By Chiagoziem Onyekwena
On this day four years ago, time stood still as hopes for a bright future congealed into pangs of cold, hard despair. Time stood still as the joyous anticipation of long-awaited reunions dissipated into the piercing agony of permanent separation. In the blink of an eye, dreams of tomorrow became nightmares of today and even though the daytime sun shone ominously above, the Niger Delta sky was suddenly enveloped in a thick grey cloud.
It’s 2009 and the skies are clear again. Time, they say, heals all wounds but there are few quantities more subjective than time. How much time is enough to wipe the tears of the grieving families? How much time do we need to heal the hurt? Exactly, how much time is enough to take away the pain?
Pain is one emotion Bez Idakula can certainly relate to. While attending Junior Secondary School at Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja, fate played a cruel one on Bez when his father was tragically taken away from him… forever. Losing the bread winner threw Bez’s family into deep financial insecurity but more than just the sudden change in lifestyle, the 12 year old Emmanuel was left lost, confused and in desperate need of direction. ‘They say there are two things that make you grow really fast, death and marriage, in my case it was my Dad’s death.’ he tells NET.
And there like a trampoline waiting to catch a failing falling stuntman, there was music – something Bez the choir boy had already come to know very well. However, beyond the long dark robes and wooden pews, when Mr. Idakula (Snr) passed on, music for Bez became less of a carolling duty and more of a best friend. Even though my dad was the one that put me through with the guitar, I don’t think he would have really supported my going into music. Allowing his almost painful pragmatism to take control, Bez added coolly, ‘Maybe (my music) was one of the reasons why he had to go.’
Fast forward from the year of his father’s demise to the year 2005 and then skip through to today, Bez vividly remembers when he first heard the news of the ill-fated Sosoliso Flight 1145 that claimed the lives of 60 of his Loyola school mates, like it was yesterday, ‘Ahn! I was on the mattress on the floor at home when I received the phone call, he reminisced. ‘I was really sad… I could imagine how all the families would feel already being at the airport waiting for them’.
Bez had been there before and the feeling of separation was all too familiar to him. However, unlike in JSS when he had his first experience with death, Bez was now grown. Rather than allowing the Loyola Jesuit community he cherished so much wilt in agony, the young singer teamed up with a few of his fellow alumni and together, they launched an NGO called MAC 61+. ‘The name stands for the 60 plane crash victims from Loyola Jesuit College and the young survivor, Kechi Okwuchi… These kids were going to make a change in the future, but all that was truncated, therefore we are going to let them live through the foundation and make that change that they would have made’.
In addition, Bez and company staged a fashion show in 2006 in Port Harcourt to support the NGO and he divulged that plans are in motion to launch a clothing label called Chlöne to further support the cause. ‘We’re just playing our role’, he offered humbly.
But Bez’s job description reads ‘fast-rising soul musician’ and not ‘budding fashion icon’; and the Nassarawa state native’s rise to the top is being expedited by a steady slew of influential industry co-signs Bez accrues on a daily basis. Critical acclaim is one thing but there is still that small matter of a debut album; all that buzz Mr. Idakula has done well to generate for himself at Taruwa and the Hennessey Artist Search would surely peter out without one, a fact that isn’t lost on the talented guitarist. Bez admits that even though his opus is a long way from completion, he isn’t fazed one bit by it; the Bez train is still very much on schedule.
Let me tell you something, he butts in, I have practically all my songs but we are still experimenting with the sound… sometimes the sound can’t just come because it’s like an invention… You have to get that Eureka moment, and that’s what we are waiting for…
That moment might be coming sooner than Bez himself might think, his official single Zuciya Daya (One Heart) released only a short while ago has been accumulating radio spins by the day and even though Lagos is steadily accepting Bez’s sultry single, the Covenant University graduate of Information Communication Technology confesses to having felt somewhat dissatisfied with the song from the very moment Cobhams played him the mixed and mastered version. ‘I doubted the song at first but I guess the song proved me wrong’, he quipped. ‘People like it here (in Lagos), and I’ve not even taken it to the north yet!
In a radio landscape densely populated with urban-style music, any success Bez’s self-described blend of soulful, vintage music is able to achieve should be lauded but don’t tell that to Bez though, ‘Not everyone uses Close-Up, some people use Macleans’, he says matter-of-factly. ‘Those that make clothes for babies know they can’t create for adults… I choose to focus on my niche; I choose to focus on my market.’
With his career in the ascendancy, Bez certainly hasn’t shut the door on creating music dedicated to the victims of flight 1145. ‘I like the idea,’ he gushed. ‘Let’s see what happens in future’.
The souls of the sixty angels might be gone now and all that is left of them are memories, but their brother Bez Idakula will always remember them and the talented singer admits he will feel incomplete until he bids his former schoolmates one fond final farewell, his own way.
4 comments
May their gentle souls rest in perfect peace… Nice interview by the way, like the innovation and appreciate the twist.
Dude..Just reading this story..give me goose-pimples.. Praying for the lost soul now and always..Amen??