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celestine ukwu -- okwukwe na nchekwube

#1970s #folk #funk #west africa #celestine ukwu

284: Celestine Ukwu & His Philosophers National // No Condition is Permanent

No Condition is Permanent Celestine Ukwu and His Philosophers National 2022, Mississippi Records (Bandcamp)

Celestine Ukwu was an Igbo highlife singer from eastern Nigeria (the region briefly known as Biafra) who became a significant star in the late ‘60s and ‘70s by turning the genre’s broad gestures inward. Highlife’s clean and nimble guitar work, jittering rhythms, and splashy horns have always made for ebullient dance music, but the selections on No Condition is Permanent find Ukwu abstracting the genre into something dreamier and more contemplative. The comparison is probably inane, but if highlife were alternative rock you could think of Ukwu as sort of a Jesus & Mary Chain or Yo La Tengo figure. You can certainly still dance to his music, but even as it evokes the sweet sensations African guitar pop is known for, it also feels blue, like a grown man reflecting on the music of his youth. Lyrically too, the music is concerned with tribulation, a philosophical acceptance of suffering, and the certainty of redemption. I’m not sure I’ve heard anything quite like “Okwukuwe na nchekwube” (“Faith and Hope”), which moves like shadows cast by a flickering bonfire, all weeping slide guitars, shuffling percussion, and jazzy horns with a North African/Andalusian flair. Nearly as good is “Onwunwa” (“Light”), which has some exceptionally moving guitar playing, a twinkling verse figure that gives over in the latter half of the song to a staccato solo that puts me in mind of the stop-start tempo of a hand writing a passionate love letter—“Life comes like the world / is blessed. Life comes like / the world ends,” Ukwu muses in Igbo.

No Condition is Permanent is a short compilation at just 32 minutes—jealously, I’d have liked another song or two from the three albums it surveys (True Philosophy [1971], Tomorrow is So Uncertain [1973], Ilo Abu Chi [1974]). Despite this, the folks at Mississippi Records (and Timothy Stollenwerk at Stereophonic Sound) have done a spectacular job with the remaster and pressing, and it’s a compilation I can easily leave on my table for ages.

284/365