Featured Essay: Records My Grandfather Left Behind

by Abraham Aondoana

My grandfather died leaving no exotic cars or mansions behind, but left a short will. At an early age, I had access to some of his books, including a stack of vinyl records in a wooden crate which had become polished due to touch. There was a handwriting on it with masking tape, it simply read; “For whoever still listens.” 

I had just attained twelve years, with no idea about what actually was a vinyl record. The turntable was almost broken, when I placed the first record - Sam Cooke “A Change is Gonna Come” my room filled with a fragile crackle even before the music came alive, this made me understand immediately that: this was not just an inheritance, but initiation.

After his remembrance thanksgiving, I started playing his records instead of my usual football or movies routine. The house usually smelled of yam roasting and then thyme, as relatives came and went from the kitchen, I built a ritual around the rotating circles- a conversation with a man I just began to know.

Track One: Sam Cooke - “A Change is gonna come” 

The vinyl needle dropped and Sam’s voice took flight, like a prayer. Grandfather had already written a charming message on the inner sleeve: “Play this when you need to remember hope.” 

Hope - hope is that somehow fragile, absurd thing which keeps families going even distance and disillusionment tries to render them apart. And Cooke’s song had been my grand father’s theme music way back in Nigeria’s independence days, a track song which made him still believe that history, history could be bent towards justice. 

That Thanksgiving, as Cooke’s voice trembled through the house, my mother usually hummed along as she stirred her stew. She would tell me how her father, as a young man then, would play this record on Sunday mornings before church. “He believed in better days,” she said to me: “Even when the world didn’t.’

When the record started playing, it would be as if he was in the room again - humming softly, waiting for that high note that will still make the air vibrate. 

Track two: Fela Kuti - “Water No Get Enemy”

If Sam Cooke songs were his prayer, Fela Kuti songs were his rebellion. The sleeve smelled faintly of palm oil and dust, the vinyl was scarred, a thin scratch made the horns stutter once per loop. 

My grandfather used to play Fela loud enough to get the neighbours complaining. “That’s the sound of freedom,” he’d tell my mother. “it’s not supposed to whisper.” 

At Thanksgiving, the song filled the house, and my cousins started cheering along. Even our old ceiling fan seemed to sway to the beat. Fela’s voice had this rebellious, teasing vibe - it was like a conversation with the ancestors: the ones who had danced, protested, and laughed in the face of oppression. 

“Water no get enemy,” Fela sang - Water had no enemy. Grandfather used to teach my mother that line as a lesson in humility: Be like water, flow around things. Try to find a way through. He would say. 

Now, I understand that Fela was not politics alone, he was endurance. He was thanksgiving in music: that grace of perseverance.

Track Three: Simon & Garfunkel - “Bridge Over Troubled Water” 

This was quite unexpected, sandwiched between Afrobeat and the soul was a mellow American folk duo - soft-strumming acoustic guitars my grand father must have discovered late in life. 

“Your grandfather loved voices that would bring him peace,” my aunt told me when she saw me grasping the sleeve. “He said this song made him think of forgiveness.” 

When Paul Simon’s voice soared: I will lay me down - I felt that old mix of melancholy and comfort that Thanksgiving always brings. The song reminded me that gratitude is not always loud or victorious. Sometimes it is quiet capitulation, sort that happens from sitting with memory, from forgiving the past for not being kinder. 

The song ended, and I knew that every record in that crate was a sort of bridge: not just over troubled water, but between generations. 

Track Four: Nina Simone - “I wish I knew How It Would Feel to be Free” 

If at all thankfulness had a heartbeat, it should likely sound like Nina Simone at the piano- fierce, yearning and unstoppable. 

Her voice filled the house like smoke- I wish I knew how it would feel to be free… 

My grandmother, sitting in her chair by the window, nodded slowly. “He played this when he was upset,” she told me. “But when he was calm, it would be over.” 

This is true, because, Nina’s voice seemed to take all of life’s paradoxes: pain and pleasure, freedom and ensalvement, love and loss - and then turn them into something sacred.

 That Thanksgiving night, as the record played, I felt weight and wonder of inheritance simultaneously. The music was no longer his, but mine, now, to play, to preserve, to pass on. 

Gratitude in the Groove 

Every Thanksgiving, I get those records out. The sound warbles now and then, the needle still crackles, but then, Vinyl does not hide its age, that’s all part of the charm: it sings through it. 

In the age of playlists and algorithms, you have to sit, flip the record over, listen to the silence between tracks; vinyl teaches patience. You hear the crackle of time - proof of someone who once loved this music to wear it down. 

When they wonder, I tell them it is not nostalgia that I still play those records. It is connection. My grandfather’s hand touched these grooves once. The same ridges that move the needle moved his memories. Each pop, each skip is a conversation. 

Should Thanksgiving be remembering what sustains us, this would by my playlist: 

Sam Cooke for hope.

Fela Kuti for resilience.

Simon & Garfunkel for forgiveness.

Nina Simone for freedom. 

Together, they make a map; from Lagos to Harlem to London to wherever my family now gathers to eat, to argue, to laugh.

Abraham Aondoana is a writer, poet and novelist. He holds a degree in law. His work has appeared in Ink Sweat and Tears (UK), Renard press Interwoven Anthology and elsewhere. His new book; “Democracy Starts with Us” is scheduled to be released in the United States in 2026.