You Must Calculate

I was sitting in newsroom, listening to The Beat. I should have been preparing the next bulletin, and then it struck me. One of the songs playing in the car of the lecturer in Cameroon was You Must Calculer, a legendary makossa tune fom the late 80s. A tear almost fell from my eye, the hairs on the back of my neck stood upright, my breathing raced to a dangerous pace. This is what hyperventilation must feel like. The vessels in my brain flooded with memories, moving my body on the balcony in our house in Three Stations, music blaring out of our antediluvian but resilient 70s Marantz speakers.

I don't remember how I danced, or if I danced. I moved my limbs, yes, but dance? I was, simply put, a crap dancer, consistenly winning zilch at "Aunty gimme cake" parties. (Many would argue that I still can't dance...) For those few minutes in the newsroom, I relived part of my childhood. We were great consumers of West African music in our household. My mum would fly back from the far corners of the subregion, and return with tapes of makossa, soukous, highlife music. There was no outward manifestation of rhythm in my bones or a groove in my step. But the music was in my soul, and boy, did I move. Relive my childhood here.