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The 2011 Lagos
Black Heritage Week will start tomorrow with ‘FELA! in Lagos’, the
acclaimed Broadway musical making its debut in Nigeria.

Unlike last year’s
festival, which was held on a grand scale, the 2011 event themed
‘Animating Heritage’ will be a mini-festival because of the ongoing
elections.

“The 2011 Black
Heritage Festival was confronted by a formidable challenge from another
aspiring ‘festival’ – the Nigerian Festival of Democracy 2011 – at
least as eternally hoped by the Nigerian populace and outside democracy
watchers. Both performances falling within the same week, the
unpredictable nature of encroachments by the aspiring ‘festival’ nearly
caused a cancellation of the creative original. In the end, however,
the Heritage Festival’s commitment to a calendar regularity won the
day, and a final decision was taken to stage ‘Heritage’, albeit on a
much reduced scale. Perhaps the ‘Festival of Democracy’ will extract
some useful lessons from the humanistic order of its unintended rival,”
explained the festival consultant, Wole Soyinka.

Though the event
will take place on a much smaller scale, it will not be devoid of its
basic components. The opening ceremony of ‘FELA! in Lagos’ will start
at 5pm tomorrow at the Eko Hotel on Victoria Island, while the 2011
festival exhibition featuring artists Tola Wewe and Nike
Davies-Okundaye will start on April 22 at 9am at Freedom Park, Lagos
Island. It will run until April 29.

The children’s
heritage village, featuring games, adventures and creativity, will also
hold in Freedom Park on Friday with the renowned Uncle Jimi Solanke
anchoring the proceedings. There will be a special video feature by
Henrietta Fagbo and guest appearances by some public figures whose
identities are being kept secret, as a surprise for the children.

Drama and music

The festival
symposium themed ‘Animating Heritage – The Lagos Experience’ will hold
at Terra Kulture, on Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island, on April
27 at 10am while drama follows later in the day. “The Drama section is
especially pleased to be able to feature Sefi Atta, 2005 winner of the
Noma Publishers Literary Award and the 2006 Wole Soyinka Award for
African Literature. She partners Wole Oguntokun in a double
presentation bill aptly described as ‘Two Parables for Naija’, a pair
of thought-provoking plays that should complete any process of
reflection that may have been missed out in the Easter season of
professing Christians! No less thought-provoking is Bode Sowande’s
play, ‘Ajantala -Pinocchio’, an indictment of adult neglect of the
future as represented by children,” noted a release from organisers.

The painting
competition, an open event themed ‘Walls of Prison to Fields of
Freedom’, will hold at Freedom Park, the former site of Broadstreet
Prison, on April 28 and will culminate with an awards night on May 2,
the last day of the festival.

The Heritage Week
2011 festival will also feature a musical segment, apart from drama and
painting. Veteran highlife musician, Tunji Oyelana, will dish out
evergreen old school tunes every night at Freedom Park from April 27 to
May 2.

Lagos Carnival
2011, a key component of the fiesta, will take place on April 30
beginning at 9am, along a designated route that begins along Awolowo
Road and ends at Tafawa Balewa Square. “The public is assured that the
lessons of last year’s festival have been absorbed, and traffic control
agencies primed to a new awareness of the controls that should be put
in place to ensure that minimal interference with normal traffic takes
place,” the organisers assured in reference to hitches recorded during
last year’s carnival.

The boat regatta
will hold on May 1 at the Lagos Lagoon along Ozumba Mbadiwe and will
feature about 15 participating yatch clubs and boating associations.

The ‘fitila’
procession, a reminder of Africa’s tragic history of the slave era, and
the triumph of resilience and survival, takes place in Badagry also on
May 1.

Works by filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, will be screened at Freedom Park before the festival ends on May 2.