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According to its website, the third edition of the Lagos Black
Heritage Festival (with the theme “Memory and Performance in the Return to Source”)
was conceived to “broaden and deepen the linkage between the African continent
and its Diaspora… through a focus on the lives and works of three eminent
representatives of, and close collaborators in this racial mission, all three
now ancestral figures: Aime Cesaire, Alioune Diop and Leopold Sedar Senghor.”

With this in mind, any guest at the Festival concert, which held
on the evening of Thursday, April 8, on the grounds of Oceanview Restaurant in
Victoria Island would be forgiven for arriving with outsized expectations.

Black Heritage Idols?

When I walked into the concert tent at 9.30pm, one and half
hours after the show was supposed to have started, it was devoid of seats, and
only a handful of people loitered around, a good number of them technicians.
Onstage guitarist Bez Idakula was doing a sound check. There was nothing – not
in the dismal pre-concert publicity, or in the venue’s half-hearted lighting,
or in the manner in which guests trickled in – to hint that a grand concert was
in the offing.

The show eventually kicked off at 10pm. Bez was the first act,
his performance punctuated by complaints (from him) that he couldn’t hear his
guitar onstage. After enduring the next two performances by unknown hip-hop
acts I was left wondering if this wasn’t actually an audition for a ‘Black
Heritage Idols’. One of the acts dished out lines like “Omo you dey high me /
let’s go to Miami” – totally lost on him was the irony of a “let’s go to Miami”
call in a Festival celebrating “the Return to Source.”

The next set of performances featured Jazzman Olofin, Kenny
Saint Brown and Zaaki Adzay, for me an invitation to wonder if the show wasn’t
after all a Career Resuscitation gig. (By the way, one of Olofin’s offerings
was a love song in which he crooned: “Omo o fly like helicopter… you can be my
bread let me be your toaster… I’m Jay Z will you be my Beyonce…”)

Fela on trumpet, but
without the girls

The Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola walked in during Olofin’s
performance. Flutist and former PMAN President Tee Mac Itsueli mounted the
stage next. Only then, to be honest, did it seem that the festival had
commenced.

After Itsueli came the masked one, Lagbaja. As his band
assembled on stage, the talking drummer launched into a passionate intro.
Behind me someone screamed a praise name: “Omo Baba muko muko!” The
sax-clutching Lagbaja emerged from the rear of the hall, sending the crowd into
a frenzy. But he did only one full-length performance (“Never Far Away”) before
leaving the stage. Expectedly, the audience roared in displeasure; they wanted
a lot more.

At midnight, Hugh Masekela came onstage, to (in his own words)
“pay tribute to [two] great musicians from Nigeria; Orlando Julius and Fela
Kuti.” In a white buba and black trousers, trumpet in hand, his nimble energy
belied his 71 years. He recounted his first visit to Nigeria, in 1972. It was
around that time that he first met Fela, who would become an enduring
influence. Effortlessly he brought “Lady”, a Fela classic, to life. I summed up
the performance as “Fela on trumpet, but without the girls.” Masekela then
played a 1973 Orlando Julius song, ‘Mura Sise’. Admonishing the audience to
dance (“Make we stand up I beg you!”), he joked: “Some of us have had too much
iyan today and egusi; some of us don quaff some Star today…”

Twenty minutes into Masekela’s performance, Governor Fashola
decided to make his exit. Being a Governor, and this being Nigeria, there
couldn’t have been such a thing as an indiscreet exit. I wondered why Mr.
Fashola couldn’t wait for Masekela to finish his performance. But then, long
ago I resigned myself to the fact that I will never understand the ways of
Nigeria’s politicians.

After Masekela another South African band performed, and then
Nigerian R’n’B act Banky W. A gospel performance by Uche, a rousing mélange of
popular gospel melodies held together by a vigorous makossa bassline, got most
of the audience dancing.

A final performance by Masekela ended the show. In between his
passionate trumpet solos, and the occasional recourse to the sekere and metal
gong, he shared a bit about his homeland. South Africa, he told us, is one of
the “top ten drinking nations in the world”. Then an explanation. “Before 1961
the African people of South Africa were not allowed to partake of alcoholic
beverages. Because it was illegal it became a business,” he said. “I was born
in a shebeen (neighbourhood shack that housed an illegal pub) myself.”

‘Forgiving but not
forgetting’

A stirring speech by Governor Fashola, just before Masekela’s
first appearance was one of the highlights – and few saving graces – of the
concert. “We have forgiven the slave trade, but we do not forget it,” Mr.
Fashola declared, to loud agreement from the audience. “From that point of no
return, through the collaboration with our brothers and sisters in Diaspora, we
intend to make a triumphant return. A triumphant return to lead the world,
because clearly the leadership of the world has rested with what our people
have done in Europe and America; their sweat, their toil and their blood built
those economies. If they could build those economies we can rebuild the economy
and the infrastructure of Africa by working together.”

Another highlight was the fashion event, which ran alongside the
musical performances. It consisted of a fashion show by children, and a fashion
competition, “My Lagos Of Old”, which saw contesting designers put forward
retro looks created from local fabrics.

Marked by absence

But on the whole this was a Black Heritage Festival Concert
painfully marked by its lack of grandeur, and by the intimidating calibre of
its absentees. Where were Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, Aretha
Franklin – world famous musicians whose roots are African, whose ancestors had
endured one-way Trans-Atlantic trips in slave ships centuries ago? And where
were the home-based greats of ages past and present: Victor Olaiya, Victor
Uwaifo, Fatai Rolling Dollar, Sunny Ade?

Considering the fact that the moving spirits of the festival;
Cesaire, Diop and Senghor were from Francophone Africa, certainly a Youssou
N’Dour wouldn’t have been out of place. Even the Steve Rhodes Orchestra and
Seun Kuti, mentioned in the absurdly brief promotional material (buried
somewhere in the festival brochure – there was no concert brochure) did not
turn up.

It was obvious that not much care went into putting this
festival together. The organisers, despite their deep pockets (Lagos is not
only one of the richest states in Nigeria, its annual budget would actually
dwarf that of a lot of African countries) blew an amazing – and rare –
opportunity to truly celebrate the resilience and survival of the black race,
in the face of centuries of slavery and colonialism. This could easily have
been the musical concert of the year, if not the decade. But what the
organisers did was to under-promise (the festival information mentioned only
three performers) and then under-deliver.

By the time the concert ended, at two in the morning, the audience (which to
start with hadn’t been that large; a few hundred people at the most) had
dwindled significantly. It was rather disheartening to see a 71-year-old
African music legend – whose concerts are sold out everywhere else in the world
– perform, with unflagging energy, to a mostly empty hall. How can anyone
possibly consider that a celebration of black culture?