On D’banj’s Bother You.

Something different from D’banj. Maybe not entirely different but substantially different from his oeuvres in recent times. And it is easy to seewhy. It is the Original Sound Track of Biyi Bandele-directed Half of Yellow Sun, the film adaptation of the Adichie’s second novel. They needed something exotic, African-sounding, suitably rhythmic to carry the thrust of the plot, a love story with the Biafran war as a backdrop.

I would have preferred a song that would be more true to that era. Highlife was the popular genre then and Highlife, in itself, is quite important to the civil war as a discourse. Adichie’s novel did pay due obeisance to Highlife by reference but in film perhaps it might be difficult to make this work. Really, how difficult is it to assemble a band to play Celestine Ukwu’s Biafran song, “Rejoice, Rejoice, Rejoice, we are all free.” Mind you, I am yet to see the movie.

Bother You will have to do. Snatches of the film interspersed with the beach scene with D’banj, his love interest and a horse will just have to do.