What is it about the past that we like to cling to? Why do we call them the good old days when those days were fraught with insecurities and uncertainties? Maybe we like the innocence of youth, the courage and foolishness, and the open road that we face. Music is the vessel that carries these memories.
When I was last at Alfajiri, I heard one of PM Dawn’s songs and it yanked me violently to a friend of mine’s room when we were in Form 2.
We would sit there listening to RnB and talking about girls we fancied but could not dare talk to.
We had pimples on our faces and were just getting used to our breaking voices. In Johnny Gill, we found hope. Bobby Brown gave us courage. Snoop Dogg made us feel we could get away with being bad and unruly. Usher invigorated us.
In music, we found a place where we could be awkward and dreamy without feeling self-conscious of our growing limbs and our untamed feelings.
Alfajiri doesn’t have decor worth mentioning. The parking is terrible. Sometimes service is a tad slow. But the music never fails. And quite often the music is all we need because it’s our magic carpet that sends us to places where we lost our footing. Places where our footprints have been swept by the winds of adulthood.
We recently gathered there with a few friends for their famous nyama choma and music. It felt like home again, listening to music, seeing faces that look familiar at first glance, but which turn out to be faces that mark a zeitgeist.
These are all boys and girls who grew up in the 80s and 90s. They look like people you used to see at Choices Bar, only now they are greying. There is comfort in that too, that we all are growing old. Safety in numbers and all that kind of thing.
And what’s the purpose of a bar if it doesn’t galvanise people in walking a common path through music and memories?
