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Prior to the
Soundcity Music Video Awards of November 20, its organisers generated a
lot of hype about the calibre of the event they were planning to
unfold. The major gist was how different this show was going to be from
prior SMVAs and also from other award shows in the country. “We are
aiming for international standards,” CEO of Consolidated Media, owner
of the Soundcity brand, Tajudeen Adeputu was quoted as saying.

The show started
with the ubiquitous red carpet which the SMVAs had transformed to a
fashion show hosted by Spice TV, the lifestyle channel and sister brand
to Soundcity. The red carpet was opened only to holders of the VVIP
ticket sold at N100,000 and special guests. The dramatically and
beautifully lit runway which was hoisted at the poolside of the Eko
Hotel and Suites, Lagos, featured designs from top fashion houses
across Africa, especially Nigeria. There were exquisite designs from
Lanre Da Silva-Ajayi, Tiffany Amber and Dax Martin from South Africa,
amongst others.

The award show proper which was held at the Expo Hall of the same hotel started at about 11pm.

Uti the host

The event started
with a performance from P-Square, backed by a high-octane dance routine
from dancer, Kaffy. The announcer soon introduced the host and Big
Brother All-Stars winner, Uti Nwachukwu. Heralded by bikini clad
females and himself in glittering metallic overalls, Uti’s entrance
aimed for the dramatic but only marginally achieved it. (To balance the
bikini-clad females, at another point during the show, bikini-clad
males accompanied Adaora, host of MTN Project Fame on stage to present
an award.) There had been some sceptics on the choice of Uti as host.
However, with the sarcastic wit he displayed on Big Brother, his
supporters felt he was worthy. At the end of the day, both sides of the
debate came out justified. He had his high and low moments but there
was nothing of the spectacular, either good or bad.

Unlike last year’s
show where the sound quality was held in question, this year it was
loud and clear. For those on the balcony who were not able to feel the
raw excitement from the well-lit stage (the downside of VIP area),
there were small screens in strategic corners there and also huge ones
on the walls of the hall that transmitted high definition images. The
camera and video-editing crew did a pretty good hands-on job as there
was no way one could have missed what was happening on stage or the
power of it.

There were however
awkward moments brought on by the absence of quite a number of award
recipients. Presenters were often left standing aimlessly on the stage
after announcing a winner’s name without any clue of what to do with
the award. When this happened to Fred Amata who had to present the
award for Viewers Choice won by Buffalo Souljah for ‘Ezandlha Phezulu’,
he called on Zaaki “the man from Benue to collect the award for the man
from Zimbabwe”. This inspired move was accepted gamely by Zaaki and
brought on amused chuckles from the audience.

The performances

Still going for big
and over the top, the SMVAs had contracted almost all the big names in
Nigerian entertainment and one or two from Ghana and South Africa to
give life performances. Even so, each staged performance depended
entirely on the artists as there were little or no stage effects
provided by the organisers. The best performances came from Sasha P,
Asa and Whiz Kid who displayed some mean dance skills. D’Banj and the
Mo’Hits crew were literal crowd pullers as they (especially after
D’Banj and Don Jazzy appeared) managed to get people off their seats
and to the bottom of the stage where they roared out their love for the
Koko Master. The show all but ended there as most people left the hall
in D’Banj’s wake, leaving very few to witness Timaya, the last
performer, give his usual energetic routine.

From the lights,
cameras and stage and hall models, one thing was evident about the
SMVAs 2010: a lot of money, effort and attention to detail were put in
to this particular event, even starting way back from the runway on the
red carpet. But as Julius Agwu who was an award presenter noted, it was
sadly a solo project from Consolidated Media with no input from
external sponsors.

Although, the SMVAs is still far from what is seen at international
awards, especially at the “average” televised American award show, its
ambitions were clear. At this stage, it is only fair to say that if
Soundcity continues to set such high standards for themselves, they
will one day surpass even these so-called international standards.

Chinua Achebe is on
my mind. I must congratulate the brave warrior for scaling his 80th
year on this rugged earth. This card-carrying member of his ardent cult
of followers wishes him many more years of happiness, peace and
prosperity.

My father,
Papalolo, and I would not be where we are today without Achebe’s
fearless and nurturing leadership. More on that later, but there was a
time when people actually read books in Nigeria. Today, Nigeria is a
nation of mostly uncritical people reading, swearing and living by
“holy” books that were crafted by scheming, feuding brothers in ancient
times, siblings who could not stand the notion of living together in
peace.

Today in Nigeria,
the bible has become a weapon of mass destruction. Not only is it
destroying the lives and aspirations of the truly dispossessed, it is
destroying Nigerian culture, our ways of life as it should be. And
those that call themselves “pastors” are at the heart of this rampage,
presiding over this hell on earth that serves to create brick by brick
their own commercial heaven. I am not a Christian, but I sincerely hope
that there really is a mean unforgiving God and a hot hell and that all
our thieving pastors have seats reserved for them on the high table of
hell.

My favourite book
of all times is Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’. It is easily my security
blanket. Whenever I am stressed, I go to it like my bible and read a
passage; it never fails to console me. Until Facebook came along and my
parents Papalolo and Mamalolo befriended me, exile was hell and there
was a passage in ‘Things Fall Apart’ where Okonkwo was being consoled
in the wintry depths of his exile by his maternal uncle. That passage
is my favourite; I used to go to it many times a year until Facebook
came along. My father Papalolo is also an Achebe groupie. My dad did
not have a formal secondary school education, but a scrappy soul, he
educated himself. He got disillusioned about the experiment called
Nigeria very early in his life and the dark humour in his reading
choices reflected his disenchantment. A dashing warrior who spent a
career prepared to die for Nigeria, he now relies on the generosity of
his children to make it to the next day. The country that he fought
for, the leaders that he fought for, have long forgotten about him and
fellow retirees. Our leaders fight over loot, national resources, that
if shared equally among all of us, would make each Nigerian as rich as
Saudi Arabian oil sheikhs. There is no God.

My father loved
books and newspapers. He loved detective stories and so he subscribed
to magazines like ‘True Detective’. He was also a romantic and he made
sure to subscribe to romance magazines. I was addicted to pictorial
magazines like ‘Sadness and Joy’, ‘Boom’ and the antics of the
detective Lance Spearman and “bad man” Rabon Zollo.

I remember once
breaking down in tears when, as punishment, my dad would not buy me the
latest copy of ‘Boom’. The magazine featured a good looking warrior and
his elephant who always managed to vanquish his enemies. Some of the
enemies were man-eating plants! My father loved Agatha Christie’s
stories. I also distinctly remember the Inspector West series by John
Creasey. Inspector Roger West was a dashing young Scotland Yard
detective and several volumes of his exploits were housed in my
father’s cupboard. My father had a cupboard of books and as a young boy
I thought it was a thing of magic; no matter how many times I visited
that cupboard there was always a book I had never read. I travelled to
many worlds on the wings of my father’s cupboard – India, England,
America and faraway places that housed little impish boys that loved to
dream.

Achebe’s books spoke to my father because Achebe was of his
generation and he could identify with the issues that the books
wrestled with. My dad would always tell me that the books ‘A Man of the
People’ and ‘No Longer at Ease’ were fabrics torn from Nigeria. They
featured the uncritical acceptance of Western culture, what my Facebook
friend, Binyavanga Wainana the brilliant writer of Kenyan extraction,
once contemptuously called mimicry on his Facebook status. In the
books, Nigerian intellectuals, newly arrived from England would acquire
cars, fake accents and at dinner parties the favourite greeting was:
“How is the car behaving?” My dad loved that phrase. On certain days,
with a glass of Star lager beer in his hand, the keys of his motorcycle
twirling around his finger, and that twinkle in his impish eyes, he
would ask the mirror in our parlour: “How is the car behaving?” and we
would both break into long peals of laughter. Here is to you, Professor
Achebe for bonding my father and me with the glue of your powerful
words. You sir, are a man of the people.

The corridors of
Olivier Hall of The National Theatre, South Bank, London was crowded on
the evening of November 16, when I arrived just minutes short of the
start of the musical, Fela!. It was the opening night of the critically
acclaimed Broadway production, which had already bagged three Tony
awards and was much talked about in international thespian circles.

It is not often
that an African personality is celebrated and chosen as a subject for
western theatre; therefore the excitement was palpable as this evening
marked its next step: a debut in London’s Theatreland – and the British
media were out in their numbers to appraise this curious collaboration
of American stagecraft and African music.

Songs by Fela
played softly from hidden speakers around the busy corridors of the
hall, seducing us to a state of ecstatic anticipation. The songs
interrupted frequently by recorded voice simulations of Fela urging
that the motley audience take their seats as the show was set to begin.
We finally made our way from the small talk, the bars and the sales
stalls offering Fela merchandise and trickled to our seats.

The Olivier had
transmuted into a world of colours, symbols and images. Grabbing
attention high up on the right wing of the hall was a giant portrait of
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Fela’s mother. The stall terraces were draped
with flags of various African countries. The stage background was a
blown up image of Kalakuta Republic, while the foreground paid homage
to many traditional deities: Oshun, Shango, Esu, Ogun and Yemoja.

Projected pages of
newpapers proclaimed news like ‘Fela Raided in Ghana’, ‘Let’s legalise
polygamy – Fela’; and the many scrolling, flashing and shifting stage
accoutrements that were scattered above the stage ensured that one did
not quite know where to look. The stage set was a tribute to excess –
oddly fitting in depicting the life of a musical legend who was known
to have been ruled by extreme passions.

Preceded by his
beautifully decorated dancers, who taxed their waists and derrieres in
seductive dances that left many in the crowd gasping at the audacity of
their ample behinds, Sahr Ngaujah swaggered onstage and promptly took
the thousand-strong audience down a headlong dive into the life of
Abami Eda from the first strains of ‘Upside Down’.

Unknown Soldier

We watch with
wistful appreciation his devotion to his mother, whom he praises as
“the first (Nigerian) woman to drive a car… the first to visit China…
The Teacher” and we mourn along with him in pin-drop silence after her
death at the hands of ‘Unknown Soldier’. We accompany him when, evoking
the spirit of his mother, he summons an Egungun who leads him by the
hand to seek her in the world of the spirits. And along with him feel
the reprimand of her pronouncement when he begs to abandon the
homeland: “I refuse to give my permission for you to use what happened
to me as an excuse to run away.”

We are acquainted
uncomfortably – considering the British audience – with his long-held
scorn for those he calls Nigeria’s “tea drinking guests, the ones who
take our petroleum and people and leave us with gonorrhoea and Jesus.”
And together we are pallbearers who carry gifts of ‘Coffin for Head of
State’.

When the musical
seems to double back on itself, we accompany Fela on his musical
education to grey, cold London and sympathise when he wallows in what
might be termed a quarter life crisis. We all discover his identity in
Black emancipated Los Angeles, learning at the feet of Sandra who is as
much a political influence on him as Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver
whose texts she plies him with. And we share his triumph when he
declares, “Music is about change and I’m going to change the world.”

Complemented by a
12-piece band – with London-based Afrobeat musician, Dele Dosimi, on
the keyboard – and two lead singers who played the two major influences
in Fela’s life Melanie Marshall (Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti) with her
steely soprano, and Paulette Ivory (Sandra Isadore) crooning in sultry
alto, Ngaujah sweated his way through several saxophone build-ups,
while exuding the megalomania and larger than life charisma of Fela. He
played the audience expertly, we laughed when he wanted and danced when
he ordered. He took us from raucous participation in the notorious
pelvic thrusting clock dance to sad contemplation of the still-bitter
state of affairs in the nation he tried so hard to change.

Shuffering and Shmilling

‘Water No Get
Enemy’, ‘Coffin for Head of State’, ‘Expensive Shit’, ‘Upside Down’,
‘Shuffering and Shmiling’, ‘Sorrow Tears and Blood’, ‘Zombie’, ‘Yellow
Fever’, led us down route after intriguing route in the life of the
much missed icon. Finally, Ngaujah asked, “Who here has ever been to
jail?” and surprisingly several hands shot up in the audience.

Two of the more
insistent hands came from the first and fifth rows, and moments later,
stage lighting revealed them to be no other than Fela’s sons, Seun and
Femi Kuti. Seated discreetly among the crowd with his older sister,
Yeni, Femi had undoubtedly tried to evade recognition until the
nostalgia of the recreated shrine ambience prompted him to abandon
anonymity. Seun on the other hand had hardly been able to restrain
himself from joining Ngaujah and the dancers onstage. His head bobbed,
shoulders shook, and feet tapped in evident enjoyment of the music and
the bird’s eye view of the spectacular dancers gyrating before him in
an alternation of perfect choreography and reckless abandon.

Employing a
colourful array of costumes, expressions, dances, ideas, Fela! was
spectacular in its drama. Bearing in mind its international audience,
however, many of the songs were performed in English rather than the
Pidgin English. The musical also played, as it were with the facts:
Fela was no known Abiku, who had eschewed his mortality in anger at
being given a foreign name. Yeni, was quick to defend these add-ons
when NEXT caught up with her after the show, “It’s a musical, they
can’t get all the facts right. You will not find me criticising it
because it has ensured that almost 14 years after his death, Fela’s
legacy continues to live internationally.”

After curtain call

The performance
seemed to be packed too tight on a body too thin, getting lost in the
hazy area between drama and musical. Nigerians may not have seen all of
the Fela they know, but the parts of Fela seen fit to be depicted was
played out in almost an overdose. “The story is flimsy and confused,
there’s a lack of narrative drive,” complained Henry Hitchings of The
London Evening Standard, and one could not agree more. One might
therefore disagree with Femi Kuti’s remark that “This show is for the
international audience. It gives the average foreigner knowledge of
Fela and what he stood for. We Nigerians are too critical; we want the
Nigerian accent and fail to understand the intention of the producers.”

Seun Kuti who was
seeing the musical for the seventh time, said he found it enjoyable
though less heightened than the Broadway shows. “Not in the message,”
he hastened to add, “but in the drama.”

Watching Ngaujah
alternate between abrasive confidence, soul and affected contempt for
his “political enemies” was a thrill only slightly marred by his
mispronunciation of Yoruba expressions. And one could not help but
wonder, as he appeared in one elaborately embroidered Fela trademarked
costume after the other, whether this job of playing Fela could not be
better delivered by D’banj, whose new Mr Endowed mantra seems another
of his similarities with the illustrious “one who carries death in his
pouch”.

Enquiring from Femi
if when Fela! debuts in Nigeria as hoped, D’banj would be playing Fela,
met with a bright eyed knowledge but a refusal to comment, and one can
only wonder whether the Koko Master is not as we speak taking a crash
course in playing the brass.

Fela! at London’s National Theatre is an exhilarating testament to
the achievement of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti while being at the same time
exaggerated yet sketchy; toned down, as it were, to appeal to British
sensibilities. One therefore hopes that when the musical visits
Nigeria, the Abami Eda will be unleashed on his people in all his
overwhelming glory.

For the second year
running, works by Nigerian and Cameroonian artists were on display at
The Last Pictures Show, organised by Catherine Pittet’s company,
Gondwana.

The five-day
exhibition kicked off on October 29 with a cocktail at Terra Kulture,
venue of the show. This was the seventh edition of the yearly event,
which had run its first five exhibitions solely in Cameroon.

Present at the opener were artists Ndidi Dike, Alex Nwokolo, Jean-Marie Ahonda and Terra Kulture’s Bolanle Austen-Peters.

The exhibition
opened to the public a day after. On display were works of various
media from 55 artists including Nigeria’s Richmond Ogolo, Duke Asidere,
Babalola Lawson, Fidelis Odogwu, George Edozie, Kehinde Balogun and
Cameroonian artists Elolongue Weti, Bekoun Calaudee François, Louis
Epee, He Zoul, Guillaume Makani, Francis Budin, and Maurice Tchinda
Tchim.

The works shown

For lovers of art, it was a mixed grill of the abstract and the realist, ranging across various media.

These included
works in acrylic on canvas by Bob-Nosa Uwagboe and Aser Kash, metal
sculptures by Fidelis Odogwu and Agose Patrick Ighogbedhere.

Blaise Bang, Joe
Kessy and Cheupine Njoya all had mixed media pieces; and there was
photographic art from Pierre-Alain Bignalet, which captured city life
in Cameroon. Mostly untitled, one of these featured stevedores on a
boat and two women dressed in traditional attire. Rural life appeared
to be the thrust of Mathieu Mbainaissem’s works: cows grazing, corn
fields, and village men and women in trade.

Amongst other
interesting pieces was Nwokolo’s ‘Congestion.’ The piece done in oil on
canvas depicts the overcrowded state of a Lagos province. ‘Manhood,’
also by the same artist features, four young men apparently in the
nude.

Weti from Cameroon
made use of bottle tops to create captivating images; one titled ‘Le
Monde’ (The World) and another piece, ‘Unity in Diversity.’

Jean-Marie Ahanda’s
dual-purpose mixed media sculptures were also a sight to behold. Turned
right-side up, upside down, front or back, the pieces depict a mother
with a child tied to her back and a calabash on her head; or a young
maiden with a long, slender neck. Marbles and sea shells were other
components of the works. The artist also had a series of abstract
paintings on display, but the sculptures stood out.

At the heart of
Emmanuel Ekong Ekefrey’s art was both modern and traditional African
existence. One of his works, ‘Molue Bus’, portrays the Lagos city bus
in its usual overloaded state. Bodies dangle from the windows and faces
peep out through the fender. In the midst of the chaos, one passenger
can be seen brandishing the Benin traditional sword. Birds and giraffes
were the focus of Sabastiene Berenyny’s animal-themed paintings.

Catherine Pittet

According to the
organiser Pittet, her outfit and the featured artists were satisfied
with this edition of the exhibition, which closed on November 2.

“We are very happy
because at Terra Kulture, we had the opportunity to display most of the
works and I think everybody was very happy. It was better than my first
time in Nigeria. This is my second time presenting the works in Nigeria
and we had a better (place) to show the works,” she said.

In her words, the
sales and appreciation for Cameroonian artists was also better than the
first time, when the show took place at The Civic Centre in October
2009.

“Many people bought
(the artworks this time round). Cameroonian artists are happier this
year because last year people did not know them. (At the initial
edition) Nigerian artists were very happy in Cameroun but it was not
the same for the Camerounians in Lagos. But they are better known now
and (sales) were better.”

Consequent editions
of the show will take place for the first time in Cote d’Ivoire in
February 2011 and in Paris (for a second time) in October 2011. While
looking forward to taking it to other countries in the future, Pittet
maintains that the exhibition will keep its home in Lagos. “I think we
are coming back here because Terra Kulture has a gallery and I like to
stay where I feel good.”

Pittet feels good
enough to be grateful that support for the exhibition has grown in
Nigeria, but she hopes for a bit more. “We have small support and I
wish next year we will have more. (I hope that) people like Coca Cola,
Samsung and the telephone companies will support the exhibition.”

She believes arts
across the West Coast will receive a huge boost if funds are available
to allow more artists feature at the exhibition. Pittet is however
positive that lack of support will not dampen her spirit. “This is my
life. I am a designer. It is part of my life.”

With no preference
for any particular artist, she says her exhibitions are open to all;
either those who approach her or those she approaches. In her words,
“It’s a big family. We are all friends.”

‘The Last Pictures Show’ opened in Cameroon on November 26 and runs till December 1.