Review: Unbury Our Dead With Song by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

‘Maybe it was the nature of the Tizita: how do you compete over who is the most honest? Over who conveys the very fragility of life?’

-Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Mukoma’s book immediately plunges you into action. There is no warning, no blinking light, no introduction, just straight action devoid of context. With strange words and foreign instruments, it almost seems like a chaotic choir, a frantic orchestra. The action is a Tizita competition, with 4 people- The Corporal, The Diva, The Taliban Man, and Miriam- as contestants. Tabloid journalist, John Thandi Manfredi, is our eyes and ears. He accurately describes himself as ‘the foil guy, the guy in the middle of the crowd telling jokes, beers thrust into his hands; the guy who gets wet kisses from the women who go home to other men’. He is the acting observer. He steps away to let the music play. Sometimes, he reveals more than is necessary, but always only what he wants us to know.

Unbury Our Dead With Song is a musical documentary about the Tizita. Written in poetic prose, Mukoma takes us on a journey from Boston to Kenya and then Ethiopia. He goes beyond explaining music, he describes sound. Surrounded by Fadhili William’s Malaika,  Bob Marley’s Guava Jelly, and Buju Banton’s Hills and Vallleys, the Tizita stands tall. 

The story of Tizita makes one question which came first- the chicken or the egg, the music or the musician. Inevitably, the investigation of music leads John to examine the lives of the musicians. Against the backdrop of music is the political climate and tension around East African countries. Mukoma manages to subtly and playfully address it without undermining it. He highlights it without letting it overshadow the story.

 Each of the contestants is a coexisting duality, a walking contradiction. Kidane, The Diva, lost her fiancée to suicide as an aftermath of the war. The Corporal, a retired soldier, suffers from a loss of identity and PTSD-induced dissociation due to the role he played in the war. Miriam’s father was killed in Ogaden, her husband died in the war, and her sister from AIDS. While these characters have suffered immense losses, it is not their trauma that brings them together. It is the Tizita that unites them.

Although the storytelling is exquisite and the characters are well-developed, the dialogue is found wanting. It is through dialogue that we come to understand our characters, and their speech can appear to be unnatural. Kidane, for example, always has an answer. She is always philosophical, always poignant, flawless, and never caught unawares. While this effect adds to the enigmatic appeal and enthralls us,  it also makes her appear distant and inhuman. She sounds rehearsed and her speech rolls out like a performance. Whether as Kidane or The Diva, she appears to be perpetually putting on a show for us. 

Unbury our Dead With Song is a 4-star novel. It begins and ends at Ali’s Boxing Club. Mukoma artfully wraps the story around itself, suspending time and traveling through music.  In the pages of his novel, time stretches, shrinks, pauses, and in some ways,  ultimately disappears. It is as he says:

‘The ending changes the beginning; the middle will change the ending; the beginning will

be something else by the time you get to the end.’ 

Oreoluwa Oyinlola is a writer and finalist at the University of Ibadan. When she is not looking at photos of cats on the internet, she is writing fiction, creative non-fiction or, book reviews.