CARDINAL REX LAWSON Passions of Pleasant Pains -Attorney Patryk Utulu Cardinal Jim Lawson (Cardinal Rex) was an African musical genius. Born to Nigerian (Igbo/Kalabari) parents the man universally acclaimed as The First King of Highlife Music was a gifted improvisational trumpeter and an enigmatic bandleader whose show-stopping voice still transports listeners to the realm of mellifluous moodiness. Listening to Rex Lawson feels like being in a dreamlike state of meeting ones departed ancestors: your heart sadly, silently smiles as memories warmly flow and you are uncertain whether to weep or worship. One of my elder brothers once called Cardinal Rex the Prince of Pleasant Pains. I did not truly understand what my brother meant until many years later (after our parents passed) and I would often find myself remembering the pure innocent joy with which he and his friends from Ghana, Guinea and Gambia all listened to Rex without boundaries of nationality. Rex was a man who spiritually crossed musical borders: so immersed was he in the passion of his own songs that he frequently shed tears while singing for both princes and plebeians. Cardinal Lawson was born in 1935 and died in a car accident in 1971. But in that short 36 years he improvised, polished and promoted Highlife Music into a global musical genre. His West African sound collaborators and contemporaries included the great Victor Olaiya, Sammy Obot, Chris Ajilo and Bobby Benson. I have been told that the music of Cardinal Rex Lawson helped to heal the post-Biafra trauma of the millions of victims of the Nigerian Civil War. These days as I find myself frequently listening to Rexs melody of melancholy I also find myself wondering if, per twist of faith, I am also pre-mourning the death of my beloved Nigeria, which is perched so precariously on the edge of violent partitioning. In his 1951 book entitled Requiem for a Nun American Nobel Laureate, William Faulkner, famously wrote that The past Is never dead. It isnt even the past. Thus, I fear that driven by self-inflicted pains and mischievous passions, Nigeria is taking giants steps backward....into the abyss!!! ****** Attorney Patryk A. Utulu U.S.-based Attorney & Strategic Communications Specialist Global Defense Analyst and Global Events Commentator Executive Vice President, Nigerian Diaspora-North America Executive Director, The Center 4 Community Empowerment & Lifeskills, Inc [Rights Rsvd. 11192014. Copyrights Strictly Enforced. Fair Use Permitted] https://youtube/watch?v=TFilIFOlZe8
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 07:37:55 +0000
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