Chapter Four - “People Hear at Night”: Sounds and Secrecy of Nocturnal Performance

Summary

I stood alongside community members observing a powerful display of youthful exuberance ignited by a collective fervor of sounds: singing, drumming, shrieking police-styled whistles, and the clang of machetes violently struck against metal and concrete surfaces. By eleven o’clock on an August night in 2018, the unified voice of the Efik vigilante youth group, known by the namesake of an area of Calabar South, Ekpo Bassey, was loudly heard. The expressive synergy produced that night was as memorizing as it was poignant. Vigilante performances such as this were rare and only organized in times of need.

A couple days prior, around three in the afternoon, alleged “cultists” armed with machetes, and possibly guns, were spotted fleeing a crime scene through the Ekpo Bassey area of town. Two unknown assailants coordinated an attack on a resident of Nsidung, slashing the victim with machetes in broad daylight. Thankfully, he survived. Alarm quickly mounted throughout the community. A few concerned residents of Ekpo Bassey, a section of the larger Nsidung area of Calabar South, responded by assembling their neighborhood vigilante youth group. The purpose was to acknowledge youths for their service to the neighborhood by treating them to a generous assortment of drinks. The second objective was to provide a stage for the youths to be heard. And as planned, a beautifully raw performative concert infused with potent artistic intention manifested. With the medium of sound, cloaked by the veil of night, the vigilante group spatially demarcated the Ekpo Bassey section of town under the protection of the youth.

This chapter turns attention to the understudied topic of acoustic performances staged at night. The associations at the heart of this analysis include Akata, Obon, and the Ekpo Bassey vigilante youth group. Akata is best understood as a trusted source of news for the community. During nighttime performance, Akata unabashedly exposes secrets of people regardless of rank or societal position (Figure 4.1). Obon, on the other hand, has two main duties: burying those who died “difficult” deaths and fighting negative forms of witchcraft (Figure 4.2). The Ekpo Bassey vigilante group is a recent permutation from Akata, Obon, and Agaba (see Figure 2.1). Devised as a grassroots Efik youth group, Ekpo Bassey vigilantes are in charge of deterring criminal activity in the community by conducting night watches.