The West African Samba dance

I was in sixth form! Precisely, I was in lower sixth, bubbling with enthusiasm for life. Incidentally, I wasn’t particularly a good dancer but liked watching others dance. When my pal Billy (Butter) did the ‘old man boogie,’ dance, he did so with passion, with contortions and distor­tions of the human frame. He often needed artificial respiration after a good dance.

Old man Boogie was the dance form adopted at the time. The more you danced like a bony and fragile old man, the more you got applaud­ed. It was fashionable at the time to go to disco with a walking stick to simulate an 80-year-old boogeyman.

On the disco dance floor, every­one was crumbling over and if you didn’t know what was in vogue at the time, you’d be tempted to order an ambulance to cart the entire gang of dancers to the nearest hospital to check their sugar levels. No doubt, you were likely to mistake for old diabetics lapsing into coma on the dance floor.

The Old man Boogie did not last very long. Soon it was replaced with ‘dog’. The dancer was expected to have the men mentality of a dog, and that included baring teeth and ‘piss­ing’ with one leg raised. When you saw Korkorti on the floor, you thought he was directing traffic with his left leg.

FRENZY

The ‘dog’ gave way to ‘cat’, a frightening choreographic innovation that put the ladies to flight. If dog produced vampires, cat engendered tigers on stage, complete with claws to show for it. The ladies were not brave enough to encounter large human cats in a frenzy, boogeying to funk. They simply fled!

Finally ‘horse’ arrived on the dance floor and you could see Ghana­ians galloping with care-less abandon. What saved the situation was the advent of break-dance which short­ly superseded the era of freestyling captured in the musical movie “The Music Machine’, starring Gerry Sund­quist and Pati Boulaye, a Nigerian performer.

Break-dance brought home an exciting dance variety with equally exciting medical problems. Youngsters began spinning on their heads and broke their necks. They were put in collar and never tried it again.

All the above mentioned dance forms were amply exhibited last Sat­urday when the Black Stars went on a demolition exercise in Cape Verde.

The 4-0 hammering reflected the level of determination of the Stars to get to Germany in 2006 to showcase samba made in Sikaman.

Soon after the victory, ECG went on ‘strike.’ The nation was plunged into darkness. I heard someone say the power off was deliberate to tone down the celebration, lest people drunk themselves to death. I won­dered whether anyone needed elec­tric power to drink himself to death. The lights came on at last.

I quickly drove through parts of Tema. Celebrations were not mass, but pockets of celebrants amply typi­fied the general mood.

CARNIVAL

A group of about eight youngsters apparently charged beyond measure, with akpeteshie running through their veins and arteries, organised a mini-carnival from Site 14 and took to the streets. “God bless our home-land Ghana… they sang the Black Stars cheer song, while hopping like delighted kangaroos. Others were dancing like cats, others like horses.

The beer bars in Tema overflowed with booze. Huge loudspeakers were mounted at Emefa Bar, Site 14, to begin a night of music, booze and chops. Khebab stands smoked freely as sausages and suya were dished out hot, charcoal-grilled.

My wife had gone to Lome, Togo for the weekend with the kids. And what she saw marvelled her. The Togo­lese national team hitherto known for its disastrous performances suddenly came alive and surprised their own selves. In the final qualifying game, they came back twice to beat Congo in a spectacular display of skills and artistry.

The rain was pouring in sheets in Lome but the celebrants hit the streets in carnival fashion. My little daughter joined them in the rain. When I heard it, I was angry. Why allow the little girl to join in the fanfare?

My wife explained that the situ­ation was so spontaneous that ev­erybody was overwhelmed. Every kid was on the street dancing in the carnival, so why not my little girl? Nobody could stop her. It would have been a sin to stop her. The young and the old were dancing. Old men and women with walking sticks limped to the streets and lock to boogie, the Togolese style.

For me, the exciting aspect of it all is that West African football has come of age. If Nigeria had qualified it would have been a West African affair. Even without Nigeria, it is. Ghana, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire are going to play in Germany in 2006. It is a new beginning for West Africa.

PRESTIGE

Egypt, Senegal, Zaire, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Morocco have participat­ed in the World Cup but did not shine. Other nations must slug it out there, because it is time an African country won the prestigious World Cup.

If African countries have won in the Olympics and the Junior World Cup tournaments, there should be no reason why they cannot make a mark in the seniors. They only have to shed the inferiority complex bothering some of the teams. Africa must shine!

Now, some Nigerians are saying Ghana, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire will be the whip-ping boys at the World Cup. I’ll advise those Nigerians to cry their own cry.

This article was first published on Saturday, October 15, 2005