knowwhati'msayin'? Mh hm.

The Pan-African Thing.

It is not politic to be anti-Pan Africanist. I know this. And for my sins, I was soundly rebuked recently when I was informed that "You might not need Pan Africanism, just as Pan Africanism doesn't need you." And here I am soundly rebuked again.

Bring it.

If it makes folks happy to come together under the African shade tree of their own free will, I got no beef with that. Part of the fun of World Cup 2010 is watching the pervasive marketing scheme, ati "Africa's World Cup" complete with celebrities* flown in from across the continent and the world (mostly black, of course) to help celebrate things with a nice cultural mash-up. But didja know that Africans have, like, the worst record for intra-continental travel? Those of us who can afford a certain lifestyle would rather go to London or New York for recreation than, say, Cairo or Antananarivo...

Anywho, my problem is with imposed collectives, which is why for example the East African Federation doesn't work for me. Especially not with Museveni's extremely naked ambitions to crown hisself King of East Africa if he's given half a chance. Likewise, the African Union idea is being peddled hardest by... Muammar Ghaddafi? Um, no thanks?

These things don't need to be forced, especially not when the major agenda behind political collectives is to stroke the egos of some imperially-minded Presidents For Life. We've been doing modern nation-states for all of half a century, and the relative frequency of explosive political situations all around indicate to me that we're still finding our feet. This One Africa business will best be engineered by private sector initiatives (like Zain's really useful multi-country thingy) and regular folks travelling around for school, for jobs, for business. I figure we'll get there in a healthy manner, especially if the political collectivists stop trying to push us around.

*You know what wasn't right? Having superb musicians like Bra Hugh and Femi Kuti on the stage for 30 seconds only during the opening ceremony and then letting that R Kelly guy do a whole song. Puke.