7-Day Wayback Music Challenge: Day 1 ~ Tracy Chapman - Baby Can I Hold You

I had just finished primary school. My parents felt I needed a change of environment, somewhere new, so my dad called his elder brother in Shagamu, Ogun State and asked him to accommodate my tiny self for a few weeks. Luckily, my uncle was in Benin to check on some projects he was running then. He and his wife had always had a soft spot for me, so they quickly accepted and soon I was bundled into my dad’s car and carried to Benin to meet up with them. My cousins were glad to see me too, though I was younger than all of them. We spent the weekend in Benin and on a Sunday, I was in the western part of Nigeria for the first time in my life.

They lived in a four bedroom flat and I had to share rooms with two of my young cousins but I never stayed in the room except when I wanted to sleep. The reason was simple; my eldest cousin had novels in his own room.

One day, rummaging about in his room, I saw a dusty cd. The cover was of an ebony man with dreads. I didn’t know what it was about, I just knew the name was Tracy Chapman. I decided, out of curiousity, to listen to it and I heard the song; *Baby Can I Hold You*. It was beautiful and the man’s voice was weirdly feminine but I loved it. I played the cd back to back until my cousin came and met me there. He laughed when I told him I loved the man’s song. Tracy Chapman is a woman, he said.

Till today the song remains one of my favourite songs of longing. There have been time, lonely and sad, depressed and broken, the song had kept me company and I had wept to the deep sad tones of Chapman’s voice. The lyrics of the song are words that everyone who has been in a relationship would or can relate with.

There is sadness in the song, longing, love, pain and there are those things which we find difficult to say. Those words that creep to our throats, choke us and leave us breathless. There are those emotions that steal to the surface of our skins but never come out because our hands are folded over our breasts like armor, like vests, like we are at war. It is like poetry;