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The late dramatist
and poet, Esiaba Irobi, has won the 2010 Nigeria Prize for Literature.
Irobi’s play, ‘Cemetery Road’, was adjudged the best ahead of Ahmed
Yerima’s ‘Little Drops…’ and Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo’s ‘The Killing
Swamp’ for this year’s prize awarded for drama.

Ninety three
entries were initially received before the panel of judges comprising
theatre scholars, Dapo Adelugba, Mary Kolawole, John Ilah, Kalu Uka,
and Tanimu Abubakar, who pruned them down to 11. Irobi, Yerima, and
Adinoyi-Ojo made the final shortlist of three announced at a press
conference on August 11.

Reading the report
of the judges at the Grand Award Night held on Saturday, October 9, at
Eko Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, Adelugba, chair, panel of judges,
said ‘Cemetery Road’ met all the eligibility criteria of the prize
endowed by Nigeria NLG Limited and administered by the Nigerian Academy
of Letters (NAL). The criteria are relevance and originality;
compliance with the highest standards of literary and dramatic
production; dramaturgy; setting and linguistic appeal; and stageability.

He explained that
the play “is about living, loving, and dying for the things we hold
dear.” Adelugba added that the dialogue of ‘Cemetery Road’ crackles and
that the play advances the frontiers of drama. Ayo Banjo, a member of
the Literature Committee, thereafter announced Irobi as winner of the
prize.

Irobi, author of
plays and poetry collections including ‘The Colour of Rusting Gold’;
‘Hangmen Also Die’; ‘Inflorescence: Selected Poems, 1977- 1988′;
‘Nwokedi: A Play’, and ‘Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin’ died on May 3,
2010, in Berlin, Germany. His ‘Cemetery Road’ had earlier won the World
Drama Trust Award for playwriting in 1992.

His brother,
Osondu, collected the prize on his behalf at the ceremony where the
winner of the Nigeria Prize for Science, Akaehomen Ibhadode, a
professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Benin, also
got his prize. Ibhadode won the award for his work, entitled
‘Development of New Methods for Precision Die Design.”

Hall of Fame

Twenty eight
Nigerians were also inducted into the Hall of Fame for Letters and
Science at the event. Afrobeat creator, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti; Nobel
Laureate, Wole Soyinka; novelist, Abubakar Imam; historians J.F.
Ade-Ajayi and Kenneth Dike; author of ‘Things Fall Apart’, Chinua
Achebe; the late potter, Ladi Kwali; and scholars, Emmanuel Obiechina
and Micheal Echeruo, amongst others were inducted into the Nigerian
Hall of Fame for Letters.

The late mathematician, Chike Obi; psychiatrist, Adeoye Lambo;
neurologist, Benjamin Osuntokun; Oladipo Akinkugbe; ophtamologist,
Adenike Abiose; medical doctors, Idris Mohammed and Umaru Shehu, and
seven others, were inducted into the Nigerian Hall of Fame for Science.

If Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti (Fela) was still alive and healthy, he would be looking
forward to being 72 years old on 15 October, 2010. Hardly the age one
associates with mavericks defiantly dishing out double-fisted
‘black-power’ salutes, decked out with war paint, amulets and charms
strapped to a tight body displaying 6-pack abs most men would die for.
So today he would be greyer or even geriatric maybe, yet I suspect he
would still have been able to sweep on stage and pull-off a power-pose
with purpose, menace and sex-appeal. And the masses would roar, and his
music would still be giving me goose bumps.

Just listen to the
opening stanzas of his songs ‘Water No Get Enemy’ or ‘Otoriti
Stealing’; the mind-blowing horn arrangements in ‘Yellow Fever’,
‘Beasts of No Nation’, ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’; and the
orchestration in ‘Overtake Don Overtake Overtake’. Add to that
signature introductory first layer of sound a rumbling seemingly
primordial drum beat delivered in a merciless pulsating rhythm, and
then percussions, from the shrill shekere and kpangolo traditional
instruments to the deep conga drums. Pure Genius.

On Fela

I cannot claim to
have known the man personally, and despite his giving me the most
memorable display of the relationship between a father and daughter,
Fela did not know me at all. He was oblivious of my many visits to his
night club the ‘Africa Shrine’. Thankfully, so was my boarding school
principal. And come to think of it, my parents who had delivered me
safely into boarding school did not know of my nocturnal adventures
either, but I digress.

At that memorable
first and only meeting 33 years ago with Fela at a concert in Tafawa
Balewa Square Lagos, one of his daughters who happened to be dating a
friend of mine sneaked us backstage to introduce us to her father.
“Fela, this na my bobo and him friend”. Fela looked my friend over and
then spoke around the inevitable stick of marijuana hanging
precariously from his lower lip. “So na you dey do my pikin, ehn?”

As a comment made
by a father in the presence of his daughter and two young strangers, it
was just too good, beyond translation or rephrasing. In its original
delivery format faithfully reproduced here, it remains deliciously
memorable. Some moments are frozen in time and this was certainly a
classic one.

I want to point out
quickly that Fela was not my role model so I never aspired to his
lifestyle, yet to me he was the ultimate icon. The man was undoubtedly
a musical genius, an inspiration for my part-time musical ambitions and
most certainly the chief proponent of Afrobeat, the music genre he is
credited with pioneering or popularising, depending who you ask.

On “Afrobeat”

According to Albert
Oikelome in his piece “Stylistic Analysis of Afrobeat Music of Fela
Anikulapo Kuti” – “In musical terms, Afrobeat clearly draws upon jazz,
blues, soul, funk, afro latin, highlife and folksong elements and
grafts them all into a West African rhythmic template.”

Also quoting
acclaimed photo journalist Tam Fiofori “… It is safe, sensible, and
factually logical to state that Afrobeat and its various flavours were
created by Nigerian musicians who were interested in expanding the
tonal and rhythmic frontiers of Nigerian highlife music… It is from
this distinct and unique Nigerian highlife flavour that the various
inflections of Afrobeat evolved through assimilation, experimentation,
cross-fertilisation, and individual musical innovation….”

I imagine in
reading these definitions, Fela in his typical continuous switch from
pidgin to Queen’s English would probably have retorted, “Which kind big
big grammar una want take confuse people?? Afrobeat is for the body and
mind, an On-the-ground spiritual game”

So for me, and I
wager that for others too, Fela’s Afrobeat with its signature call and
response pattern in both the music and the lyrics will always stir deep
emotions and feelings of the foot-tapping, head bobbing; chin holding
and occasional deep sighing variety, as we sway to the beat and ponder
what our beloved Nigeria might have been if we had listened more
carefully to his ingenious stories in song.

With Fela, Afrobeat
achieved international recognition and political purpose, evolving
alongside a Nigeria losing its innocence to civil war, military
dictatorship and rapacious corruption. Afrobeat became synonymous with
non-conformism and disaffection.

The youth,
especially the poor and disadvantaged, were drawn to it like bees to
pollen, even as parents squirmed and clucked their tongues in
disapproval of its proponent’s lifestyle.

I was fortunate
enough to be present at Fela’s club the Afrika Shrine on the night that
the ‘Overtake don Overtake’ was performed for the first time. A very
strange thing started to happen when the song got to the point of
describing the struggle of an ordinary civil servant trying
unsuccessfully to buy a fan to reduce the discomfort of sleeping in the
oppressive Lagos heat (“My friend wan come buy fan, him dey sweat where
him dey sleep for room”). I heard a restrained sob escape from the man
standing next to me, and when I looked around, realised that several
grown men in the audience where weeping quietly as they swayed to the
music! With this song, Fela was stripping bare the truth about their
lives in grim and excruciating detail – an overwhelming revelation of
their day to day non-existence (“Na now him come understand him life,
enjoyment can never come him way, na now him life dey go reverse, in
Africa him fatherland”). Later it occurred to me that the expatriates
in the audience that day must have thought these men had smoked a
particularly potent strain of marijuana and were literally “stoned to
tears”! To this day, the memory of that surreal night still makes me
break out in goose bumps. Such is the power of his music.

On Fela the Rebel

After Fela
metamorphosed from as he put it “a young guy enjoying himself around
town” to a powerful and fearsome social critic, he became widely viewed
as a “Rebel”.

I have questioned
this categorization of the man, and believe that his goal was promoting
genuine social reformation. He was not always coherent, especially in
his interviews, but once the music started you could always see an
immediate transformation in which he not only created but also directed
the merging of a thousand seemingly discordant notes into a harmonious
whole as a backdrop to the powerful story telling which he referred to
as “the on-the-ground spiritual game”. Raw, irreverent, and deeply
moving.

So for me, it has
and will always be about the music, this gift he had of storytelling
using the powerful Afrobeat platform. Perhaps some inspiration came
from the ganja he “rebelliously” and habitually smoked, but above all,
Fela was simply a unique being in which various elements came together
over a period of time to produce the equally notorious and revered
legend we know.

It was probably
this powerful effect he had over the masses through his music that led
Fela to think he could actually rule Nigeria as president. I watched in
astonishment as he attempted to register a political party and run for
elections, and even more ridiculous was the Government’s viewing of it
as a real threat, enough so as to actually employ time and energy in
frustrating his efforts!

On the live performances

For all his
anti-convention reputation, Fela ran his clubs with good old-fashioned
authoritarianism supported by corporal punishment. Other than
marijuana, his own personal narcotic of choice, it was apparently
forbidden to deal any other drug at the venues. Discipline was harsh,
meted swiftly and liberally. Patrons at Afrika Shrine apparently felt
more at risk from the ever possible police drug squad raid than from a
crime committed at the club.

Clad in adire-print
trousers, hand-made shoes from matching fabric and very often
bare-chested, Fela moved about on-stage, cigarette betwixt fingers, in
a casual, smooth (almost languid) stroll. Off-stage he existed mostly
in underpants. It was hard not to pay attention to him in a room full
of people. A late night performance at the Shrine was as much
showmanship as it was theatre, a musical concert and a “gaddem
on-the-ground spiritual game’!

Patrons showed-up
for yabbis i.e. irreverent commentary by Fela interspersed between
the songs about the inanities of Nigerian and African society. Fela
himself sang about his irreverent unstoppable mouth in the song Beasts
of No Nation “…basket mouth don start to leak again o..oo, basket mouth
don open up again o..oo!

Make I yab dem?
Fela would tease; Fela yab demmmm… the anticipating audience would roar
back, eager for a laugh at someone else’s expense. Contempt for the
affectations and pretentiousness of the ruling elite was dished-out in
equal measure with thorough verbal roastings of the ‘masses’ that
condoned these rulers in the first place.

A visit to Lagos
without a pit stop at Fela’s club was a less than fulfilling experience
for savvy foreigners, especially Europeans, who paid good money to
endure humorous but stinging jibes from a social critic conscious
always, about the legacy of colonialism and oppression.

For all of his
brilliance as a composer, arranger, keyboardist and saxophonist, it was
his prowess as a bandleader that held everything together. Supported by
a coterie of brilliant individualists like Igo Chico on tenor saxophone
and the peerless Tony Allen on drums; catchy and easily understood
lyrics largely in pidgin English flavoured by syncopated rhythms and an
awe inspiring horn section, were echoed and chorused by the female
singer-dancers whose shrill voices struck me as a throwback to the
witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Intense, raw and uncut.

No matter where he
was playing live, Fela was value-for-money. Whether performing with his
entire ensemble at the Shrine or at the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) in
Lagos or just gigging impromptu with Tunde & the late Fran Kuboye
at the Museum Kitchen and later at Jazz 38 on Awolowo Road Ikoyi, he
effortlessly delivered a satisfying performance which friends and I
would talk about till the next show.

Even his habitual
lateness in arriving at his live performances did nothing to dampen the
anticipation of the crowd and the joyful roar that always greeted his
double fisted black power salute as he strode onto the stage, sometimes
six hours late!

Last thoughts

Yes, I didn’t know
the man personally but almost every time I watched him live, I saw the
visceral impact his music had on his audience, me included. He had the
ability to talk directly to each person in the audience. I now have an
extensive collection of his music as one of my most prized possessions,
and even to this moment, continue to discover new things about the man
through his music. Where did he get the opening stanza of ‘Water No Get
Enemy’?? What was he thinking? Why is this assembly of notes still one
of the most recognisable musical phrases in Nigeria, across gender and
tribe? Why would a light skinned woman be described as “Yellow Fever”?
I get the “Yellow” but the “Fever” beats me. Was she hot to the touch
or just hot to look at??

There are many more
such questions waiting when I head into blissful retirement with Fela’s
music, and it will be a joy to ponder on them and perhaps find answers,
if only in my head.

Epilogue

I have heard other
Afrobeat bands and artists keeping the music alive, listened to sampled
versions of his music by young international artists, and even seen the
Broadway show “Fela!” that is now making waves on the global
entertainment circuit and introducing the Fela phenomenon to new
audiences worldwide. This is AWESOME. The Emperor sleeps and the people
ponder and talk amongst themselves!

More respect, Abami Eda (The strange being), more respect to you as you rest. I am still getting those goose bumps.

Uchenna Ikonne
could be described as a walking encyclopedia of some sort because of
his knowledge of the history of Nigerian music. Based in the United
States, he is a filmmaker by vocation and a lawyer by training, but his
consuming passion is Nigerian music. Ikonne is currently working on
reissuing a lot of Nigerian classic songs under his label, Comb &
Razor Sound. He shares his story with NEXT.

With your knowledge of Nigerian music classics, many would be shocked to realise that you are only 35 years old

That does often
take people by surprise. I’m primarily known as an online presence,
chiefly for my writing on my blog (http://combandrazor.blogspot.com),
so most people have no idea of my background, age, or appearance. They
generally expect me to be much older than I am because I’m writing
about Nigerian music and popular culture of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s;
and they’re often alarmed to learn that I’m in my 30s.

The funny thing
about it is that I have spent a lot of time interviewing musicians from
that era, and even when I’m sitting with them face-to-face, they still
forget how old I am. Like, we’ll be discussing some events that
happened immediately after the civil war, and they’ll say to me, “Shey,
you know that nightclub we used to go to in Port Harcourt… You remember
when so-and-so played there one Friday night like that in 1971. Were
you there that night?”

When stuff like
that happens, I’m not quite sure how to process it: do I take it as a
compliment that I appear so knowledgeable of the era that they forget I
wasn’t there? Or does it mean that hard life has aged me to the point
that men in their 50s and 60s can look at me and think I am their age
mate?

Do Nigerian youth know enough about Nigerian songs of old?

I would not even be
exaggerating if I said that many of our youth actually believe that the
Nigerian music industry started in 1998 or so. They realise that yes,
there must have been music in Nigeria “back in da dayz” – but they
think that maybe we only had a handful of artists: Fela, Osadebe, Sonny
Okosuns, Onyeka, maybe Evi-Edna, and a few other really popular names
like that. I am not playing!

I have had many
young people express this to me directly! But what’s curious is that a
lot of times, even Nigerians who are old enough to remember better have
completely forgotten most of the music of the past; cultural amnesia is
an epidemic in our society, and that’s a shame.

Tell us why you decided to embark on this task

If I didn’t do it,
who would? Well, the main thing I am working on right now is the Comb
& Razor Sound record label, which will be reissuing a lot of
classic music from Nigeria, as well as other countries in Africa and
South America.

I’m trying to make
it so that our releases are more like “publications”—big booklets full
of historical information, stories, and photographs with a CD attached
to them.

Because really,
people aren’t that interested in just buying CDs anymore and CDs are
too easily pirated, anyway. You have to give them the value for their
money. We’ll also be releasing the music on vinyl records, which
happens to be my preferred format.

You recently embarked on a trip to Nigeria to get more information; were there any challenges?

The number one
challenge is always the relative inaccessibility of the information.
It’s not like you can just walk into a library or something and
comfortably find information. You have to dig for it. And frankly, not
a lot of people have the stamina or resourcefulness to do that.

I remember when I first started telling people in Nigeria that I am looking for old records and stuff like that.

They told me, “You
can’t find that kind of thing in Nigeria today.” My reply was “No, you
mean YOU can’t find it… I can!” And they would say “Ha! You won’t see
that sort of thing in the market o!” The market? Are you kidding? Who
is looking at the market? To find this stuff, you need to go ‘under’
the market! For months on end I would be rummaging through dark and
filthy storage spaces, day in and day out. Getting sinus infections
from the dust and mould… digging through urine-soaked garbage and
getting bitten by rats. And in the end, when I show all the material
I’ve gathered, people always ask “How did you find this stuff?” as if
I’m a magician. But really, it’s all right here under our noses!

Security was also a
major challenge. Undertaking the project required me to traverse the
breadth of the country several times over, and navigating the terrain
while trying to stay ahead of the kidnapping epidemic in the East.
Well, let’s say it required a good deal of gumption and creativity.

The challenge I
feel defeated me, though, was the complete unavailability of a lot of
the material. I’m actually a filmmaker by vocation, and my original
intention had been to make a documentary film about Nigerian musicians.

Unfortunately, I
couldn’t get enough period footage to create a sufficiently dynamic
documentary because of a lot of the tapes of musical performances
recorded for television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were either dubbed
over or thrown away. So, unfortunately, I had to put that project aside.

Any collaborations with record labels in Nigeria for more information?

No, not really. For
one thing, most of the big record labels from Nigeria’s golden age of
music – EMI, Phillips, Decca/Afrodisia, and the like – they don’t exist
anymore. And many of them even discarded or destroyed most of their
records, master tapes, artwork, videos, and documentation.

Record keeping is almost non-existent in Nigeria. Why do you think this is so?

It’s probably a
controversial view, but I think that we as Africans have a peculiar
relationship to the concept of antiquity. We joke about “African time”
and what-not, but I really do believe that the African perception of
time is a bit more… fluid than it is in the West. We tend to live
primarily in the present, and even our concept of “the present” is very
elastic.

I once read about
an anthropologist who was looking for artefacts in a certain African
country, and he was presented with a carved wooden mask representing an
ancient fertility god. He asked the indigenes if the mask was
“authentic” – by which he meant: “does this particular mask actually
date back to an ancient era of this land? Is it an antique?” And the
people told him, “Of course it’s authentic” – by which they meant:
“Yes, it was made here, and it still represents this particular
fertility god who we still worship.”

Whether or not the
mask is old was unimportant to them: all that matters is whether the
mask did its job as the avatar for the god. It wouldn’t make a
difference to them if the mask was carved 3000 years ago or yesterday.
And if there was a mask from thousands of years ago representing a god
that they no longer worshipped, then they would have no qualms with
burning it or throwing it away because it served no useful purpose for
them in “the present.”

So it is with us in
Nigeria. We’re fixated upon how utilitarian things are to us in “the
present,” and “the present” trumps everything.

That’s why you have
television stations erasing the only copies of classic TV shows like
‘The Village Headmaster’ so they can use the tapes to record today’s
music videos. It’s why record companies hired contractors to cart away
and destroy entire libraries of master tapes of Nigerian music from the
1940s to the 1980s, so they’d have room for the music of the 1990s.
‘The present’ is all that exists for us.

When will your releases hit the market?

The first of these
publications will probably be released in the US and Europe at the end
of November. I’m not sure exactly when it will come to Nigeria, but
obviously it will find its way here. It’s a musical chronicle of the
years of Nigeria’s Second Republic (1979-83) and covers a lot of the
notable developments of that era: the increased professionalisation of
the Nigerian music industry with the rise of high-tech independent
labels like Phondisk and Tabansi, the rise of solo singers as the old
bands died, the emergence of more women in the music scene, and so on.

The next one will
probably be out in December, and it will focus on the venerable
Semi-Colon Rock Group of Umuahia. Then in early 2011, we’ll have
something concentrating on music from Cross River and Akwa Ibom States
and then a spotlight on Benin-style highlife, and lots of other stuff
in the pipeline.

Is royalty payment a big issue for you?

It is a big deal to
me. A BIG deal. You see, one thing that a lot of people don’t know is
that most Nigerian musicians of years past never made any money off the
sales of their records. I mean, ask someone like Onyeka Onwenu if she
ever made even one naira from record sales. There’s no way I can in
good conscience perpetuate that kind of exploitation of our artists and
so, it’s of the utmost importance to me that the original artists are
paid, even if it’s not a huge amount of money.

CDs actually are
not selling as much as they were ten years ago, so nobody is getting
rich off selling discs. But one thing we’re working on is developing
ways to licence the music for use in films, television, adverts,
ringtones, and other applications, and hopefully we can make some
decent money for the artists that way, because some of them really,
really need it.

What do you hope to achieve with this project?

I’d love to tell
you that I hope to become a millionaire from it, but I’m much too
realistic to even fool myself with that, let alone fool you. If, as a
result of my efforts, Nigeria’s rich heritage of popular culture
becomes fully recognised and celebrated, and I get to see our national
artistic legends reap some of the money and kudos they deserve, I think
I’d call myself a happy man.

And if I’m able to
even make a few pennies from it myself to stay afloat and continue
doing what I do, that would be a bonus, because this is really
expensive work and I fund it pretty much completely out of my own
pocket.

What’s next after this?

Well, I don’t like
to look like I’m this guy who is stuck in the past, because despite my
interest in history, I’m very much on the cutting edge of culture! I
want to sign some contemporary artists to Comb & Razor Sound; I’m
just looking for artists who are really unique. What I would really
love is to find a really cool, young Nigerian hard rock/funk band.

Also, this whole
music thing is really a side track that I stumbled into over the past
two or three years and it has taken me away from my work as a
filmmaker, so I’d like to get back to making movies soon.

To that effect, I have some film projects I’m developing. I haven’t
completely given up on the documentary either. I’m also working on a
book on the history of Nigerian filmmaking, and a cartoon series for
Nigerian TV.

Octogenarian
photographer, J.D. Okhai Ojeikere`s ‘Sartorial Moments and the Nearness
of Yesterday’, opened at the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), Yaba,
Lagos on October 1 to acclaim from viewers.

Unlike his famous
photographs of Nigerian hairstyles of the 60s and 70s, works that were
displayed at the exhibition were Nigerian fashion photographs of the
pre-Independence and Indepence era. However, three images from the
hairstyles series still made their way into the exhibition, curated by
Bisi Silva.

The about 50 black
and white framed photographs feature people in fashionable dresses at
different occasions. There are some showing a wedding of the 60s with
the bride and groom attired in Aso Oke, while there are also group and
individual photographs of women smiling into Ojeikere’s lens. There is
a touching one of a woman assisting her husband with his necklace,
while belles of the period in hot numbers are also featured.

Pre Independence
and Independence campus fashion did not escape the documentarist as he
captured images of students at the University College, Ibadan (now
University of Ibadan) and the University College Hospital (UCH) from
around 1958 to 1963.

Welcoming guests to
the opening, Silva began on a note of gratitude. She thanked all for
making time for the event and explained that it was a three-in-one
celebration incorporating Pa Ojeikere’s 80th birthday, “60 years of
incredible photography”, and 50 years of Nigeria’s Independence. She
reserved special thanks for Ojeikere “ for this incredible body of
works of his” she spent two and half months going through.

Silva further
disclosed that the CCA had, in the last one year, been exploring the
intersections of art, fashion and identity as part of its interest in
post-coloniality and its related ambivalence. Pa Ojeikere’s fashion
photographs, she said, helps in giving a peep into Nigeria’s cultural
heritage. The founder of CCA also noted the skills Ojeikere has
demonstrated in his photography, adding that the exhibition was an
“opportunity to show the world the diversity of his practice in
fashion, architecture and Television.”

Silva said that
apart from being honoured that Pa Ojeikere agreed to work with her,
going through his archives have raised more questions about Nigerian
history, for her. “What of the earlier photographers, those in the
1900s and before, what happened to them?” Asked Silva who disclosed
that she has started researching into the past.

In a short speech
at the occasion, Pa Ojeikere thanked Silva, the CCA, his children and
his wife who was also present. “I am honoured that such a great number
of people are gathered here because of my work,” he concluded.

Commenting on the
exhibition, Pascal Ott of the French School, Victoria Island, and an
associate of the photographer, said though the photographs are not new
to him, “I am enjoying myself because I know most of these pictures but
I have not seen them on the wall like this.”

Another guest, Bowo
Olateru-Olagbegi, said, “I think it’s a very nice exhibition and it
brings old memories, particularly when you see someone like Pa
Ojeikhere at 80 and he’s still taking photographs, it’s quite a
challenge. He challenges you that if somebody like that can still be up
and going at 80, it tells you that he still has many more years ahead.
But the pictures themselves speak volumes and it’s quite exciting. I
really appreciate what the man has done.”

In a chat with
NEXT, Pa Ojeikere disclosed that he was just having fun when he started
taking the pictures. “I never knew anything about exhibition then. I
was taking it for artistic sake, artistic interest. I wasn’t taking
them for any purpose, except people who came to me in the university to
take their portraits.”

Most of the
photographs, he said, were taken at UCI, UCH , Saint Theresa and Saint
Annes, all in Ibadan because he spent most of his time in the city.

“I feel very happy,
of course. I’m grateful to God for giving me the energy and the wisdom
to have taken these pictures and preserve them,” he disclosed on how he
felt with the photographs being in the public domain.

Asked how he
preserved the photographs, Ojeikere said, “When the pictures were taken
I kept the negative, That’s divine direction. Any picture I take, I
keep the negative.” He added that even when moving house, “The cupboard
containing my negative were usually in my bedroom. When I move, I move
them first.”

Sartorial Moments
and the Nearness of Yesterday is at the Centre for Contemporary Art, 9
McEwen Street, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos, till October 14.

A documentary film
based on one of Africa’s and Nigeria’s most celebrated footballers,
Nwankwo Kanu, is to be premiered on the international movie stage early
next year. The documentary, titled ‘Lion Heart: the Kanu Story’ is the
brainchild of Neil Oyenekan, CEO, Lighthouse Television and Filmworks,
a wholly Nigerian-owned film and television production company.

Prior to starting
up his own production company, Oyenekan worked for the BBC in the
United Kingdom before coming back to Nigeria to become a partner at
Stormvision, the production outfit responsible for the TV shows,
Dragon’s Den, Big Brother Nigeria, and Koko Mansion.

According to
Oyenekan, the idea for the Kanu documentary came about as part of a
vision to create indigenous and innovative TV shows and documentary
features worthy of the international market.

He points to the compelling story of Kanu’s life, which made the footballer a perfect candidate for documentary treatment.

“Kanu was chosen as
subject for the first documentary from Lighthouse, based on his trials,
tribulations, and triumphs in football,” he says.

Heart condition

Nwankwo Kanu is
well known as one of the most successful footballers to come out from
Africa. However, in 1996, the discovery of a congenital heart defect by
doctors at Inter Milan FC, almost put paid to his career. But after a
successful surgery in November of that year to replace an aortic valve,
the 1996 Olympic medalist was able to return to his football club side
in Italy in a matter of months, in April 1997.

From there, Kanu
would go on to win more medals and trophies, becoming at one point the
most decorated footballer in Africa. Still, inspired by his near-death
experience, Kanu decided to set up the Kanu Heart Foundation, an
organisation dedicated to helping young children across Africa with
debilitating heart conditions.

“Kanu is a hero,”
Oyenekan enthuses, going on to explain the message behind the biopic.
“The idea behind this documentary is to create a heart-rending feature
that would inspire the average person, irrespective of age, race, and
gender. You can be from anywhere around the world, but the heart of the
story is about believing in yourself, irrespective of the obstacles you
face.”

Kanu approves

The feature has the
blessing of Nwankwo Kanu, who came on as executive producer. According
to Oyenekan, rights to the documentary were obtained in 2006, but
production was delayed for almost five years due to lack of funds.
Eventually, MRS, an oil-producing company based in Nigeria, stepped up
to the plate to provide the necessary funds. Production is currently
underway and is expected to last for six months.

The documentary
film will be filmed across several continents, following the footsteps
of Kanu from his days as a young footballer with Iwuanyanwu Nationale,
up until his debut in the English Premiership, with stopovers in
Holland and Italy.

“Much of our
material would be derived from archives, but also interspersed with
interviews with [those] who have been part of Kanu’s career,” the
producer says, name-checking the likes of Arsene Wenger, Kanu’s coach
at Arsenal FC; Arsenal teammate, Thierry Henry; Jay Jay Okocha; and
Taribo West – as some of the people expected to be featured. The
doctors who treated his heart condition would also make an appearance.

“Since we are
making a documentary that not only chronicles Kanu’s successful career,
but also tries to show the impact African football has made
internationally, we would also be featuring African icons like Roger
Miller,” Oyenekan adds.

Wish list

The story-part of
the documentary would be narrated via voice-over. “We are yet to
actually pick a person to do the honours, but our tentative wish-list
includes ace broadcaster, Patrick Oke; Hollywood actors, Chiwetel
Ejiofor and Djimon Hounsou; and Britsh actor, David Oyewole,” says
Oyenekan.

Direction on the
biopic has been taken up by Caroline Deeds, who is described as an
“experienced documentarian who will tell the story from the African
angle.”

Deeds is British of
African descent, and has previously worked in Nigeria as a newscaster
at a local television station. She has made several
internationally-recognised documentaries and also programmes for the
BBC.

‘Lion Heart’ is
expected to premiere simultaneously in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, The
United States, and Holland in April 2011. Plans towards a South African
premiere are still underway. Lighthouse productions also plans to
screen the documentary at international film festivals and enter it for
awards. It would also be released on DVD.

“In the long run,
our plan is to have a Nigerian story told from a Nigerian point of
view, that is appreciated around the world. We are hoping that it would
be distributed in schools and eventually become a collector’s item,”
Oyenekan declares.

‘Lion Heart: the Kanu Story’ will be the first major documentary produced by Lighthouse Television and Filmworks.

First of all, let
us abolish one myth. It is not true that Nigerians (and by extension,
Africans) do not read. When you really think about Nigerians, we are
not much different from citizens in the Western world. These days,
Westerners do not read books, they do not read print. It is too
expensive a habit and it just does not fit into how they live these
days. Similarly, our people stopped reading a long time ago because
like in the West it is an unnecessary luxury. Life is too short.
Besides, how many of you have tried to read a book while perched an
Okada motorcycle on the Third Mainland Bridge?

Our people read.
They read their bibles religiously, begging an indifferent God for
relief from their thieving sons and daughters, our vagabonds in power.
They read religiously: Cell phones, smartphones, laptops, etc.
Regardless, the writer-thinker keeps churning out ideas in books that
few people read. We need to redesign our attitudes and our mindsets. We
are too busy being the sage on the stage when we should be the guide on
the side of those whom we seek to influence. The amount of time we all
spend online complaining about the poor reading culture of poor people
could be more productively spent designing instructional materials that
could be ported to the medium that our people now use.

It is not as if the
books that are being produced in Nigeria are attractive enough to want
to be read. Last year, I visited a number of bookstores in Nigeria. I
found my way to about four bookstores including those at the airports.
The bookstore is still alive in Nigeria. I was at the Jazzhole in
Lagos; I found it to be a very eclectic place. I urge people to
patronise it. You are never sure who you are going to meet there (I met
the legendary Fatai Rolling Dollar) and the proprietors are filled with
an infectious optimism and vision for reading in Nigeria. I bought
several books by known and unknown authors. I was going home to the
States to enjoy the books. I must say sadly that for the most part,
these are wretched productions. There are some bright spots but the
publishing stinks and one is left with a very poor impression of
Nigerian writing and publishers.

Let’s face it: Most
Nigerian writers of note live abroad. Most of those that are left
behind would like to escape. They live on the Internet, communing with
the world outside. The Internet allows the West to further plunder our
best brains. If you truly want to enjoy Nigerian literature, go to the
Internet. Very soon, I will stop reading books and simply prowl the
Internet for good writing. The best of our writing now exists on the
web. Our Nigerian writers are writing feverishly mostly in blogs,
online journals and Facebook. There is some pretty good literature out
there; it is just that we are still busy reviewing books. Have you ever
met someone at a party that introduced him or herself as a blog
reviewer? There is no such animal. There should be. We are missing out
on some great gems out there. We should be reading and reviewing
digital productions. And they are free. These writers should be paid.

We have great
writers in Nigeria; however there is something that happens to their
brains once they begin to write books. They become giddy. Pot-bellied
generals begin to fall off the windows of their books, rapes chase
incest and blood and alcohol and sh*t mix to form a potent brew to
knock the reader senseless with boredom. It sells I guess. There are
some truly great poets out there, but it just seems to me that the ones
that are angling to be read these days lack range and depth. It is the
same tired crap. And yet they complain that no one reads these days. I
don’t blame the astute reader for choosing illiteracy over depression.

This is not to minimize the pain that Nigerian writers feel. What
the Nigeria government has done to our writers is grim beyond the
speaking of it. It is a roll call of abuse, degradation, death.
Beginning with Christopher Okigbo, many writers have paid the ultimate
price for owning words. Wole Soyinka’s lengthy experience in the hands
of Nigeria’s government is outlined with farcical detail in his various
memoirs. Chinua Achebe sits in wintry exile in North America. On one
level it is a shame, how Nigeria has hounded her wordsmiths to the
grave or to exile. The loss has been incalculable. Even in peace time,
Nigeria can be rough on a writer. Like ravenous termites, thieving
leaders have decimated whatever media structures are there. I have said
this before, there are some courageous people doing some really great
things for the arts in Nigeria. But it is not enough, in the year 2010,
it is criminal that these initiatives are still largely dependent on
individuals, rather than on robust structures. Our leaders should be
shot.

TW Magazine,
published by television personality, Adesuwa Onyenokwe, feted friends,
subscribers, vendors, and advertisers to an evening of fun on 30
September at the Coral Hall, Victoria Island, Lagos, as it marked its
third anniversary.

The event was
anchored by Beat 99.9FM’s Catherine Edoho and began with a rendition of
the Nigerian national anthem by Chidinma Ekile, winner of the just
concluded MTN Project Fame West Africa.

For the Love of Charity

Amidst the
celebrations, guests witnessed the presentation of an audio book for
the visually impaired. The novel initiative, called TW’s Vision for the
Blind, is a first in a series for TW Magazine.

The title chosen
for the inaugural edition of the Audio Book for the Blind initiative is
Sade Adeniran’s award winning debut novel, ‘Imagine This’, published by
Cassava Republic. Speaking on the choice of the book, Onyenokwe said
“‘Imagine This’ is easy to read and comprehend, and at the same time,
laced with a lot of humour which will put smiles on the faces of the
visually impaired.”

According to her,
schools for the blind enjoy little support and one of their greatest
needs are books, whether Braille or in audio books.

The 266-page long
novel was read by 10 celebrities and studio mastered by the award
winning producer, Cobhams Asuquo. The readers include Nollywood
actresses, Joke Silva and Dakore Egbuson; rapper, M.I; soul singer,
Bez; and fashion designer, Ituen Basi. Others are African barbie doll
maker, Toafick Okoya; movie producer, Femi Odugbemi; radio personality,
Mandy Brown Ojugbana; PR expert, Ebun Feludu; and Onyenokwe herself.

A short documentary
on the making of the audio book was also shown, featuring comments from
participants. The documentary took the gathering on a behind-the-scenes
tour, showing the rigours of the process, as well as mistakes during
reading, deleted from the final product.

Beyond Television

Adesuwa Onyenokwe
is best known for her television magazine programme, ‘Today’s Woman’,
and her days as one of NTA’s forefront broadcaster. It was, therefore,
not surprising to see a number of her TV colleagues present at the
event.

Sharing the story of her foray into publishing, she said it was borne out of a “love for humanity, albeit women.”

“After ten years of Today’s Woman on television, we decided to put it in print because print is very enduring,” she explained.

“We are three years today, but we are not rolling in money. It’s not all about the money, but we just want to be relevant.”

Speaking further,
she added that she sees ‘TW Magazine’ as a link to national
development, especially since its birthday falls on the eve of
Nigeria’s independence.

The toast was given by Nigerian Television Authority broadcaster, Siene Allwell-Brown.

A new look TW Magazine

The climax of the
event was unveiling the new look TW magazine, which according to the
publisher, is dedicated to the young and young at heart. The new logo,
which still has the abbreviation, TW, was unveiled amidst fireworks.

“The new logo is
all about curves, just like the African woman and both [letters] -TW-
are linked together and flow from one to the other, and this shows
continuity,” the publisher explained.

The magazine’s new
editor, Kemi Ogunleye, was also introduced to guests. Ogunleye was the
founding editor of Elan, the style magazine of NEXT on Sunday.

As the event wound
to a close, a lucky subscriber walked away with a TW travel voucher,
earning an all-expense paid trip to Dubai. The magazine also rewarded
its vendors and agents for their longstanding relationship with the
company and the anniversary cake was cut by the TW Magazine team.

The event was spiced with wonderful performances by singer, Tosan,
Blackky, and DMSquare, whose beautifully choreographed dance moves and
songs got the audience onto their feet.

If Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti (Fela) was still alive and healthy, he would be looking
forward to being 72 years old on 15 October, 2010. Hardly the age one
associates with mavericks defiantly dishing out double-fisted
‘black-power’ salutes, decked out with war paint, amulets and charms
strapped to a tight body displaying 6-pack abs most men would die for.
So today he would be greyer or even geriatric maybe, yet I suspect he
would still have been able to sweep on stage and pull-off a power-pose
with purpose, menace and sex-appeal. And the masses would roar, and his
music would still be giving me goose bumps.

Just listen to the
opening stanzas of his songs ‘Water No Get Enemy’ or ‘Otoriti
Stealing’; the mind-blowing horn arrangements in ‘Yellow Fever’,
‘Beasts of No Nation’, ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’; and the
orchestration in ‘Overtake Don Overtake Overtake’. Add to that
signature introductory first layer of sound a rumbling seemingly
primordial drum beat delivered in a merciless pulsating rhythm, and
then percussions, from the shrill shekere and kpangolo traditional
instruments to the deep conga drums. Pure Genius.

On Fela

I cannot claim to
have known the man personally, and despite his giving me the most
memorable display of the relationship between a father and daughter,
Fela did not know me at all. He was oblivious of my many visits to his
night club the ‘Africa Shrine’. Thankfully, so was my boarding school
principal. And come to think of it, my parents who had delivered me
safely into boarding school did not know of my nocturnal adventures
either, but I digress.

At that memorable
first and only meeting 33 years ago with Fela at a concert in Tafawa
Balewa Square Lagos, one of his daughters who happened to be dating a
friend of mine sneaked us backstage to introduce us to her father.
“Fela, this na my bobo and him friend”. Fela looked my friend over and
then spoke around the inevitable stick of marijuana hanging
precariously from his lower lip. “So na you dey do my pikin, ehn?”

As a comment made
by a father in the presence of his daughter and two young strangers, it
was just too good, beyond translation or rephrasing. In its original
delivery format faithfully reproduced here, it remains deliciously
memorable. Some moments are frozen in time and this was certainly a
classic one.

I want to point out
quickly that Fela was not my role model so I never aspired to his
lifestyle, yet to me he was the ultimate icon. The man was undoubtedly
a musical genius, an inspiration for my part-time musical ambitions and
most certainly the chief proponent of Afrobeat, the music genre he is
credited with pioneering or popularising, depending who you ask.

On “Afrobeat”

According to Albert
Oikelome in his piece “Stylistic Analysis of Afrobeat Music of Fela
Anikulapo Kuti” – “In musical terms, Afrobeat clearly draws upon jazz,
blues, soul, funk, afro latin, highlife and folksong elements and
grafts them all into a West African rhythmic template.”

Also quoting
acclaimed photo journalist Tam Fiofori “… It is safe, sensible, and
factually logical to state that Afrobeat and its various flavours were
created by Nigerian musicians who were interested in expanding the
tonal and rhythmic frontiers of Nigerian highlife music… It is from
this distinct and unique Nigerian highlife flavour that the various
inflections of Afrobeat evolved through assimilation, experimentation,
cross-fertilisation, and individual musical innovation….”

I imagine in
reading these definitions, Fela in his typical continuous switch from
pidgin to Queen’s English would probably have retorted, “Which kind big
big grammar una want take confuse people?? Afrobeat is for the body and
mind, an On-the-ground spiritual game”

So for me, and I
wager that for others too, Fela’s Afrobeat with its signature call and
response pattern in both the music and the lyrics will always stir deep
emotions and feelings of the foot-tapping, head bobbing; chin holding
and occasional deep sighing variety, as we sway to the beat and ponder
what our beloved Nigeria might have been if we had listened more
carefully to his ingenious stories in song.

With Fela, Afrobeat
achieved international recognition and political purpose, evolving
alongside a Nigeria losing its innocence to civil war, military
dictatorship and rapacious corruption. Afrobeat became synonymous with
non-conformism and disaffection.

The youth,
especially the poor and disadvantaged, were drawn to it like bees to
pollen, even as parents squirmed and clucked their tongues in
disapproval of its proponent’s lifestyle.

I was fortunate
enough to be present at Fela’s club the Afrika Shrine on the night that
the ‘Overtake don Overtake’ was performed for the first time. A very
strange thing started to happen when the song got to the point of
describing the struggle of an ordinary civil servant trying
unsuccessfully to buy a fan to reduce the discomfort of sleeping in the
oppressive Lagos heat (“My friend wan come buy fan, him dey sweat where
him dey sleep for room”). I heard a restrained sob escape from the man
standing next to me, and when I looked around, realised that several
grown men in the audience where weeping quietly as they swayed to the
music! With this song, Fela was stripping bare the truth about their
lives in grim and excruciating detail – an overwhelming revelation of
their day to day non-existence (“Na now him come understand him life,
enjoyment can never come him way, na now him life dey go reverse, in
Africa him fatherland”). Later it occurred to me that the expatriates
in the audience that day must have thought these men had smoked a
particularly potent strain of marijuana and were literally “stoned to
tears”! To this day, the memory of that surreal night still makes me
break out in goose bumps. Such is the power of his music.

On Fela the Rebel

After Fela
metamorphosed from as he put it “a young guy enjoying himself around
town” to a powerful and fearsome social critic, he became widely viewed
as a “Rebel”.

I have questioned
this categorization of the man, and believe that his goal was promoting
genuine social reformation. He was not always coherent, especially in
his interviews, but once the music started you could always see an
immediate transformation in which he not only created but also directed
the merging of a thousand seemingly discordant notes into a harmonious
whole as a backdrop to the powerful story telling which he referred to
as “the on-the-ground spiritual game”. Raw, irreverent, and deeply
moving.

So for me, it has
and will always be about the music, this gift he had of storytelling
using the powerful Afrobeat platform. Perhaps some inspiration came
from the ganja he “rebelliously” and habitually smoked, but above all,
Fela was simply a unique being in which various elements came together
over a period of time to produce the equally notorious and revered
legend we know.

It was probably
this powerful effect he had over the masses through his music that led
Fela to think he could actually rule Nigeria as president. I watched in
astonishment as he attempted to register a political party and run for
elections, and even more ridiculous was the Government’s viewing of it
as a real threat, enough so as to actually employ time and energy in
frustrating his efforts!

On the live performances

For all his
anti-convention reputation, Fela ran his clubs with good old-fashioned
authoritarianism supported by corporal punishment. Other than
marijuana, his own personal narcotic of choice, it was apparently
forbidden to deal any other drug at the venues. Discipline was harsh,
meted swiftly and liberally. Patrons at Afrika Shrine apparently felt
more at risk from the ever possible police drug squad raid than from a
crime committed at the club.

Clad in adire-print
trousers, hand-made shoes from matching fabric and very often
bare-chested, Fela moved about on-stage, cigarette betwixt fingers, in
a casual, smooth (almost languid) stroll. Off-stage he existed mostly
in underpants. It was hard not to pay attention to him in a room full
of people. A late night performance at the Shrine was as much
showmanship as it was theatre, a musical concert and a “gaddem
on-the-ground spiritual game’!

Patrons showed-up
for yabbis i.e. irreverent commentary by Fela interspersed between
the songs about the inanities of Nigerian and African society. Fela
himself sang about his irreverent unstoppable mouth in the song Beasts
of No Nation “…basket mouth don start to leak again o..oo, basket mouth
don open up again o..oo!

Make I yab dem?
Fela would tease; Fela yab demmmm… the anticipating audience would roar
back, eager for a laugh at someone else’s expense. Contempt for the
affectations and pretentiousness of the ruling elite was dished-out in
equal measure with thorough verbal roastings of the ‘masses’ that
condoned these rulers in the first place.

A visit to Lagos
without a pit stop at Fela’s club was a less than fulfilling experience
for savvy foreigners, especially Europeans, who paid good money to
endure humorous but stinging jibes from a social critic conscious
always, about the legacy of colonialism and oppression.

For all of his
brilliance as a composer, arranger, keyboardist and saxophonist, it was
his prowess as a bandleader that held everything together. Supported by
a coterie of brilliant individualists like Igo Chico on tenor saxophone
and the peerless Tony Allen on drums; catchy and easily understood
lyrics largely in pidgin English flavoured by syncopated rhythms and an
awe inspiring horn section, were echoed and chorused by the female
singer-dancers whose shrill voices struck me as a throwback to the
witches in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Intense, raw and uncut.

No matter where he
was playing live, Fela was value-for-money. Whether performing with his
entire ensemble at the Shrine or at the Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS) in
Lagos or just gigging impromptu with Tunde & the late Fran Kuboye
at the Museum Kitchen and later at Jazz 38 on Awolowo Road Ikoyi, he
effortlessly delivered a satisfying performance which friends and I
would talk about till the next show.

Even his habitual
lateness in arriving at his live performances did nothing to dampen the
anticipation of the crowd and the joyful roar that always greeted his
double fisted black power salute as he strode onto the stage, sometimes
six hours late!

Last thoughts

Yes, I didn’t know
the man personally but almost every time I watched him live, I saw the
visceral impact his music had on his audience, me included. He had the
ability to talk directly to each person in the audience. I now have an
extensive collection of his music as one of my most prized possessions,
and even to this moment, continue to discover new things about the man
through his music. Where did he get the opening stanza of ‘Water No Get
Enemy’?? What was he thinking? Why is this assembly of notes still one
of the most recognisable musical phrases in Nigeria, across gender and
tribe? Why would a light skinned woman be described as “Yellow Fever”?
I get the “Yellow” but the “Fever” beats me. Was she hot to the touch
or just hot to look at??

There are many more
such questions waiting when I head into blissful retirement with Fela’s
music, and it will be a joy to ponder on them and perhaps find answers,
if only in my head.

Epilogue

I have heard other
Afrobeat bands and artists keeping the music alive, listened to sampled
versions of his music by young international artists, and even seen the
Broadway show “Fela!” that is now making waves on the global
entertainment circuit and introducing the Fela phenomenon to new
audiences worldwide. This is AWESOME. The Emperor sleeps and the people
ponder and talk amongst themselves!

More respect, Abami Eda (The strange being), more respect to you as you rest. I am still getting those goose bumps.

Uchenna Ikonne
could be described as a walking encyclopedia of some sort because of
his knowledge of the history of Nigerian music. Based in the United
States, he is a filmmaker by vocation and a lawyer by training, but his
consuming passion is Nigerian music. Ikonne is currently working on
reissuing a lot of Nigerian classic songs under his label, Comb &
Razor Sound. He shares his story with NEXT.

With your knowledge of Nigerian music classics, many would be shocked to realise that you are only 35 years old

That does often
take people by surprise. I’m primarily known as an online presence,
chiefly for my writing on my blog (http://combandrazor.blogspot.com),
so most people have no idea of my background, age, or appearance. They
generally expect me to be much older than I am because I’m writing
about Nigerian music and popular culture of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s;
and they’re often alarmed to learn that I’m in my 30s.

The funny thing
about it is that I have spent a lot of time interviewing musicians from
that era, and even when I’m sitting with them face-to-face, they still
forget how old I am. Like, we’ll be discussing some events that
happened immediately after the civil war, and they’ll say to me, “Shey,
you know that nightclub we used to go to in Port Harcourt… You remember
when so-and-so played there one Friday night like that in 1971. Were
you there that night?”

When stuff like
that happens, I’m not quite sure how to process it: do I take it as a
compliment that I appear so knowledgeable of the era that they forget I
wasn’t there? Or does it mean that hard life has aged me to the point
that men in their 50s and 60s can look at me and think I am their age
mate?

Do Nigerian youth know enough about Nigerian songs of old?

I would not even be
exaggerating if I said that many of our youth actually believe that the
Nigerian music industry started in 1998 or so. They realise that yes,
there must have been music in Nigeria “back in da dayz” – but they
think that maybe we only had a handful of artists: Fela, Osadebe, Sonny
Okosuns, Onyeka, maybe Evi-Edna, and a few other really popular names
like that. I am not playing!

I have had many
young people express this to me directly! But what’s curious is that a
lot of times, even Nigerians who are old enough to remember better have
completely forgotten most of the music of the past; cultural amnesia is
an epidemic in our society, and that’s a shame.

Tell us why you decided to embark on this task

If I didn’t do it,
who would? Well, the main thing I am working on right now is the Comb
& Razor Sound record label, which will be reissuing a lot of
classic music from Nigeria, as well as other countries in Africa and
South America.

I’m trying to make
it so that our releases are more like “publications”—big booklets full
of historical information, stories, and photographs with a CD attached
to them.

Because really,
people aren’t that interested in just buying CDs anymore and CDs are
too easily pirated, anyway. You have to give them the value for their
money. We’ll also be releasing the music on vinyl records, which
happens to be my preferred format.

You recently embarked on a trip to Nigeria to get more information; were there any challenges?

The number one
challenge is always the relative inaccessibility of the information.
It’s not like you can just walk into a library or something and
comfortably find information. You have to dig for it. And frankly, not
a lot of people have the stamina or resourcefulness to do that.

I remember when I first started telling people in Nigeria that I am looking for old records and stuff like that.

They told me, “You
can’t find that kind of thing in Nigeria today.” My reply was “No, you
mean YOU can’t find it… I can!” And they would say “Ha! You won’t see
that sort of thing in the market o!” The market? Are you kidding? Who
is looking at the market? To find this stuff, you need to go ‘under’
the market! For months on end I would be rummaging through dark and
filthy storage spaces, day in and day out. Getting sinus infections
from the dust and mould… digging through urine-soaked garbage and
getting bitten by rats. And in the end, when I show all the material
I’ve gathered, people always ask “How did you find this stuff?” as if
I’m a magician. But really, it’s all right here under our noses!

Security was also a
major challenge. Undertaking the project required me to traverse the
breadth of the country several times over, and navigating the terrain
while trying to stay ahead of the kidnapping epidemic in the East.
Well, let’s say it required a good deal of gumption and creativity.

The challenge I
feel defeated me, though, was the complete unavailability of a lot of
the material. I’m actually a filmmaker by vocation, and my original
intention had been to make a documentary film about Nigerian musicians.

Unfortunately, I
couldn’t get enough period footage to create a sufficiently dynamic
documentary because of a lot of the tapes of musical performances
recorded for television in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were either dubbed
over or thrown away. So, unfortunately, I had to put that project aside.

Any collaborations with record labels in Nigeria for more information?

No, not really. For
one thing, most of the big record labels from Nigeria’s golden age of
music – EMI, Phillips, Decca/Afrodisia, and the like – they don’t exist
anymore. And many of them even discarded or destroyed most of their
records, master tapes, artwork, videos, and documentation.

Record keeping is almost non-existent in Nigeria. Why do you think this is so?

It’s probably a
controversial view, but I think that we as Africans have a peculiar
relationship to the concept of antiquity. We joke about “African time”
and what-not, but I really do believe that the African perception of
time is a bit more… fluid than it is in the West. We tend to live
primarily in the present, and even our concept of “the present” is very
elastic.

I once read about
an anthropologist who was looking for artefacts in a certain African
country, and he was presented with a carved wooden mask representing an
ancient fertility god. He asked the indigenes if the mask was
“authentic” – by which he meant: “does this particular mask actually
date back to an ancient era of this land? Is it an antique?” And the
people told him, “Of course it’s authentic” – by which they meant:
“Yes, it was made here, and it still represents this particular
fertility god who we still worship.”

Whether or not the
mask is old was unimportant to them: all that matters is whether the
mask did its job as the avatar for the god. It wouldn’t make a
difference to them if the mask was carved 3000 years ago or yesterday.
And if there was a mask from thousands of years ago representing a god
that they no longer worshipped, then they would have no qualms with
burning it or throwing it away because it served no useful purpose for
them in “the present.”

So it is with us in
Nigeria. We’re fixated upon how utilitarian things are to us in “the
present,” and “the present” trumps everything.

That’s why you have
television stations erasing the only copies of classic TV shows like
‘The Village Headmaster’ so they can use the tapes to record today’s
music videos. It’s why record companies hired contractors to cart away
and destroy entire libraries of master tapes of Nigerian music from the
1940s to the 1980s, so they’d have room for the music of the 1990s.
‘The present’ is all that exists for us.

When will your releases hit the market?

The first of these
publications will probably be released in the US and Europe at the end
of November. I’m not sure exactly when it will come to Nigeria, but
obviously it will find its way here. It’s a musical chronicle of the
years of Nigeria’s Second Republic (1979-83) and covers a lot of the
notable developments of that era: the increased professionalisation of
the Nigerian music industry with the rise of high-tech independent
labels like Phondisk and Tabansi, the rise of solo singers as the old
bands died, the emergence of more women in the music scene, and so on.

The next one will
probably be out in December, and it will focus on the venerable
Semi-Colon Rock Group of Umuahia. Then in early 2011, we’ll have
something concentrating on music from Cross River and Akwa Ibom States
and then a spotlight on Benin-style highlife, and lots of other stuff
in the pipeline.

Is royalty payment a big issue for you?

It is a big deal to
me. A BIG deal. You see, one thing that a lot of people don’t know is
that most Nigerian musicians of years past never made any money off the
sales of their records. I mean, ask someone like Onyeka Onwenu if she
ever made even one naira from record sales. There’s no way I can in
good conscience perpetuate that kind of exploitation of our artists and
so, it’s of the utmost importance to me that the original artists are
paid, even if it’s not a huge amount of money.

CDs actually are
not selling as much as they were ten years ago, so nobody is getting
rich off selling discs. But one thing we’re working on is developing
ways to licence the music for use in films, television, adverts,
ringtones, and other applications, and hopefully we can make some
decent money for the artists that way, because some of them really,
really need it.

What do you hope to achieve with this project?

I’d love to tell
you that I hope to become a millionaire from it, but I’m much too
realistic to even fool myself with that, let alone fool you. If, as a
result of my efforts, Nigeria’s rich heritage of popular culture
becomes fully recognised and celebrated, and I get to see our national
artistic legends reap some of the money and kudos they deserve, I think
I’d call myself a happy man.

And if I’m able to
even make a few pennies from it myself to stay afloat and continue
doing what I do, that would be a bonus, because this is really
expensive work and I fund it pretty much completely out of my own
pocket.

What’s next after this?

Well, I don’t like
to look like I’m this guy who is stuck in the past, because despite my
interest in history, I’m very much on the cutting edge of culture! I
want to sign some contemporary artists to Comb & Razor Sound; I’m
just looking for artists who are really unique. What I would really
love is to find a really cool, young Nigerian hard rock/funk band.

Also, this whole
music thing is really a side track that I stumbled into over the past
two or three years and it has taken me away from my work as a
filmmaker, so I’d like to get back to making movies soon.

To that effect, I have some film projects I’m developing. I haven’t
completely given up on the documentary either. I’m also working on a
book on the history of Nigerian filmmaking, and a cartoon series for
Nigerian TV.

One of the
highlights of next week’s Felabration is the re-issue of a major book
on the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, written by Carlos Moore. First
published 28 years ago, the 350-page ‘Fela: This Bitch of a Life’ is
touted as “the authorised biography” of the Afrobeat impresario.

It is being
republished locally by Nigerian publisher, Cassava Republic Press. The
publisher says that, with Nigeria’s 50 independence anniversary in the
air, “there is, perhaps, no better time for a reflection on some of the
country’s heroes, social, and political history.

“Fela’s music is
guaranteed to outlive us all, becoming part of our own classical. It
is, therefore, equally important for future generations (and younger
African children today) to have the opportunity to find out more about
Fela the man and Fela’s music.”

Carlos Moore’s book
is coming back on the book shelves at the height of Fela consciousness
all over the world, with the critical and popular success of the Fela!
Musical on Broadway in New York.

The new version of
the book comes with extra features, including a preface by Brazilian
musician and statesman, Gilberto Gil; a prologue by journalist and
writer, Lindsay Barrett; as well as an introduction and epilogue by the
author. Cover art for the new book was done by Lemi Ghariokwu,original
designer of Fela’s iconic albums.

Born in Cuba in
1942, Carlos Moore is a naturalised Jamaican and now lives in Brazil.
An ethnologist and political scientist, he was a personal friend to
Fela.

The book, written
in the first person, as though in Fela’s own voice, is based on a
series of interviews with the Afrobeat legend and, in some cases, his
wives. The book recounts Fela’s growing up in the Ransome-Kuti clan,
his studies in England, and his radicalisation into Black Power
ideology in the United States. The Afrika Shrine, Kalakuta Republic,
and the musician-activist’s struggles with the Nigerian authorities
during the 70s and 80s, are also covered.

Bibi Bakare-Yusuf
of Cassava Republic said the company is excited to be making Moore’s
book available for the first time on the continent. She said the book
is for “everyone interested in African music and socio-political
history.”

‘Fela: This Bitch of a Life’ will be launched at the Centre for
Contemporary Art, 9, McEwen Street, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos, at 4pm on
October 9. Other events around the book are scheduled for next week, as
part of Felabration.