ByHenry Akubuiro, h.akubuiro@sunnewsonline.com 08070965586
He started writing when he was 13 and half years as a schoolboy in Jos. Years later, he had started contributing poems and stories to a local newspaper in Jos, Nigeria Standard. From contributing those pieces, Hassan was to write articles and other journalistic stories for the paper after secondary education.
As a journalist, Hassan was just looking for an outlet to publish his stories. “Journalism was like a bridge for me,” he admits in a dulcet tone, in a chat in Port Harcourt. He later worked with the popular Ovation magazine. He was also ghostwriting books for some people those days.
Now, as a creative writer, Hassan is fascinated with fables. “I like the idea of writing about animal characters,” he says. So, his early stories were re-enactment of old stories.
The first time he came across spoken words was in 1986 from a Jamaican artiste he was watching on NTA Jos. Fascinated, he took a cue, but there was a limited audience for his art. He went ahead to publish a mini magazine, where he created space for poetry inside it. “People told me ‘You are trying,’ and that sparked off my spoken words career.”
If you are one of those who find it difficult differentiating between spoken words and rap, Hassan explains: “Rap goes with metres; it has a ordered format, unlike spoken words, where you don’t have to measure words. Also, the process of recording rap is not the process of recording spoken words. I don’t do 15 bars; I don’t do chorus, which you do in rap.”
If you listen to normal performance of poetry, you may not get the same speed of rendering you get in spoken words. Hassan says that spoken words are animated, “but those who perform their poems want you to hear their voices and what they are saying. Spoken words are what you enjoy everyday; it is less on academics; it is more of the flow of the words.”
Does Nigerians understand what he is doing? “Yes,” says the Niger State born artiste. “I have been doing it for 7-8 years, and everywhere I go to, people follow me. They may not remember the words, but they understand me.”
Unlike the conventional poetry performance, there are some Nigerian literati who still see spoken words as a foreign thing, which is why we don’t have many practitioners in the country. Does it have any future in Nigeria?
Hassan is upbeat about the positive possibilities: “I have been to Abuja, Port Harcourt, Lagos, and other places, and, everywhere I go to, there is a crop of people doing it. As long as they do it, it will hit their friends, families, neighbours, schools and the country. So, there is future for spoken words in Nigeria definitely.”
He is the author of Dream Maker (2013), a work of fabulation. “I like fables,” says Hassan. “There is a two side to me: I want a change and I want to entertain. I don’t want to be a teacher; I want to do one thing that will allow me do both. That’s why I would prefer writing fables than novels,, which are mean to entertain.” Dream Maker started off as a short story he began some fifteen years ago.
There is an experiental basis for this fable, though. The author says it came out of the things he has passed through and learnt in life. “These things kept struggling inside me and wanted to come out, and that was what made me put them together. It was a compulsion. I told myself, ‘You can’t go pass pass 40 without doing this book’.
“This book is a composition of the things I think that I know. I have been an adult for 20-25, and there are important things that I have learnt I need to put together for someone as a book. This [Dream Maker] is me at 40.”
Fables are more of children’s literature in Nigeria, unlike Dream Maker not targeted basically at adults. Marketing the book to such a partial adult audience may pose a problem. The fabulist isn’t bothered, however. “I love doing things that people are not doing. I could have easily been a rapper, but I said no; it is better to be doing what others are not doing,” he tells me. “I believe there is so much more we can add to the quality of our culture, and this is my contribution, and am going to keep on writing fables.”
Hassan is working on another fable. He is also condensing Dream Maker to a pocket book for younger audience. A new poetry album is also on the way, too. Not your usual garden-variety, as you can tell.
The post Sage Hassan: Why I do what no writer does in Nigeria appeared first on The Sun News.
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