By
Obododimma Oha
Since I wrote the article, “A Voyage to English,” I have had to cite the piece in other writings with much humorous stimulation and have even had to use the essay in teaching a course, “English Language in Nigeria,” just to expose my students to the interesting struggles of some second-language learners of English, struggles that have given birth to exciting narratives about encounter with English. As a teacher of English in the second-language context, the experiences of those struggles are important subjects for brainstorming in the language classroom and can be an input on the debates on English and Englishes. In line with that thinking, a musical narrative on “Ingligbo” by Bright Chimezie, which I heard again on a bus while travelling from Owerri to Ibadan after conducting examinations at a university in Nigeria’s South-East, set me thinking hard about the need to write a second installment of the essay.
Bright Chimezie of Zigima sound highlife music is a special toast for lovers of “new” highlife in the South-East. Is it his humorous lyrics? Is it his gripping and lively musical beat, often punctuated with the signature, “Shekina” or “Ice water,” to regulate the ecstatic beat? The very handsome Bright, beautifully costumed in a live performance, who shot into fame with “Okoro Junior,” is really bright behind the microphone and in rhythm and remains a special “take-away” any day!
But what is particularly noteworthy and remains a special concern in this essay is that Bright Chimezie, just like Oliver de Coque, tries to do sociolinguistics of English as a second language in his song on “Ingligbo,” “Because of English,” produced by Rogers All Stars (available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vY3En7zMdQ ). It was Oliver de Coque that started it all, warning in one of his songs: Onye asuzina Ingligbo. Yes, the linguistic hybridity exhibited by contemporary ndiigbo who (1) do not speak Igbo fluently without adding an English word, (2) who can neither speak nor write Igbo, but bear Igbo names, (3) who can only speak Igbo fluently but cannot speak English well, even though they bear English or Western names, and so on, are worrisome cases that indicate a false “Englishness” in the postcolony. Ingligbo seems to be a major tendency --- which has moved from mere showing off with one’s little learning of English to an attitude that has gripped the new Igbo person.
I listened carefully to Bright Chimeze’s song and could place him as moving from the narrative of his mean and deracinated teacher caning him for speaking Igbo in class (an experience most of us had to pass through in the English-language classroom in Nigeria) to an analysis of talk among learners who try to grapple with English and reconcile the semiotics of both, even from the letters of English alphabet to Igbo alphabet, “A B GB D…,” and the in-betweenness of “Chinyere nye m pensuru m o” (chinyere, give me my pencil). One striking thing about what Bright Chimezie is doing in that song is that he is teaching English in Nigeria through a song! He is turning his listeners into his pupils, listenership on the bus a language classroom! Yes, we are his students, anywhere and anytime we listen to that song. He is a language professor in his own right.
That sets me thinking hard. I am a professor of language by virtue of a pronouncement by a committee that I have become one. Yes; it was a long voyage through B.A. to Ph.D., with certificates to show. But these culture workers are also professors, apart from producing what makes my own work exciting and meaningful. What is even very outstanding is that he is using a musical medium to make the reception more welcome. He may not know all the theories that I know, but he surely produces theories that only patience and humility would help me to figure out.
What is it that Alastair Pennycook, for instance, is doing in The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language, only other critical second-language writers, that Bright Chimezie and others are not using music to communicate? I believe that these culture workers are sources of powerful theories, not just demonstrators of theories.
I know you would ask which theoretical issues Bright Chimezie has brought up or has introduced through his song about Ingligbo! No; don’t focus only on the beating in the English language classroom – which is worth exploring, though, on interaction in the classroom between teacher and pupil and creating friendly learning atmospheres. What of second-language learning as a humorous engagement? The alphabet of the indigenous language (although old orthography), “A B GB D….” especially as a song? Elementary school teachers should know the marvels of drill. When the subject matter becomes a song, it becomes more easily digestible and sinks deep into the learner, what more a language that is not yours but which you must learn! For me, this is cultural: whether at the corn grinding mill, or at the farm, even palm-oil processing – all manner of labour, Africans traditionally sing to enjoy their work. Work song is not a mere vehicle driving the work; it is the very breath of the labourer.
Now, what does it suggest to be caned in class because of English? What is the power of linguistic imperialism in the briefcase of a post-colonial enforcer of foreignness? To be caned because of a language not yours may seem to be a militaristic way making the colony utter what it does not mean, hoping that coercion is better than persuasion in the knowledge business.
Bright Chimezie might not have sat in the linguistics classroom but he was aware of acts tantamount to language death and language killing measures in the postcolony. So, he sang:
Because of English e
They want to kill my language
Because of English e
They want to kill my culture
English e
Who will save my language?
From English e
Who will save Africa?
Important questions: Who will save indigenous African languages? Who will save Africa? Who will save Africa from Africans who have taken over the task of imposing foreign expression of the self on African experience, so that Bright’s protagonist in the song cannot freely ask his classmate, Chinyere, “Chinyere, nye m pensuru (pencil) m”? Even when “Chinyere nye m pensuru m” is not fully vernacular, but a hybrid or interference expression standing between English and Igbo! The teacher is not interested in what this hybridity represents in the learning process. For him, it must be English fully, or English straight. The model of English Straight is implemented at the cost of great pain. Is the learning of the language still at the pleasure of the learner?
How very often the models we impose on our pupils seem to indicate that the learning of the language is not to the gain of the primary gain of the learner really, that they are only the guinea pigs for our tests and experiments? We are not really doing it for them but for ourselves and for the owners of the language who have to dominate and rule the other through it, give us grants and fellowships to encourage caning the postcolony. At language workshops and conferences, don’t we just talk to ourselves as professionals and only bring in the learners as fictional characters?
Now, I have fully become Bright’s student, Bright whose protagonist was caned mercilessly in class because of English, for us to learn the necessity of an alternative language teaching/learning model. In this painful voyage to English, Bright’s protagonist and I have suffered. The teacher’s joy has been to “wicked” us if we speak vernacular to transmit our indigenous values. Every singer of the song particularly in my type of in-betweenness is acknowledging being between English and Igbo in the classroom and receiving the strokes of the cane.
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