Making Music: Publishers’ Note

Here at Saraba, music has been a perpetual ache, a constant obsession, so we are as confounded as you are that it took this long to rest our oars on these stringed sheets that stretches memory and touches eternity gingerly. We like to start on the precipice of controversy, the shoulders of Chris Abani. We like to start where he ended his brilliant essay, “Lagos: A Pilgrimage... Read More

Saraba 10 – The Music Issue

Download In this issue: Making Music: Publishers’ Note My Music Timeline: Joseph Omotayo  Sweet Notes: Agatha Aduro The Guitarist: Ayomide Owoyemi The Piano: Neelam Chandra Naming Hip-Hop or Recalling Abati: Peter Akinlabi The Chocolate Torte: Andrew Rooney With Musical Scores The Pledge: Ikeogu Oke I Can’t Reach You: Ikeogu Oke Maple Country: Ikeogu Oke We Have Known... Read More

Saraba 9: The Food Issue

Gathering Food :4, Publishers’ Note Dodo & A Notebook :49, Featured Every Race Is Capable Of Apartheid :15, Conversation The Literature of Food :26, Conversation My stomach, My Wall, My War :58 Memoir A Foodie, Not a Glutton :5, Fiction Before the Trip :19, Fiction Her Death To Come :33, Fiction The Old Man and the Cat :40, Fiction See and Eat :37, 38, 82, Illustrations ... Read More

Publishers’ Note: Gathering Food

There is a certain way of perpetuating the discourse of food: relishing a meal while predetermining the next. This might be the subliminal rationale behind the Prequel Issue to the Food Issue, the culinary delight of hors d’oeuvre. This philosophy might as well promote gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, but Temitayo Olofinlua’s piece pointedly asserts this behaviour as... Read More

Saraba 9: The Prequel

Editor’s Note The photos will speak for themselves, and for what we tried to do in this prequel. I am constantly interested, as an artist and publisher, in seeking forms that intersect – in mergers and hybrids. The question is bigger than whether or not we eat. It must be why;and it must be whether or not we can capture the usual without caution. Here are 28 photos,... Read More

Issue 8 – Fashion

Download Publishers Note: /The task of raising a collage that forays into fashion is arduous and pitiful. Firstly, fashion is a slippery phenomenon, like a jelly hydra, it eludes even the most patient and skilled handlers, which we were not. We often cut to the chase. We exhaust our senses in the pursuit of an ideal perspective for each our issues, but with this issue, it was not... Read More

Issue 7b- The Anniversary Issue

Download Planning Obsolescence Emmanuel Iduma & Dominique Malaquais in conversation The Blank Sheet: On Blogging and Other Botherations (II) Kola Tubosun The Serious Guide to Becoming a Seriously Unfashionable Writer Suzanne Ushie A New Literariness Sokari Ekine interviews Emmanuel Iduma The Ideal Husband Adebiyi Olusolape A Question of Ajayi E Iduma Books of The Year Various Goodwill Various Writing... Read More

Saraba 7: The Tech Issue

Download We think of technology as a basket of broken eggs, which must hatch into chicks. Our contemplation is that we must accept disadvantage as advantage, that we must lead ourselves into a den of a lion, and sleep close to its mane. The starting point was an identification of eternity. It‘s difficult to agree with James Blunt: ―”Forever is just a minute to me.”... Read More

Issue 6: The God Issue

Download Let’s imagine that God is to be traced with a golden crayon held in the shaky hands of an experienced infant. The infant asserts the moral cum spiritual right to tracing, and as Margaret Atwood once affirmed, God is a good listener. He doesn’t interrupt. In our case, he didn’t. There was tenacity in our vision for this Issue; if you wish, a tenaciousness. In attempting... Read More

Issue 5 – Niger Delta

Download First a caveat: the story of the delta is tricky. One fraught with a rigmarole of details and bilious emotions, but must still be told nonetheless. We owe it to ourselves, to literature and, most of all, to humanity. And what is the best way to dispel this ambiguity: to begin by saying that the tale is rather a simple one. The details are numerous, disorganised, recurring.... Read More