And then the sleigh bells. But wrong. They weren’t silver; they were brass, dull and warm, like anklets on a dancer’s foot. The tempo was 95 BPM—slow enough to sway, fast enough to forget your rent.
Tunde stared at the metadata. Creator: Unknown. Date: Christmas Day, 1978. A decade before he was born. Download Seriki Agbalumo Mi Instrumental Christmasxmass
He didn’t tell Seriki that. Instead, he typed: “The ancestors. And they want royalties.” And then the sleigh bells
A talking drum began, not like a call, but like a confession. Then a soft, highlife guitar arpeggio, wet with reverb. Then—unmistakably—the sound of agbalọmu seeds being spat out, recorded and sampled into a percussive loop. Chk-chk-pfft. Chk-chk-pfft. Underneath, a choir of neighborhood children humming “We Three Kings” in Yoruba, their voices layered like honey and harmattan dust. The tempo was 95 BPM—slow enough to sway,
Tunde had laughed. “Sleigh bells and star apples? Seriki, you want to confuse the ancestors and Santa Claus at the same time?”