Angry youth vs. Honiara 09: Pagasa

Pagasa has been the voice of angry young Honiara men for a number of years now.

Beginning with his local smash hit in 2006 - "Aelan boy", he has stood out with raw, misogynistic lyrics and a defiant, cynical take on life in the capital, paticularly the seedy tragedy of youth, sex, exploitation and family breakup. 

His songs are so catchy that schoolkids sing them after school, but so blunt that their mothers try to stop them. 

Following "Aelan Boy", a raunchy jaunt through actuality and metaphor on the dance floor, there was "Children's Park", "Green Bottle" and now "Whatever!". While castigated by many women leaders for his sharp-tongued attacks on young women, he has not spared the male participants in Honiara debauchery after dark - the stereotypic middle aged man was the object of derision in both "Kavara man" and subject of heaped scorn in "Olman finis".

The latter is one of my local favourites of the year, though with so much music coming out of Honiara every month, I don't know how long it will keep this title...

"Nafu fo tekem gele

Iu olman finis

Iu bolhet finis..."

Olman Finis - Pagasa sample 08

No artist consistently illuminates Honiara life as unflinchingly and entertainingly as Pagasa today, but what makes his work most interesting for me is how he marries currency in the two dimensions of subject and language so smoothly and accurately. 

Pijin has never been able to sit still for long, and Pagasa is a great showcase for this - words and syntax are freely borrowed and mixed to fuel pijin idiom that is at once lyrically tight and topically resonant.  

The line Hem push start weitem white lid nomoa in "Ol man finis" is a great example. Kwaso has only really been around for 7 years or so, but the euphemisms now abound: 'white lid'(after the plastic lid on the recycled softdrink bottles it is sold in)  is just one. "Push starting" or loading up with the cheap stuff before a night out, often results in sudden early onset of all the symptoms you would expect. In that one short line are many layers painted at once: the new normality of bingeing on the cheap, the desperation implied in such actions, and the connotation of hard domestic life that the "push start" reminds us of.  In doing so it sets up the whole mood for the rest of the song - the black humour in observing a grown man making a fool of himself on a weekend night and bringing heartache to his family. 

But enough from me... here is a sample of one of Pagasa's  latest. Listen carefully, if you've spent any time hanging outin Honiara with young men lately you might just hear their voice in his...

Whatever - Pagasa 2009