A Lecture
at National Gallery of Art’s Seventh Annual Distinguished Lecture on December
17, 2003.
By Segun
Olusola, Africa’s pioneers TV broadcaster (1935-2012)
THE performing arts review,
and subject of this lecture, would incorporate works of art situated and
communicated in all media — stage radio, television, film as film, later video,
the night markets, the roads side backyard spaces, the bishops courts, Mbari,
Caban Bamboo and much later — the National Theatre.
Growing up in Iperu-Remo, my
remembrances of the performing arts should also flash back to the masquerades
and the Oro shrines and street parades, in that historic city.
Iperu Remo, in the 40s and
50s, was a big enough community to host Hubert Ogunde’s Concert Party tours and
where one of the most outstanding popular music stars of Nigeria, Irewolede
Denge, popularised our traditional ruler, Oba Okupe, in the unforgettable lyric
Okupe oba wanlo! Se wo lo tawaya s’orun powo o de simo Eleda tawaiya pada – po
wo ma mbo o.
The performing arts was also
magic. I cannot be tired of recalling the story of Onisigu, the masquerade of
peace that would emerge from a crack in the wall of the cult house – trudge
round the community streets keeping peace – with women and children in tow –
and his head bent to be raised only when there’s sign of conflict following
which there will be torrents of rain showers.
Onisigu o
– a fehin to mi orun gogo: the one who holds back rainstorm on his neck.
In a review of Duro Ladipo’s
plays, Oba Moro and Oba Koso for Nigeria Magazine in 1964, the Onisigu was
recalled!
“It was dramatic; each year
the ritual was flawless. We were witnessing the descent from heaven of one of
the gods, bringing cure for the sick and holding back the anger of the great
one with his bent back. And I believed it… we had to believe it. It was one
remarkable example of a play well staged, properly timed and exploiting the
sense of imagination of the women and us kids.”
There are many ways
therefore in which the performing artists can be likened to the masquerades –
creatures of our imagination who straddle the time specific and gender divide
to communicate with the rest of us – warning, advising, chastising, sometimes
abusing us – in order to move us from one level of understanding to the next.
In popular currency,
therefore, it is to Lagbaja, the masked one – dancer, instrumentalist, actor,
the most recent in a long line of masquerades from my Iperu years of Onisigu,
that this lecture is dedicated.
Festivals
of the arts
WHEN the National Festival
of the Arts and Culture was first introduced 33 years back in 1970, it was
designed to celebrate the end of hostilities of the Biafra-Nigerian encounter.
In a review of the inaugural
festival, Prof. Michael Crowther, eminent historian and editor of Nigeria
Magazine remarked in his post festival report thus:
“In its scope and concept,
the planning of the festival had little to fault it. It represented all the
states in traditional culture; it rightly included the universities as
important agencies for the stimulus of contemporary culture and the
investigation and presentation of traditional culture.”
The first three festivals –
in Lagos (1970), Ibadan (1971) and Kaduna (1972) and the Special Festival of
Traditional Dances of December 1974 also in Kaduna, had served as appropriate
preparation for Nigeria’s eventual hosting of the World Black and African
Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) in 1977.
The founding director of
CBAAC, Z.S. Alli wrote in his preface to The Arts and Civilization of Black and
African Peoples: “As an event, FESTAC was indeed a tremendous undertaking. For
observers both within and outside Africa, its most striking feature was the
atmosphere of festivities.”
So altogether, between the
festivals – 1970, 1971 and 1972 and the Special Dance Festival of 1974 and
thereafter FESTAC 77 – Nigeria has staged her 16th Festival of the Arts in
Owerri – previous hosts having been Port Harcourt, 1995; Calabar, 1994; Abuja,
1992; Kaduna, 1990; Lagos, 1989; Maiduguri, 1983; and Port Harcourt, 1982.
In a National Radio
‘Newstalk’ broadcast on Network on December 26, 1974, it had been remarked:
“The irrepressible character and strength of our traditional culture, which
have survived these years of colonial servitude and cultural invasion, was the
first gesture that came out so clearly at the Kaduna Festival.
“Indeed, the Kaduna
exhibition of our traditional dances bore a testimony to the highest spiritual
development of the Nigerian peoples which preceded the arrival of foreign
cultures and their staff bearers who delighted in describing our culture in
contemptible terms. That is why our traditional rulers and community elders
deserve the nation’s gratitude for remembering so much and some of our
traditional rulers also need to be told of the nation’s appreciation for
personally honouring the invitations extended to them to be Guests of Honour at
the Festival. The opportunity given to the very young ones, from babies in arms
to school children, whose theirs is the future, to participate in the Kaduna
carnival cannot be passed unnoticed.”
It is not too difficult to
understand the enthusiasm with which media practitioners, particularly
broadcasters respond to festivals of performing arts because that’s what they
feed on.
In the run-up to the
inaugural festival of the arts in 1970, media focus, particularly television
coverage, had been inevitable and assured and the opening ceremony of the
festival from the grand foyer of the Lagos City Hall – had been broadcast live
by television, a habit that has been sustained all through the years –
including the opening and closing ceremonies of the last two festivals in Port
Harcourt and Owerri.
Given the Federal
Government’s proprietary rights over the affairs of the Nigerian Television
Authority, it was inevitable that such rich theatrical materials as a
reproduced by the NAFEST organisers be freely available to the NTA – but
arrangements should be in place for direct feeds of such materials to other broadcasting
stations.
Television resources are
enriched naturally with rare occasional materials from such periodic festivals,
which should be available to sustain our growing number of television
operations.
In the meantime, one of the
newer independent television organisations, DAAR Communications’ AIT, has gone
further and sponsored Drama Festivals – premiered on September 26 last year at
the Tamarin Hostels, Ikeja.
Dramafeast was designed as a
celebration of arts, culture and drama on television – consisting of seven
different thematic dramas – weeklong on AIT.
Our broadcasting
organisations must be commended for sustaining the proprietary and,
institutional roles of broadcasting particularly television in the promotion of
our arts and culture for national development.
Television
broadcasting and the performing arts
FROM the inception of
television in Nigeria in 1959, the arts of dance, drama and music generally
designated as the performing arts, have been irretrievably linked.
Although I had been
recruited as a television producer in 1959 – from a background of radio
features production, and some amateur theatre experience – my initial
confrontation was with the British managers of television who saw Nigerian
television as a natural outlet for some of the more popular products of Western
film serials from Britain and America.
In the first few years, some
progress was made and our efforts resulted in the commissioning and production
of our first original play in English, My Father’s Burden by Wole Soyinka,
which was transmitted live from our Agodi Studios in August 1960:
“Before the production, the
managers of television were genuinely worried and took steps to prevent the
production. The publicly declared reason was the ‘very high cost of the
production?’ But more forbidding must have been their fear that once launched,
a television programme of ideas in dramatic form, created by a singularly
imaginative writer like Wole Soyinka would cause ruptures to established, if
questionable, models of a developing colonial society. Their consternation and
resultant threatening stances were suitably conveyed to the producer, their own
employee. On the other hand, the playwright had his own fevers of doubts and
second thoughts. A director of experience himself, the reality of a play
commissioned of him and production of which he would have very little control
over was sub-consciously objectionable. Neither the novelty of the medium nor
his own mutually friendly disposition towards the television producer totally
overcame his doubts.”
I must therefore take some
time to rewind to the promise and the performance of the multi-disciplinary art
environment, which nearly overwhelmed many of us in Ibadan in the five years
season of artistic experimentation that can be situated in 1959 to 1964.
Just before television was
introduced in September 1959 – in the heady days of regional self-government –
Players of the Dawn – an amateur theatre group outside of the university and
within the city centre had brought together writers, performers, directors and
play readers and found accommodation for rehearsals and public performance at
the old British Council.
Not even the special
interest in our production of T.M. Aluko - eminent writer and novelist -
suggested to us that we should attempt plays written by Nigerians in the
repertoire which included, some Shakespeare, and later Arthur Miller.
The mutual enjoyment of
amateur environment changed dramatically in the early 60s with the arrival on
the scene of the multi-media genius – Wole Soyinka who established the 1960
Masks – incorporating the lead members of Players of the Dawn, Christopher
Kolade and Elsie Thomas Nkune and this speaker – with Francesca Pereira, Yemi
Lijadu, Frank Aig-Imokhuede, and Ralph Opara. Rehearsals and workshop training
sessions commenced in Ibadan – sometimes on the premises of the Cambridge
University Press hosted by Christopher Okigbo.
Rehearsals and performance
schedules were vigorous and took place in either Ibadan or Lagos while the range
of media incorporated theatre, television, film, radio and sometimes the night
clubs in both cities – particularly Central Hotel and Black Morroco or
Brokentime Bar, its radio variety and Caban Bamboo at weekends.
By the time Mbari Club was
inaugurated, the multi-discipline, multi-media, multi-genre, multi-national
approach to the arts expanded to include Uli Bier, Frank Speed, musicians,
poets, teachers, sculptors and designers, filmmakers and before long – Culture
in Transition, a documentary — drama film production and the first African
television drama – My Father’s Burden written by Wole Soyinka were realised
during this period.
 |
| Late Segun Olusola |
It was risky, was daring,
was hazardous particularly the shuttle road journey between Ibadan and Lagos –
but it provided some insulation against the political “rascalities” of the
season – some of which was captured for us – only two weeks ago by one of the
living masters of the season, Otunba T.O.S. Benson – in his memento: Fire on
the Mountain in The Guardian newspaper on Monday, December 1, 2003.
Drawing inspiration from the
first drama serial on radio, Save Journey of the Shaky and Alao fame – the
Ibadan multi-media creative group designed Broketime bar – with scripts and
variety songs from Wole Soyinka, Ted Mukoro, Segun Sofowote and this sometimes
lyricist – producing the series and providing the themes including: Nwene Lagos
O, Okoko koko. But that’s another story – another day!
The Mbari phenomena – the
club of artists should be understood as the physical manifestation and response
of the arts community – first in Ibadan and later in Oshogbo and much farther
inland – a response to the political drama that had been spurned in the year
1958 on the death through road accident of Adegoke Adelabu – the embargo on the
broadcast of the news, the street killings that followed and the political
testimonial and magic of the funeral which was dramatised in the city centre.
And so, not even the
challenging diversion occasionally to Oshogbo – rehearsing the trio of Kola
Ogunmola, Duro Ladipo and later Oyin Adejobi could hold me back in Ibadan.
My three months in Syracuse
– San Francisco and Hollywood in the closing month of 1960 had raised
expectations which the domestic political developments in the Western Region
between 1962 and 1964 considerably constrained.
And so I left Ibadan in
March 1964 with a burden on my mind of a multi-media, disciplinary performance
arts pavilion.
Demas Nwoko, wood worker,
designer and dance director was to later pick up the strings at Mbari and
establish base at the New Culture Studios on the hills, the other side of
Premier Hotel, of which Prof. John Godwin, eminent architect described as an
extraordinary complex covering a multitude of artistic functions. Not even the
prospect of New Culture Studios could hold me back in Ibadan.
The
Nigerian Arts Council
AT the Ajibulu-Moniya
Gallery in Surulere where I work and live, there is a sculpture in wood by
Erhabor Emokpae, a man mountain of a Nigerian artist, designer, sculptor and
prime motivator of the first generation of volunteers of the Nigerian Arts
Council. Growing Up, which is the title I have given this piece of sculpture,
has been in great demand, but since it is the one memento left for me, which
not even the ‘Golden Gong’ the festival Trophy and Symbol, which Erhabor also
designed and crafted, will replace.
Among the collaborators who
welcome me into Lagos in 1964 some 40 years ago – were Christopher Kolade,
Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Ekpo Eyo, Ralph Opara, Yemi Lijadu, Nora
Majekodunmi, Afi Ekpong and Erhabor Emokpae.
The Nigerian Arts Council
that emerged was a volunteer, art concerned, spirited set of innovators who
found premises at the old Niger House, courtesy of the United African Company.
Public activities included
exhibitions of art and photographs, highlife and pop recitals and the
foundations of what was to become the festival of the arts.
As a television producer in
the midst of so varied a crop of talents and ideas, the arts was like a
seamless robe – visual, performing, audio, video, film and multi disciplinary.
Soon after in 1965, to prove
a point and pay my dues to the Nigerian Television Service, which has lured me,
the first ever Festival of Television Drama was designed.
“This international event,
the opening of which visiting American astronauts were present to witness,
marked a significant identification by television operators with the rising
theatre movement in Africa. Poems by Rubandi, Soyinka, Dennis Brutus, Lenrie
Peters featured in an experimental television production of voices, drums and
movement titled African Voices. And daily, all through the entire week,
television premieres of plays by Clark, Soyinka, Ladipo, Ogunmola kept
television audiences spell-bound.”
It was not long after that
the challenge of the production of a full-length play came calling in the
person of Klaus Stephen – journalist, writer and representative of German
Bavarian Broadcasting Service in West Africa. His proposal to film the story –
Taiwo Sango – his version of the Yoruba legend of Elesin Oba made famous later
in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horsemen – was accepted.
The Nigerian Television
Service collaborated with the Bavarian Television in the filming session
located in the valleys of Idanre hills of this co-operative venture – which was
transmitted in most of Europe and on Nigerian Television.
The lead performer included
Christopher Kolade, who played Taiwo Sango and Elsie Olusola and a cast of
dancers and musicians.
In a feature article written
for the Interlink of December 1967, a U.S. Agency publication, recalled: “The
production of the film Taiwo Sango in 1965 through collaboration between
Bavarian and Nigeria Television was a landmark in the uneventful history of
film making in Nigeria. The principal cast consisted of Nigerian actors and
actresses. The producer was assisted by the writer. It was not an artistically
brilliant production, but the filming lasted long enough to be a source of
inspiration for the Nigerian participants. Without new material, the
inspiration itself did not last and soon the participants left the experience
of Taiwo Sango behind them and sank into the routine of media
organisation.”
The
performing artists – as change agents
THE performing arts have
occupied a long time the centre of communications – the pivot of our existence,
the spoken word, the magic of visuals, the dance, the song, the drama, the
drums — all of these are inevitable components of the communication era, a new
civilization.
The professional performing
artist has yielded his services to those who have ideas and products to market.
In many instances, those who have idea to market have invested in massive
training in presentation techniques and take over their own presentation of
their message of salvation.
The Nigerian successors to
Billy Graham and Oral Roberts of this era have mastered the artistry and
technique of the performing artist in communicating their message of salvation,
often insistently.
Some of our performing
artists have naturally enriched their popular repertoire with spirit-filled
messages, post conversion and have become even more effective communication
artists – Ebenezer Obey, Sunny Okosuns for instance.
You may well ask: Who comes
first, the performing artist or the Evangelist…
But whenever we step on that
stage – confronting our audience and/or the cameras, aren’t we all masquerades?
But the village square, the
night market, the palace grounds should be the ultimate workshop of the
performing artiste.
These are the places where
the artistes can touch people and be touched – the ideal training ground for
the masters.
In the political structure
that we now operate, it is the Local Governments that should be prevailed upon
to institute structures and platforms for the training and operations of
performing artistes in our many varieties.
What is required is a
complex of community theatre exhibition markets, community radio and television
in every community where there’s palace or a church or mosque.
In my neighbourhood in
Surulere, Lagos, there is a growing video-film market for producers of original
plays. A few weeks ago, I walked up to them and our encounter was most
reinvigorating. They dream, write plays, act and direct, produce and market
their video films. They are performing artistes of this generation.
Not too far from there, in
Ajegunle, are the successors and children of my younger colleagues – Segun
Taiwo, who at the Ayota Community Theatre rehearse and perform in a modest
stage next to the grave of their late initiator.
Many times, the performing
arts have predicted and warned of impending horrors - Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of
the Forest and Hubert Ogunde’s Yoruba Ronu – but we ultimately reaped what we
have sown.
Now, we have performing
artistes in some of our palaces. From the cast of Village Headmaster alone, we
now have the Alaiye Ode Remo, Oba Funso Adeolu, Oba Wole Amele of Aramoko and
Oba Segun Akinbola of Ode Idanre.
As we gather here for this
encounter, one of us, Oba-elect Gbenga Sonuga, is commencing traditional
preparations to ascend the throne of his community as Fadesewa of Simawa,
Makun, Sagamu Remo.
Historic and unforgettable
developments in every nation have always been marked with creative, inspired
works of art. The deficiencies that have characterised such developments in the
43-year history of post independence Nigeria afflicted the performing arts to
the same degree, even if our political leaders cannot claim credit for all of
these initiatives - and they more often ignore the warnings.
The
Mediators
LET’S now take sometime to
discuss film as film, video and the valiant attempts that have been made by the
producers of this new media invaders in the arsenal of the performing artistes,
but not before we recall the beginning of Village Headmaster and the role that
the performing arts through film, video, and The Village Headmaster should be
playing in order to convey meaning to life and resolve our perennial conflicts.
In the original text of the
master story of Village Headmaster, there is a scene in which the headmaster,
confronted with a rebellion and communal conflict in Oja village and we find
him almost in tears intoning the following lines:
“Once upon the history of
this village, not so long ago, the whole town turned against me, because I
allowed three strangers who once lived in this village to come back and
resettle and repossess their property. That was the year that saw the first
public demonstration in this village with placards carried by one of your
children whom God has blessed to go overseas to be a lawyer. Even my own child
joined in that shameful demonstration.
“There was bitterness and
plenty of curses, but we resolved the matter. I like fights and enjoy
arguments. Where I come from, it is only a bastard who should come face to face
with fight and turn his back. This is my village and it will take more than
abuse and threats and curses and even death to make me abandon this village.
“One child died last night
and one tongue wagged. ‘We have strangers among us’, he said and the whole
village was on fire. I am that stranger, but do you see a stranger’s face on my
face? I grew up in this village, took my first job in this village, married my
first wife in this village, buried her in this village. I tell you I am no
stranger here. What control has anybody over where he is born? This is my village.
This is my school. This is my own house. These things that you can see, the
market place, Bassey’s shop, these have not rejected me. And that church, it
was I who preached the first sermon in that church.”
“All the children have now
gone and we see the Headmaster break into a dirge-like song, obviously
Christian, but in Yoruba language. His eyes are tearful and his singing fades
into a halt with a choke: suddenly, we do not see him.”
But before Village
Headmaster, there had been various attempts made to use the cinema as a media
for the management of trafficking and prostitution across borders.
Once upon a time, Lebanese
and Egyptian crew of film producers actually came to Nigeria and in
collaboration with Nigerian colleagues produced two films now famously referred
to as Son of Africa and Golden Women otherwise known as Women of Arabia.
It was not so much the
storyline but the mode of production that raised the demonstration of film to
new levels because both films were shot with the performer using the English
language, but by the time the film producer got to Beirut, Nigerian performing
artists were invited there to translate the text into major Nigerian languages
and for the first time when the films were brought back to Nigeria, the media
of the film became Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa and a dubbing technique that later on
became the fad at that period.
We must also remember the
pioneering work at about this same period of our own Eddie Ugbomah, movie
producer, director and actor, who left us with a long list of productions
including Dr. Oyenusi and Black President.
There are two other agencies
of the Federal Government as I speak to you, which have continued to influence
the contributions of the performing artists in their briefs.
The National Film
Corporation has a long history from the colonial period and can claim to have
established a tradition of film production that has refused to go under in
spite of financial and bureaucratic impediments. It has just completed a
successful run of its second Film Festival a few weeks back, which should serve
as a reminder of the role of the corporation to train film producers and
produce films, which can contribute decisively to national development.
We also have the National
Film and Video Censors Board, which has intervened decisively in the now fully
democratised video production discipline and has supported the production of
good, quality film and video, like the Anthill Africana Film Festival last
September. The last catalogue of the productions issued has thrown the board
into the difficult task of ensuring and enforcing standards in an area the
board unfortunately cannot show examples, because its brief does not include
production.
In that catalogue are listed
over 4,000 production categories of materials suitable for Cinema Halls, Video
Rental Clubs, Video Production Studios and Video Viewing Centres. And
financially, it has motivated the video film industry into a boom: to quote its
latest report “from an enterprise of N250 million in the mid-nineties to the
present estimated turnover of about N7 billion; the industry has contributed in
no small measure to the growth of the nation’s economy.”
A review of the statues of
both agencies is recommended to enable the Federal Government intervene
decisively in the production of film and video for national development.
Cultural
administration
IT is the last 10 years that
has witnessed a multi-media opening of opportunities for the performing arts,
the range of which had blurred the old distinctions of the live theatre, film
as film, video, television as channels of opportunities for the performing
artists.
The International Centre for
the Arts, Lagos (ICAL), which just marked its 10th anniversary, can point to
the successful American premiere of the dance drama Ori, which later was played
to audiences across Nigeria. It can also claim to have popularised the
storytelling mode as a medium that has now become established in art circles.
ICAL’s production of the
story of highlife with Segun Sofowote and Tunji Oyelana, first in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia in the early 90s became a popular repertoire of ICAL to other parts of
Africa and Europe.
But it is in the area of
policy orientation and training that ICAL has been able to influence the
performing arts and the success not unrelated to the foundation work of Gbenga
Sonuga as the Performing Arts specialist first at the New Africa Studios,
Ibadan; and later as Director of the Lagos State Arts Council before he settled
into ICAL.
Following a series of
workshops that culminated in the March 2003 Chief Executive Seminar on Culture
and Management in collaboration with ASCON in Badagry – ICAL recommended:
“That our leadership must
pursue more vigorously the creation and sustenance of a collective sense of
identity among our diverse peoples; and of a new spirit of patriotism and
nationalism, unity and national integration, while recognising and respecting
our ethnic and cultural diversities;
“That there is the need to
inculcate in our leadership, a greater sense of honesty, integrity, probity,
transparency, accountability, justice, fair play, equity, brotherhood,
hard-work, and selfless service based on our indigenous ethical values; as well
as eliminate all forms of corrupt practices and related vices, which, diminish
our processes of growth and development and dent our national image.” Other
recommendations include:
• a campaign to widen the
use of Nigerian languages in broadcasting and legislative houses and schools;
• the promotion of a
civilized, dependable culture of artist centred-copyright regime;
• the upgrading of the
National Festival of the Arts of international status – to receive World
Tourists;
• encouraging the
resuscitation of the Society of Nigerian Broadcasters;
• the transfer of the
National Theatre, Lagos, to a Confederation of Performing Artistes, a new apex
organisation with roots at all Nigeria Local Government headquarters and state
capitals.
And then suddenly, the
highlife sounds of yesteryears are being brought to our attention in the series
of Evergreen Hits Music Masters of our country. We have been reminded of the
music of J.O. Araba, Ayinde Bakare and Tunde Nightingale in addition to the
Nigerian-American returnee – Orlando Julius – all broadcasting delights.
