He didn’t remember making it. But as he clicked play, the room shifted.
By noon, the instrumental leaked. Not from Seriki, but from Tunde’s own malfunctioning cloud drive. Within hours, street hawkers were humming it. A DJ in London mashed it up with “Last Christmas.” A grandmother in Ibadan recorded herself dancing to it, the agbalọmu stains on her fingers glistening like communion wine.
He didn’t tell Seriki that. Instead, he typed: “The ancestors. And they want royalties.” Download Seriki Agbalumo Mi Instrumental Christmasxmass
Tunde’s phone buzzed. Seriki: “I feel it. The file. It’s downloading on my end. But Tunde… I didn’t send you anything. Who made this?”
Tunde had laughed. “Sleigh bells and star apples? Seriki, you want to confuse the ancestors and Santa Claus at the same time?” He didn’t remember making it
The download counter on the file had crossed a million. But no one had paid. No one could. The link was broken, the file untraceable—except it lived on every phone, every Bluetooth speaker, every memory card in the city.
Tunde smiled, bit into an agbalọmu, and spat the seed into the dust. The rhythm had always been there. He just happened to be the one who finally pressed download. Not from Seriki, but from Tunde’s own malfunctioning
But Seriki was serious. “The people are tired of ‘Jingle Bells’ and frozen reindeer. We are not winter people. We are harmattan people. Give us dust, drums, and desire. Give me Agbalọmu Mi .”
Tunde stared at the metadata. Creator: Unknown. Date: Christmas Day, 1978. A decade before he was born.
A rising Afrobeats star, Seriki, had called him at 2 AM. “Tunde, I need a miracle. I’m dropping ‘Agbalọmu Mi’—the Christmas remix. But the instrumental must feel like sunrise on a harmattan morning. Like agbalọmu—that sweet, sticky African star apple—melting on the tongue, but with sleigh bells.”