Èrò Ni Gbẹ̀gìrì

Decades back during my freshman year at the University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University), Ilé-Ifẹ̀ , Nigeria, I once heard a custodial worker sing:  Ọ̀na fásitì mó fẹ́ lọ  Nìbi táwọn ọ̀jọ̀gbọ́n wà  Nìbẹ lọ́mọ́ mi yó lọ  Jèsu yó mu wọ̀n dé 'bẹ̀ o  The lines translate roughly to English thus:  I desire to be on the road to the university  The place where the learned gather  There my child[ren] will go  Jesus will surely lead them there.  I do not know why the song has stuck in my head ineradicably. I do not recollect the date; but it was not in the Harmattan semester. It was in Awolowo Hall. I cannot recollect any ill will  from her towards those of us already inside the university.  I know that she sang earnestly. I believed then, and still believe now, that she wanted her children to be one of us. It was clear in her voice that she did not want her children to be custodial workers, cleaning toilets for other people's chi

Rhythm does not erase difference. We could hear, see, and feel the disparate elements--the stresses, the tones, the meters, etc--in the rhythmic phenomenon. Rhythm is a recognition of patterned regularity that need not arise from the internal, disparate elements. Rhythm is its own order, its own phenomenon. Rhythm is the experience of the totality; of, perhaps, totalization.