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26/7/05
7:04 pm
Page 49
emigrants, coming soon or collected already at a law firm/chem
breed of cultural hybrids.
Bye-Bye BuBu –
Hello Afropolitan
I
t’s moments to midnight on Thursday night at
Medicine Bar in London. Zak, boy-genius DJ, is
spinning a Fela Kuti remix. The little downstairs
dance floor swells with smiling, sweating men and
women fusing hip-hop dance moves with a funky
sort of djembe. The women show off enormous
afros, tiny t-shirts, gaps in teeth; the men those
incredible torsos unique to and common on African
coastlines. The whole scene speaks of the Cultural
Hybrid: kente cloth worn over low-waisted jeans;
African Lady over Ludacris bass lines; London meets
Lagos meets Durban meets Dakar. Even the DJ is an
ethnic fusion: Nigerian and Romanian; fair, fearless
leader; bobbing his head as the crowd reacts to a
sample of Sweet Mother.
Were you to ask any of these beautiful, brown-skinned
people that basic question – “Where are you from?”
– you’d get no single answer from a single smiling
dancer. This one lives in London but was raised in
Toronto and born in Accra; that one works in Lagos
but grew up in Houston, Texas. ‘Home’ for this lot is
many things: where their parents are from; where they
go for vacation; where they went to school; where
they see old friends; where they live (or live this
year). Like so many African young people working
and living in cities around the globe, they belong to
no single geography, but feel at home in many.
You’ll know us when you see us by our funny blend
of London fashion, New York jargon, African ethics,
and academic successes. Some of us are ethnic
mixes, e.g. Ghanaian/Jamaican, Nigerian/Swiss;
others are merely cultural mutts: American accent,
European affect, African ethos. Most of us are
multilingual: in addition to English and a Romance
or two, we understand some indigenous tongue(s)
and speak a few urban vernaculars. There is at least
one place on the Continent to which we tie our
“We are Afropolitans: not citizens, but
Africans of the world”.
sense of self: be it a nation-state (Ethiopia), a city
(Ibadan), or simply an auntie’s kitchen. Then there’s
the G8 city or two (or three) that we know like the
backs of our hands, and the institutions (corporate,
academic) that know us for our focus.
Some three decades later this scattered tribe of
pharmacists, physicists, physicians (and the odd
polygamist) has set up camp around the globe. The
caricatures are familiar. The Nigerian physics-professor
with faux-Coogi sweater; the Kenyan marathonist with
long legs and rolled letter ‘r’s; the heavyset Gambian
braiding hair in a house that smells of burnt Kanekalon. Even those unacquainted with synthetic »