I am ever fascinated by a seemingly
unnoticed linguistic revolution that is perpetuated by Hip Hop Mc’s around the
world and on the African continent in particular, where resilient lyrics are written
to resemble manifestos of revolutions underway on every street corner of the
continent.
These verses, seeming like catechisms of
rituals are what exhilarate me most, more so when witnessing these MC’s recite
these words unflinchingly, year after year without fail or misspelled
utterances of their long enduring epistles.
These revolutionaries can recall their best
scriptures and creeds as inked in strife and rhyme, each word etched like ordinances
of sacred scrolls to tongues not easily dissuaded from their proselyte missions.
And in my township, what puzzles me more are
the many dialects devised by various voices in Hip Hop and Ragga, new words and
expressions which bear no resemblance to the universally accepted Anglo-Saxon
linguistic strands, or the Arabic inclinations of the east.
A vocabulary that is not calligraphic or
oriental in any way, not formed in academic laboratories like scientific jargon,
just words concocted in secret chambers of prisons cryptography, codes
deciphered only by initiates who themselves inscribe messages into poems like
orders to troops on ground.
TwangaFofo is one such language, twisted
and ruggedly composed by Kuli Khunou, who has had his badges bestowed by the
inevitability of prison rites and its linguistic imprints gained like tattoos
of stature.
Ths is a hacked language, a derivative of
various languages in the nature of Tsotsi-taal but slightly more encrypted.
I have often heard my sisters speak SeLista,
another language composed of reversed words said to conceal content of specific
conversations, yet that was much easier to catch if one applied their minds
accordingly and adjusting their auditory faculty to decipher the conundrum.
But TwangaFofo takes another leap into
mysteries of language.
Applied as a device of concealment, I
wonder how Kuli (Kuldox as we fondly call him) has managed to weave a musical
style that aims to educate and engage social realities from this linguistic
labyrinth.
Verbally, it is intriguingly marvelous to
listen to, as it somewhat sound quite like a Jamaican dialect used by Ragga
artists, but when you observe the words in a textual compendium you begin to see
the obscurity you are appreciating.
The language is not completely divorced
from Anglo-Saxon alphabets which stands to say that it is still bound to the
whims of the English cannon, but the alphabets are not a hindrance to the
ingenious elasticity of its creativity.
This language seems to continually birth
itself, with words giving rise to other words, or even meanings being
interchangeable between words in accordance to context.
But what is language if not another hammer
in the ironworks of communication, where the furnace of the mouth utters flames
that melt hard metal of souls to be shaped into swords of expression?
I find here a vocabulary that attempts to
mold old speech with a new vernacular of dissent, a technique at realigning
‘western’ alphabetic constructions not to conquer and usurp our indigenous
language structures but enhance them at an exponential rate.
Kuli’s linguistic talents that sadly languish
in poverty stricken streets of one townships among the innumerable, has
provided a signifying lingo which is yet to be professed and legitimized by a
cultural expression that will never bow to the strictures of academic approval.
I commend him for such a feat of brave
intervention during a dearth of a language suitable for exclaiming some of our
unspeakable socio-psychological realities, as well our often muted messages of
self-reclamation from strangleholds of prison.
This is a First Edition of the volume TWANGAH
FOFO, conceived and compiled by Kuli Louis Khunou and all Intellectual Rights
belong to the compile who is also author of the language concerned.
It is indeed an honor for the blog to be
the first platform to publicaly disseminate the ‘dictionary’, with the hope
that this language will spark dialogue among linguists as well as all
revolutionary men and women who strive to transform language for purposes of
social liberation.
Kuli Khunou - The Author of Twangah Fofo
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