CHANGES I’ve lived through many music devices the way others have lived through social changes I remember the static of the record & the senseless pleasure of fingertips passing on the ridges of the vinyl stripped of its sleeve my country had been a colony when my parents were teenagers & they danced listening to Congolese rumba I remember the thread of the tape entangled over a white cogwheel my country the unabashed dictatorship of Makosso I clad in their platform pants and harboring their beautiful Afros my parents still rebelled against the former colonizer I remember the rainbow on the surface of the CD as you brought it to the light its body smooth like albumen easily scratched the album jumped & skipped & repeated over and over Keith Sweat said twisted over you twisted twisted over over over you like the present capitalism must save us all nowadays music is untouchable for most of us & we don’t need to feel for a song & put on an album it must be the future untouchable & imperceptible my parents and I will be gone let’s see what the young will make of it © 2022 by Nadia Bongo
African Voices 15
