On the 30th of December, some minutes past 12 am, I walked into Calabar Wakkis in the most sour mood and looked around for my friends who were waiting for me. The end of the year came with reflection. I was looking at a version of myself that had existed throughout the year, and I was happy for only survival and nothing else. But that wasn’t why I was standing in this place while the city of Calabar partied. I came to witness the pulsating power of electronic music at Nocturna.
The ticketing process was smooth: you show a QR code on your phone, it gets scanned, a wristband is wrapped around your wrist, and you’re given a hand fan, which was a caring gesture to help you ward off the heat of the dance floor. I slipped into the building and perched at the back, the music moving from where my feet took root to my shoulders, and suddenly I felt lighter; whatever woes I had been toiling with pulsed away to be replaced by an Afro house set by Lipe.
This was my third Nocturna dance music event. The first was earlier in the year, where we gathered in someone’s home to dance to DJs honing their craft. It was glitchy, speakers tripping off and dead space as DJs figured out their setups, but it was ours. The second was at Tipsy Mistress, an outdoor bar, where my friends and I danced into the 1st of December to remixes of early 2010s EDM hits. Kufreabasi Eyo has managed to build a community in Calabar around film and music that tilts away from the mainstream. It’s difficult to rebel in small cities—there’s often chatter, disbelief and pushback—but little by little, Nocturna was pulling a crowd. A crowd of diehards, doubters and curious people.
The set quickly ended as I had gotten there a bit late, and then Raey went B2B with Nacci, which kept the energy up, moving people to the front away from the margins, heads bopping to the music with recognition of the songs but intrigue at the electronic vessel they came in, a theme that repeated itself in Coldsound’s highlight set. The dance floor ebbed and flowed, sometimes empty as people caught up with friends outside and then full when recognisable songs were spun, the energy was tactile, and bodies began to press against each other. Nocturna was entering flow state.
Pasta came up next to keep the flow going. His set was a pulsating mix of afrotech remixes, an immersion into local music from other countries meeting the familiar alternative music of Lady Donli’s My Ability remix by Faem— a personal highlight for me, evidenced by video proof my friends shared with me later, where I screamed out “My ability” five hundred times. His set moved the crowd to the front, heads were banging, waists were rolling, hands were voguing, Nocturna was dancing.
Despite the sound interruptions and technical difficulties, the crowd never settled, demanding quick fixes, hungry to get back into the flow. Coldsound, our very own, was up next. This was my third time watching him on the decks, and the growth was exponential. The first time, you could tell he was feeling out his style, but this time, there was an overflowing of confidence honed by times on the deck in Lagos. He spun remixes of Nigerian classics and Rema hits with a 3-step and Afro house twist, even adding a remix of Baji’s song—a melding of two artists creating their own path in Calabar. There was a direct flow from the DJ to the audience; they were not on an elevated stage, which allowed you to dance directly in front of them or beside them. The DJs danced directly into your camera, their essence never diluted by some stage access ticket.
Stirfry came up next with her genre-jumping set. The crowd had thinned a bit as this was the night of the anticipated Calabar carnival, and people were location hopping, but the core crowd stayed behind. The moment she spun Amaarae’s Sad Girlz Luv Money, the people erupted into a symphony of dancing and screaming of lyrics. The night had aged, people had come and gone, but Nocturna kept the bass thumping.
The giant leaps in electronic music would not be possible without the women. From pioneering synthesisers, to curating sets and fostering communities, Nocturna found it footing in that space with DJ Baby following Stirfry’s set. She played techno remixes, calling back to Daft Punk and radiating her energy to the group surrounding her deck as she danced excitedly. At this point, I had not sat down throughout the night, and my smart watch notified me that I had surpassed twenty thousand steps. My shirt stuck to my bod,y and my legs ache,d but I had one more set in me, and so did Nocturna.
Lipe came back to play a classic Afro house set supported by Coldsound. It was nearing 5 am and many people were outside sitting, talking, reinforcing old bonds and forming new ones; prodding minds curiously, the only way darkness allows. I remained on the dance floor with a few others as the closing set flowed through my body. My friends were ready to go but knew I wasn’t, so they waited as I conducted closing prayers to Dlala Thukzin and Dankie Boi.
The time finally came, it was way past 5, and the lights went off with a few people on the dance floor, the last of the technical difficulties signalling an end to a night drenched in sweat and electronic music. I was already outside with my friends, and slowly, the last people trickled out of the sanctuary of synths, and we debriefed about the night. Who wanted who, who knew who, who saw a future with who, when next would we dance again. We took selfies and exchanged gossip, mapping out the city of Calabar through people we knew and those we had met for the first time on the dance floor.
Nocturna remains in its infancy, and that makes it more exciting. The future is limitless, and it’s proof that if you bring the music, the people will dance. Calabar, a small city in the south notable for its annual carnival of past glory, is aware of the fact that the major raves will most likely not come here, but Kufreabasi and the Nocturna team have reminded us that the people do not need the elaborate lights and star DJs; an abandoned former restaurant in Calabar will do.