Essays:

Essay: Theatre of the Enthusiasts




The others are doing the show the we are in limbo

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 3:49 PM WAT

NOTES ON NIGERIAN THEATRE: (LAGOS ENVIRONS 1999-2003)
A RANDOM SAMPLING BY
JAHMAN ANIKULAPO

At
a time the public culture circuit was enwrapped in despair on the future of the live stage and especially, the seeming helplessness and hopelessness of theatre practitioners on the viability of their professional calling, there emerged a new trend which suggested that something fundamental had been wrong with the approach of trained artistes to their vocation.
The past five years had witnessed not a drought of live theatre per se, but a seeming retreat by the club of regular theatre producers which used to keep the stage engaged. Various reasons were adduced for the retreat. The most frequent was the paucity of fund and as well diversion of interest of popular sponsoring institutions to other less intellectually engaging ventures such as sports and popular music.
Thus gradually, the stage dried up of real productions apart from the usual overtly mercantilist literature text productions, which are guaranteed to draw school audiences, even if the quality of show was poor.
Intriguingly however, at the same time that the major theatre producers were taking a break, certain unusual organisations, which are not necessarily into theatre production and are not composed of trained artistes, came on strongly on the scene.
Of interest was the fact that each of the groups had firm root in social activities of the Church, particularly, the Pentecostal variations. Membership of each of the groups usually comprise fellows of the same church who had decided to stretch the entertainment content of their praise and worship activities beyond the confine of the church. This fact is always vividly reflected in the theme and context of their productions.
Notable among these groups was the Rhythm of the Blackman, a band of young school leavers. The group came to popular attention with Going Back to My Root, a play which in content, form and context of production, was fashioned after the Negro theatre tradition. After a series of runs on the Lagos stage, the play was billed for an outside engagement. In its wake came two other plays which have also been performed to a variety of audience at some of the most expensive venues in Lagos, Abuja and parts of the South West.
Remarkably too, the Rhythm of the Blackman could be said to have come up with such an impressive business profile -- an aggressive marketing scheme that saw them doing costly adverts on the print and electronic media and selling their tickets at high-profile business concerns around the city.
Rhythm of the Blackman also broke into the diplomatic circle and soon set up as a model theatre producing outfit with its work staged so many times in cottage theatre formation. Significantly, there is much to learn from its experience.
The Rhythm of The Blackman has in its repertory:
*Going back to my roots by Dozie Atuenyi; January 2001.
*Dawn of a New Day by Dozie Atuenyi; April 2002
*A New Song by Dozie Atuenyi; November 2002
*Journey of the Drum by Dozie Atuenyi, 2002
Another group which has continued to exert such great impact on the theatre scene is the JASONVISION - also a team of young theatre enthusiasts led by the lawyer Wole Oguntokun. A few of the group's members had had romance with the Theatre 15, a troupe of students drawn from the humanities at the University of Lagos but which has for almost a decade made its mark producing plays and entertainment shows on the Akoka campus.
Indeed, the JASONVISION has produced some of the most thought-provoking theatre pieces that the Lagos scene has witnessed in the past few years. Its first major play was Who Is Afraid of Wole Soyinka (title modeled after Who is Afraid of Tai Solarin by Femi Osofisan), and well acknowledged was its boldness in the treatment of the theme of corruption and the intolerance of the political elite for criticism, transparency and probity. Next came Rage of the Pentecost, a steamy satire on the comic excesses of the new-found 'fishers of men' Pastors and their 'prosperity churches'. There have been other equally successful plays with equally radical thematic focus.
A third group in this neo-Pentecostal theatre movement was the Baneo Ventures which however, appears to be the most technically sophisticated of the new groups. Its marketing strategy made intense use of the electronic mailing system and it uses the web a lot in its publicity drive. It produced no less than five major plays in the past two years including the box-office romance drama hit, Private Lies. The group's clientele also consist of the top echelon of the society including key political figures and captains of industries. These are the classes of Nigerians that, sufficiently weaned on European cultural taste, always shun the local produce except when it is supported and promoted by the various foreign cultural agencies.
Another non-conventional group that had been something of a surprise on the theatre scene is the Spirit of David, which comprises young school leavers of strong Christian inclination. The troupe staged many dance drama at major performance venues around Lagos, particularly at key corporate events.
Like the other troupes in its class, the Spirit of David was very aggressive in its business approach. Theatre production was taken beyond the conventional, almost conservative feature that had defined the sixties through the mid-nineties.
To these groups, the age-long maxim, 'The Show Must Go On' which had defined the operative environment of theatre was out-dated. Theatre must be business-like in orientation. And this pretext conditioned the content, form, context and as well the approach of their productions.
Of course, the groups broke so many sacred rules of the theatre in the process, not the least, the quality of performance. It was most times difficult to apply the strict paradigms of dramatic theory and literary criticisms to their performances and operations because of their non-conformity to the basic rules of performance art. Yet they brought a fresh breath to the stage which had been rusticated by the poor patronage, dis-enabling economic environment and skepticism by the general public.
It could be said that the positive examples the groups set, particularly, the emphasis on commercial viability of the stage led to the seeming explosion of productions that the theatre scene was to witness in the past three years or so; maybe so, in the Lagos environs.
As a matter of fact, when a group of middle-age veterans of the Lagos-Ibadan-Ife stage circuit including Mahmoud Ali-Balogun, Lara Akinsola and Ayo Oluwasanmi among others, mid-last year, decided on a missionary project entitled: 'The Revival Of Dramatic Excellence On The Nigerian Stage' designed to "to rescue the Live Theatre from its current lack of excellence", they were perceived by some critics, as having been stimulated by the doors of possibilities flung open by the new non-conventional theatre groups.
The 'veterans' had teamed up under the name Stagecrafts Incorporated with Ali-Balogun's multi-media outfit, Brickwall Productions as motivator. They resolved to stage a play a year as a "way of setting examples of quality productions". They mounted a high-class production of Ola Rotimi's If... Tragedy of the Ruled which also featured top actors and actresses. But the financial failure of Stagecrafts no doubt, killed the dream at birth! The performance could only hold once and could not travel to Abuja and other parts of the country as had been projected.
Juxtaposed against the success of the neo-Pentecostal-church groups, the failure of Stagecrafts further signposted by its inability to be sustained in 2003, has further affirmed that there is much the school-trained artistes can learn from the business formula of the non-conventional troupes.
Aside of these groups, the various foreign cultural institutions continued to be at the forefront of theatre promotion and production. The front runners remained the Goethe Institut (German Cultural Centre) and the Maison de France (French Cultural Center) while occasionally the Public Affairs Department (which under the name United States Information Service, USIS had produced many plays through a seemly monopolized project by the Chuck Mike-led Collective Artistes and Performance Studio Workshop), remembers to mount a play.
The Goethe Institut had in 1996 developed a project with a group of artistes under the control of Kakaaki Arts Company led by Ben Tomoloju and, Jide Ogungbade-led Rotom Productions. Christened Africa Project, it was designed as an African-European (Nigerian-German) cultural dialogue which produced a global theatrical theme per year. Each year produced at least two plays that were then staged in Nigeria and later in various cities of Germany. The plays were usually co-directed by a German and a Nigerian director.
After its debut in 1996 with a Euro-African reinterpretation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Ben Tomoloju's Amona (itself an African response to the question of guilt as espoused in Oedipus), the project took on an educational garb in 1997 when an award- winning playwright came in from Germany to hold a workshop with a select group of local actors, dramatists and directors.
The idea was to develop an 'authentic African life story' with universal thematic focus and performance style. The experiment led to the creation of A Horse on my Back. And in 1998, the play was staged with another, Andorra Goes Kinshasa (a Femi Osofisan's adaptation on Max Frisch's classic Andorra), in Lagos and parts of Germany. Africa Project produced Iphigenia Finds Aiyelala (adapted by Ben Tomoloju from Aeschylus' Iphigenia auf Tauris) in 1999.
In 2000, another the project presented Asylanten (Asylum Seekers) by Susanne Amatosero after a workshop with a group of local artistes. However, the cut in funding of its operations overseas by the Goethe headquarters in Munich Germany, led to a stoppage of the project as the budget was no longer realistic and; quest for local supplement sponsorship of the project had consistently failed to yield any fruit.
The French Cultural Centre on its own, has never really had a sustainable theatre project. But it has always had individual projects that brought in experts -- a director, actor or choreographer --- into workshop with select Nigerian artistes. Usually, a play or dance package is developed which is performed in Lagos and then sent on tour of many cities of the country. However, in the dance art, the Centre has had the most enduring project.
It had five years ago commenced the modern dance and choreography project which brought the famous French choregrapher, Claudio Brumachon into contact with a wide group of young Nigerian dance artistes. The workshop no doubt, radicalized the character of the dance theatre in the country. It opened a new vista of professionalism to the Nigerian dancers who before now had been confined to merely adapting the various traditional and ethnic dance steps and forms to the proscenium stage. The modern dance form as obtained in the West and to which the French are the greatest promoters, became a regular feature on the local stage.
The Brumachon workshop presented those (now) astute professionals as Ijo Dee, Omitun among others. These are groups, which have been competing well and winning awards at international events in the last few years. The profusion of these new professional modern dance companies led to the creation of the yearly project, Dance Meets Danse, an across-Africa (Nigeria-France cultural dialogue) project that in its three years, has brought dancers and choreographers from no less than 20 countries into the country.
For the theatre however, the French Centre last year teamed up with the National Troupe of Nigeria to launch the project, EXPLAFEST -- a festival of young theatre directors and dramatists. This was a low budget feast of performances that at its birth, showcased at least six short plays and gave the young directors a lot of work to do.
The first edition of Explafest held in the second quarter of 2002 featured six plays which were performed at the French Cultural Centre, Lagos and the National Theatre simultaneously. The plays included:
* The Bridge, written by Don Pedro Obaseki and directed by Henry Eze Sainyo; *Tai written by Sesan Ogunledun and directed by Makinde Adeniran;
*The Twist, written by Ahmed Yerimah and directed by Israel Eboh; and
*The Engagement, written by Femi Osofisan and directed by Nwachukwu.
Explafest which threw up a lot of promises unfortunately could not be sustained by the two collaborating institutions. No doubt, shortage of fund is at the root of death of the dream.
But the festival was probably the next big theatre show after the yearly Festival of Nigerian Theatre, FESTINA initiated by the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP). The project was organized in three-zone format such that it could cater for the commonest geo-polity of the country, since NANTAP purports to have membership spread in at least 18 states of the federation.
The first edition of FESTINA held in August 2001 at the Glover Memorial Hall, Lagos. Plays performed at the first edition were:
*Aikin Mata (based on the classic Lysisrata) by the Northern Zone;
*King Emene by Eastern Zone;
*Death and the King's Horseman by the Western Zone.
The second edition of FESTINA in 2002 was at the MUSON Centre, Lagos and the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos. The plays performed were:
*Ovonramwen Nogbaisi by Ola Rotimi directed by Israel Wekpe for the Eastern Zone;
*The Beggars' Strike, (an adaptation of an Aminata Sow Fall's novel The Beggars' Strike) by Teju Olaniyan directed by Tony Shittu for the Northern Zone;
*Aman-Iba by Amayo Uzo Phillips and directed by Ben Tomoloju for the Southern Zone.
The Third edition of FESTINA took place at MUSON Centre, Lagos in August 2003 and featured:
*The Divorce by Wale Ogunyemi, directed by Niji Akanni for the Western Zone;
*Mooremi Ajaasoro by Lekan Balogun and directed by Ahmed Yerima;
*Things Fall Apart (adapted from Chinua Achebe's classic by same title) by Bassey Effiong who also directed the play for the Eastern Zone.
Note that there was no play to represent the Northern Zone in the third edition of FESTINA.
There have been other theatre performances some of which are outlined below:
*Queen Amina of Zazzau by Wale Ogunyemi directed by Patrick Jude-Oteh at the yearly MUSON Festival in 1999. Another performance took place at National Theatre in May 2000.
*Jankariwo by Ben Tomoloju and directed by Tunji Azeez for the 2002 MUSON festival;
Also there were various drama skits by the King's Theatre led by the university teacher, Tosan Edremoda-Ugbeye which were presented every Monday evening at the Nimbus Art Centre on Victoria Island, Lagos, including the popular Romario and Jullieta adapted from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
In another part of the city in Ikeja, another group of young enthusiasts under the name Black Image Theatre presents a monthly theatre show, more of drama skits, at the La Campaigne Tropicana. The project has been on for about two years and has an in-built cultural tourism dimension as it is done in conjunction with the management of the La Campagne Company.
In the neighbourhood also, African Film Company owned by the marketer-actor Yinka Ogundaisi, has revived the aged Little Theatre located in the elite Country Club. The company which has a track record of promoting the popular 1980s television Yoruba drama, Feyikogbon, had started out about two years ago with the idea of reviving the famous Duro Ladipo travelling theatre. It had struck a working relationship with the Duro Ladipo Memorial Theatre led by the wife of the legendary dramatist, actor, Biodun Ladipo. The collaboration early this year, marked 25 years of transition of Duro Ladipo with a revival of the classic, Oba Koso. The company has also launched Global Children Theatre and has plans to mount a children workshop theatre every month to cater for the needs of children of members of the Country Club.
In the past five years, the yearly International Theatre Day, ITD, as celebrated by the NANTAP has been a good source of theatrical activities. The practice had been to mount at least, a play a year. Sadly however, the celebration has not witnessed any theatre performance in the pats two years. The organisation had instead presented a night of variety entertainment. Also, the yearly International Dance Day (IDD) celebration every April 29 by the Guild of Nigerian Dancers, GOND, has often climaxed with the staging of a dance drama on performance. There was Victor Eze's - Nsibidi in 1998 and Osusu Owoh in 2000. 2002 had A Dance for Ola Rotimi and this year had Together As One.
The play reading sessions of the National Troupe of Nigeria which started in 2000 has also elicited much interest in theatrical activities. It usually featured public reading and critiquing of new scripts. Sometimes, selected scenes are enacted at the reading.
Other notable performances have been:
* Echoes from Lagoon by Rasheed Gbadamosi, directed by Shade Ogunde; 2000;
*Who is Afraid of Solarin by Femi Osofisan produced by NANTAP as part of activities marking the 2000 edition of International Theatre Day; 2000;
*Ire Olokun by Hubert Ogunde ; directed by George Ogunde; January, 2000;
*Locked Inside; March, 2002;
*Mbarra (dance drama) by Arnold Udoka and National Troupe; December, 2001
*The Sisters written and directed by Ahmed Yerima; January, 2001
*Song of a Goat by John Pepper Clark; directed by Ahmed Yerimah; 2001
*Kuluso - a theatre outreach programme performed at the University of Lagos in 1999 and 2000.
*Midnight Hotel by Femi Osofisan; directed by Abiodun Abe; June, 2001 (as part of activities marking Femi Osofisan's 55th birthday).
*Conflict Resolution by written and directed by Fred Agbeyegbe; 2002;
*Ojomolami by Martins Adaji; 2002;
oMekunu Melody written and directed by Felix Okolo for Tall and Wide, Communications; 2002;
*Iludun; March, 2002
*House of Gold written by Thomas Animashaun; March, 2002;
*Drums of War written and directed by Ojo Bakare Rasaki; 2002;
*Her Majesty's Visit by Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo; directed by Patrick Ombo; 2001;
* She stoops to conquer by Oliver Goldsmith; directed by Israel Eboh; February 2000 (as part of activities marking the 10th anniversary of Fezi Production);
*Yemoja - written and directed by Ahmed Yerima (National Troupe of Nigeria's presentation as part of activities marking the 41st Independence anniversary of Nigeria and a preview of the performance before its tour of Mexico); October, 2001;
*Madness Junction; directed by Binda Ngazolo; November, 2001;
*Epitaph for Simon Kisulu by Audu Ogbeh; directed by Gloria Ogunyemi; April, 2002;
*Strong Breed by Wole Soyinka; directed by Ahmed Yerima , 2002;
*Farewell to a cannibal rage by Femi Osifosan; directed by Israel Eboh, September 2002 (as part of activities marking United Nations' International peace day);
*The Scoundrel Suberu by Dapo Adelugba;
*Ori (Dance of Destiny) by Dayo Liadi;
February 2003;
*Ladugba; St. Dominic Catholic Church, Yaba; May , 2003;
*Agbedo; August, 2003;
*Genesis; August, 2003;
*Community Call - a theatre outreach programme staged at motor parks and markets in Lagos.
*Valley cry - a theatre outreach programme.
*One legend Many Season, written and directed by Femi Osofisan for the Christmas Season of 2001;
*The Sick People by Ahmed Yerima; directed by Israel Eboh; January 2001;
*Bishop Ajayi Crowther written and directed by Femi Osofisan 2002;
Other theatre related programmes in Lagos in the last five years include The Black Heritage Festival which had its first edition in Badagry between May 24-29, 2001.The second e edition held in Badagry and Epe between August 23-30, 2002;
*First ECOWAS Culture, Tourism and Fashion Festival; Grand Hotel Asaba, Delta State; January 2002;
*Pan Yoruba Festival of Arts and Culture; Oyo State Cultural Centre, Mokola, Ibadan
April 2002;
Other remarkable theatre producers in the past five years include the:
o Optimum Art Konsotium based at the Lagos State University which produces plays regularly on the campus with occasional foray to the public circuit.
oFred Agbeyegbe, the lawyer-playwright who had been instrumental to the flourish of theatrical activities of the eighties with the Ajo Productions has also been relatively active producing among others Human Cargo which toured Ghana recently.
o Kakaaki Arts Company led by Tomoloju and, which produced the huge Red Cross Theatre Project (Askari) in 1997 and toured 20 states of the federation in a project described as perhaps the biggest of its kind since FESTAC 77, has been on stage every year.
oCentrestage Productions led by the actor-teacher Sola Fosudo has also been active. It recently staged Osofisan's Twingle Twangle, to mark the 43rd Independence Day celebration.
oDon-Pedro Obaseki, a trained stage actor who has moved more into the video-drama genre has always returned to the stage. In his repertory in the last five years have been Obaseki, Azagidi, Idia among others. Azagidi will be presented in October 2003 as the drama entry for the yearly MUSON festival of arts and culture.
Significantly too, the various comedy and light entertainment shows have thrown up a lot of theatrical activities. Of note is the yearly Nite of A Thousand Laughter initiated by the movie artiste, Opa Williams and; the Crab Ya Rib by the dancer-actor, Julius Agu. Lately they have been joined by other comic actors such as Okey Bakassi, Yinka Adeyemi and Tunde Adewale a.k.a Tee-A.
The Creative Arts Department of the University of Lagos unde the tutelage of Tunji Sotimirin has also launched Arts-O'Clock, a mimi-festival of theatre, which presents a series of play per semester both as part of the students training and for the entertainment of the public.

Macintosh HD:Story of Nigerian Theatre2.doc





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Essay: Sussan Omagu




Thinking of Sussan

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 3:50 PM WAT

Sussan Omagu:
Graffiti of an interventionist


YOU would think that the nebulous albeit inchoate argument about the place of minimalist art in a figural artistic tradition such as Nigeria’s has been over-stretched; that all the gladiators have since reached some consensus on the possibility of 'form' as an alternative to the 'figurative' or 'representational' art that has characterised (in fact, dominated) practice and discourses of the Nigerian art exhibition scene.
Particularly, as some critics had observed in the past, many of those – form-wise – who dared to stretch their vision beyond the common template of existing painting traditions have since seemed to retrace their steps. Some of them had been hounded by peer criticisms to submit to the ‘common line’, while others simply discovered how frustrating it is to step out of the ‘mainstream’, even if for a short while, through a real or perceived unrestrained flirtation with experimentation.
The truth is that the Nigerian exhibition site remains a close circuit, almost intolerant of exuberant experimentation; and so has little sympathy for art for the sake of philosophical cogitation.
But Sussan Ogeyi Omagu has rebelled against the quaint silence; thus returning the argument that form as against content could indeed drive the character of art. Not only that, her art points a new direction for the debate and raises the heat of a redefinition of the boundaries of artistic vision.
The painter equally highlights a new direction of the argument, which is whether or not it is possible for the minimalist to escape the trap of sacrificing content for aesthetics; meaning for form; and draughtsman-ship, sometimes in expressionism modules in colour use. Or whether the minimalist navigating on a vast field of concepts but confined to the properties of few symbolic colours can be trusted to produce a work that is complete in all the departments of traditional painting culture.
OMAGU's latest collection entitled 'MINIMALISM' going on display, late March through April, 2007 in the Goethe Institut, Lagos, is no doubt a "leap" (as contended by a fellow painter) from what she did in the past. Whereas the tendency for a reduction in the content of her canvas/board, especially the volume of figural representation – itself a sort of departure from the Ahmadu Bello tradition where she trained – had manifested even as early as when she debuted on the exhibition circuit, Omagu perhaps has never been as daring on canvas as she appears in the current collection. She has remarkably fused symbolic motifs (newspaper cuttings, graffiti, patches of canvas), expressionistic colour use with romantic aesthetics (design patterns defined by poetic lines and verses, signs and symbols from anyaa facial scarification tradition of her Ogoja native home in northern Cross River State), to produce paintings that bear uncommon signature. And considering her strength in composition even in her deceptively lean content, she manages to evoke a cathartic denouement in her viewer. She commits her audience to a deep sense of reflection not just through her sometimes versified theme as in the work Courage, but also through her deployment of effusive lines and temperamental patterning in such a way that she invokes the image of a painter in unending dialogue with her canvas.
The result of this flight of creative temper are poetic pictures that are forested with hideous motifs whose implied meanings are sometimes coded in the tenor and intensity of her colours as in 'All Things Bright and Beautiful', where the onyaa script shares characteristics with nsibidi patterns.
Specifically for this collection, Omagu dots on themes of afflictive social and political orientation as in 'And the Man Died' – (recall wole Soyinka's prison memoir, 'The Man Died') – a work compositionally suggestive of a thriller movie scene, with imageries of anger, fear, poverty, sickness streaming out of the screen. Her three-part 'Handle With Care' series, in particular, seeks better life for children. But rather than draw empathy with images of depressed, pathetic children with poverty-oriented motifs strewn all over the face of the canvas, the artist puts the meaning in the motions of her lines, the newspaper and patches of canvas graffiti and, of course, the emotive raw colours.
Notably too, her predilection for feminism and the politics of gender discourse comes across in some of the works.
Though she once in a press interview, declined the feminist tag, saying: "when I paint I see myself just as an artist, not from gender perspective", 'Dear Sister' – which bears the expression of a woman resolute to break free from a certain enslaving condition – hints at a strong feminist contention. 'Dependable' with a newspaper rider caption 'More Women Must Be Involved In Governance', like Dear Sister, is a poetic sermon on the trials, if not travails of womanhood.
Largely, however, Omagu's thematic contention is consistent with her career profile as an artist. She once established her social concern thus: "In my country Nigeria, we have abundant human and natural resources and yet there is still hunger, unemployment and dejection in the land. In fact, an average Nigerian is not getting the basic necessities of life and everybody knows that a few people feed at the expense of the huge mass of the people of this country".
In "most of my works I try to give hope and courage to our people and to say that there is always a brighter side to life. So, I tell people, as in Tomorrow's Far, get up from that depression, go out there and accomplish your dream".
This sermonic voice is also found in 'Loss is a Protagonist', an installation with newspaper, which she explains "Whatever you lose, you learn in the process. If you are positive-minded and maleable; every experience comes with a price." Also 'This Too Shall Pass', is "a word of encouragement and hope that "things will get better as long as you stay focused and works towards a better date".
Hope and Courage, these are the dual resolutions driving Susan Omagu’s artistic vision; she is comfortable preaching, and seeing the finest points in every human condition, no matter the depth of despair or anxiety. In fact, the miniature series, 'My City is Under Construction', sums her conviction – "there is hope that things will definitely get better when the right people are sought and put into place to play the right role at the right time; it’s a process akin to a city under construction, which will reach its desired end". The choice of theme is the romantist in her, and this may be her greatest attraction to her audience.

IT is not really Omagu’s theme or subjects that excites one in this show, however; it is the dimension to which she has extended the frontiers of her chosen form. It is here that the strength of the artist, her competence in handling her medium as well as her depth of vision are celebrated. And her treatment of the subjects as well as deployment of objects in accomplishing the various mixed media works are only amplified by the form she has chosen.
One supposes that the essentials of Omagu's intervention in the earlier referenced discourse on the essence of form ‘minimalism’ – is to contend that it is possible to achieve a synergy between content, form and aesthetics, without losing out in the usually delicate area of depth both of artistic vision and technical sophistication. Interestingly, this has been the usual pitfalls of many later day minimalism converts as is very vivid in the art exhibition circuit, especially in Lagos.
However, it should be clear even here that it is not as if the works of minimalists or painters who show predilection for this style must always be held with suspicion; as if minimalism itself is an escape from the perceived laborious vocation of painting; a negation of the rigour of draughtsmanship. The point is that the sudden advent or shall one say the preponderance of minimalist paintings on the local exhibition circuit, tends to throw up many questions about the competence of certain painters in the handling of the several technical requirements of the genre of painting; drawing, effective/innovative exploration of colour scheme, pictorial composition and symmetry being very vital. Added to this is the often seeming impatience, perhaps apparent disregard, of such so-called ‘minimalists’ for the process of accomplishing a rounded piece of painting; a complete piece of artwork.
Here Omagu distinguishes her work through her seeming deliberateness to strike a symmetry among the divergent particulars of painting – where she negates drawing, she engages objects or employs the direct communication vehicle of graffiti in the context of mixed media format. Through this approach she carries her commentary on various social and political tensions in the national polity as well as in human relationships. Where she declines to drench the whole face of the canvas in generous paints, as prevalent in most works that currently grace most local galleries or display foyers, she applies colour to convey the intensity of the mood and tenor of the subject, or object of contention in the painting (See 'Spillage', 'Apparition', 'I See You', for instance). Sometimes, the inter-course between colour and object is so knitted that, viewing 'U Learn' for instance, one is drawn to query which is her central motif, the poetic colour or the newspaper/canvas graffiti?
Remarkably, aside the form, the minimalist predilection also manifests in her engagement of colour, which appears more like an interrogation of what had been; a sort of rebellion against the established mode of rendition, in which colour is seemingly subservient to content. In other words, colour was used only as an appendage, engaged for mere aesthetic purposes, such as in elucidating the theme; or as mere embellishment, to create an atmosphere to the content. In this instance, Omagu could be said to be a mere aesthete, who cherishes evoking emotive response in her viewer through atmospheric effects.
In most of the current collection, she is significantly, bolder in her experimentation playing, essentially, with shades of red, black, white and gray, and in rare occasions, with blue and green. Her colours appear almost ritualistic in some instances i.e so deeply engaging that one suspects an addiction, a sort of worshipping of the evocative power of those hues to inspire deeper meaning beyond the mere appearance on the board or canvas. It is curious for instance, that Omagu would rather deploy the raw texture of the colour than variegate its character or graduate its intensity to buoy the ambience of the painting. Perhaps this comes in the context of the minimalist’s orientation, in which case, having eliminated the more traditional particulars of the painting such as figures and a motif-bristling face of the canvas, the artist must have found alternative paradigms to elucidate her artistic contention.
Beyond the riches of her colour scheme, however, the temperament of her strokes and the cadences of her painting vocabulary present are reflexive of a poet at work in visual representation.
IN a press interview, during her first solo, Expectations, held in 2005, Omagu had hinted at the source of her influences; she admires the forms and motifs of fellow artist Ndidi Dike – who herself is currently experimenting with space, shades and colour (not only on her traditional wood panels but on canvas). Omagu said: "As an African artist I try to incorporate things African in my works. I also like the colour scheme of Jerry Buhari, who happened to be my teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. As an artist I enjoy fresh and live colours and I try to see how to apply them in my canvas".
Omagu hinted in the course of preparing this exhibition that the theme she desired to explore drove the forms she has adopted. This is perhaps another departure from the lean club of minimalists here, who often operate like absurdists with the with the form seeming to interface with, sometimes intrude, on the meaning.
THE current show, her second solo, provides a different template to evaluate her emerging voice. Thus it is perhaps, providential that she has chosen to experiment with form and colour – two platforms that give her ample room to stretch her imagination and creative temperament. But she ensures that the experiment immunises her against afflictions from the sometimes cacophony of influences in the visual arts circuit.
Should this show be taken as a ‘one-off’ or suggestive of a new direction for her not-so-old career as a professional painter? The answer may not be so glaring now until her artistic ouvre in the next few years (or exhibition) is studied. But what Susan Omagu has shown is that there is a limitless possibility to which she is ever willing to push her creative intervention in experimental art.
Jahman Anikulapo,
Lagos.
March, 2007


NB: Article was written without knowledge of the fact that the title of the collection of work is MINIMALISM. It was sheer coincidence.





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Essay: Some Family Do Have Them




Spme Family Do Have Them

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 4:03 PM WAT

THE RANSOME-KUTI FAMILY: IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, THE MOTHER AND THE ACTIVIST CHILDREN...

BY JAHMAN ANIKULAPO

It was the weirdest of the family that first gave a hint of the root of the virus that had, no doubt, eaten deep into the soul of the Ransome-Kutis.
On a most appointed day a little two decades ago, after his dramatic session of worship in the comic-looking altar in his music kingdom, the Afrikan Shrine, he was accosted by a reporter who had been excited at the latest act from the musician's seeming endless reservoir of madness:
'Why are you changing your name from Ransome-Kuti, when your brothers have maintained the family's name?'
The legendary acid-mouthed musician took a long drag on his Three Rings cigarette, smiled, shot a direct missile of a look at the reporter: 'You go first go ask ya papa why im deh bear Joseph, Johnson, Stonehead or abi na elephantiasis be im name.'
Not wanting to let the yabbis master slip away from the question, the reporter repeated his query: 'We know of Beko Ransome-Kuti, Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, why Fela go change im own name now?'
'Well as you be original winsh make I tell you small bio...'
His multitude of hangers-on and fans screamed his alias: Ogostin di tori teller...' hailing such as this usually got the man leaping in frenzy; he begins: You see, Ransome, na di name weh slave master bin give my great great grand papa. E mean say my grand grand great papa na slave, weh one master com dash another.... Ransome, gift, dash...'
More ululation followed this revelation, which though mouthed in slapstick now, was probably not a piece of news to some acolytes of the Afrikan Shrine's Chief Priest.
The man continued nevertheless: 'My great grand papa was a rebel stubborn man, as im refuse to give the slavemaster im real name after dem purchase am for market, na im the slave master kuku call am Ransome... gift weh dem give am to cover igbese (debt) weh the slave master bin owe im trade partner'.
The wird being dressd in his peculiar stage costume, stretched his hand and his customized jumbo wrap of hemp was engraved into his pretty palm. A deep pull at the massive stick, he jumped up and paced down the little passage towards the changing room at the back of the stage, the reporter and a handful of chaps in his tow, he declared with a stiffer expression, which manifested a hardened resolve: 'Me I no fit continue with that kain name, I be Anikulapo... I get death for my pocket, and person we him get that one im no fit die again lailai...'
He stepped out of the dingy room into the expanse of the hallway, where a crowd was waiting, not particularly for him, yet conscious that the Lord of the Republic, was always around to protect them against the prowling men of the police force that had laid siege to the Shrine since the dawn of the day.
Raising his famous black power salute, the screaming of 'Anikulapo-Kuti' broke out amid catcalls... the entire shrine palpitated to the rhythm of exuberant displays by the youthful acolytes, many of whom were already high on substances that included hemp and local gin....
Anikulapo!!! Varied interpretation of the name were also created on the spot .. anigbolapo - one who habours marijuana in his pocket, alokolepon (one how has enormous male genitalia.. etc.
The concert soon resumed...
***
THOUGH carved in such hilarious cadences, the impact of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's (formerly Ransome-Kuti) act was not lost on those who had made it a duty to set a store of high value by what he says; even if to a larger segment of the society, the musician must have lost his mind by his various anti-norm acts of late.
Date was 1985: It was at the launch of his most definitive album Beast of No Nation at the Afrikan Shrine on Pepple Street in the heart of Ikeja the capital of Lagos State, where he had spent all his adult life since he returned from London late fifties.
Fela had in a way given a background to how the blood of non-conformism was planted in the veins of the family.
***

Rebellion... the virus started with the grandfather -- Josiah Jesse (1855-1930), streamed into his son, Israel Oludotun (1891-1955), who infected his wife, Olufunmilayo (1900-1978), and both passed it on to their own daughter and sons (Dolupo (1926-2006), Olikoye (1927-2003), Olufela ( 1938-1997), and Bekololari (1940-2006)... and now it has been injected in the grandchildren... who already are passing it on to their own children - the fifth generation of the Ransome-Kuti family.
In a sense the family started out on a class suicide mission - they stooped from the pinnacle of societal pedestal of comfort and affluence to fraternize with the flotsam and jetsam of the community. And in this unusual move they had always been regarded as outlaws, anti-norms, rebels and those to whom the society has to be circumspect. But that was only to the high and mighty whose myth of super-humanity they had shattered. To the mass body of the poor, helpless and hapless in whose service they deployed their services, the family remains an eternal hero, and even if their offspring do not step deep into the dangerous trenches of activism, the reverence for the Ransome-Kuti remains etched in the deep of the sand of history.
***
The rebellion, if it could be termed so, or humanism if it can be rationalised so, is the plank on which the family erected its legend of being. And as history of the struggles of the varied generations of the family would show, the rebellion are in three formalistic dimensions o cultural nationalism,
o social-political activism and
o humanitarian activism.
Remarkably, the most rambunctious of the family's activism -Socio-political - was taken from the unusual source, their mother.

CULTURAL ACTIVISM, AND NATIONALISM...
It all began with Josiah Jesse.
JJ had been born June 1, 1855 at Igbein in Abeokuta to a weaver, soldier and community diplomat. An early convert to Christianity, it was in the new faith that he began his rebellion. He had queried the established order of worship, wondering why the growing body of native converts still had to be made to relate to a Lord that seemed so distant to their cultural norms and expectations. He chose the strongest weapon, the language of communication in the church. As catechist of the Gbagura Church, he gradually moved his people to appreciate that there are traits in their cultural norms that are compliant with the Christian faith; particularly that their language, songs and drums are not evil, and in fact could serve as instruments to glorify the Lord.
This essentially was not to the total comfort of the church hierarchy, which thought that such a treatment of the faith at an early age of the mission could, in fact, mortgage the future of the church; particularly as there was then still a strong resistance by some influential members of the society - nameky the Ogboni cult -- to the new faith, leading to what was described as half-hearted acceptance of the gospel among the natives.
Thus the Rev JJ Ransome-Kuti faced difficulties in his service to the Lord and the Church. However, though the leadership loathed aspects of his operation he was an irresistible factor in the advancement of the Church. He was progressive. He had moved the congregation from their usual open-air location into a building, which he succeeded in mobilising the community to construct. He had also improved the quality of the Church music, even if in that process he had changed the content and performance context of the music, which earned him reprimand from the hierarchy of the faith. He had also established the Church as central to the progress of the society in the way he mobilized the flock to render service to their community. In this context, unlike in other places where the faith often sat as foreign intrusion to the life of the community, JJ made the Church to be part of the society.
But this too was not to the comfort of the Church top echelon... his activities was seen as capable of dragging the Church into some perceived contentious practices in the society. But then the congregation swelled by his innovation, and this at least gladdened the conquistador vision of the Church's headquarters in Europe.
For these feats he was popular among the flock, and irresistible to the Church.
However, after his ordination as a Deacon in 1895, he was moved out of the centre to a remote part of the Church district, Sunren-Ifo, about 60 miles away. Though the Church said it needed JJ's unique wisdom and capability to help restore peace in the community that had been turned chaotic in the aftermath of a war, the motive for the movement was said to have been spurred by the need to exile his nuisance from the centre, where the Church had been making remarkable progress.
However Rev JJ made his mark in the Sunren-Ifo after an initial turbulent starting in which he had many clashes with the strong influential forces that had taken hold of the soul of the community. His radical disposition too had launched him into the trenches with the converts who saw his radical ways as anti-norm, especially departing from the practice of his predecessors in feeding on the largesse provided by the congregation. He had continued his mission of uniting the Church and the Society, and this brought him into repeated conflicts with the authorities as well as the Community governance.
JJ's reputation as a competent leader of people grew with his ascendancy in the church hierarchy. Gradually he was pushed up the political ladder. In 1903 he was asked by the Abeokuta District Government to, in addition to his new role as the superintendent of the Abeokuta Church, act as its representatives in times of emergency. He made a success of the role, and this helped in pushing his profile in his missionary work. The congregation grew even as he advanced his objective of transforming the traditional mode of worship in the church, of course amidst great resistance by the leadership.
JJ's radical deployment of the Church to challenge some set attitude of the society led him into conflicts with not just the community but also the traditional institution. Notable in this stead was the incidence around 1908 when he literally compelled the traditional ruler of the tyown to allows Christians use the umbrella as against norms that reserved the right for only the king. This caused upheaval, leading to protestations by other members of the community as well as disquiet among some members of the Church who felt that the Priest was bringing the church into conflict with the sacred traditional institutions. The action eventually led to an attack on JJ himself in which he was severely injured.
Until his death on September 4, 1930 at age 75, JJ Ransome-Kuti remained a double-edge radical, reforming the church out of its tradition and challenging societal norms - both making him a hero and as well a virus.

SOCIAL REFORMISM AND HUMANITARIAN ACTIVISM... Israel Oludotun personified it.
JJ would seem to have passed the baton of cultural patriotism to his son, Israel Oludotun, born April 30, 1891. Like his father, Oludotun was a reformist of seemingly insatiable appetite. He left his mark in every office he held, every institution he worked in. He seemed to have imbibed the cultural activism that underscored the rebellion of his father JJ. As a teacher he ensured that the education of the young ones had enough dose of cultural content. And as a catechist, he continued the reforms of the Christian procedures, such that much of the indigenous norms and mores found their ways into the worship and evangelisation. And for the realization of his mission, Israel Oludotun after his BA degree at the Fourrah Bay College, Freetown (1913-16) - an institution where many of West African nationalists had been trained and groomed -- became a teacher at his former school, the Ijebu-Ode Grammar School, founded the Boys Scout movement, which aimed at grooming a new set of young leaders in cultural nationalism.
He left in 1918 by which time he had sown the seed of the new leadership training through the Boys Scout, which influence quickly spread among other schools in the area.
Ransome-Kuti returned to his native home to head the prestigious Abeokuta Grammar School, and in his 22 years, he revolutionised the traditions of the school. His main instrument was to engage the cultural notions of the people in the training of the young ones. Some of his innovations did not find peace with administrators of education in the district, and in the country, but Ransome-Kuti continued. His landmark in this area was the founding of the union of teachers in his local environment, which was to drastically alter the way education was administered in the whole of Egba district. A year earlier in May 1925, Rev JO Lucas had established the very first teachers' union in the country, though strictly for those in Lagos area. Yet it was Ransome-Kuti's local effort that pushed the agenda of the union to the national menu as the fame of its activities spread. It was only natural that at the formation of the National Union of Teachers in 1931, Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti was anointed its founding president. He transformed the Union to a powerful pressure group that shaped the path of education in the country, and largely many parts of Africa. Israel is credited with having deployed his charisma, his focused activism and eloquent vision in agitating better working conditions for the teachers. Naturally he was at conflict with the colonial administrators and their political allies most of the time over the activities of the union; the virus of which also spread to other part of West Africa.

THE MOTHER, FUNMILAYO, ENDOWED THE FAMILY WITH POLITICAL AND CIVIL ACTIVISM.
Whereas the more famous Ransome-Kuti brothers may imbibed cultural reformist and visionary philosophies from their patriarchal heritage from JJ down to his son, Israel, their more known forte, political activism, was no doubt a bug from their mother, Funmilayo, who was born 1900 to the Thomas family of Abeokuta.
In fact the narrative had been provided by the weird being of the family, Fela himself, when in response to a question in 1985, on why he seemed to speak less of his father, he had said,
'My Papa that one im miss road, he say im be churchman deh worship one oyinbo man with biabia... me na my mama I know, that one im be winsh,.. im show dem gaddem yeye rulers pepper'.
And when the woman died in 1978, following injuries she sustained in the Fela versus Soldier fracas, Fela broke down in tears on recollecting the impact his mother had on his life... 'That woman weh dem kill so, na the soul of revolution gangan na im dem exterminate so'.
Some commentators had reasoned that the death of Funmilayo, did a permanent damage to Fela's psyche, and even affected the movement of his music. One, he became more militant, a deviant and gradually intolerant of what he perceived inanities in the system, especially if such were authored by his favourite subject of derision, the political/military elites. His music lost its musicality and became more of political pamphleteering, in sound format.
An insight into the political sagacity of Funmilayo is provided by the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka in his childhood recollection, Ake, The Year of Childhood, when he captured how Mrs Ransome-Kuti had led a group of women including his own mother, to invade the palace of the then Alake of Egbaland, to protest certain policies that they thought were inimical to the interest of the womenfolk.
Soyinka a cousin of the Ransome-Kutis was a student in Rev. Israel Oludotun's Ab eokuta Grammar School, and in recollecting the enigma of the strict disciplinarian fondly called Daodu or 'D-a-o-o-o-o' by his bemused wards, offered sufficient clues on the difference between the activism of the man and his wife, Funmilayo whom he dubbed 'Beere', also a teacher in the same school. He recalled how at a time the then principal, Ransome-Kuti had journeyed abroad, a group of women had begun massing around his equally tough wife.
'It was informal gathering which began with three or four women, then increased in numbers', wrote the famous author. 'They met, discussed problems which had to do with the community and matters relating also to their homes'.
He continued, 'They were all Christian, wives of 'professionals' - teachers, pastors, pharmacists, and so on. When they were not discussing problems of sanitation, the shortages or rise in price of some commodity, plans for some kind of anniversary, their absorbing concern appeared to centre on the plight of young women who were just entering a phase of domestic responsibility. Over and over again, came the observation that 'they don't know what to do'; they seem not to know how to take their place in the society...'
Enlightenment, protection of rights, defending the helpless... these about sum up the ideology of the revolution planted by Mrs Kuti and her dream-sharers. And these are the traits that would manifest in the activities of not just Fela and Beko, but in the four Ransome-Kuti siblings, including Dolupo, the first girl, and Olikoye, the professor of medicine, who though least interested in politics radicalised administration of health affairs in the country, with significant influence internationally too.
Significant also is Soyinka's hint of how the Rev Ransome-Kuti helped to broaden the target group of his wife's growing class of self-aware women. The women had started mostly as wives of 'professionals', which meant they had all obtained certain degre of education...
Wrote Soyinka, 'Daodu was strolling past the 'Group' (at the regular meeting then) one afternoon when he stopped to listen. Then he interrupted: 'You know, you women have quite good aims but you don't seem to know how you want to implement them. You've been meeting now for some time and all I see all the time are 'onikaba' (gown wearers). The people who really need your help are the 'arosos' (wrapper wearers), yet they are not here. Forget the problems of social graces for newly weds. Concentrate on the 'aroso'. Bring them in your meetings. They are the ones who need your help'.
It is clear from this that both Rev Israel Oludotun and his wife share a passion for helping to lift the veil of ignorance from the faces of all classes of people, particularly the lowly placed. This is a sort of class suicide for a family that by virtue of its education and social attainment ought to be aristocratic.
The activities of the children, in their divergent manifestations reflect this predilection to speak for the voiceless and mobilise them for collective actions - a trait that is at the base of Beko's human/civil right commitments.
Perhaps most instructive in the shift of baton between Funmilayo and her four children is yet another narration by Soyinka of how eventually the matriarch of the Ransome-Kutis 'was empowered to give notice of a demand for the abolition of tax for women, both to the District Officer and the Alake of Abeokuta and his Council of Chiefs".
According to Soyinka, who by virtue of his own mother whom he dubbed Wild Christian, being an influential member of the 'Group' had done much of the errand running for the women, the meeting at which the mandate was given to Mrs Ransome- Kuti lasted late into the night with each of the members presenting examples of the maltreatment they had lately been receiving from the tax officers to justify why an urgent action needed to be taken by the group.
'On the following morning at breakfast I heard, for the first time, the expression Egba Women's Union...', which was to carry the banner of the protestations not just against indiscriminate tax but also all other forms of unfair policies against the women.
The fame of the Union spread round the country and beyond leading to the series of invitation to Mrs. Ransome-Kuti to attend various conferences overseas. She had the opportunity to draw international attention to the plight of women in the hands of colonial rulers and their cohorts in the ruling class. Ostensibly she had drawn attention to the various exploitations, which the colonial policies or the action of their men in the colony was inflicting on the people. She became quite unpopular with the ruling class, the same way that his children, especially the two politically inclined were to become to the various military and democratic regimes.
There were several attempt to stop Beere, including clandestine campaign ion the media to break her hold on the group of women but all failed. Rather she grew in stature among them as a sort of messiah. The climax of her activities led to the women openly confronting the Alake of Egbaland in his palace - a strange development particularly for a group of women. The incidence in which the women deployed all their weapons of blackmail including baring parts of their bodies, has been variously termed the Egba Women Riot, the women revolt etc.. and consequently, the Alake was forced to flee his throne and proceed on exile.
***

THE THIRD GENERATION, THE MOST INFLUENTIAL
The enigmatic influence of the matriarch of the Ransome-Kuti family on the four children is very profound, perhaps helped by the fact that she spent the longest time with them. 23 years after her husband passed on when the children were still relatively young while - (Fela was just 17 and Beko the last born, 15 in 1955 at the death of Israel), Funmilayo hanged around the children, shaping their cognitive structures, their socio-political sagacity and reformist's consciousness.
Olikoye on his 70th birthday declared: 'Our mother was no doubt the most influential in our lives. She was a very strong, determined woman who believed there is virtue in struggle for the betterment of the society and the comfort of your fellow men...'
Perhaps the greatest virtue underlining the works of the Ransome-Kuti siblings was a sense of responsibility to the welfare of the society in which they live. They believed that they owed the society a service to ensure its betterment and sustenance of good values and secured future. Their gospel was to guarantee every member of the community a tolerable level of comfort and well-being.
Dolupo, the only girl but eldest child, who's lesser known of the four, made her own impact in her nursing profession. Aside her often referenced eccentricities, including the refusal to wear shoes and rather walk bare-footed, she was known to be full of human kindness. She was known to insist that services of the government hospitals be made affordable to every member of the community, and most of the time free to the needy. In her world there were no classes in the society, everybody was equal before the creator. Thus she worked assiduously to dismantle the famous affliction - 'bigmanism' - of the Nigerian system. She was also reported to be fond of prowling the streets to pick up destitute for free medical services, which made her on collided many occasions with her superiors and authorities of the hospitals where she worked.
Until her death on January 6, 2006, Dolupo had filled up the role of matriarch of the family which the mother vacated 29 years earlier in 1978. And she bore this remarkable semblance to the mother. At her funeral, there was a suffusion of tributes not just by the well-placed dignitaries but many ordinary people who had benefited from her gesture of insisting that government institutions' services must be put at the reach of the masses who could hardly afford to cater for their needs. A famous action she took when her immediate younger brother, Koye, became health minister was to write him a public letter that if he had no intention of guaranteeing free primary healthcare to the poor of the country, he had no business taking the oath of office. Quite a lot of people frowned at her decision to send copy of the letter to the media, when she could have made it a 'family affair.' But such a counsel failed to pitch that action against the antecedent of the family.
OLIKOYE: Though often sniggered at by his own brothers for being publicly non-committal to political and civil rights activism, and being politically naïve to the point that he could take a ministerial appointment under a most contemptuous military regime, Olikoye's trajectory in public service is silver-lined. He was a pro-people administrator, who like his father, mother, brothers and even sister, insisted that the ruler must at all time uphold the tenet of their contract with the people - ensure that community wealth serves the need of the collective, rather than greed of the privileged individual. All his years at the United Nations Health bureaucracy, he was reputed to have helped shaped policies that guaranteed safe comfort zone for the needy of the world. While he served as Minister of health under the Ibrahim Babangida military administration, he stuck out of the cabinet whose soul was generally believed to have been carved in treasury looting and misrules.
Almost two decades after he left office (died in 2003), many still wonder how he managed to get away with his impressive reform policies, which drastically altered the destiny of healthcare delivery in the country. His plank was primary healthcare delivery, which he hoped would help make medical services available and affordable to a larger mass of the people. The policy helped to liberalise the administration of health in the country by redirecting its orientation from an elitist predilection. Upon his death, Babangida described Olikoye as a lonesome pro-reform enigma who believed that every man should strive to swim by his own self-resolved tide.
OLUFELA: Ostensibly by the virtue of his vocation and militant, well confrontational, disposition to activism, Olufela, remains the most influential member of the Ransome Kutis. And intriguingly by his act of changing his name to Anikulapo-Kuti, he was the one that could have helped eclipse the name that had become a part of the long, winding, drama-filled script that is Nigeria.
Fela was more than an activist, he was a revolutionary by inclination and disposition both in his psyche and character, even if his method was engraved in adventurism, sometimes weird and crude. And he is surely the most confrontational; and intolerant of the shenanigans of the ruling clan - very much in the tradition of his mother. It might not be simplistic to say that since he was the professed favourite of his mother, and one who lived longest with her, and whose serial confrontation with the security operatives eventually led to the mother's death, they both shared a deeper passion for distrusting the system.
Fela elevated outlaw to a virtue and compelled - not by force - a multitude to be a part of his movement of non-conformists. He had no sympathy for the law crafted by the rulers whom he regarded as corrupt, inept, anti-people oppressors. He deployed his creative sensibility and skill to achieve his objective of mobilising the people to self-realisation and possible action. He could be declared an astute politician who was, however, reluctant to live according to the law skewed by the centrifugal forces in the society to govern conduct of public affairs.
Was Fela dreaming an Utopia? It was most unlikely. Was he thinking of sitting in the state house as leader of government? He did not even equip himself for that role? And that was quite a distance from his objective. But he did form a political party, Movement of the People, MOP. Fela was essentially, an interventionist who deployed the civilising principles of the arts to etch his agenda in the psyche of the people.
He was the child of his mother.
BEKOLOLARI: Though in orientation, Fela's activism is closer to Beko's, the brothers differ in the strength of sacrifice they were ready to make. It could be argued however, that of the family, it was Fela that completely abandoned the Ransome-Kuti's aristocratic heredity, a total renouncing of his elevated class to intervene in the life of the masses of the people from among them. Others, including Beko, who probably spent more time on the street marching and protesting against iniquities in the social and political system, than he ever spent in his clinic as a medical doctor, looked in from up there, or from the outside of the community. This is probably why Fela's influence is more deepening in the public psyche, even among the puritans who despised his lifestyle of express sex and drug. Well, his robust music, soaked in rambunctious politics, helped a lot to spread his influence and will in future, ensure that his influence is not dropped in the abyss of the forgotten.
Beko though as omnipresent in the public eye as his weird brother, Fela, arguably had the diciest start and credential in activism. Of course, he was looking in from up-there/outside; he never like his brother, renounced his privilege background. He fraternised with the mass of the people, fought for them, pounded the streets with them, shared their pains and frustrations, but he did it from his comfort zone - which in any case is an understated fact about many of Nigeria's robust civil activists' clan.
On this course, he and Fela were never in agreement. At his many Shrine-speak, Fela could be heard sniggering at Beko's 'ajebota's (spoilt/privilege child) inner disposition: 'Ha, that Beko na craze colomentality man. Im deh fight for the masses, but im fit chop for buka or shit for public, or smoke igbo for street?' Fela declared on an occasion when Beko was arrested after yet another street protest. This comment ricocheted a similar Fela's yabbis of his dear younger brother when Beko took up the job of Chairman of the board of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH... 'Im no get business for that kain oyinbo medicine centre, and working for these yeye government sef', he had said, reaffirming his denouncement of orthodox medicine as capable of saving the Blackman from ailment.
Beko himself was to say of Fela in an interview: 'that one, he is a crazy fellow, it was frustrating growing up with him. He was always up to one thing or the other. We argued over everything, and we were at loggerheads all the time. He used to make fun of me and say 'Mr Logic... do you think you can address everything with logic'.
Beko's statement is instructive of the fundamental difference between the two brothers - incidentally however, the two dimensions re deducible from the character traits of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti's brand of activism. For Fela, struggle means getting into the trenches and doing the 'roforofo' (rough, possibly violent) fight - matching the enemies gut for gut, brawn for brawn, no matter the risk and cost to your personal safety and comfort; for Beko, the struggle must toe the line of ideology, it must be logical on concept and execution. 'I am that kind of person who is very concerned about my environment. As long as I lived, I will continue to engage in the struggle to make sure that my society, that my environment, is better.' says Beko shortly after the sickly man came out of hospital following another bout of illness.
In another interview, Beko gave an insight into his own unwritten pact with the people: 'Our people must realise that things will not change on their own. The kind of people we have in power today are very ruthless people who care less about the ordinary citizen. Unless we are prepared to fight real hard, they would one day wipe all of us completely out from the shores of this land. We must also realise that the consequences of fighting, in remaining in the struggle is not as bad as engaging in the struggle. We shouldn't be afraid in fighting for our collective rights, happiness and survive'.
Bekololari, a pace away from his brother, Fela, believes in the collective struggle. He would not form his own party or institution through which to fight, rather, he would identify people who share his dream of redeeming the environment from the claws of forces of darkness, and form a collective to give the struggle wider appeal and a tighter muscle. The problem he ran into in this choice, and which must have gravely undermined his influence and as well tormented his hapless, frustrated soul, is that in his collective of fellow travellers, were to be found activists of credentials; those who were part of the very rot he sought to clean. He had among his close friends and fellow fighters, roguish members of the ruling class, pseudo-human rightists, pretentious ideologists as well as ex-criminals whose main agenda is to rake in hard currency from he donor agencies. He did not discriminate, or did not seem to know how to turn people down once the precept of the struggle is well stressed to the collective.
This is perhaps what Fela referred to as his over-addiction to 'logic'. And surely why he never really was close to the legend of civil and rights activism, Gani Fawehinmi, who was indeed his neighbour in the Anthony Village part of Lagos. It was also certainly why Beko was seemingly flirtatious around the civil society organisations, which saw him literally hopping from one organisation to the other. Even at the time of his death on February 10, 2006, Beko was embroiled in a battle with the Pro-National Conference, PRONACO, a body he had worked very hard to help firm-footed for the purpose of compelling the government of Olusegun Obasanjo to stage a truly representative and purpose-driven national dialogue towards resolving the many incongruities in the federation. He had also run into conflict with the very unexpected quarter, his cousin Wole Soyinka, who had to issue a public declaimer of a rally that Beko's faction of the PRONACO had staged in Ibadan where Soyinka was advertised as a speaker.
His inability to abide by inanities of others, even of his closest associates, earned the hush-hush criticisms of his being dictatorial in his opinion, resentful of opinions that did not emanate from him, intolerant of other people's interest, and overtly self-loving.

A LINK TO THE PAST

To every generation of Ransome-Kuti, its own virtues and authored philosophy of activism, or legacy of intervention in the social, political and cultural orderings of the environment or society. However, the greatest virtue the members shared is the concern for a better, progressive environment, a more humane community of man and a well-defined path to the future.
These virtues are encapsulated in Beko's description of the nature of their parents -- the second generation: 'What you could read from both parents was a genuine concern for their environment. My father was very good at music and he composed numerous songs. He composed Egba National Anthem. He was not necessarily thinking of Nigeria; he was thinking in terms of Yoruba nationhood. When my father died, my mother carried the Nigerian vision a bit further, which was why she joined the National Council of Nigerian and Cameroun Citizens, NCNC, because NCNC of that time was the one group focusing on the concept of one Nigeria, whereas the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC and Action Group, AG were more interested in a federations of the Regions. She transmitted from 'One Africa' to 'One Nigeria'. But in her last years, she had become disillusioned.'

THE FUTURE SPEAKS
Disillusionment!
Sure this was no portion of the Ransome-Kuti dynasty of activists, certainly not of the third generation, aptly represented by Fela and Beko. They both died of ill-health. They died fighting. They expired on the struggle... not exterminated by the struggle.
Perhaps this was the looming sign that the family is not resting yet on Project Better Nigeria, Better Humanity.
For what the future portend for the family in the scheme of struggle. The words of members of the fourth generation provide the guide:

DOTUN RANSOME_KUTI, son of Olikoye Ransome Kuti:
Yes, the burden of the struggle, which our parents championed is on us... It is something that every Nigerian should share for a better society. So in my own little way as Dotun Ransome-Kuti, I'll try and do my own bit. I don't think the death of Beko, the last of the brothers, will end the involvement of the family in the struggle for a just and better society. You could see that already some of us the children are involved in some form of activism or the other. We still have people like Mr. Femi Anikulapo-Kuti. He's doing it in his own little way. I know Mrs. Nike Nedum, who had gone to jail with her late father and she'd always stood by her father. She's doing it already in her own way. I can't say anything of myself, but I know of those two. You don't just say I want to be human rights activist. You have to feel it after you have the conviction. Our dynasty has got to a point where we hold tenaciously whatever we believe in and stand by it till eternity. The fact that your father was an engineer is not a guarantee that you will be an engineer... I don't know what my daughters or my sons will be. They might decide to take up that struggle. I can't talk for other people. I've never been politically inclined. It is not because I don't have any views or things like that. But I don't think I have that push to be rapped up into public arena.

YENI RANSOME-KUTI, performing artiste, designer, daughter of Fela

I share ultimately my father's vision for a better society. My father and his siblings were not fighting for something that's not real. Rather they were fighting for something that's so real. Unfortunately, in their lifetime, the vision did not come to pass... I have the courage to sustain and carry out the struggle. It is the means to carry out the struggle that I don't have. For instance, I'll never accept to serve government or go into politics as it's obtained today. This is 'chop chop' politics. I don't believe in such politics. I can't stand a situation where somebody does something that's obviously wrong and you say we should leave the person by covering him up. I don't believe in that. I believe in being straightforward. I cannot practise 'boju-boju' (shady) politics. I can only deal with people that are honest, because I'm more interested in the betterment of this society. An average youth wants to leave Nigeria for Europe and America. But I believe we should stay here and do something to make ours a better society. My beliefs and ideas are positive force and not radical, because radical is a negative word. They are positive force particularly concerned about changing this country. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to go about it. I started in our own small Africa Shrine. The orientation of our people is wrong now. We don't believe in hardwork again. To me, I look at the shrine with the view that if I'm running a state or a country how would I succeed if I cannot run this shrine properly... My brother, Femi, does the struggle through his songs. Our music has satirical Lyric, trying to reshape the society. Femi started Movement Against Second Slavery... I dream of a society where there will be light, water etc. I wish for a society where we'll be light, water good road, good food, safe and secured etc. when a man is well-fed, he can always think of better ideas to move the society forward. But if he is hungry, the reverse is the case.


FEMI ANIKULAPO KUTI, Musician, son of Fela (he founded the Movement Against Second Slavery)

My music and my life have always been channelled in the direction of struggle for justice and a better society. I don't think I'm afraid of anybody... I'll forever confront injustices that come my way. The struggle for African liberty and total emancipation can only be won collectively, not by an individual. If people are not concerned that for more than 40 years after independence, we don't have light, no good road, so many poor people in the streets, etc, that's getting dangerous. As an individual and as educated as we are, we can't understand that simple fact, only for us to just sit at home and pray, pray, that's the individual's business... There's nothing to be afraid of as far as I'm concerned. I'll continue to do what I'm doing and I'll do it to the best of best. My son will do the same. He's trained in that direction. His son will do the same. It will be the history of Anikulapo- Kuti... I'm not preparing him, but I'm just teaching him the truth. I've been telling him about his grand father. I played his songs for him as much as possible, even my own music. He knows what I'm doing. He knows probably 90 per cent of everything in my life. I have no secret for him. He knows the truth. Now it's for him to use his intelligence to decide, which one he is going to uphold and how he's going to handle that. I can only teach him what I know. So, I teach him as much as possible day-by-day, second-by-second, as much as I can. So, if I'm not here tomorrow he will be able to handle his life. He's prepared for the future. It's his duty to uplift the family name. He has to do better than me. Because the family has a name to protect.

Mrs. NIKE NEDUM (nee Ransome Kuti) daughter of Bekololari

Struggle cannot be passed on genetically. Like I said earlier, it's the responsibility of all Nigerians to seek to hold their leaders accountable to be forthright and consistent in defending what they believe is their rights. If we continue to wait for people because they're from a certain family then not much is going to get done really. It will be the struggle of the lone. I feel concerned about issues and I try as much as possible personally to stand by it and defend whatever I feel strongly about. But I don't think it's the responsibility of the Ransome-Kutis. The fact that my father and his siblings did so, I think it was not a design or a plan that was agreed by them. It just arose by the nature of their character. Whatever role the next generation of the Ransome-Kutis plays will be defined by individual's perception of the society and how they deal with it. Obviously it won't be as if we are sitting down somewhere to hold a meeting and say the next generation must continue the struggle. They just found themselves in circumstances that made them to stand up for what they believed in. I think it is a spirit we should expect from all Nigerians not just the Ransome-Kuti family. If we want a better society in our country, it is a thing we should expect from all Nigerians. People can have expectations you can't stop them. The events as they unfold will determine whether their expectations can be met or not.





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ARt & OUTrage 5




I love Daddy Showkey, I am choking

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 at 4:09 PM WAT

A Love Affair With Daddy Showkey
By Olaiya 'Subomi
My friend James barges in this afternoon, visibly agitated…
"Why, you guys don't give Daddy Showkey and the guys from Ajegunle the respect they deserve; you don’t even put them on your pages? You are biased and segregationist…"
The activist poet raves on. And when he goes like that, you'd better hush him.
"But where did you pick up all these accusations", I launch at him, a bit irritated at his incorrigibility.
"I don’t have to pick it up from anywhere. I read your pages. When was the last time you wrote something about Showkey? Even when he won four award including best song and the best musician in the country award, you only mentioned it in passing. That is not good. The guy is great and he deserves more than you are willing to give him!"
James drops into one of the seats before me, dives into the bowels of his bag clawing at some object. I observe him: such an intelligent fellow but sometimes, lousy with his reasoning; and a running mouth to boot. Perhaps he talks before he thinks. But then his word sparks a thought in me:
Have I really being unfair to these new age Nigerian musicians who peddle their wares as afro-hip-pop and see themselves as culturally more exposed than the musicians in the traditional or trado-modern forms such as juju, fuji, highlife, kalangu, ikwokrikwo among others.
Well, to credit, the new wave musicians (mostly singers in fact, as they hardly play any instrument) have succeeded a lot in wrenching a great deal of space from the hitherto tight clutches of the local airwaves and screen by the Western (American) pop works.
The radio stations for instance, now find themselves playing more of Tony Tetuila, Azaadu, Remedies, Plantashon Boys, Zakky Adze, Maintain, Eedris… The more reggae steeped of them run the Showkeys, Father U-Turns, Fryos, Mighty Mouses on their various programmes.
This is a great cultural statement indeed. At least, a Westerner would not any longer, step here, listen to local FM stations and, ask if he was back in his homeland. That used to be the case and it happened in 1998 to a group of American journalists on a research mission here.
And of course, in a time of economic depression and political uncertainties buoyed by social disequilibria, the hip pop acts have provided entertainment for the distressed and liven up the stressed social space. They have found jobs for themselves and others in showbiz fields such as audio-visual, dance, designs, fashion, even marketers and others. They might have even re-coursed certain potential miscreants from the landmine planted on their path to future by massive graduate unemployment and youth disempowerment.

Daddy Showkey!
Now, I am thinking: James must be running a PR consult for the sensational reggae toaster from the seedy suburb of the Lagos metropolis.
In fact, hasn’t Showkey got more than he deserved from the critical press?
Sure, he is a dance floor favourite and knows how to waoh the popular concert arena, but he is very light in concept and vision…
Well, this is my (very personal) critical opinion. After all, some other supposed critical media workers had once blessed Showkey's head with the best Nigerian Musician for 2000 crown.
Yet this is where I think the problem is: Status Conferment.
There ought to be a debate on such ritual. Who for instance, should be confirming status on the Nigerian artists? What are the criteria to hook on? Should the venture even be the turf of some media workers who are not trained in music…? A legion of queries to be raised.
There is a violent misplacement of values when the wrong people have the wholly whim to give sensitive endorsement to certain artists and, for indeed the wrong or suspect reasons. Wrong signals may be sold to other more culturally civilized observers that we are a people governed by the masturbation syndrome; rather than the cerebral.
Showkey as the best Nigerian artists. Curiouser and curiouser!
"Oh well, he probably sold better that year, had the most frequent radio and TV airing, had more concerts bla bla… But was he really the most qualitative voice, best tuned musician, most sonorous singer, eminent lyricist, most philosophical composer… what in fact is in Showkey's songs to balm the pain of the hopeless, and satiate the discomforted with dose of tonic…?"
James springs to life again!
"There you are! I knew that you don’t know much about the guy. You have not been listening to him, because you are biased…he is a fighter for his people, the ghetto people. You won't know that because you are one of the oppressors of the suffering masses, the type in Ajegunle…"
Were James not my friend, I should have called up my lawyer to start preparing for our million-naira days. Such lousy accuser!
"Well James", I begin, "I can't really think of any great, deep work from that chap. He is a good performer, he even created the dance style, galala, but that is where it ends. As for lyrical depth, he is nowhere. As for singing, the voice is haughty. And his act though comical and so deceptively attractive, is in material and substance dirty. It is the stuff of the crass. Best for 'area boy-minded' fellows and…"
" See where you sell yourself in the open market" James shoots, "you mean you have not heard of 'Fire Fire In our country, give me plenty water make I quench fire'. James is singing. I am amused…
"Okay, give me another one".
" There are many of them… 'Fire Fire, In The Ghetto', said James and he dries up. I tease him"…Dianna, Welcome Daddy Showkey…"
He sure got the joke and cast his eyes away from my mischievous looks.
I lecture him: "You see there are populist artists and there are visionary artists, just as you have populist politicians and philosopher—politicians.
"The populist artist is the more popular because he appeals to your basal instincts, more to your brawn and purse, your dancing feet and your sexual desires. The Artist-philosopher steals your souls with his words and tune. He conquers your space of reasoning; he imprisons your emotions and overrides your cerebral cavity so much that you fall in line with his thought process.
"That is the artist that moves men to positive actions and speed up the process of change. He is a medium of national reformation or cultural regeneration. He is the one to spur a renaissance in the social consciousness.
"Your Showkey is not that kind of artist and neither are other artists of his ilk. They just want your pocket and your patronage. That is why their music go well with drinks and women, especially the easy virtue type".
Poor James. He gazes like rain-drenched chic…
I continue: "Of course, there are some of those Ajegunle artists who have come up very strong in terms of deep lyrics, even if flippant or perfunctory… I talk of Mighty Mouse, even Showkey and his good friend, Daddy Fresh…
"But the most surprising has been Baba Fryo who, curious still, has about the most unserious personal carriage of them all, with his usual one-eye mask. His Denge Potze debut happens to have approximated the rot in today's social etiquette and valuation system where a man's worth is no longer judged by the quality of his mind and resourcefulness of his handiwork, but by the flashiness of his appearance.
"You are only as big as the size and brand of your car and the depth of your intellect could sometime be your passport to public opprobrium. Your fat certificate can no longer earn you applause in your community.
"The ideal role model most parents sell to their children, is that chubby-cheek fellow from the city with a limo and an obscene bank account and grand house down the street. It doesn’t matter to such parents that to the vacuous fellow education is an anathema; or the volume of blood he shed to grab riches by the scruff.
"Fryo studied this new attitude and came up with Denge Potze, a treatise on the ignominious crash of values and morality of the new society. He follows up with Notice Me, which in content and context is a stretch of the message in the first.
"Now that is a popular artist who managed to scale the bar to the midst of philosopher-artists. And it doesn’t really matter how clean or astute the content of his message is. There are some of them like that too, even Daddy Showkey in some of his songs; except that his extraneous are sometimes too much that they tend to overshadow the substance."
I have a student in session, so I continue to pound ideas into James’ head:
"Popular art is a luxury to a society such as we live in, bedraggled by political iniquities and consistently raped (sorry, ruled) by mean men whose idea of leadership is underdeveloping their community and decimating their people to the deep of the abyss.
'In such a society, a real artist would not just be an entertainer doing the lewd and seedy songs that can only administer temporary relief to the people.
"The artiste will no doubt, find himself drawn into the debate about reordering the status quo; sculpting a more focused leadership and an enlightened followership -- he will indeed champion the struggle of his people, his potential fans, to get out of their precarious situations.
"Otherwise, he might find himself inadvertently as the harbinger of further fatal resolve on the part of the people. For one, the insincere note in his songs could breed false hope in the people to the point that they begin to resign to their fate and weaken their desire to fight their way out of their situation; and that is cancerous to the heart of the society and the psyche of the people themselves.
"That is the kind of thing a Showkey or those in his group who have the opportunity to talk but have decided to hum, could end up achieving".
I didn’t want to lose James, so I hit further: "Showkey is even fair. There are far more educated musicians whose initial pedigree was committed art, but who soon capitulated to the force of commerce that they abandoned the serious for the mundane and; they even have the audacity to proclaim in the market place their new found penchant for 'na ideology we go chop' attitude.
"It is okay if an artist wants to chop, afterall it is in our cultural canon that 'a man eats where he sweats' and; besides, it is a matter of personal choice. The problem is: once you sentence yourself to 'chop chop' syndrome, you may discover that you are not able to get out of it again. 'Money good o, but money make man lose im soul, money na devil', sang Nico Mbarga… and that is what has afflicted majority of our musicians.
"And the pain is that most of the legends that they peddled as their mentors were not so given to flirtatious swing between the profound and the mundane. That was why they were able to create the evergreens, works of lasting virtues that you and I still coveted today", I submit.
"But all the musicians cannot be politicians or fighters. Life is not so dry… people have to live and love", a rasped James has finally found his voice. Wonderful!
But I am not done yet.
"Oh yes, they don’t all have to be. But each artiste has to be evaluated according to the nature and colour of his vision.
'If your vision is as deep as the hollow of your stomach or as vast as the space of the dance floor, why should any self-worthy critic accord you a deeper minefield of idealism or ideology?
"If you battered your artistic conviction for a pot of commerce and survivalism as some notable artistes here have done, why should a critic continue to ascribe to you the golden garb of the committed, when you have long abandoned the ship? And if you on your own, declared yourself no longer interested in making your art serve far more missionary objectives, why should the public continue to proclaim you as their voice of reason and wisdom?"
"Well, you are right", say James, but I was not convinced he got the message yet.
"You are a poet", I say, "If you write show your colour, konko below or omo pupa lemi nfe kind of poem, why should you be taken beyond the reach of your vision. That critic would have committed a faux pax, you know. And if you decided to capitulate into a socially conscious artiste to a mere entertainer, undistinguishable from the runs of the mill, why should I be expected to rank you alongside your colleagues who are futuristic and doing profound works? That is the crux of it all."
"How about those guys doing all those great stuff on rap and toast?" queries James, "I think you guys should look at them closely and see which among them would endure. They can't all be flukes!"
"Well, remember I said it too that they are fulfilling a role. They have for one, forced our exuberantly Americanized deejays and presenters to detune their selections a bit. Now you either have to play the local varieties of the Western pop or you are off the beat. Thanks to the doggedness of Kennis Music and the like who have taken those local boys to greater heights.
"But you see, you still cannot define authentic contemporary music of Nigeria from the musical products of those guys. What they are doing is cooking western delicacy with spices of local condiments. The taste can never be as real as the real indigenous menu. At best, especially to a foreign hear, it will sound like a well-grilled mistake, irritable but passable for unserious attention.
"Those of them who stretch their imagination further in terms of sound experimentation and style and identity would surely survive. And in fact those are the guys who seem to be doing something akin to evergreen. Maybe a Paul Play Dairo, whose real luck is that he adapted an already evergreen number of his father, IK Dairo.
The products of the hip pop guys are like tomato, highly perishable. If you don’t consume it soonest, it goes rotten. That is why you see them always rushing back to the studio -- to keep themselves in business.
"Imagine in a recording career of less than two years, some of them have had as much as eight albums. That is not the stuff of professional musicianship. It will sound ludicrous in some more musically enlightened clime.
"Really, I think many of those guys should team up and do one solid, serious work. You know the way, the Spice Girls did. And long before them, the Supreme Sisters that eventually threw up Dianna Ross. Or ABBA. Or Beatles. Or Rolling Stone. Or…
"Won't you for instance say that the Remedies would by now, have been a more enduring group but for the solo career ambition of Tetuila, Idris and Montana? The Plantashon Boyz remains hot because they are in some kind of a cooperative…
"But many of the guys just feel that they could croak into the Mic and get the studio engineer to strewn it up into some manageable sound and, pronto, they are in the market.
"Of course, after some cash-induced rash of radio and TV exposure, they crash off the sight and mind of the public. They have to hit the studio again. The music is two-for-kobo".
Now I am sure I have lost my boisterous friend, James. His gaze is fixed hard on the TV screen. Whatever was of interest there? The usual: suicide bombers have wreaked another havoc; this time in downtown Jerusalem; there was blood and pandemonium everywhere on the street.
I grab the remote control. There! The petit singer, Yinka Davies, doing Eko Ile, a one-off video clip promo she did long before her current album was released.
"Yeah, that is what I think a real musical effort is", I announce gleefully. "You could see some grand effort at quality performance".
James isn't listening but I continue, "now would you compare this with Showkey. Or would you put Showkey in the class of Kayode Olajide, Laitan Adeniji, Funso Ogundipe, Kola Ogunkoya, Seyi Solagbade and others…"
James retorts dismissively: "Many of those guys are only imitating Fela, they have nothing original to offer!"
There we go again. My friend James and his hasty brain. Yet I have known him to be capable of grander thought.
I feed him: "Including Lagbaja?"
"Lagbaja is just an entertainer like Showkey. The only difference is that he wears the mask which gives him a mystic quality", says James and he s
"Have you ever heard of afro-jazz movement?"
"Well, I see you guys write that all the time. I doubt if I know what you are talking about."
"That is the classification we have given the stuff by Lagbaja, Kayode Olajide, Adeniji and others. And it simply means that they are redefining jazz idioms in the context of traditional materials. It takes a lot of musical depth and intellection to do that.
"You must be well exposed to the complex nuances, the standard format of jazz as well as all the different schools, you must be musically literate and have a considerable competence in composition and arrangement; a good level of skill and artistic comportment…" I seem to be losing James again. "You can't just wake up and go into the studio the way your hip-pop dudes do.
"The chaps involved in this kind of form, plus those doing the afro-highlife blend, the so-called post-Fela Kuti experimentalists are the keys to our future musical destiny. They are most likely to give us that musical identity we have been craving for. The reggae-toasters, the Showkeys can continue to provide auxiliary services", I wrap up my treatise.
James sighs: "I know you will try to bamboozle me with all those technical. All I ask for is that you should give those guys some exposure too".
"Well we are doing that. But we shall take up your grievances, grumbling poet.





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Chatting up with pal,. Norbert




'You Can't Do Genuine Criticism In A Philistine Environment'

Being the text of an interview the actor/broadcaster Norbert Young granted Jahman Anikulapo, former Arts Editor and now Editor The Guardian on Sunday on the television programme, Star Time Out.


NORBERT: Today, we have the Sunday Editor of The Guardian Newspapers; a medium that is widely read in Nigeria, in Africa and probably the world. I'm talking about a soul mate, a very good friend and a very, very truthful friend that most people would like to have. I'm talking about Mr Jahman Oladejo Anikulapo.
Jahman, welcome to Stars Time-Out.
We are very happy to have you here today, and we have chosen a topic to discuss. We are going to discuss Criticism.
I know that since your graduation from the University of Ibadan in 1986 and national youth service in 1987, you have worked with The Guardian. You have come up the ranks. Now by God's grace you are Editor, The Guardian On Sunday. It is our pleasure having you here today.
JAHMAN: Thank you so much, Norbert. This to me is like a family talk because we have both come a long way, since 1983, or so when we entered UI. I have always interviewed you as one of our brightest actors and theatre personalities; but now you have turned the table against me. God deh o!
NORBERT: Thanks Jahman. We will like you to give us an overview of the entertainment Industry in Nigeria; especially the claim that there is not much criticism of our creative arts going on right now.
JAHMAN: When people talk about the absence of Criticism in the culture sector, you tend to ask yourself: what are they expecting?
Criticism can only thrive in an environment where there is enough room for creativity; quality creativity. But when you live in an environment that stifles creativity, you cannot expect criticism to thrive.
You want to look at a work of art; you want to talk about somebody's performance -- a dancer or a visual artist -- you must look at the environment of performance.
What has the state or the society provided for Norbert Young not just to produce his film but to produce effectively; or to produce a quality work?
What has the environment provided for Olu Ajayi who is a quality painter to produce a qualitative work of art?
What has the environment given to Lagbaja to strive to produce his songs to the best of his ability...
When you put all these things together you'll see that the environment is not even prepared for the artist to perform effectively, or optimally.
Why are you expecting the artist to live above that environment?
Then you say you are a critic, you sit down and, you are observing the trend of performances and making comments on them, and pointing a way for the future! What future are you pointing to, when the people that consume the art works are not even prepared for qualitative ones.
That is why you find out that most critics... let me use myself as an example... I took a decision; I said the era of just sitting down in my newsroom and writing critiques about somebody's work has to be postponed for sometime!
I resolved that I wanted to be more involved in creating the necessary environment for the artists to be able to, at least, produce qualitative works. If I succeeded in that conscientious activism, then I can sit down and write comments; objective and conscientious assessment of the work of art.
I don't want to go through the exasperating experience of writing comments on works that are by all the parameters for critical discourse are substandard; especially works I know that given the right environment, the artist could have accomplished better.
Perhaps, if I am myself not one who engage in creative enterprises all the time, it wouldn't have mattered; but I am an artiste first; the critical vocation is only a gift of talent and a bonus acquired through my training in Dramatic Theories and Literary Criticisms; and years of practice as a writer on the arts and cultural productions.
I am not just an observer of the trends in culture production; I am an active participant; just as any producer could be. I cannot afford the luxury of a mere journalistic interrogation of artistic experiences. The journalist can do that, I have no qualms. I am informed in my practice by something deeper than journalistic inclination and expertise.
By my training and antecedents, I cannot continue to be saying: "That theatre performance is not good enough'. 'That painting is not good.' etc. Do I know how much of Norbert's wife's money, Norbert has stolen to be able to produce that film? Do I know how much of his properties he had to sell; or the dirty thing that people had to go into to raise money to produce a play. I have once been a witness to a lady theatre producer having to befriend a banker just so to be able to pay the balance of his cast and crew fees, when the supposed sponsors ditched her at the last minute. She got a loan through that means but the cast needed not know where the money came from. There are uglier stories that I heard from artistes themselves... many of them are big stars today... on what they did to get their first album off the demo stage...
Then, I sat down and reviewed my intervention in the institution of critical discourses and I resolved that I'd better off, conscience-wise, if I diverted my critical sensibility to culture activism. We try to create the right environment for quality creativity to flower, then nobody will have an excuse for underperformance or perfunctory production. And this is why I am very compassionate when it comes to matters concerning the arts. I insist that if you are a Minister for Culture or Minister in charge of entertainment, Minister in charge of Tourism, you must do what the Minister of Aviation is doing in terms of envisioning for the wholesome uplifting of the sector; you must initiate good policies and carry out necessary reforms with a view to making the vocations and the practitioners have hope and perform optimally. You must do what the Minister of Transport is ready to do in terms of providing the necessary infrastructure for that vital sector of the national economy...
You talk about the Culture sector; the culture sector is the fundament of our nation building. You talk of technology transfer, how can you transfer technology, when you don't even know the basic farm implements that we have; you don't even know them, so, you can't improve on them. Then you want to talk about technology transfer! You can only transfer ignorance and incompetence at handling such transferred knowledge. It is all laughable.
So, instead of jumping on the bandwagon, and jumping the gun, I decided to stay on one spot and use my talent and a little link that God has helped me to gather these years in the course of the job, in ensuring that the right environment; the appropriate visions; functional policies and beneficial actions are taken by whoever the political process throws into the leadership of the culture sector of the economy.
That is more important to me than writing reviews and critiques that don't even get read by the public but the artists themselves and their colleagues. Even at that, how many of those can afford to buy the papers to read up what you have written about them. Most times, you -- the writer -- still has to take the paper to the artists and say, 'look what I have written about your work'... Haba, the burden that the so-called arts writer carries is enormous; painful at times.
So, I reviewed my career and I said since, God has been kind to me, I have a voice, when I write and when I talk people listen, I should use that to make the right noise, the right statement, so that we can challenge the polity to give recognition to the labour of the artists and culture workers; so that we can begin to create room for quality intellect that would produce qualitative art.
That is why I have been so engrossed in what has come to be termed 'Culture Activism'... I am sure the sobriquet is in the context of a civil activist, human rightist or social activist. But really, it does not really matter what it is called. I only know I have a missionary zeal to the cause of the art and culture.
That is why I am deeply involved in cultural activism structures such as the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA), which also incorporates such other bodies as Culture Enthusiasts Club; Lagos Circle of Critics; Friends of the Arts; Culture Working Committee etc. Of course, the more fundamental of such structures is the Coalition of Nigeria Artists, CONA, a fraternity of all the artists professional associations, which primary aim is to protect the interest of all artists whatever their callings; and especially to give some kind of assistance to the artists when they are distressed. Unfortunately, the coalition has been crippled by unnecessary politics by a certain section of the artiste community. But I assure you, the vision can never be eclipsed.
I believe that it is when I have succeeded in helping get the right environment, that is the point at which the critic in me will come out. And I don't have to still be a practising journalist when that time will manifest.
That is my position and I have no apology about it; not even to myself. Even a critic has a choice to criticise or remain silent!
What I have done is to do an overview of our entertainment sector in the context of my own experience in a time capsule of my years on the job as an arts writer.
But I insist that, though we may complain about quality of what we produce and the attitude of the artists, we have to bear one point in mind: that the artist cannot live outside of his own environment. He must operate within his environment. To expect him to live in a pure world, the world that is not corrupt, is to construct a Utopia; an unreal world, totally antithetical to his environment that is corrupt.
Even if the artist doesn't want to be corrupt, remember that in an environment like this, he's coming from a family, and this family members are going to ask him: "We are not interested in how many times you appeared on the television, we are interested in what you have made for yourself; what are you going to give to your brothers and sisters; what have you made for your parents; what have you made for the community that nurtures your being.
In the West, some of these questions may not apply because of their socialisation process and the way the society is constructed, which is why an artist will make a single hit, and he becomes an international star, money wise, influence wise, and so on; he could go and buy the most expensive house in the costliest area of town and spend so much money on it. That is the way he wants to spend his fortune. No extended or expanded family to ask him to take in his cousin and his cousin's cousin or to offer scholarship to other youths in the community as a matter of compulsion, since the community had contributed to his schooling or whatever.
But an artist here... I have one actor on my street, you imagine the pressure that the man goes through to be able to live to a standard that is expected of him by people in the neighbourhood. I have seen him done one or two things on the street, and I just know that this was not what he wanted to do, but he has to do it, because of the expectation of his neighbours.
So we cannot expect the art, the entertainment produced by artists living and functioning in this stifling environment to be well rounded in all creative departments as that produced in other societies where there are, at least, the basic infrastructures that enable creativity to flower; that encourages clean, clear thought, and make provision for facilities, including social respect and understanding; and thus assist the artist to concentrate on the business of thinking and creating.
We have to first create the right, functional environment; and that is what I have dedicated my intervention through the media, especially after 13 solid years as arts reporter and so-called critic.
And when I say creating the environment; it does not just stop at creating Endowment Fund or launching the Cultural Policy or establishing an Art Academy - all vital institutions to culture management that other societies take for granted but which we don't even have after 40 years of Independence and clamour for same instruments - the saner environment also includes re-orientating the society and the people consuming the artwork to begin to see the artist as a professional who deserves to eat from his toil; his talent and his skill just as the medical doctor, the lawyer or the engineer. In fact, the appropriate social respect for the vocation of the artist or culture worker is the first essential infrastructure to be created.
Would you for instance, recognising that the actor is the most poorly paid professional in this country, say that because this actor -- a brilliant, skilful performer who has brought joy to you and your family -- and this day you see him standing by the bus stop, would you put him in your air conditioned car so that his shirt does not end up with dust, so that your children to whom he is a sort of hero or role model, would not snigger at his dirty look?
Bear in mind please that most of the times, the people in the public do not discriminate between the illusion of affluence they see the actor live on screen or stage from his reality as a human being functioning in the real life; with his own set of economic and social realities, hopes and despairs. They only want to appreciate him the way they see him act. Here is the guy unable to live a comfortable, dignifying life; after those lavish life on screen he crashes into this real life of wants and disappointment; he could not even afford a taxi if he has no car of his own, and this guy knows how many people that he is bringing happiness to, he knows the sweat that goes into his acts! And yet you want him to be pure, you want him to be qualitative, you want him to live above everybody...
NORBERT: Jahman, you see, that is why Stars Time-out is happy to have you here, you have just criticised everybody...
JAHMAN: Including myself (laughs)
NORBERT: I quite appreciate it when you said you do not want to criticise substandard works, but these are the works we have now, the works society has to look at! And in those substandard works, we still have to know how substandard in the category of substandard hierarchy, some of them are. So even if we do not have an enabling environment, we still need the critic, we still need to be informed so that when things begin to take shape, when government now start to live up to its responsibilities, and the society begins to accord due respect to the artiste, and the people begin to figure out how they can contribute to the development of the entertainment industry, we would have overcome the shortcomings of the artistes..
JAHMAN: When we talk about substandard works, we are not saying that Nigerian works are substandard, but that is the general impression. That is part of the attitude of the society to what the artist does. When they say that an artwork is substandard, they actually based such judgement on the mindset of comparison they harbour in their mind. They look at what the American Pop artistes are doing and they expect the artist here to do similar thing. So they come up with the attitude of saying: "It's a Nigerian product, it is substandard'.
It is the same way you can relate to the cloth sold at Orile market. There is the foreign consumption craze. People don't want to consume what is produced locally because of a deep-seated perception that if it is made at home it must be inferior. It is the crisis of identity; lack of self-esteem; lack of self-worth. The Nigerian consumer would rather spend fortune to buy that foreign product so far it carries the label of a foreign country or producer. So, the local producers grew smart too; when they make shirts here, they will put the label that says made in Britain, Taiwan, America etc... It is an intractable crisis of taste.
We do need the critics at all time in our creative enterprise. I'm not saying that we don't need the critic! If I said that, it will be a subversion of sensibility; a subversion of my personal conviction that the critic drives the creative energy and resourcefulness of the society. I still operate basically as a critic in the sense that, when I am confronted with materials, I weigh the material, I say 'okay this material deserves maximum attention'; this material deserves the best that I have got; then I look at another material and I say, 'this material deserves lesser attention'... this assessment will reflect in the way I present the subject, the way I write about it or I comment on it! It is a result of the way I weighed the material; product of my evaluation but it is still essentially subjective albeit informed by my personal cognitive structures.
This is why I have insistently argued that criticism is no more than a personal opinion of the critic; a product of his cognitive structures - the sum total of his past experiences, cultural tendencies, taste, training, skill, exposures, and the school of criticism to which he subscribes among others.
But it is curious that the general public has been conditioned to see the critic as some kind of god. And it has to do with the self-institutionalising antics of the ancestors of the critics. Over time and through the various literary milleux, the critics have successfully entrenched themselves as monstrous institutions in the creative industry.
As a matter of fact, the critic has become something like an over-institutionalised person. We have created tin-gods out of the vocation of the critic. But he is no more than an ordinary professional but with a specialised consciousness for the vocation of evaluating or assessing a piece of art and offering informed opinion on same. In other words, the critic is only an informed commentator or evaluator or assessor of a creative product.
We have to bear in mind that there is a critic in every person. The television viewer is a critic, just as the man who reads a book; even as a hobby. This is because when the fellow is watching this interview session on the television programme, he is forming his own opinion; he could say for instance: "Now Jahman is talking rubbish, I'm not interested;" and; he picks his cigarette and lights it and puts his mind on more productive or self-satisfying venture... he has shut me off from his senses! That's a critical enterprise at work.
I want to refer us back to a paper that was presented by Dr Ola Oloidi of the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He is a specialist in Visual Art criticism, and he said that the first set of critics were actually those simple folk who were appreciating the works of the community sculptor or carver. When in a village, a Yoruba man stands up and says: "This work is the work of gbegigbegi (the one who hews or chops the wood); and this one is gbenagbena, which means the one who is creating beauty out of a given object. Once a man or even a little kid stands up and says, "this man is gbegigbegi, that one is a gbenagbena, he has already made a critical assessment; a fundamental critical statement. He has described you as producing beauty or merely chopping the wood...
So, the critic is human after-all and he is only a shade higher in his evaluation than the ordinary viewer or audience, by the circumstance of his acquired skill; the fact of his vocation. But we have turned them into semi-god by our own exaggeration of their enterprise.
Those were some of the facts I see and I am amused at the lie of it all, when some people sing deceptively: 'I am a critic, I hold the power to make or mar you the artist'.
I participate in some internet discussion, the way people sound on this critic thing, is like they are living above everybody else.. Yet, somebody had already said in the past that a critic is actually a failed artist; that because he cannot create, he now runs commentary in other people.
But intriguingly, Chinua Achebe was one of the very first people to even dismantle this myth around the critic, by saying: "look, the moment you can read my book and form an opinion, you are a critic".
This is a very fundamental statement about criticism; that it is essentially the opinion of the person; by the viewer of painting, the audience of a theatre piece, and the listener to that music.
You seem to be saying that the critic is not an opinion shaper, who then project it into the public. Do you see the critic as somebody who makes negative marks about works of art. Is the work of a critic just to appreciate and write an opinion, or just to condemn?
A critic is not to write a negative opinion. Unfortunately, that's what the critic vocation has become, especially in a creative environment like Nigeria where there is perennial struggle for power between perceptibly contending forces and envy and avarice reign in the mind of most men... - all products of poverty of purse and the intellect you know there is a way wants and unfulfilled dreams affect the reasoning and actions of men...
If you evaluate my explanation again, you'll see that the critic is not definitely somebody who makes negative remarks. A critic is one who forms a technically informed opinion about a work, and who then projects it. And presenting it, it could either be negative or positive; depending on the way he perceives the work. But as I said his evaluation of the work, his judgment will be informed by his own cognitive structures; itself a summation of diverse factors.
NORBERT: I ask this question because in 1996, when as part of the Africa Project cast, we went to present the play Amona and Oedipus in Germany... you, in particular, made a statement that because you are familiar with the works of a particular critic in Germany, called Christopher Funke; you said the man was coming to see our preview, and if he said something positive about our work, then our work would sold out in Germany. In which case Funke is an opinion leader.
Compare that to the situation in Nigeria... what would you say is the work of a critic; is it to appreciate, following certain criteria, or to condemn.
In a place like Germany, the artistes can afford to wait for Funke and the ilk to do the job of selling the play to the public, but in Nigeria, do you think the critics here have do that kind of thing? Because here there is always so-called press preview and the critic will be there to write about that play, and then the people will say, "oh, Jahman Anikulapo has said this is it', so it must be so with the play. Where a Jahman Anikulapo cannot make up his mind about that play, it even makes it more appetising for the viewer; that since Jahman cannot give a specific opinion about a thing, that thing is worth seeing.
Do you see the critic in that situation in Nigeria?
JAHMAN: The example of Funke is what Ben Tomoloju, who is my mentor in arts and in journalism -- he was the Deputy Editor at The Guardian -- made a statement at the time when Nigerian journalism was becoming obsessively arrogant with its perceived power; over-estimating its influence on the public's decision-making process, Tomoloju said that what we were practising was "Media Terrorism"! That because you thought we had the power of the pen, you had the medium, you think that you are a law, thus you wield tremendous influence on somebody's work; to soil that person, or somebody's family, and write some funny stories about that person and therefore shape the public's opinion about that person or work.
Christian Funke was doing 'Media Terrorism' (laugh)... let me quickly re-capture what happened in Germany. We were leaving Nigeria with a production in the series Africa Project, a Nigeria-Germany cultural dialogue, which is the dialogue between Africa and Europe. And we were going to Germany carrying the burden of misperception of the African person by the West that we are no more than apes... that the image of Africa, in the perception of an average European is backwardness, war, hunger, impoverishment... as a matter of fact we still live on the trees; so, when you say you are bringing something about Africa, it must be 'exotic'; since the African is generally incapable of intelligent discourse, he is not developed enough to attend to anything that is contemporary.
So, when we were leaving here, there was always this feedback from Germany, from Goethe Institut that, "Look the German audience do not understand what you are coming to do; in fact, you have to translate some of your things into German language...! And we, the producers of the play, we were telling the Germans that 'we will effect some of the suggestions you are making, but we will not deviate from what we are doing, because we have a mission'.
When we got there, and we were ready to perform at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin, there was this big noise about a particular critic in one of the newspapers who is so powerful that once he writes negative about your work, that's the end, and once he writes positive, then the show is made.
And we were told that this guy is not necessarily wide- scoped to appreciate anything that is non-German; that anything that comes from outside, especially from Africa, he will not support it. And that was what informed my statement that night that we -- the actors and crew-- had to at least, take cognisance of the taste and preferences of the many Funkes that would be in the audience.
So, when I made that statement, I was looking at the environment we were going to... it was portrayed as a hostile environment. And I said the way to tackle this Christian Funke chap - who was being portrayed as some tin-god -- is to tell him that we were coming with our identity. And when we come, we were going to 'unleash' our cultural identity on him, let him 'unleash' his criticisms on us. But we must not underperform; we must not be seen to be playing down what we were supposed to do, just so to please the strange taste of Mr. Funke. That was why I made that statement. I spoke as the staege-manager of that show to imbue confidence in our actors, not to get conditioned to change their show because of someone's expectation... and that is what I always say: an artiste must essentially perform to his own expectation; not that of any other person; not even of his own wife or mistress.
There are many Christian Funkes in the Nigerian situation. There are many of us so-called critics or arts writers who just pick our pen and rubbish what other people do. I must have done it in the past, beginning of my career when I was still marvelling at the power I assume I have over the life and death of the work of an artist; which made me to come to the conclusion, that critics in Nigeria for instance, in the media, what we have been doing is either writing to project or writing to destroy.
But we have to be very careful because we are opinion shapers just like you said. People read you because they respect you, because they want to hang on to what you said about a particular work or artist...
But I tell you that the Nigerian audience, the Nigerian viewers, they are even very exceptional! They don't necessarily follow anybody's writing before they determine what they consume.
If you, the critic, say that one video production is substandard, has it ever stopped them from buying? How come that the video movie market that critics have always condemned gross up to N8 billion in two years as was reported? How come it was the only sector in Nigerian economy that is making profit while others are in distress.
The only industry that can compete with the video movie market which the Nigerian critics have described as a sham full of substandard products, is the GSM telephone market.


NORBERT: Yes Jahman, thank you so much for your explanation so far. But I do not agree with your assertion that if you don't see your critique of a work from the producer's or the director's point of view, you might be misjudging that person's work. Because, first of all, coming from the classical era, whether we like it or not, standards have been set for putting together works of art; standards set by people who knew. There was the classical standard and then there was the 17th Century French Academy that came out with parameters for achieving a complete work of art. So, if you are going to produce a work of art, you should know the standard, you should know the criteria, you should know the yardstick, you should know the fixed points from which you must work. So we do not need to see your personality in the work. We just see a work of art which the critic now looks at using those same parameters that the producer or director ought to have known, putting aside his own creative input right now. Even then you still have to judge with his creative in-put. So to that extent, what do you say?
JAHMAN: I think that we are even coming from the same point, just that I deviated a bit by really pressing on the influence of the environment on the works of the producer.
Remember what I said earlier on; that there are critics in the media who now look at the forms, the style, the techniques, the content of the works in the context of the message that you are trying to get across.
Every critic, for instance, is supposed to look at a particular work of art from these parameters, to say that these are standard paradigms. If you say that you are working as an impressionist in painting, and what I see is expressionism, I can say that he claims to be doing impressionism but I am seeing something else; perhaps realism. There you are talking of the form or the style.
Then when you are talking of style in the theatre, for instance, you say you are doing Agitprop, which is a usually a play set in caricature model; most times, a satire or political drama that sermonises, agitates and seeks to propagate a particular ideal or idea...a production that is based on propaganda. Because of the nature of the script, it could appear as snatches; it may not be a whole direct production. If you say you are doing this and I am seeing something else, then I could begin to raise questions about the confusion of form or technique because it is going to affect the entire design of the production; including the acting style. When you say that you are using symbolism in a production, and then there are no symbols to even represent all the things you are saying, I could engage critical theories to assess your contentions in the play and see how far you have been fair to the form adopted...
In fact when I joined journalism mid-eighties after my graduation, writing on the arts, I had to go to my Professor, Dapo Adelugba... I told him that this was what I had decided to do in the media, the man warned me... mind you, this is the foremost critic in the performing arts... he told me to be careful the way I applied the critical canons and theories I had ingested in school, because the medium I shall be writing for is a popular medium. He said, if you are not careful, nobody will understand what you are saying! I had to recoil from my heated passion for theories; and check all I had been saying.
So, when I talked about hearing from the artist, I mean asking for clarifications, for instance, about the style that he is using... that if I watch a play, I will be able to ask that artist, "that thing that you did at that point, what were you trying to do." Then he says, "this is what I'm trying to do," and then I can apply my criticism based on that.
For example, when Felix Okolo -- one of the very good young directors that came out of University of Ibadan and operated in Lagos State-- many people do not really understand him; they were saying, "what is this man trying to do." The whole play looked like a piece of accident, impulsive, formless and unserious... In fact, at a time he claimed to have adapted Ben Okri's novel, The Famished Road in the play, Mekunu Melody, one critic said he only read the first two paragraphs and wrote a play; that maybe he never read the whole play, I laughed.
Then I had to go back to myself, I said 'who is Felix Okolo?' And I remembered that we were both students at the University of Ibadan -- I directed him, he directed me on a number of occasions -- and I have had cause to listen to him. I even remember that we gave him a name Aruku Shanka, which means this guy is very impatient with normal processes of production; he abhors unity of form or unity of style as the classical critical theory will advise. He is not somebody you sit down and say his production is from A, B, C, D progressing to Z, the denouement. He can take it from F and come back to A and go to G and so on...
NORBERT: Even that style has a definition, eclecticism
JAHMAN: That's what I'm saying, if you understand that, that's where the artist is coming from, then you will be able to better appreciate the work.
NORBERT: That brings me to this question: what is the level of awareness and qualification of most critics in Nigeria. Because I do not think after seeing a film, I will ask the director anything...
JAHMAN: No, you don't need to ask.
NORBERT: But if the critic does not understand the theories, or familiar with all the forms and techniques, what kind of critic is that?
JAHMAN: This is what I'm saying and soon, I will still come back to your point.
You can't say that you are doing a Nigerian historical play, and put the standard or the forms, the style and the techniques that the Roman historical theatre demands into operation! You cannot. The moment you do that, you have dislocated that production; you are even abusing the production, because we have different approaches to history.
History to the black man is a very passionate matter because buried in that history is the long history of his being; his very essence; the pride of his race, the meaning of the name he bears today. History to the African is like the skin he wears. So, he is subjective in his judgment of the materials that history throws up. But to the European, he can distance himself from history and be very objective in his treatment of the facts.
Today, Germany can talk big about everything, Hitler is just one distant thing in his mind, a distant burden, but I tell you that an African carries the burden of history perpetually on his conscience. We know of great families and dynasties that have been buried in the abyss of the forgotten just for a simple error of judgment that the forebears made while in office. For instance, a person like Abacha, his descendants will continue to bear the burden of his excessive dictatorial actions for generations to come. He wi8ll forever remain a constant reference in the Nigerian history, as long as Nigeria is existing. In that context how do you apply historical canons of the Roman or the Germans to the Africans or the Nigerians then? You will surely dislocate the dramaturgical experience.
When I talk about talking to the director of aplay or film before writing my critique, I'm not saying necessarily you must talk to the director, I am only saying you need have studied what the person is trying to do. If a man comes out and says I'm doing, or I want to do Agitprops, it has a thematic context, then you are looking at it from another point of view and saying why is he saying so much about government in his play, why is he lamenting how democracy is not working in Nigeria... but that is what he set out to do.
What many critics do is that, they don't even look at all those parameters, they just run away with their own subjective expectations; pass magisterial assessment on what the artist has done and foist their uninformed or ill-informed opinion on the creative work of another person. But I say, If you are not pregnant how do you determine how painful the experience of labour is.
And particularly, in African theatre and other art forms, you need to debrief the artist constantly... much of what the African artist inject into his work are informed by certain ritualistic or spiritual essentials to which he is a participant or had been a participant; sometimes, it is exclusive to him; and you, the critic, are just an outsider. How do you speak to such an experience then when you are a novice on its essences and beings?
Talking about the level of training of the critics in this country, you will know very well that we don't have that in the first place. The reason is that our art studies did not start from that point. The arts school started on the note of that word again... agitprops! They were struggling with the society just to even impress it on an indifferent social ethos that the theatre is something to study; that fine art is something to study; that being functionally educated does not end with being a doctor, lawyer, engineer etc.
The schools at the start were (and largely even now) trying to challenge the position of the society that art is for everybody; that everybody can dance; can paint; can sing! So, why go to school to waste four-five years and huge money to study what every other dunce on the street can do?
You know that there was a time when you dare not tell your parents that you are studying theatre in the university; you risked being disowned or excommunicated from the family. In fact, my father never knew that I was studying theatre, until when I graduated. I had gone in for Sociology and Economics and my dad carried that impression. He never bothered to check; in any case I was not collecting a dime from him. Fortunately, I was doing some works in the theatre already and earning my own money, so I never had to go to him for money. He thought I was doing Economics.
Imagine, the University of Ibadan theatre school was 40 last year (2002), the celebration is still on; and even to date, Professor Adelugba says they are still trying to educate this society that theatre is a course of study! That your child can study Theatre or drama and become a worthy person in life. If you are still struggling with that, where do you have room for criticisms as a study? Those who go in for criticism, they do it as elective courses.
In fact, I remember that in my final year at Ibadan, we were 15 that registered for Dramatic Theory and Literary criticisms. By the time we were graduating, we were only three. And out of the three, one made First Class, two of us were queued at First Class but for a course outside of our department that we were supposed to take but which could not because of the way the exam time-table was arranged. It clashed with our practical exams in Voice and Speech. And you know, that is a compulsory course for a credible theatre graduate.. (laughs).
Indeed, how many theatre schools are training critics?
Now, Fine Artists are complaining that the quality of Fine Art discourse in the papers are not impressive. And I ask them: "how many art historians and critics have you produced from your school who are ready to work in the media". We have about 10 departments of Fine Art, how many of them have produced art historians writing frequently in the papers. In fact, how many of them have their own faculty or department's journal to propagate the ideals of its peculiar scholarship?
It is not easy, sir. It is not easy because no media house even want to employ you in the first place. If not that The Guardian with Ben Tomoloju, started a formal arts desk... (that was after that impressive collection of academics and scholars had flagged off the literary culture in the paper)... and he then trained a generation of arts journalists, writers so to say because many of them were just graduates of liberal arts and sometimes, sciences and related fields. Those are the chaps sustaining the seemingly robust arts and culture journalism in the Nigerian media today... I was trained on the arts desk of the paper, and since then, I have trained some other people who are themselves now arts editors in other newspapers in the country. Go to other media houses, the arts editors were all, or let's for modesty sake, say many of them were from The Guardian. If such a person never worked for The Guardian, he must have at one time or the other written for the paper.
And after it returned from its one-year proscription in 1995, The Guardian decided to go daily with its arts pages, everybody else hopped on the wagon. So we are just copying... we are learning things from each other and today you have a daily page of arts or showbiz in at least, six national dailies. Even the news magazines which were almost scandalously averse to the arts once they get enough of sensational political stories, have in the past few years retained at least, an arts reporter in their fold.
In the past, no one would employ you to write on the arts. It takes far deeper passion by the publisher or the editor to insist he was employing you to write on the arts.
No media house is even ready to open up pages for reports on the arts. They think it is not worthy of serious attention. It won't generate adverts anyway!
Reuben Abati, for instance, is a brilliant critic of the arts but he is operating in an environment that is different from his natural calling. Occasionally, he comes in and does something for us, but you know that he has so much other responsibilities in his own Editorial section. In fact, if you are a great critic and you need to satisfy your professional yearnings, you may have to end up on the campus.
And, how many schools are ready to train the critic? What are the facilities to train critics?... In fact, the Bible for classical dramatic theories and theatre criticism, for instance, is the book famously called Dukor; how many students have seen Dukor? When I was graduating, there were only three in the departmental library and; before we graduated two were stolen...! (laughs). Where are the books to even train the critics?
NORBERT: How do these producers of art work, how do they react to certain criticisms that you have done in the past. Do they see you as a bad person or do they see you as friend or enemy.
JAHMAN: As a matter of fact, I have collected about two dirty slaps (laughs). One at the Jazz 38, when a director just saw me and said "I feel like just killing you, but let me just give you thisas a warning o; the next time I will distort your face'...
NORBERT: And you retaliated?
JAHMAN: Ah, no o! Rather, I found a way to escape from the scene.
The fact is that, the critics and journalists have to be careful about what they write because, what you are writing is very, very long lasting than that work of art. Perhaps it is only Fine Art, Literature, recorded music which originals could be resurrected in the original forms. But not so for theatre, concert and other such performance art, which thrived in momentary-ness. If I'm presenting a play, people must have seen it and gone, but what I have written as a critic would be read hundred years after my departure; or even thousands of years later. And generation who never encountered you and who were never part of the conditions that dictated the creation of the work and as well the tone and shade of your critical opinion might have to issue queries on what you had written. In literary criticisms and theories, isn't that what we are doing today? Interrogating the paradigms that had been set by our forebears?
In my career, I got to that point at which I said, If I make this comment about this man's work, what happens if I'm challenged later, and say "when you were writing this, did you even attempt to find out how he managed to put up the production'?
But then, that's for me. I'm not saying that it is the standard for every practising arts writer. It is a very, very personal choice. And it has to do with my kind of person. I like to work with my conscience, I work within myself, I listen to my own opinion. A friend said I could reason that way because aside being a critic in the newspaper I am also a practising actor, director and producer. That the benefit of the two sides which I am fully involved with informs my passion about how the work got done... Well, maybe; but I have never given that explanation a deep thought.
But to return to your poser on the readiness of the artist to accept critical comments on his work, I shall say that essentially, the society is not prepared. The people are not used to open criticisms and this is part of the fundamental dilemma of development that we face in Africa. Even in our socio-cultural lore, criticism of the ruling class or the affluent was often coded in symbolic languages, cultic signs or in proverbs, gestures, wits etc. This was part of the self-preservation ethos of the society; sometimes, measures to ensure that only few people are availed of the details of such criticisms. And Africans do not have to be apologetic about this. It is an integral part of our cultural being. And it serves so many functions including to ensure preservation of mutual respect and harmonious living in the community. But applied to modern time, the collusion of this African ideas of criticisms and the Western type of open speak, is responsible for the conflict characterised by intolerance that we often witnessed in the modern African state.
And for the artists, because he has produced his works within the ambience of lean resources available to him, he is expecting that whatever you are going to say about his work would be complimentary, so that people can buy it. To him, you, the critic, you are only an extension of the marketing department of his operation!
The best you, the critic, can do is to work according to your own conscience. You know what you are trying to do, and you say it the way you see it.
But the language of criticism is not condemnation. It is not to say that this work is bad. The language of criticism is, 'may be' or 'if he had', things like that. It is not a magisterial proclamation or postulation where you say that work is bad! There is no bad work of art because the creative process that produced that work is informed by certain inspiration, certain mote process that produced that work is informed by certain inspiration, certain motive,tain expectations, certain cognitive structure. Sweat has gone into it; thinking has gone into it, money has gone into it, somebody's being as a person has gone into it
NORBERT: Now, Jahman, can I still call you a critic?
JAHMAN: I have told people that by the virtue of my resolve which I have explained and by virtue of my operative environment, I'm not a critic, but you could say that I write informed opinion or critiques on the arts.
NORBERT: Okay, if you write criticism on art, if you do informed art appreciation... because this word 'criticism', it sounds so negative, and people don't understand. Criticism means appreciating a work of art. This appreciation of work of art, who is it supposed to pay?
You were talking about receiving slaps from two directors, yes because you wrote what will educate the public. Now, you don't want to offend the producer, thereby blocking information for your public. Now, who are you supposed to satisfy? Should there be what is called a balance in critique.
JAHMAN: Just like every journalist, first of all, you write from your conscience, you write for your conscience. Just be sure that what you are saying is according to how you have seen it, how you have perceived it; be true to your conscience; even if the person is your arch enemy or he has just dished you slaps for he last work you did on his work.
I am saying that criticism is not basically evil. It is opinion essentially. If I saw your blue dress and I say that what you are wearing is red, it is my opinion; that is what my mind tells me; that you wearing are red. It may be black to another person, it may be blue to the next person, but as for me, it is red. So, it is a matter of opinion. And the audience like I said had an option to either accept it or reject it.
So, first of all, as a critic, work from your conscience and work for your conscience. Then the target of a critical discourse should necessarily be for the two sides. You should write in a way that the man who has created the art work can learn two or three things about the way you see it as a member of the audience. And the audience too can learn one or two things that they could understand in the work of art from you.
In other words, the critic is more like a medium. A medium between these two extremes -- the audience and the producer of the work. So you should see yourself that way and the only way to see yourself as a balanced medium, a balanced refree, is to work for your conscience. You write the truth the way you have seen them, without being unfair to the artist, without being unfair to the public.
When I talk about the artist's point of view, you see that the question has gone back to you. You try to understand what the artist is trying to do, the environment he is operating in; the audience he is targeting? The last point is very important indeed. If I produce a play for children and you as an adult come there to appreciate my work from the point of view of an adult, have you not done injustice to me, my work and the audience? Yes, you are doing injustice to my work because I did not write or produced the play for you, an adult, I have written for the childre