By Uduma Kalu
Who was Area Scatter? Did he die or disappear? Was he from water or was he born of woman?
Was he homosexual or was he straight? What was he hiding? Did he hide anything?
One of the most tragic threats of the human memory is erasure. A historical moment may become unknown to generations later. That memory loss is today affecting the life and times of the late legendary Igbo traditional musician, popularly known as Area Scatter.
To most people today in their '40s and early '50s, the name Area Scatter doesn't ring a bell. It was more scandalous when an enquiry at the national television station, the NTA Aba, in Abia state, where the legend performed at the popular weekend TV programme , the Ukonu's Club in the 1970s and 1980s. every Sunday. But a search for him there yielded no results.
In fact, the GM in his late 40s or early 50s, along with his other principle officers did not know the icon called Area Scatter. Worse still, the TV station, being one of the makers of modern Nigerian entertainment icons, including other notable individuals and programmes, was to house the tapes of that gone moment in good shape. But its archive is like a dumpsite. The tapes machines were archaic. The content difficult to access, even when you got the tapes. Because it would be difficult to retrieve the contents as the modern machine for such retrieval is not available there.
My journey to Aba was to a large extent to extract the TV contents from the old videos and tapes of Area Scatter, his life stories, interviews and whatever he said about himself.
But this quest paled into nothingness. So what next?
My friend and fellow writer, Professor Unoma Azuah, had requested that I go to NTA Aba and extract some of the on Area Scatter contents for a book project. She wanted to unearth Area Scatter who has become known today as the first African crossover artiste. It was a bold move then by Area Scatter to meander between being male and female in an era people never thought of such act or art.
Unoma is an LGBTQ advocate and she wanted to know the sexual orientation of Area Scatter in a society that vehemently opposes homosexual life. Area Scatter, she had found out, was a casanova. He had many female lovers who she said had children for him. Having many lovers of the opposite sex she said was one of the traits of a homosexual. They use it to hide their homosexuality in a society opposed to gay practice. Could I find out Area Scatter's sexual orientation, his artistry, life story, crossover makeups, family, his background, culture and everything about him?
But the whole quest yielded nothing at the NTA Aba. The questions were not answered, and this took months to realise after several persistent trips from Umuahia to Aba. Then, the quest took me to the NTA headquarters in Abuja through a media friend Mrs Angela Osuji. Angela is a TV presenter whose economic television company uses the NTA station at Abuja to broadcast. So, I contacted her as the NTA Aba GM, after months of delay for my application to him for me to access the Area Scatter materials from their archives, had directed me to the director general, DG, of the NTA in Abuja for the permission for me to access the Area Scatter materials at the NTA Aba. Such red tape.
Angela was very helpful. She knew the top directors in the TV headquarters and was able to penetrate the NTA structures. Unfortunately, she was defeated by the ethnically and corrupt personages that bestride Nigeria's official quarters, including the NTA.
That quest too yielded nothing, and that was after months of writing, calls and pleadings.
So what to do? Unoma was worried. That was when my journalism practice came to assist. As a features editor, I knew that we could still scoop stories from the field, which could still be wholistic, some what, even if we had an interview with the very subject. After all, there are cases where we research on a dead subject and people will give you stories about him, which will be more representational than nothing. For me, therefore, in the absence of NTA materials, newspapers and other media works on the artiste, Area Scatter, a field trip to the sources that would give life to the forgotten artiste was the only way out.
And this was what I told Unoma and she agreed. The field work would interview Area Scatter's family members, his village folks, follow artistes, friends and others. To discover his village and his environment, his career, among others, to know everything about him.
There was the need to collect contacts that knew him, starting from Owerri where I was told he was based. I thought of the NTA Owerri and the statesman newspaper of the Old Imo state as resource places.
But the NTA Aba experience was also repeated at Owerri when a friend there was not able to help. The newspapers were not even available. The Arts and Culture Council people at Owerri could not help too. Our project was therefore a war against forgetting. So, who knew Area Scatter? That was the question.
In a era of rabid Christianity, political opportunism, in the midst of ignorance, Area Scatter's life is not just a blank sheet to many today, it is a myth to others. Few remember him in detail as a man, yet many in the social media or elsewhere present him as half man, half myth, half truth or outright fiction.
For example, one social media writer said Area Scatter got his music craft from the spirits when he disappeared for seven years or so in his village forest. Area Scatter, he writes, had emerged from the forest later to play his traditional Igbo ubo guitar and to dress exquisitely like a woman. Still, other writers said that he communed with spirits and that he was gay. Few saw him as a full fledged human being. Even the definition of him as an artiste was lost in this mythology. Nobody really knew him. Nobody knew whether he had any album. Nobody knew the number of songs he sang. Nobody knew the albums he released, if any. Who were his costumiers and how he got them, his wives, children, parents, educational background and so many others. No answer.
And yet, Area Scatter was a man that is credited today as the first crossover artiste in Africa, the one that played with the high and mighty artistes like Oliver De Coque, Osita Osadebe, Paulson Kalu, Sir Warrior and many others.
Area Scatter played for governors like the Imo state governor Sam Mbakwe. He played across the length and breath of the country.
He was popular then. Almost everyone knew him. Sadly, today, Area Scatter is fading into a myth. The battle to reclaim Area Scatter as human being, especially, his sexual intetest and as artiste that lived was a way to start. How do we start? That was the problem.
But I had an encyclopedia of a friend, Mr. Chidozie Chukwubikem in Owerri.
Dozie, a cultural intellectual, teacher, art practitioner, writer, academic and activist, I reasoned, would know how to dig out the phenomenon called Area Scatter.
I called him. Dozie was excited. He too was planning a documentary on legendary Igbo artistes who had been forgotten. And Area Scatter had featured significantly in his plan. So, I asked him where Area Scatter was from. He was from Ohaji, Dozie replied. Dozie had two friends, Cally and one Silverman that knew Area Scatter personally.
Ohaji is a local government area off Owerri. It is made of several other towns, including Umuagwo, a university town. It is a rural community though highly urbanizing in the heart of a forested, riverine nowhere, along the Owerri Port Harcourt express road.
Ohaji is also a dangerous area and criminal elements such as kidnappers, secessionist agitators and youth vagabonds frequently disturb the peace there. It's a long way from where he stayed at Orji, Owerri and a journey to that place must be made early enough for a quick return home.
In our discussion, Dozie confirmed what Unoma said, that Area Scatter was married and he had in-laws at Ngor Okpala and Silverman knew that. Cally, he went on, was from Umuagwo where Area Scatter lived. Area Scatter also played for some monarchs at Owerri. And he hoped we could also get some newspaper cutouts and video clips of the late musician.
But I told Dozie that my NTA experience had shown that the TV stations were a very frustrating place for a researcher. They were bedeviled by bureaucracy and incompetence . I told him how Angela regretted her experience at Abuja, how she spent her money, time and energy, got insulted by the NTA staff and was asked for bribery. Angela was really frustrated by the NTA officials, including the DG and her fellow ethnic folks. In fact, she was told that my application for the Area Scatter tapes at the NTA, Aba to the DG - a Yoruba man, he was later removed and replaced with a northerner after months of waiting for the Yoruba man to sign my letter - would take six months to sign the etter for a time bound research book project.
I repeated to him what I told Unoma that the NTA was not going to work. So, the best thing was to come to Owerri and dig out the legend who died about forty years ago.
Dozie agreed that the field research was the best option for me. He gave me Cally's and Silverman's contacts. Cally was the PRO at the Imo State Arts Council. He was also from Umuagwo and knew Area Scatter's family. He would help out, even with archives from the Arts Council on Area Scatter.
I called Cally but Cally was at a writing workshop at Afikpo, Ebonyi State and would return to Owerri the next week. Sadly, Cally didn't link up with me again, in spite to weeks of calls, even when he returned to Owerri and I needed to interview him and know Area Scatter's family, his relationship with Area Scatter, Area Scatter's background, his music, his motivations for going into music, crossover dressing. Was he loved as a local guitar player? Why did he choose that music tool? Why did he decide to be different from other artistes as cross dresser? How was he accepted in his unique form as a cross dresser musician? Why did he decide to do that? Was there any plan to sustain his memory as good artiste? I knew this could be a good material. But Cally didn't pick his calls. Didn't call back.
Memory? Well, I doubted whether any effort would be made to preserve Area Scatter's memory. If the federal government agency, the NTA, could not preserve basic things like tapes, then how could the family preserve Area Scatter's memory? Yet, you see BBC videos of early Nigeria going back to the early '30s on Nigeria, BBC interviews with young authors like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Nnamdi Azikiwe and others intact. But old NTA tapes are lost and such preservation government agencies are marked by corruption and ethnicity.
This is because the NTA Aba, looked dreary like a collapsing graveyard, the staff sat sad and complained in the vast emptiness, sometimes sleeping off.
Even if you got the tapes, it would be difficult to retrieve the contents, the man in charge told me. The NTA was a lethargic place. The staff didn't care about preservations. And this had affected the memory of Area Scatter today so much that he is fading into a myth to the new generation, he added.
Memory? No, not from the Imo state government either. Dozie told me how the Imo State government, under then Governor Rochas Okorocha, reportedly destroyed the famous Mbari Arts Gallery that showcased the ancient history of Owerri people going back thousand of years. There was no where the government would preserve Area Scatter's memory in these circumstances, he said.
The government was the very one now erasing cultural memory. Yet, its money spinning agencies like the NTA and cultural outfits are poor and lying waste, Dozie noted.
A visit to them showed delapilated structures and no electricity, depressed workers who are only there to receive their salaries because they cannot perform. They are on their own, and every order must come from Abuja, which doesn't care about memory.
That was my finding in seeking government preservation of our cultural memories. And for me and Dozie, therefore, that is the problem facing the preservation of cultural contents, their creators cultural and cultural memory in Nigeria. We agreed that today, it was only private institutions and persons like Unoma that could help to preserve our intangible heritage.
Unoma called later to give some further information on Area Scatter. Her contact had told her that Area Scatter was not gay, neither did he give impression that he was gay. But he was promiscuous, sleeping from one woman to the other; that the closest Area Scatter got to linking himself to gay was when he was alive and he was asked that since he dressed like a woman, didn't a man take him for a woman? Area Scatter had replied, yes, that a man once took him for a woman and invited him to a hotel room. Area Scatter went and revealed to the man that he was a man, not a woman and that interaction ended there.
That was a good information for me. I had to find out more on this subject, whether Area Scatter was truly gay. Did some people make sexual advances at him, taking him for a woman? What were his reactions to those advances, since Area Scatter scatter enjoyed being mistaken for a woman?
Unoma said that since Area Scatter acknowledged that he was mistaken for a woman, Area Scatter was queer and odd in his ways. And that he was not necessarily bisexual or gay.
Unoma's contact had added that he was not like Bobrisky, allegedly a homosexual hiding as cross dresser to gain more public acceptance. Bobrisky, she said, was different from Charly Boy who is also a cross dresser. That means in a way that Charly Boy and Area Scatter are also in the same category. Still more questions. Was Area Scatter a crossgender? Nobody had said something to that effect.
Our field trip therefore would look into all these..
Is there is a tendency for Area Scatter to be promiscous but hid his true nature by running around with different women as a cover up because men were not available? Did he run from one woman to the other, man to another man? Was it why reason Area Scatter was not a faithful husband? Was he unfaithful? Unoma asked. It was our job to find out.
As Cally couldn't respond to us, I left for Owerri to see Dozie. Dozie is a principal at a secondary school at the Calvary International School at Orji, Owerri. I travelled on a Monday to see him.
In the East of Nigeria, Mondays are what they call sit-at-home. This is a declaration by the people of the region in solidarity with the leader of the separatist group, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, who was renditioned from Kenya and detained at the Directorate of State Services, DSS, headquarters from where he was being taken to court. Now, Kanu is sentenced to life imprisonment at Sokoto prison.
The sit- at-home order means no vehicles were allowed to run in the region. The markets, schools, banks, offices, among others, were locked up. Defaulters had their properties burnt or their lives snuffed out.
However, the order was not totally effective in Umuahia where I lived and traffic moved somewhat between Umuahia and Owerri, although it could be dangerous. Many people have been killed while defying this order. Vehicles have been set ablaze, security officials have been shot dead too. Fear rattled the land. This fear still persists.
This was the atmosphere that surrounded our project.
That Monday, Dozie was busy, though his school was not open. I had to spend the whole week for him to be less busy. I had planned to go round Owerri town to see the contacts I could get and interview them. The contacts, including the monarchs, as tradition demanded, would need some entertainments and honoria. I had to get those I could, interview them before Saturday and get ready for Dozie for the travels to Ohaji.
So far, we didn't know anyone in Ohaji we could interview. Ohaji, as I noted earlier, is the hometown of Area Scatter.
Dozie then asked me to call Area Scatter's in-law, Silverman. I did . But Silverman was busy with his mother's burial at Ngor Okpala. So, I planned to go to Ngor Okpala, then to Umuagwo, in Ohaji. I also planned to see the monarch of Amakaohia, Owerri, where Area Scatter played, and to speak with Professor Chidi Osuagwu, a cultural intellectual, on Aeea Scatter. He would later expose the true identity of the mysterious legend.
It was a tight schedule . But I didnt go to Ngor Okpala due to logistic problems. It was therefore left for me and Dozie to restrategize. We needed to research on questions to ask our interviewees.
We planned a-four time trip to Area Scatter's Ohaji homes, though we were able to make three trips only. It could have been more than four had there been enough financial support. Eventually, Dozie made it. It was on a Friday, an Nkwo day. Nkwo is one of the market days in Igbo week. We decided to go to Umuagwo with my identity card as a journalist to help us. We were scared because of the insecurity in that area. Umuagwo is a long trip away from Owerri. It was gripping journey, full of mystery, mythicism, superstition and fear. That fear arose, in part, because of unconfirmed reports about Area Scatter. The story out there was that Area Scatter was not an ordinary man. Area Scatter died in a mysterious auto crash in his Umuagwo village at a police station check point.
Throughout the trip in Imo state on the Area Scatter project, traffic was dangerous and chaotic. The buses, trucks and bikes drove insanely, sometimes, almost crashing down on us. We felt Area Scatter's presence with us and that he was constantly reminding us of his death and presence. Finally, we were able to track his maternal home at Umuagwo and it was, you may say, a journey in the land of the spirits. Umuagwo is a busy town but it has two sides to its story. It is full of palm trees and traffic. In fact, the people's occupation is agriculture, and palm produce is their major cash crop.
This urbanizing town is full of traffic, shops, travellers, petty traders, commercial drivers, students from the nearby university, with the nearby police station blocking the road. That police station was where Area Scatter died. The blockage aided his death, the folks alleged.
That day, the road was still under construction. The government was widening the road from Owerri to Port Harcourt and heavy duty and earth moving vehicles were all over disturbing the traffic.
But that is the surface story of Umuagwo. Because just across the road locked the real fear and superstition that described the Area Scatter story.
When the bus stopped us, we crossed the dual carriageway and asked about Area Scatter who died over 40 years ago, many people did not know him. Those that knew him looked at us oddly and said, but the man was dead. They pointed across the road where tall and ancient trees towered to the heavens. They told us to ask about Area Scatter where those trees stood.
The thick trees looked us fiercely. As we moved close, we discovered that the trees were totems of a big walled shrine. A long red cloth was fenced about the road blocking access to the compound. The earth path to the compound was muddy and flooded. Being a level land, flood doesn't usually drain away easily in these parts.
Well, it was Nkwo day and there were some traditional worshippers at the shrine. And there was no access to the compound. We were told that the compound people and the village folks worshipped there on Nkwo. It was their holy day. We were to enter the compound through another flooded road, which we did after many inquires and questions with the people looking at us criously.
From the back, we were finally ushered into the Area Scatter compound, dilapidating, full of rotten, old buildings and poverty needing help.
Here, almost everyone looked like Area Scatter. In front of the compound was a po
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