31/07/2024
Yesterday, while strolling along my street at night, I heard about 3 different shops playing Gentleman Mike Ejeagha's songs and I am not just referring to Ka E Si Le Onye Isi Oche ( the song that has the rhythmic Onomatopoeia "gwo gwo gwo ngwo"). I mean his other songs as well, like Onye Ori Utaba, characterized by his intricate strumming of guitar strings. Without a doubt, the "gwo gwo gwo ngwo" challenge has not only revived the legendary folklorist's career but also introduced him to a wider, global audience. Even though Mike Ejeagha's songs were very popular in the Eastern part of Nigeria, to the extent that we still have the phrase "Akuko Mike Ejeagha" meaning "Mike Ejeagha's story" as an equivalent way of saying "c**k and bull story" when we hear something we don't believe, most people in other regions of the country, all over Africa and across the globe, are hearing his music for the first time.
One striking thing that Brain Jotter said in his video about visiting the celebrity nonagenarian, is that "anything can happen". None of this was planned. There was an already existing trend on TikTok with a brief part of the song where Mike Ejeagha says "Nke a na akpo Chairman", before Brain Jotter came across it. The clip he used for the now famous dance, was from a video he had done previously. This means that he wasn't dancing to "gwo gwo gwo ngwo" when he made the original video but he saw that it synced with that part of the song and BOOM 29 millions IG views and a spontaneous viral challenge later, Gentleman Mike Ejeagha has "blown" more than he ever did, while actively doing music.
This event is what people may describe as "God's time", "Kairos time" or "Time and Chance". It is akin to a glitch in the matrix because nothing in the trajectory of Brain Jotter's videos explains how he got more than 3 times of his normal views, for that single video. He has not had up to half of that number of views, before or after that. It would almost seem like the algorithm blew up that video beyond proportion, just for Mike Ejeagha to get his well deserved global recognition and receive his flowers, while still on this side of eternity.
