By OSA AMADI – Arts Editor

We arranged our first lesson for the morning of the following day, 8 January 1988. When I got there, instead of giving me the music lesson, Mr. Cyprian gave me a little book I will never forget its title and author: The Rudiments of Music by S. Geoffrey Boateng. He said I should go and study the book and come back. I told him I had read music books before on my own but did not understand them. He said I should go and read that one first; that I should come back to him if there was anything I did not understand.

I never went back to him for anything. Like magic, I understood everything! My head almost exploded as I was reading the book. I was blown away to another planet as Geoffrey Boateng’s Rudiments of Music initiated me into the cult of reading and writing music on staff of five lines and four spaces. “Just before 5:00 a.m. this morning,” I wrote in my journal dated Sunday 10 January 1988, “I had rounded up the book. Judging with the kind of clarity and ease with which I absorbed everything the wonderful author wrote in the book, I am most optimistic that my dream of excelling in the art of making music has (been) actualized.”

That year I wrote JAMB and in addition, Entrance exam into Alvan Ikoku College of Education. Alvan first offered me admission and I started studying music in education there.

Alvan opened my eyes to a very important reality: Students who come to study music in the higher institutions were people who had been singing or playing one musical instrument or the other in church choirs or in few cases, secular dance bands, for many years. They have already well-developed ears for music. Many of my course mates were already organists, trumpeters, trombonists, flutist, drummers, etc. Their senses of tonality were already high before they came to Alvan. I was nowhere. The only thing I knew about music was composing and singing songs by heart.

My deficiency and ignorance began to manifest as soon as we had the first class in music. Throughout that first semester in Alvan, I was made a laughing stock. Because I was flunking in all the departmental courses (music), everyone, both students and teachers, concluded that I was dumb. The only girl I liked then and wanted to befriend (I can’t remember her name) refused me. She decided to follow Emma, our Class Captain, who played the trumpet and the organ.

At Alvan we were required to take courses equally from both music department and education department. That’s why it was called Double Major – majoring in both music and education. From education department, we took courses like Curriculum and Planning, Measurement and Evaluation, History of Education, Philosophy of Education, Psychology of Education, and Sociology of Education. Unknown to my classmates, those education causes were mere walkovers for me – I was supposed to be a lawyer. Unknown to me too, almost all my classmates who did well in music courses were scared stiff of education courses and flops in them. No one knew about all these until the beginning of second semester when we all trouped out one day to the education department to check our first semester results. Being taller than everyone, I stood behind my classmates as we all stood before the large noticeboard where the first semester results of all the education courses were displayed. My classmates traced the result with their fingers:

“Philosophy of education… Philosophy… Phi-lo-so-phy. Phi-lo-so-phy…only one person from music department got an “A”. Who is this? Amadi!”

All the education courses: only one “A” from music department: Amadi!!!

Everyone turned to me, mouth agape. “So you are brilliant like this and you are pretending and behaving as if you don’t know anything?”

“What then are you doing in music department? If I had your type of brain I would go and major in education courses instead of wasting it on music.”

From that day I acquired a new image and respect amongst my classmates. Back to the department, they broke the news to our music lecturers. Instantly, the dull brain stigma left me. Everyone became my friend; even the girl I wanted to befriend dropped her hostility towards me. But I was no longer interested in her, or any other girl anywhere.

Yet I had a greater shocker for all of them: No one knew I was just a passing trance at Alvan; that I had no intention of completing the NCE program. No one knew I had written another JME in 1989 and that I had my eyes set at the music department of the Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. It was my secret and I guarded it very jealously.