My Father’s Violin

My Father’s Violin

My father was born on a Sunday and I was born on a Sunday, and so my dear father concluded that we were from the same place. He always wanted me to accompany him whenever he visited his friends or went shopping. He was fond of noting our physical similarities from our fair complexion to our aquiline nose. He was psychic and a metaphysician and said we came from the water.
“God forbid,” I said in my heart.

He said I was an Aquarian, but I did not share his superstitious belief in astrology. I have always been a Christian from childhood, and I thank God for giving me a wonderful mother who brought me up on the Word of God from her copy of the Holy Bible in Igbo, our mother tongue. I loved the man from Galilee, Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God. I always loved to play Jesus and even had my own disciples who joined me to sweep and clean the pews of the St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Lafiaji on the Lagos Island. I was going to be a priest until my father refused to let me go to the seminary in Ibadan. Since he did not allow me to become a priest, I decided that I would be a rock star and joined the Daily Mirror Pop & Rock Club. I thought my father would be glad to see me sing, rock and roll since he loved music and played the violin. But he sneered at rock music and would rather serenade to the music of his violin after work.

I did not like the way the violin whined like one of the Sirens.
My father would embrace his violin the way he embraced my mother, holding the neck with his left hand and resting his narrow jaw on the chinrest and the scroll tilted horizontally above his left shoulder, he would put the rosined bow between the bridge and the fingerboard. Then he would pull the bow back and forth the four strings one after the other to make the whining sounds of the different scales of the music. My mother loved to gaze at him as he played and paused to sing his own songs. He had a melodious voice and always looked heavenly whilst playing his violin. He never allowed me and his other children to touch it. I never asked him to teach me, because I preferred to learn how to play the acoustic or electric guitar and join the Bay City Rollers, Adam Ant and the other rockers in the UK.

I was 18 when I got my first recording contract to produce my country rock song Hardway to Broadway, but my father waved the contract aside and did not even ask me about it again. He never wanted me to travel to England or America for my music. The recording date passed and I was disappointed. Since he ignored my own passion for Pop music, I ignored his passion for the violin and classical music. We disagreed over his religious beliefs and in one of his angry moods, he hit me with the bow of his violin and it broke into two pieces. He was heart broken and did not bother to buy a new bow. He left the violin where he always hung it on the wall and never played his violin until he passed away on November 19, 1983. I put the violin away and it was accidentally damaged. It was now a useless musical instrument. A year after my father’s death, I produced Hardway To Broadway. I was still thinking of becoming a young rock star when I left the Roman Catholic Church for the Deeper Christian Life Bible Church and became a street and bus evangelist.

It was in the Deeper Christian Life Bible Church that I saw the importance of the violin, because many members of the choir played violins and made heavenly sound of music to the glory of God. Every time I listened to the solemn music of the violin, the unforgettable memories of my dear father playing his violin would hold me captive in nostalgia. I cannot remember the past without remembering my dear father and I cannot remember my dear father without remembering his violin. I am going to buy a new violin and put it on the mantle piece in memory of my father. I am also going to produce my first classical composition Your Majesty and an old man playing the violin will be included in the musical video to share the memory of my father’s violin with the world.

~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima




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