Blakes

It was Diana's last night in FCT, so we went to Thai Chi then on to Blakes to mark the occasion. Its difficult to believe but we've been in Abuja over two years now and not once been to Blakes. Blakes is a semi-open air joint in Garki (pronounced Gariki), describing itself as an Entertainment and Leisure resort.

It was maximum entertainment - on stage four women in local prints and beads wiggling about and providing backing with a full group (drummer, bata drummer, three trumpet players, bass, guitar behind the lead singer). One of the female dancers was quite fat and pale and looked as if she was a bit out of it (she looked pale like the Delta soap billboard girls here); the other three enthusiastically strutted about, doing some quite amazing bum rotation manoevers at certain points. Its fascinating how independently motivated the derriere can be when under the control of a practiced African musculature..

We were taken through lilting gospelly dancy Igbo music, through to soul-funk classics, with a bit of Apala-style Yoruba singing later on. At one point, there was a technical problem so the local comedian BigMouth came on. His delivery was high-velocity pidgin so I could only just keep up. The humour was finely observed class pieces (the rich man and the poor man's differing reactions when their 'moto don jam') as well as more bawdy physical-theatre style pieces (the man who makes love to his woman in a pounding-yam position).

Members of the audience were so excited they got on stage to spray naira (and dollars) as well as to perform. Two men danced very close to each other, simulating sex and felatio (or so it seemed); anywhere else the dancing would have been construed as intensely homoerotic and a bit OTT. There were some queens in the audience - however I'm sure hardly anyone there would have been aware. A woman with a ruched ruby red short skirt perfectly moulded to her shapely ass got up on stage and started wiggling her butt at high speed - like a vibrator on the Thrill setting. The dancers stopped and stared in admiration. We left by around 1am, just before the Church service (the music stops and everyone praises the lord). Next time I'd like to stay to see the transformation - a clear indication that the erotic and the spiritual are not absolutely distinct as they are in many Western forms of Christianity.

In short, Blakes is a lot of fun, even on a cool night like last night. If you ever come to Abuja and stuck for a Friday night option, now you know where to go and enjoy yourself, for only N300.