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THE DAY THE MINSTREL TAUGHT ME
HOW TO DANCE
by Andy Willoughby
What can I tell you of my friend, The Great Irobi? What will
serve as a fitting image in tribute to the man they called
The Minstrel, now he’s gone? A kaleidoscope of iconic images
and telling moments with Esiaba revolves in my head as I
contemplate his passing from the world, what can communicate
the amount of light that has been taken from us by his early
demise?
Maybe the image from the
first time I saw him in Sheffield in 1989 on the first day
of the Master’s degree, bouncing into the room of scholars,
storming the citadel, wearing one glove like a muscular
manly tribute to Michael Jackson, but no that can come
later, maybe the time he changed like a superhero into his
African Robes and cast a deep spell on a roomful of young
people with poetry and drum at the Hydrogen Jukebox Cabaret
of the Spoken Word in Darlington six or seven years ago,
bringing them within minutes to a better understanding of
the truths of political realities in Africa? Or the time he
declared to me, in a seminar full of political correctness
and the orthodoxies of 80’s feminism after I asked him how
his weekend was “Man, I came so many times last night I
thought she would explode” or the time he insisted on
drinking with me in a dubious North Eastern pub I wouldn’t
normally even go in myself, full of customers who looked
like they could be skinheads of the worst kind and cowed
them all in his F.B.I style sunglasses with a smile that
could be seen from outer space like the great wall of china
and told me later with that great warm laugh of his, “the
white man doesn’t know what to do when the black man is
happy”, how he was one of the bravest of the brave, but no,
I think the smile has to come last. I won’t start with any
of these memories though they all are tales I will tell
forever when I speak of this extraordinary man who changed
my life and helped me kindle my own fire. No, readers what I
will tell you is more simple but had a deeper effect on me
as a poet and a human being – I will tell you first of the
moment , at 25 years old that the Minstrel taught me how to
dance and of how previously I hadn’t really known what
dancing was.
We had been friends for many months by then thrown together
by the Master’s in Theatre and Film in Sheffield and living
nearby in the student flats off Riverside Drive we had many
times of drinking tea or whisky and discussing theatre,
poetry and other less lofty subjects. We bonded over the
fact we were both poets on this course in other disciplines
but of course we both agreed that Theatre and film needed
poetry too. We’d walk into the drama studio often together,
often with Victor Yankah: a very kind and gentle man from
Ghana who was co-directing a version of Esiaba’s great play
“Hangmen Also Die” there.
One day they told me they were working on a kind of African
history political pageant play for International students
day for the Octagon theatre tracing a line from slavery
days to the modern day Apartheid regime and Esiaba told me –
"there is a part for you Andy – you can play the oppressor
through history, though my script isn’t black and white –
Africans were sold by Africans, you can be the missionary,
the overseer, the cop." Well what self respecting would be
actor would say no to playing the whole of Babylon? Though I
did insist he introduced me to the cast by saying I was cast
partly due to my opposing views to all the characters I
would play!
So there I was a few weeks later working with Esiaba; he
wanted me to bring to bear some physical theatre skills he’s
seen me using in a Production of Berkoff’s East. There was a
lot of people in the play, “The King Who Sold His People For
a Mirror” as he and Victor had hooked up with the
Afro-Caribbean societies at the University, the Polytechnic
and the town itself. As far as I remember I was the only
white actor, it was such a mind-blowing, enriching
experience, I had joined the Afro Caribbean society via a
friend Angela at my previous university at Kent and gone to
great events like Hugh Masekela and Benjamin Zephaniah live,
and my long standing love of reggae and the work of Linton
Kwesi Johnson and poets like Braithwaite and James Berry,
and my involvement in campaigning against Apartheid, meant I
had some understanding of cultures and politics beyond my
upbringing that I could discuss but now I was working with
around 30 people in rehearsals every day with a heady mix of
the various ancient tribal cultures of Nigeria, Ghana and
South Africa, I was utterly captivated watching Zulu and
Igbo dances, listening to and learning chants and somewhat
dismayed at my inability to move or play the drums in
anything but very simple rhythm . Esiaba’s first line in the
play was "Africans are a dancing people...”
He hadn’t written in the need for me to dance but one day
after rehearsals I told him I wished I could dance even a
little like my collaborators – he got me to play a small
goatskin drum – “Play this Andy.” I did so – he took it from
me - “No, like this “ It jumped into life, I swear it
talked. I told him I couldn’t get the feeling. He said
“that’s why you can’t dance, but in your poetry you have the
feeling of dance, your poetry is coming from a different place
that’s where the drums and dance come from. I have seen you
dance - you have great energy but like a lot of white people
you dance from here!”
He patted my chest. “A lot of English people, I’ve noticed
dance from their tops down”
“Africans” he said, demonstrating a hip and
legs power move – “dance the other way round”.
He patted my belly just above the groin – “Dance from here,
feel the energy coming from the rhythm of your heart and
from the earth, your soul rests here, just above the
important bits – that’s what you need to dance with”. Again
that laugh echo’s in my mind now – the laughter of Dionysus.
I can still feel that pat and see the moment like a cartoon
with light emanating from him and finding a corresponding
light that glows through me from this centre of energy. I
have learnt to access this energy through meditation and Chi
Gung exercises since then but this was an epiphany for me, I
realised what was sometimes behind my poetry was accessible
to me, how to connect to music, and really a different way
of moving on stage. It was a magical and a practical lesson
and the reason I don’t just dad-dance at weddings now. When
I write now, I always remember that lesson when I’m looking
for the texture of feeling of the piece in the rhythms in
words and between words.
I remember it when I dance, when I play guitar and, because
it’s not my head I remember it with, I try to remember it
whenever I’m in bed with my lovely wife. It’s a lesson that,
as with so much Esiaba shared with me and, I’m sure, with so
many others, that helps me stay in love with life itself.
So that’s my tale for this written wake, though I could have
told you of the time we flamboyantly drank flaming Drambuie
in the student union at his insistence, the time he made
oxtail soup for me in his high rise flat in Leeds after
charming all the ladies in the market place, the time I
awoke to find him dancing for my then girlfriend in the
living room declaring he felt good to be alive that morning,
the long conversations about Brecht, Neruda, Soyinka, the
time we went to see Derek Walcott at the National and how I
was dumbstruck when he introduced me to the great bard;
totally cool himself. The time we ate delicious goat, peas
and rice at his sister’s restaurant and how the fabulous
hospitality there uplifted my spirits as I worked my way
through a list of dead-end London jobs the poetry ebbing
inside me, the way he’d shift from a deep quiet and
contemplative calm to pure shimmering being in a second,
like a tropical sea shifting into a hurricane whipped
maelstrom, the wicked twinkle in his eye my wife feels
privileged to have seen a glimpse of, or the time the
esteemed Teesside poet and promoter Andy Croft told me
“I’ve invited this amazing Igbo poet up from Leeds to read –
I saw him jump on a table down there and start reading his
poems to a bunch of spellbound strangers – and the resulting
smile that spread across my own face as I said “ And his
name was Esiaba Irobi!” to Andy’s astonishment.
But no, dear Sentinel readers, I’ll have to write a book to
get in all the tales of Esiaba I know and have heard about,
I’ve even heard great legends about him on a daytrip - from
ex-students working behind pub bars in Liverpool. Like
Orpheus he has left a web of tales about his brilliant,
often mischievous, joyously outrageous, sometimes blazingly
righteous, Minstrelsy behind him, across continents. I will
certainly write a set of poems about or inspired by the man,
after twenty years of friendship, often over distance but
no, it’s the moment he taught me how to find my soul at
will: the day Esiaba Irobi, the Minstrel himself taught me
how to dance, that I want to focus on here, and to leave you
with that that image and that smile of his – I’ve felt so
sad about his passing but when I close my eyes that smile is
the first thing that comes back, illuminating the place
where all the dead dwell, I’m sure everyone who met him
knows what I mean, and for those of you who didn’t have the
privilege maybe you too will find it in a pattern of stars
on a clear night, it was surely too strong not to be taken
into the cosmos for all to look for – or maybe you’ll feel
it inside yourself next time you dance with your soul. SLQ
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