To Andrew, On St. Andrew's Day

Dear Andrew,

I write this to you a day after my 28th birthday.  In case I wont be around to impart this twisted wisdom to you in person on YOUR 28th birthday I felt I would put it in writing.

Firstly, the significance of your name and today's date:  My middle name Andrew was given to me by your very Catholic grandfather, as I was born a day before St. Andrew's day, which falls on the 30th of November.  Your mother liked my middle name, so we named you Andrew.  

Twenty-eight isn't one of those  landmark years, like 13 or 18 or 21.  In reality its one above 27 and a couple away from 30.  If, like myself, you haven't quite figured your life out, I have sad news for you:

You're fucked.

BUT

The great thing about 28 is you now have 336 months of life experiences under your belt.  You may still make bad decisions, but not as bad as a decade ago.  You know a lot more people than you did 5 years ago, and you're a better judge of character than you were last year.  Use that to you advantage.


Take care of your siblings (though as I write this you have none, and none planned for the foreseeable future).  Keep close to your cousins and aunties and uncles.  You can't choose your family.  But they are fucken useful people to have around.  Love, honor, respect and cherish your mother and grandmother.  Dont give these two peopl the grief I gave them.  Treat them special, like the queens that they are.

Don't ever let money come between your family or friends.

Exercise.  You should be at your physical peak right now.  They say its all downhere from here.

Read.  Feed your mind, always look for a new intellectual challenge.

Obey the law.  Drive safely, pay your taxes, etc.

Be considerate, be helpful, be compassionate.  Learn first aid.  DOnate to charity.  Asssit random old people.

Drugs and alcohol are great fun.  But expensive.  And they tend to fuck with your health.  I'd rather you didn't.

Its OK to be socially awkward.  Your grandfather and myself were introverts.  All you have to do is BE YOU.  Don't feel pressured to conform.

But be assertive.  Don't take shit from anyone.  Absolutely no one.

Pray.  I'll never force religion on you.  But prayer helps when one is troubled.  The Bible is an interesting read, you should definitiely give it a try.

Your father was, deep down, a decent honest man.  A jack of all trades but master of none.  But he certainly did try.  He worked hard and he played harder.  An enigmatic, bright but troubled under-achiever. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.


Most importantly my son: I loved you, I love you, and I will always love you.  Never forget that whatever you do in your life

This Facebook post got over 100 likes

 I posted this on the 14th of July and got over a hundred likes.  A summation of my life thus far I guess.

"I've played with people I was told not to, driven drunk, walked in the rain. I've tasted academic success but also flunked out of university twice. Swam naked, lost a tooth, fathered a child. Buried a father and a sister. I've spent many a sleepless night in pain, shaking with alcohol withdrawal. I've worn out pairs of shoes, walking, hustling in Lusaka and Joburg streets. I've bedded more women than I care to count. I've felt the pain of unrequited love. I've spent money on whores and cigarettes and guitars and alcohol. I've watched football in stadiums and screamed my lungs out. I've sat in booths playing music for millions of people. I've made beautiful music myself. I've missed flights, been thrown out of nightclubs and I've cried at funerals. I've had good jobs, I've had bad jobs. I've offended people, I've been offended myself. I've jerked off at my gate. Been in car accidents.
I've been punched, kicked, slapped. I've beaten a few people my self. I've had food poisoning, alcohol poisoning, malaria, and a respiratory infection. I've contemplated suicide, I've talked people out of suicide. I've been the life of a party, I've been a nobody. I've been homeless, I've stayed in some nice hotels.

Life is beautiful. The dizzying heights and the crushing lows. I'm twenty seven years old. I WILL NOT join the club, even though the thought haunts me almost daily. I'm just getting warmed up. Some love me, most hate me. My innings isn't over. Yes, there will be a day when you will have to put me in box and lay me down at Old Leopards Hill. But that day isn't yet here. Favour is eternal, and Nkandu Andrew Kataya is alive and well!"

Coming Home

I read an article the other day about the stereotypes that are still being propagated about Africa.  A little study revealed  that a great deal of published material about our continent have very similar visual themes on their front covers.  Essentially, the world sees us as elephants on a flat plain, with a golden sunset in background and the token acacia tree in silhouette.  And this got me thinking about what I personally think of Africa.  I’ll admit my view of Africa is limited, limited to the few countries in the south that I’ve visited and or lived in.  As such when I do question what my image is of Africa, mostly I think of the two thousand kilometre road journey from Johannesburg to Lusaka.  A trip I’ve undertaken thrice in the past twenty four months.  This trip shows you quite an interesting slice of what Africa is REALLY like.  

  

One thing the world should know, in this part of Africa, one hardly ever sees wildlife.  Cows, goats, chickens, dogs and donkeys, yes.  In abundance!  But Elephants and baboons?  Hardly ever.  And the glorious hues of the sunsets they romantically extol in their literature?  Well, yes we do indeed have glorious sunsets.  But in reality, the colours you see most in Africa are boring brown and boring green and of course glorious blue sky.  In this part of the world, (depending on the time of the year) everything is either very brown or very green.  In our cities, its brown all year round (think Nigerian movie).   Dirt roads, the brown of the unpainted houses and the brown of the skin.

We begin our journey with the bustle and industry of Gauteng.  Despite having lived here on and off for the past seven years, I still have a hard time coming to terms with the sheer size of Johannesburg.  Cars, people, office block, houses, everywhere!  The disparities in wealth are very, very striking.  A squatter settlement here, a gated community there.  A beggar approaching the window of a Porsche Cayenne.  Its obscene.  But its life I suppose.  Our journey is smooth, the terrain flat through most of Limpopo.  A little escarpment and we’re at Beit Bridge, signalling our entry into Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe

What amazes me about Zimbabwe is how very big it seems .  it’s much, much smaller than Zambia, but when you’ve on a bus already for twelve hours and you are still a thousand kilometres from home it seems as though you are traversing the Sahara desert.  But it’s always nice to stare out the window and soak in the huge potential that the country has.  It truly is a fallen giant.  Despite the tough times they’ve had, their small towns are still bigger and more numerous than Zambia’s.  The farms on the outskirts of Harare are more impressive and feature greater herds of cattle and more massive granaries than what you’d see in, say, Chisamba. 

Finally, Chirundu.  Dog-tired after spending some eight hours waiting for all passengers and luggage in the sixty-seater to be cleared by customs and immigration.  Chirundu really is nothing more than a village, for as soon as you drive a kilometre from the gates of the border post facility you are met by the humblest of thatched dwellings.  An hour or so of twisting through the escarpment and you’re back on the flat land you’ve grown accustomed to throughout the journey.  To the right, Kafue Gorge.  A few more minutes and you’re in sprawling, uninspiring Kafue town.  But one’s heart quickens now, knowing that Lusaka is very very close by. Chilanga is soon upon us.  And then Lilayi and Makeni.  

Nothing says “Lusaka” like traffic.  But this particular gridlock feels great.  It means I’m back home.  I peer down and see motorists patiently inching their way forward towards Kafue roundabout, their final destinations unknown to me.  Lusaka residents like myself.  Their faces occasionally darkened in the shadow of an optimistic street vendor at their window.  Findeco House looms large and confident in t the afternoon sun, bidding me, the prodigal son from the south, a warm Lusaka welcome.

Snare Nine

Much has been said on the #BanDunka campaign. I dedicated a few tweets to it a couple of weeks ago, but here in one place are my thoughts again:

The origins of the genre have been highlighted already by brother Anthony Muligisa.  Reggaeton came to us through the like of Daddy Yankee and Don Omar.  Zambian producers were quick to copy the infectious drum pattern and soon we had hits like Gong’a by Uncle Jah and Over Over by jimmy.  Soon there was a plethora of dunka songs in our ears over the successive years, the arrival of a new genre of Zambian music that went relatively unheralded.

Dunka is essentially reggaeton music, adapted for Zambian audiences.  It employs the normal reggaeton four-on-the-floor drum pattern.  Use of “snare 9” was once very prominent, snare 9 being the instrument that gives the beats their distinct “ka” sound from which the word dunka is derived. 

What I like about dunka is its authentic Zambian-ness.  Others may beg to differ, asserting that it’s a copycat of an established sound.  I disagree.  Inasmuch as dunka has its origins in reggaeton, it has evolved over the years to be a truly local sound.  Our music is different from that of the DRC or Malawi or Tanzania.  Like most other music genres, we took another idea and made it our own.  (Bear in mind that rock and roll had its origins in black Spirituals, but was adopted by British youth and turned into something altogether unique).  One only needs to listen to the work of Mampi, Dandy Crazy and Oga Family to realise the level that dunka has raised Zambian music.  Its success in international markets bears testimony to the success of the genre.

Unfortunately with the rise of dunka came a multitude of artists hoping to make a quick buck off a tried and tested musical formula.  Many were quick to replicate the rhythms and melodies, note-for-note, of established hits.  Herein lies the problem.  The past six years we have been bombarded with a whole bunch of songs that “sound the same”.  And indeed they do. Take the established drum pattern, incorporate a simple four chord progression and add juvenile lyrics.  The result?  A catchy, danceable, yet annoyingly predictable hit.  And that is the crux of Krytic’s argument. 

We do indeed have great singers and producers in our great republic.  But lately there is very little real songcraft for we the public to appreciate.  The onus now is on the so called “artists” to revisit their motives for making music, and ponder over what art and artistry is really about.  I’m confident that the industry will rise to the challenge and bring us more great music.

Banjo's dead. Long Live Banjo.

There's something very personal about the rough glide of graphite on paper.  In stark contrast to the manic dance of long fingers on plastic keyboard.  Assuming anyone is reading this, the transfer to the digital realm eventually did take place, but these words were conceived in a lonely, insufficiently lit room, when 0.7mm cluch pencil made hurried love to A4 hard cover exercise book.  The latter doesn't belong to me.

I write at a time when I feel creatively stifled.  My guitars are two thousand kilometres away.  I don't have a phone to share my twisted thoughts 140 characters at a time.  My Blackberry Torch was a casualty of my overly enthusiastic exertions on the dancefloor of our local watering hole two weeks prior.

Release is important to me.  I'm in constant need of an outlet.  I wake up some afternoons with my mind racing, a million thoughts per second going through my head.  Mostly sensible things, sometimes deeply philosophical thoughts.  And of course lots of silly things, much of which I share with my Twitter followers.  Mostly in-your-face, uncensored, I-can't-believe-he-just-tweeted-that kinda stuff.  I know it makes some people uncomfortable and others find my tweets downright offensive.  Some days I feel guilty.  Most others, I don't.  Truth is, I like to shock people.  Its a bit of a perversion of mine.  Another truth is, some people like it.  Their retweets tell me so.  The retweets and favourites are shouting loudly to me "Go, stretch, go!!"  Their perverse enjoyment of my reckless tweets feeds my desire to come up with even more shocking material.  Until we're in some depraved cyber orgy.  A sick (and very, very fun) little Catch 22 on the world wide web.

99% of my tweets are gospel truth.  The other 1% contain embellishmets.  Dont act like youve never added spice to a story.

I word of advice though.  Take my tweets cum grano salis.  I always insist that my internet persona is not the same as my real personality.  I'm a fairly introverted and soft-spoken being in person.  I'm only loud and talkative when I'm drunk or in an uncomfortable situation.  I sort of over-compensate for my shyness by being especially mouthy.  My internet persona is an extension of my radio persona "stretch.dj".  stretch is a douchebag who says risqué things on air, flirts with callers and gets drunk and thrown out of nightclubs.  Nkandu Kataya on the other hand, pays his taxes, dotes on his mother and likes cats.

Oh and Banjo Wirez?  He's dead.  Long live Banjo.

Three Full Moons

I've been fascinated by sex since I was a tiny little thing.  I don't think I was more than six when I first stumbled upon soft porn.  I wasn't sure what was going on, but oh how bare breasts excited me!  Thankfully I was raised in a sheltered, religious environment.  The tumultuous teenage years passed largely uneventful for me.  The first kiss at age 14.  Feeling boobs for the first time a few months later (the most perfect D cups ever.  I'll never forget them).  Mostly it was me whacking off to naughty thoughts of girls at my school.  I told myself I was saving it for marriage, or at least for some person and time worth saving it for. 

At sixteen I had my first real test.  She was my age, a close family friend and we were tipsy, in the back of my mom's car, somewhere in Jesmondine.  I still vividly remember how her smooth, dark skin shone in the moonlight from the open sunroof.  She was wearing a matching bra and thong.  We kissed, we grabbed, we groped and we grinded on each other like our young lives depended on it.  We steamed up mommy's windows. 

But we didnt do it.

I just couldn't let myself.  Tomorrow would be Sunday and I was determined that that we would both be at the Kingdom Hall with our mothers. Hangovered, but singing Jehovah's praises heartily, consciences unbothered by thoughts of the previous night's fornicating.  So we put our clothes back on and I dropped her off at home, and headed home myself, with her bra as a souvenir.  Lord how I fapped that night.  In retrospect that probably would've been the perfect introduction to the wonderful world of the flesh;  a girl I actually liked, in a fairly safe and comfortable environment.

Because a year later, my resolve was finally broken.  Like most boys, my first time was with a more experienced woman.  Again, alcohol was involved.  Mosi.  She reeked of the stuff.   She led me behind the Chudleigh tank, mere metres away from her house.  She kept thrusting her tongue in my mouth in a way that I hated.  I didnt have a condom.  She lay down on the ground in the moonlight and divested herself of clothing.  She fumbled around with my belt, and suddenly I found my shorts around my ankles, my pathetic bare buttocks ironically exposed to the full moon.  It was all over within two minutes, with me pulling out just in time to bust an awkward, apologetic nut on her belly.  I was a few weeks shy of my eighteenth birthday.

That damn moonlight.