Sound Statements and Counterpoints: Ike Oguine's Channeling of Music, Highlife, and Jazz in A Squatter's Tale

In his essay, "The Newly Black Americans: African Immigrants and Black America," Louis Chude-Sokei suggests that the contemporary African immigrant novel has tended to frame diaspora linkages and fraternity, specifically the historical kinship and social interactions of African immigrants and black America, as problematic at best. In this discussion, I offer a contrarian view of one such narrative, Ike Oguine's A Squatter's Tale (2000). Limning the story's critically unharnessed musical economy, I fine-tune earlier under-recordings of what I believe are Oguine's extensive investments in cultural logic, racial discourse, and intra-racial dialogue. I argue that, through his encryptions of black world music, most notably the deep interconnections of highlife and jazz, Oguine directs attention to the at-times unstated, misstated, yet tangibly sound (as in musical, fluid, strong, and positive) linkages of black world music and, with that, the unbroken ties and relatabilities of African America and Nigeria/Africa.