Blurred lines: Where will you ever find a man like me?
Weddings. Probably my favourite pasttime. Those and kwanjulas. On average, I attend about six weddings and kwanjulas a month.
Some I have just dressed up and gate crashed. Not for the food. Not for the hot bridesmaids either, but for the music played as the couple open the dance with their first routine; or at a kwanjula, when the bride is coming out of the waiting room to entertain her guests with all those weird gomesi tearing dance strokes.
I attend these social functions because Tugume, a dating expert once told me you can tell how long a marriage is going to last by the couple’s opening song played for and danced by the couple. It is actually true.
Couples that have opened their dance to Mariah Carey and Luther Vandross’ Endless Love or Shania Twain’s From this Moment on have seen their marriages through almost anything; infidelity, poverty, sickness and all sorts of dysfunctions.
These people have emerged from the stormy waters of back-stabbers and nosy in-laws.
I have attended those but I have not enjoyed them as much as I have weddings where a ‘strange’ song is played for the couple and its entourage.
For example last week, a newly wedded couple opened the dance with Birthday Sex by Jeremir.
And even though none of them was celebrating a birthday on that particular day, I could feel their pain throughout the three minutes or so that the song lasted. The best man and matron jumped in too and treated the guests to a rare spectacle of ‘squeeze’.
Whether it was a mistake by the DJ or that of the couple, no one knows. As of today, even the Reverend Father who joined them in marriage says it was a mistake that flatly cost a marriage.
That was not as bad, in my opinion, as what had happened at a certain kwanjula about a fortnight earlier. The bride all dressed to kill in her long Sari emerged to a good song that crashed midway her entrance.
Good in the sense that even the middle-aged Sheikh at the back of the tent kept swaying his head and parting his longish white beard. In a bid to rectify the mistake, however, the DJ played David Lutalo/Maro’s ‘Mubi Mubi’.
You should have seen the bride freeze. And the DJ played the song louder instead of switching it off completely or reducing the volume.
The best part was the old men and women from both camps trading silent accusations and hurling food at each other.
The bride broke down and cried while the groom, a young man in his early 20s ran into the hands of his waiting father on the other end of the quadrangle. They knelt down and prayed. I imagined him thanking God for showing him the sign that he was about to take a woman to his house that would sweep him within three weeks.
Ultimately, the one song that should be played at any wedding is Oswadde Nyo aka Sikulimba. That Afrigo band song which poses a very pertinent question; ‘Oli mujawa omusaja ansinga nze?’
Yes, where will you ever get a man like me?
That is the song that I want to open my everything; birthday, housewarming party, my daughter’s graduation ceremony, her wedding day, my wedding day. That song is a classic. I will insist on you telling me where you will ever find a man like me over dinner and at the movies. When we go swimming and I save you from drowning, I will loudly whisper it into your ears and then do the Bakisimba dance. Because, honestly; where will you ever find a man like me? Thank you Afrigo.
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