William Onyeabor - (1982) Hypertension LP

 

Wilfilms Records ‎– WLP 018 

I wonder what the hell William Onyeabor thought he was doing. He owned flour mills in Nigeria, did quite well at that, apparently (perhaps he still owns them, who knows). And he studied cinematography in Russia, I recall somebody saying, which is probably why his record label is called Wilfilms. What possible connection is there between those two things? And then he made records as well? No, William, you've got it all wrong, you're meant to have a career.

I'm not sure what sort of reputation he has in Nigeria, if he has a reputation at all. Perhaps he's completely unknown there, too. I suspect he made his money, then spent it on things he liked. Making music happened to be one of them. Probably he gave no thought to pleasing anyone but himself in this. He didn't Strive to Achieve, or compare himself to those around him while muttering in self-reassurance that it was okay, the younger ones were all useless and the successful ones were all older, plenty of time left yet (this soon ceases to be an effective strategy: I have now outlived Jesus).

Yet he made his small impact, and its influence is bound to widen. Like all of us, I suspect, he delights others in ways he wouldn't imagine, wouldn't even think of trying to guess at imagining. Occasionally I meet somebody from my past who I've forgotten, but they remember me. Why? Perhaps because I'm a particular sort of idiot, but then it sometimes happens that I meet people who I remember but are completely ignorant of me, and I know those people aren't idiots. I went out tonight at half past nine to buy a bottle of wine and, as I left my gate, the house over the road let off fireworks in celebration. Who knows how these things work?

This is not Onyeabor's greatest record. The synths are tinpot, there is a general atmosphere of cheese, and the only version floating around the web is coated in a thick layer of vinyl crackle. But I can listen to it on repeat for an hour and a half (experiments prove it) and I love the title track, in which William gives a list of reasons we'd be bound to suffer from the complaint - having a bad wife, having a bad husband, having too much money, being a bad man, being a bad woman - and the girls in the chorus sing "Hyper-ten-sion / Is killing many / Many many people / Hyper-ten-sion / Is killing many many many people" while overlapping synths bubble like cheerfully boiling blood, blood that, contrary to all good sense, says "live, live."