What an extraordinary reunion for you and your family, Uche! My
congratulations to your parents.
Oh, indeed, your dialect-shifting was a perfect fitting vehicle for your
poem.
Re being a misfit, you join the club of most everyone I've known well. They
haven't had the fantastic experiences that you've had, but they've felt
themselves outsiders in worrying ways they carry with them like old
luggage. (I include myself in the group, btw; am sometimes sharply aware of
my tactics for dodging the misfitty feelings) Good to hear you've concluded
that you're not such a misfit after all.
Fascinating how your family divides the duties of each dialect! Kinda
funny, actually. How do they decide that Umon will carry all the "private"
words? USAmericans seem to use baby talk words with a syllable repeated:
"peepee", "poopoo", "caca".
Re African languages up close (to me), I attempted to pronounce the "click"
words of my son's best friend, Lu, (Luyanda Kunene) from South Africa.
Saying a sound precisely at the moment one is "clicking" is quite a feat for
the unpracticed! I had it for a few seconds, now couldn't do it without
mimicking someone. I loved it, tho!
(BTW, Lu composes music for films, and he lives in LA.)
Surely, you know someone who could connect with you musically and with a
spread of culture-diverse instruments. Could get the word out thru TNB, if
you wished. It's an excellent idea (whose time has obviously come).
Judy
On 6 May 2010 12:04, Uche Ogbuji <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 9:25 AM, Judy Prince <[log in to unmask]
> >wrote:
>
> > Heard your speaking your "Growing up Misfit" last week, Uche, on TNB
> > (thenervousbreakdown), and loved how you got into it, brought out in your
> > several "dialects", your morphing through several cultures, coping with
> > disparate expectations.
> >
> > Returns me to the *live*-ness that poetry so often was and is now to a
> > certain extent returning. Though we speak poems in our heads as we read
> > them, still it's so stunningly augmented by hearing the poet (I should
> > qualify re poets whose readings are less than we'd want them to be).
> > Thinking of Sappho and Anacreon, I so much yearn for fine poets to
> > accompany
> > their words with musical instruments.
> >
> > Thanks for the reminder to hear you! It's the only time most of us will
> > have that privilege and pleasure.
> >
>
> Very kind of you, Judy.
>
> Yes, yes yes. I think that poetry's proper place is with musical
> accompaniment. I think we all get by reasonably well without it, but there
> is a surfeit of magic that we lose without the nearby Grecian lyre or the
> griot's ekpe or tumba or other drum. I have neither the musical talent nor
> connections to collaborate as I'd like on such projects, but I certainly
> have a mind to do so.
>
> As for the shifting accents, it was completely unpremeditated. I think it
> was the word "ajebutta" that triggered it. You can't really say that in
> other than a Nigerian accent, and then I kicked into that accent for a few
> verses before I realized I was doing it, and then there was a bit of an
> awkward moment for me as I was thinking in my head, while trying to avoid
> ruining my flow: "is this going to sound mad?" I'm grateful that in the
> end
> it didn't sound too badly.
>
> I just got back from my parent's 40th anniversary past weekend. We had
> family and friends from the world over, including some of the same uncles
> and aunties who taught me Igbo, Efik and Umon when I was a toddler. I'd
> already recovered much of my Igbo during my Nigerian schooling, which was
> all in Igbo territory, but never really the Efik and Umon, except for the
> toilet and privy part words, which have always been in Umon in my parents'
> household (glan-glan = penis, ebribe = buttocks, ibe = faeces, etc.) but
> this weekend, I found myself back to saying "Messierere", "Aba ibibi",
> "ih-ih", "di" and more, and realizing that I haven't lost the knack for
> pronouncing some of the really difficult bits of Umon, such as the rapid,
> tone-inflected combinations of dentate "d"s and unaspirated "t"s and "p"s.
> Not so much a misfit, I guess.
>
>
> --
> Uche Ogbuji http://uche.ogbuji.net
> Founding Partner, Zepheira http://zepheira.com
> Linked-in profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ucheogbuji
> Articles: http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/publications/
> TNB: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/uogbuji/
> Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/uche
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/uogbuji
> http://www.google.com/profiles/uche.ogbuji
>
--
"People in Oregon used TNT to explode a whale carcass, and blubber hit those
running a quarter mile away."
Jeff Hecker, Norfolk VA
|