Lagbaja, the entertainer without a face

BY JOHN MUKENDI

It was one of  the most exciting moments of my two-week stay this month in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s largest city. A local friend invited me to a concert marking the end of a week-long cultural festival. While I enjoyed the performances of several artists, including the sexy, provocative Mapouka dancers that were not new to me, I was fascinated by a performer that, honestly, I had never heard of before. His music is a blend of afrobeat, highlife, juju and funk, sometimes without singing, using different kinds of Yoruba drums, with the dominance of the dundun/gangan variety, and other African instruments as well as European ones that create the grooves and the moods. Lagbaja sings and plays the saxophone. The show brought such a vibrancy to the stage that the 30 minutes allotted to him and his band flew by like five.

The most unsual thing about this artist was that he wore a “weird” costume from head to toe that hid his face. It didn’t take more to arouse a reporter’s curiosity, which prompted me to hava an impromptu chat with this unusual entertainer right af the end of the program.

“Lagbaja” is a word in Yoruba – a language spoken in Nigeria, the country of origin of the visiting artist – that means “anybody.” The artist, I learned, chose that name and wears the costume to personify the common man. I also learned that the costume links him to the egungun, a venerated ancestral spirit in the Yoruba tradition that symbolises the return of the deads. Lagbaja, the entertainer, is often referred to as “the man without a face who speaks for people without a voice.”

Lagbadja, a much-traveled artisit who has performed on the world’s stage throughout Africa, in Europe and in the United States, is not just a powerful entertainer. There is also a theatrical component to his performance. When the time allotted to his band was over and all the bandmembers had left the stage, one of his drummers was so carried away by the show that he would not leave the stage, and kept on playing despite Lagbaja’s orders, through music, that the stubborn drummer leave. It took the effort of several bandmembers who came back on stage to literally drag the recalcitant drummer away, triggering laughter and applause that added to the festive atmosphere of the intense show.