THE HELL NO! NOT CHOGE!!
I was on my way back from Bauchi yesterday night when a friend called to tell me that Hajia Sa’adatu,the legendary Barmani Choge, a popular Hausa women musician, praise-singer, and perhaps the highest record sellers of all Hausa women musicians, had passed away. By the time he called, I was a little way past Unguwar Fulani, negotiating those sloppy sharp bends of plateau, with her most popular song “Duwai wai” blaring throughout the car and Hamisu Soba was beside me warning of answering calls at such high speed. Immediately the news was broken, I slid my toes off the accelerator and pulled over. I quickly put a call through to Funtua to confirm the news,but couldn’t get through. I allowed Hamisu to take over the driving and continued trying till I got a friend living just across the road opposite her house in ‘Kududdufin Yaro da Gari’, in Funtua who confirmed her death.
The death of Choge(1943-2013) finally marked the end of an era that started and ended with her in Funtua,my ancestral hometown. Funtua of 1990s was what you could call Bariki (Barracks),as it had all the complexity of barracks life. It formed a base and settlement for all and sundry,people from all walks of life,”the good,the bad and the ugly”. And B.S.C.G was the centre of it all as it provided the stage where the late Alhaji (DR.) Mamman Shata Funtua,another legendary praise-singer and arguably by far the best of all Hausa musicians; composed, performed and rendered most of his songs. It also served as a sanctuary for women of easy virtues, and that attracted visitors who would later make it a home. And Garba Liyo with his “Goge”,another central figure of that age,holding sway with his crew in Sabon Layi the second stage in those days, his lulling flute men, his subdued stilting voice added all to the glamour and serenity of the town. Our former house was not far from the stage where Garba Liyo used to perform his magic, and my dad would always warn my mum not allow us get near that devilish place. We would sit in our parlour after dinner cross-legged, but the flutes and the shriek of the goge would be issuing inside in pitched tones from the open doors and windows. Although I was too young to understand the lascivious voluptuary of those days, the smoking women passing by our doorstep and men reeking of cigarette smoke holding women by their buttocks, I still consider those days as the most exciting moment of our lives as young men. Perhaps that was what forced my dad to sell his house and move down new Funtua for that was the end I saw of Garba Liyo.
Barmani Choge was born in 1943(5) in Funtua,Katsina State. She started up as an in-house musician,specialising in Amada a popular Hausa traditional musical genre of praise-singing that involves light beating of calabash gourds steeped in a pool of water to produce a rhythmic beat,to which the head singer sings and dances. Choge popularised this genre that by the time she came to limelight performing in public performances, she was a force to reckon with. She put up several appearances throughout Hausa states,including other non-Hausa states of Borno,Adamawa and Minna in Niger state. Throughout her life,Choge became an enigma,a force to reckon with,who chose to tread on paths no other Hausa woman had dared to tread, a woman that made a place in history for herself. And although she withdrew from public performances towards the end of her life because of old-age and her compositions seemed to have receded in appeal and depth,she was still the favourite of the highly placed in society,with that her lush comforting voice.
Choge was a social reformer who occupied most of her life with plight of women in Hausa Muslim society,encouraging them to be strong and self-sufficient. Although she had a few number of compositions to her credit,and all in praise of highly placed women,the only exception was perhaps her song “Ku Kama Sana’a Mata”in which we saw the social activist in her,appealing to women of all classes to stand up to the challenge of modern life and engage in profitable businesses, she was still the best at what later came to define her life as an advocate of change. In “Sakarai Bata Da Wayau”, Choge established her place as feminist, not in the sense of modern day opportunism of our so called feminists–some of whom you would not want be left alone with in a room for fear of being sexually harassed by them,but as a women’s rights activist, imploring women to stop being idle and depending on other women. This call she made in a highly pitched satire against highly placed women that used to be her favourite themes and who took other women for granted by the mere ecstasy of being privileged. In “Wakar Duwai wai”,my second favourite song,she praised women’s buttocks as source of power and attraction. In that song, we saw Choge as a societal deviant, talking vulgar in public, of sex and sexual performance, something considered indecent in Hausa tradition. And she never pretended to lace it up with Hausa, something she could have done to cover the rawness of the words. But the words were clear, and so clear indeed, for you could feel the jolt of her voice as it trailed up the verses.
And like the beginning and end of a rainstorm,Funtua reached its peak and began to subside, the storm became droplets, so spherical, drizzling till the sky became clear of any speck of clouds. Garba Liyo went first, and just before Ahmad Sani, the Yarima of Bakura, could light up the fire of Sharia that was to finally smoulder up prostitution in that axis, Alhaji Mamman Shata followed Garba Liyo in 1999. And then Sharia came to Katsina in 2001 to finally put an end to the sacrilegiousity that was B.S.C.G. and Sabon Layi. It was like destroying a legacy,but we could not help it as people continued to watch performances by visiting Hausa musicians secretly. And as it happens anytime they use God as a means to an end, they dropped Sharia halfway few years after. And just yesterday, without any notice, Choge went the same way. And she brought it all to the end. May she find peace.
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