Night of exciting jazz at MUSON

By Anote Ajeluorou

Although the Etuk Obong Quartet had the honour of kicking off the show with the intro and after the interlude, the night didn’t become magically enchanting until the masters of the jazz genre came on stage. Young and poised to go places, Etuk Obong Quartet is the regular jazz stuff that excites MUSON Centre faithful so much so that even when their jamming would otherwise lull newcomers to sleep, the regulars were appreciative of their performance with applause. But after the 10-minute intermission, they came on stronger, with Tombratade Roberts on drums really revving up the hall with his callisthenic virtuoso as he seemed possessed by some drumming powers even beyond his control. The performance, at last, re-energised slumbering non-jazz enthusiasts.

  But then the masters and avante garde Afro-centric innovators of the jazz genre came on to create a new kind of jazz. First was MUSON’s new Artistic Director, Mr. Tunde Jegede, with his kora, an instrument made popular by Malians. In his simple white top and white trousers and a pair of sandals, he was the true court musician reminiscence of the time when the kora serenaded some of Africa’s beloved monarchs. With his fingers deftly set to work, Jegede plucked away enchantingly, sexily at the stringed instrument to produce soul-stirring music that could rouse slumbering spirits from the nether world. It was ‘Timeless warriors’ and merely the intro to a rich bouquet of radically democratised jazz offering that was yet to come.

  It was perhaps Jegede’s New Horizons’ concert series. It would be Jegede’s first imprint at taking charge of MUSON artistically and the innovation it brought would be relived for a while to come in the minds of the audience.

  By the time Cef (on bass guitar), Imoleayo Balogun (saxophone) and Venus Bushfires, who bore a totem for a headgear (on hang - a brass-like and compressed calabash-shaped percussion instrument), joined Jegede still on his kora, a magical night of unbridled Afro-jazz was born. It was sheer virtuoso performance, as Venus Bushfires lent her velvety voice to ‘Last Winter’s Sparrow’. Apart from the saxophone and possibly guitar, the kora and hang offered a different sound perspective, which is a revolution on the way jazz music sounds. The pity was Venus Bushfires didn’t perform a solo so the true beauty of the hang could be appreciated on its own without the accompaniment of other instruments.

  And when the Balogun and Venus Bushfires left the stage for Jegede and Cef, it was a wonder from which musical planet the Cef phenomenon emerged. If there was ever an extravagant, colourful guitar-maniac, Cef right qualifies as front-runner; he could easily suppliant ‘Guitar Boy’, Sir Victor Uwaifo. He bends and strains the guitar to his will with the fluidity of a gymnast, as he coaxes the strings to breaking point crescendo and then, just as swiftly, brings then down to the least, undulating point, with his powerful voice rising and falling along with the waves of his guitar. All the while, Jegede is also plucking at his kora alongside him in a fusion of high-breed Afro-fusion and mastery that are unrivalled.

  When Age Beeka joined them and wailed his way from among the audience in a negro-spiritual, and brought his own rough-and-ready but tempered voice and guitar effect to the stage, it was clear MUSON will perhaps never be the same again. The old, faithful lovers of jazz – Nigerians and a sizeable number of whites - would wonder if it was the same MUSON they’d known. They might have given a grudging applause to the performance, but they just can’t stem the tide of musical revolution that happened in a jazz radically democratised for the high-breed effect.

  In all the genius of the night remained Cef, a relatively unknown quantum but a music force to beat. He navigates from the guitar to the beat-box, the choral drum or udu, the gong or ogene or agogo and other local instruments with effortless ease. Even the setting for the performers was so ancient and rustic in its ground-level elevation it lent certain quaintness to the players’ setting and the entire performance. Most times, Cef would sit cross-legged like a monk and kneel like a supplicant or just sit on the bare floor while working at a given instrument. It was such a radical departure.

  From ‘We’re moving to higher ground, rising like a morning star’ to ‘You’ve got to hear the river crying’ and ‘Breaking barriers’ and ‘Always Love’, it was the finest musical experimentation shone of any encumbering orthodoxy. And one looked around and didn’t find any Nigerian hiphop ‘stars’ trending the airwaves. The concert was for them to learn a thing or two about how music is made, as much as it was for its pure enjoyment for the loyal audience that thronged the Agip Recital Hall.

  Perhaps, what really got to the audience after this high-breed Afro-jazz feast were the politically-charged liberation words of Dike Chukwumerije, a spoken word artist. Chukwumerije’s poetry is street poetry laden with the failings of the Nigerian society and its inhabitants, who profit by sucking the blood of fellow beings. It’s poetry that spits at so-called modern ways that are sharply at variance with old, golden days of yore.

  But he caps it all with ‘Bring Back Jos’, perhaps a city he’d lived that used to be haven of peace suddenly torn to shreds ‘when we dipped our hands in blood’, as the claims and counter-claims of indigenes and settlers or immigrants deafened the ears in staccato of guns and bullets and arrows to destroy centuries-old harmony and peace. It’s what is at the heart of Boko Haram insurgents, abductors of innocent schoolgirls. How do we bring them home and restore our bleeding humanity are the poetic concerns of Chukwumerije. He got a standing ovation for his supreme performance.

  Wrapping up performance was the Art Essemble of Lagos comprising of Jegede, Cef, Beeka and the Etuk Obong quartet. In their white apparel, with Jegede on bass guitar, Cef on African instruments and Beeka, as lead voice and doing ‘How many prophets do we have to lose?’, the essemble is the future of a redefined Afro-centric jazz. And if you thought you’d attended a music concert in recent times and missed Sunday’s concert at MUSON, then you need to stay close to your calendar.

  March 29 is next musical date at MUSON, when Jegede performs African Messiah. It features MUSON Choir and the Samadhi Essemble, which will be conducted by Sir Emeka Nwokedi.

How Ukala’s Iredi War connects demolition of Ekumeku, other statues in Delta State

By Anote Ajeluorou

“Ekumeku War statue at Asaba was destroyed to make way for Zenith Bank roundabout, and later a flyover bridge. I nearly led a one-man riot to protest that vandalisation of our national patrimony!” That was how award-winning author of epic play, Iredi War, Prof. Sam Ukala, put it while expressing his bitterness at the demolished Ekumeku War statue in Asaba. It was while recently celebrating him for winning The Nigeria Prize for Literature 2014, worth USD$100,000, sponsored by NLNG, at Delta State University, Abraka.

  His book threw up the question of abysmal neglect and even destruction of commissioned sculptural landmarks that beautify Delta State to the consternation of art lovers and scholars alike. Iredi War echoes such destroyed or neglected statues, as Ekumeku War echoes similar concerns in Ukala’s award-winning play in Asaaba people’s historic struggle with the white man in the early 1900s. Ojife statue also at Asaba and Delta Panorama in Warri and others adorning entrances to the state are not spared the same fate.

  Ukala’s play particularly helped to raise questions about the state government’s neglect and poor attitude towards artistic objects scattered around the state. Dr. Nelson Edewor, who is chairman, Society of Nigerian Arts (SNA) and teaches at the Department of Fine Arts, DELSU, and Ukala then charged the Dr. Emmanuel Uduahan-led Delta State Government to immediately relocate, re-erect and rehabilitate all demolished landmark sculptural objects in the state.

  Specifically, the two dons at the state-owned university urged the state government to re-erect Ekumeku War statue in the state capital, rehabilitate Ojife statue also in Asaba, remake or relocate Delta Panorama and rehabilitate all neglected sculptural works in all entry points to the state.

  It was Edewor who raised the issue of demolished and abandoned sculptural works while responding to Ukala’s Iredi War’s play, a historical narrative of Owa people and their battle with the colonial powers that sought to subjugate them. Edewor said the play reminded him of similar wars wagged by Asaba people against the British colonial powers in 1900s, a war that Ekumeku statue helps to immortalise, as reminder of that historic struggle in Asaba people’s encounter with foreign powers.

  According to Edewor, “Ekumeku War statue at Asaba was pulled down for no reason at all. But with Ukala’s book that part of our history has been restored. Pulling down Ekumeku is a disservice to visual arts society in Delta State. We have protested against it and made representation to government that it be restored. Restoration of that statue is very important to the cultural life of the people”.

  For Edewor, the historical essence of Ekumeku War is inestimable and that only its restoration would make sense, saying, “For its historical essence, we desire Ekumeku War statue’s replacement on any acceptable location within Asaba, as consented to by the community’s royalty. Ekumeku War sculpture was made by Mr. Augustus Iweke in 1995 at Inter-Bua roundabout; it was destroyed in 2010. A giant Christmas tree first replaced the statue, then Zenith Bank advert, which was eventually demolished for the flyover bridge under construction.

  “Also, the over 20-feet Delta Panorama made by Mr. Mike Igbowe and situated at Effurun roundabout in Warri went down. Delta Panorama was replaced with a mere water fountain. Last year it was also cleared off for a flyover bridge under construction”.

  In a meeting with Delta State Commissioner for Art, Culture and Tourism, Richard Mofe-Damijo, Edewor, as chairman of SNA had charged, “(We) further decry the high rate of assault on public sculptures and monuments, with special focus on Ekumeku War and Delta Panorama public sculptures that adorned Asaba and Warri metropolises. This assault, the society believes, has grave consequences as abuse on intellectual property law and assault on social image”.

  The state government’s neglect of statues erected at strategic parts of the state is another source of worry for the visual arts teacher and art practitioner. According to Edewor, “Government’s neglect of monuments or their destruction is insupportable. The Ojife statue at West-end roundabout in Asaba is falling apart already. All statues at all entrances to the state are in similar state of disrepair. Government must act to restore these sculptures to their glory days to beautify the state”.

AT the symposium, Ukala and Yeibo took opportunity to respond to the honour bestowed on them by their fellow academics. ON his part, Yeibo expressed gratitude for the honour accorded him when he said, “I’ve always regarded Abraka as my home. The event is unique and I’m blessed.” To the students in the hall, he said, “You’re on the right path; put in your best in whatever you do, as students, as aspiring writers and you will attain success.”

  Ukala also expressed gratitude to English and Literary Studies Department for honouring him. According to him, “The department is cultivating, fostering what we see in older universities – academic culture! How can offices be shut at 4pm, even the library in a university? At University of Ibadan, offices are still open till 1am. The coming of Darah has changed things at Abraka.”

  Ukala also responded to Omoko’s criticism of his play and explained that the time lag was justified, as the telegram didn’t arrive when it should and that the white feared juju given the circumstances of its happening and what was at stake.

  He, however, praised the nobility of Igboba in not only standing up to the white man, but offering himself to be punished along with his subjects, as the hallmark of leadership. “Igboba didn’t allow his subjects to be chained or hanged without offering himself first, as the hallmark of good leadership,” he stated.

  Dean, Faculty of Arts, DELSU, Prof. Austin Anigala, who was represented by Prof. Grace Orji-Ogwu, thanked the two prize-winning authors for “representing us well. Ukala has gone beyond the university to let the world know that this university is grooming men and women of distinction. The Faculty of Arts is proud of its men and women. Darah just came back from the National Conference. More is yet to come.”

  Sadly though, not even a 10-minute drama skit was performed to serenade a master dramatist of Ukala’s stature. Clearly, it would seem Ukala’s department (Theatre Arts) merely watched from the sidelines while another (English) claimed him in celebration.

With New Horizons Concert Series, MUSON lifts jazz music offering

By Anote Ajeluorou

Although music is a universal language that transcends boundaries, classical jazz, as popularised at Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) Centre, Onikan, Lagos, is viewed by a majority of music lovers as somewhat elitist. Thus it sometimes struggles to attract as much audience as it should in spite of quality training and skills its performers are being exposed to on a regular basis.

  New Horizons Concert Series MUSON’s new Artistic Director, Mr. Tunde Jegede, has conceived, apart from preaching jazz gospel to many, is also aimed at democratising jazz and making it music to be loved by all, especially with the infusion of essential African musical elements.

  At a press briefing to herald the new concert series last week, both Jegede and MUSON’s General Manager, Mr. Gboyega Banjo, explained efforts being made to take the gospel of jazz to all parts of Nigerian in spite of the challenges that ambition poses.

  Jegede’s New Horizons kicks off this Sunday, February 22, with unique themes. The other three performances are scheduled to hold on Sunday, March 29, April 19 and June 14. Time for all shows is 6pm. The first concert this Sunday is an exploration of jazz and its African Connections featuring Nigeria’s spoken word artists such as Venus Bushfires, Age Beeka, Imolayo Balogun and the Art Essemble of Lagos.

  Jegede said the first concert “is a meeting point between jazz and music from here, a connection between Africa and the Diaspora.”

  On Sunday, March 29, the focus will be on Africa Messiah, which is a contemporary opera by Jegede. It brings African and baroque music together for the first time. It is the story of “the messiah in parallel to the historical trials and tribulations of African people through millennia and told in poetic narrative.” It will feature MUSON Choir and the Samadhi Essemble and will be conducted by Sir Emeka Nwokedi. This concert, Jegede also noted, “is also a meeting point between African and Western classical music; I will play the kora in it. Most of the work I do is a meeting point.”

   On Sunday, April 19, performance theme is After the Dream, which is “an opera of celebrated arias put together by the soprano soloist, Ranti Ihimoyan, and features American opera diva, Laverne Williams and some of Nigeria’s finest opera singers, including Guchi Egbunine, Fatima Anyekema and Chika Ogbuji”. The third concert, a soprano, “is classical work adapted to a storyline, which has an access point,” Jegede stated.

  On Sunday, June 14, performance theme will be Emidy: He Who Dared to Dream, a “concert centred around the life and times of the 19th century composer and violinist, Joseph Antonio Emidy, who traversed three continents from Africa to South America and Europe. The concert features Jegede, Diana Baroni and the Indian multi-percussionist, Renu Hossain.” According to Jegede, “There is a balance between folk traditions and classical music.”

  These four Sundays promise a unique “taste of Jegede’s operatic, jazz and chamber music” and his “unique synthesis of classical jazz and traditional music, which embodies the legacy of African Classical Music idiom.” This is more so, as Jegede’s New Horizons “embraces jazz, classical opera and African music” and made unique by the array of local and global talents billed to perform.

THE coming of Jegede to MUSON has the bonus of making jazz music more democratic. According to him, “Classical music internationally, has a problem; it has difficult time reaching out to non-classical music enthusiasts. So programming is key; we have to have a clearer way of programming. I combine jazz and spoken word, and this is to say that MUSON has more than jazz music.”

  In order to mitigate the challenges of spreading the gospel of jazz to unbelievers of the music genre, Jegede said MUSON was mulling creating more outreaches to get classical jazz to non-traditional places and non-enthusiasts. “There could be more outreach work to get jazz music outside of here (MUSON Centre) to the public; that could be started next year. Taking MUSON to Abuja, Port Harcourt or Abuja or elsewhere would take time because of the commitment involved to get it out there.

  “Outreach programming is important; it has to be done. We have to go out and play music. I would like for musicians here at MUSON to go out and collaborate with music departments in universities”.

  Banjo said the appointment of Jegede as Artistic Director of MUSON was spot on, as he said, “From our experience, Jegede’s appointment was an immediate hit, as they say in music, in what he has done when we hired him. From our experience also you only have to motivate young people in this country and they will exceed your expectations.”

  On the need for MUSON to take music to public places outside of the centre, Banjo noted, “We’re actively wrestling with that idea. Given the geography of this country, it would be good for us to have branches or partners out there. What could happen is that we could replicate MUSON in Abuja or Port Harcourt – two strong cases to look at.

  “Another thing is aggregating a critical mass of people in those places take the initiative and MUSON partners with them to establish it there or MUSON takes concerts to those places and it generates interests. Those things could happen in the fullness of time. It will be ideal, no doubt. Right now, we look as if we’re Musical Society of Lagos rather than Nigeria!”

Enahoro, a patriot at 80, by Anote Ajeluorou

How does it feel to be 80?

  I’ve been incredibly cheered by so many people calling to congratulate me. Therefore, my answer should not be mistaken for grouchiness. Let us say you’ve lived your life on an exotic island. There were glorious periods of laughter and gaiety. Although there were also periods of painful failures; life, for the most part, has been a fulfilment. Then you are 80. You can remember the distant past as though yesterday. You wonder where all the years have gone. You cannot understand the fuss about being 80 – until someone offers you a tot of cognac and you shake your head and confess shyly, “I don’t drink anymore.” Your body, like the calendar, reminds you you’re an old man!

How would you say exile has treated you?

  A simple question not easily answered. I fled Nigeria at 31. Although I’d travelled halfway round the globe before then I count that time as the moment a new life began for me. I gained the welcome anonymity I did not have in Lagos. I could go back in time and enjoy the life of a young adult that I’d missed. I was a citizen of the world with freedom to travel in Africa and explore Europe. The downside was a sense of not belonging.

At 80 perhaps it is time to return home or don’t you think so?

  Apart from extended visits in the early part of this decade, I spent altogether seven of the forty-nine years since 1966 in Nigeria when I twice tried to resettle in the 1990s. It didn’t work out.

Independence night in 1960 left a bitter taste in the mouth of many like you so much so that you stayed away from the celebration. What political significance did that moment have for the country ever since?

  The precise moment that Nigeria became an Independent state was at the stroke of midnight on Saturday, October 1, 1960.  I was editor of the Sunday Times waiting in the office for pictures of the handing over of the Constitutional Instruments by Princess Alexandra, Queen Elisabeth’s cousin, to Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa; so I had valid excuse not to be at the Race Course venue to witness the historic moment. However, it is true that I was not overly keen to be there. It just didn’t seem right that those who fought hardest for Independence were outcasts. It so happened that they boycotted the ceremony. Maybe that was a signal for the bitterness that soon engulfed the early post-Independence years. 

Some say that journalists have partly been the cause of Nigeria’s problems. A colleague of yours at the Daily Times writing in Drum, according to you, partly caused the mayhem in 1966. How have journalists fared in reporting your country ever since?

  A misplaced humour by my friend, Nelson Ottah, with a photo montage that went seriously awry was blamed among other things for the killing of Igbos in the North. I didn’t see the joke in the picture mount-up or in its accompanying write-up, but that did not justify the terrible slaughters that ensued. In the wider picture of the record of the Nigerian Press, I don’t think the Press should be held responsible for the malaise in the country. Some people will say, he’s bound to say that; isn’t he? He’s one of them! But in fairness, what the Press does is hold up a mirror to the society at large. The Press should not be blamed when some people don’t like what they see.

  However, I’ve since learned that there is such a thing as self-censorship. I left Nigeria all those years ago believing in the absolute truth of the slogan “publish and be damned”. I came to learn that even in the Western world whose media boast that they have absolute freedom, there is an addendum. When it comes to reporting Africa the gloves are usually off, however. Africa is still the Dark Continent in the minds of many readers. Foreign reporters feed into that, albeit with a revised stereotyping. We don’t eat missionaries any more; instead, we are universally, individually, collectively corrupt and incompetent, and dependent on foreign aid. The visiting foreign reporter is an intrepid do-gooder who wants to save Africans from themselves. Unfortunately, our indigenous Press hold them as role models.   

Nigeria descended into war in 1967. Was it unavoidable?

  In theory all wars are avoidable.

You played a part in that war on the side of Biafra. Do you regret it? What part did that play in your going into exile?

  I was already abroad before the crisis became a war. My sympathy was for the struggle of the Igbo people. I made that known wherever my travels took me. That was as much part as I played. I would have been happiest if the war became a stalemate so that a just and proper end to the dispute could be negotiated. It happened that Biafra lost the war. Gowon said there was no victor, no vanquished. The Igbos have been reintegrated into the Federation. It suggests that the story is ended. If you want to take an absolutely cynical view you would remind yourself that most of today’s established nations were put together by force of arms. The great democrat Abraham Lincoln fought and won a civil war that kept the U.S. as one and indivisible nation.

  Nonetheless, someone like me might reply that in the modern age it ought to be possible to build a nation on a foundation of consent and trust. We see ethnic conflicts and separatist movements all over the world, even among enlightened and sophisticated societies. There is the current crisis in Ukraine where thousands have died. There is the lingering undercurrent of French-Canadian “nationalism”; the Basques in Spain; the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. Closer to our experience is the demand for Scottish Independence. The nationalists lost a recent referendum but I don’t believe it is over for good. Even so, what struck me was that after 300 years of the termination of Scottish Independence; 300 years of “Great Britain”; three hundred centuries, during which Scotsmen and Englishmen bestrode the world jointly as subjects of a common sovereign, and together built an empire on which the sun never set; and despite the negative propaganda hurled at the nationalist campaign – including EU and US subtle and not so subtle interventions – as many as 45 percent of the voters asked for Independence!     

Your former colleague, the late Chinua Achebe wrote his last book, There was a Country that sparked so much controversy back home. What was your assessment of the book in the light of events of the civil war?

  Chinua Achebe was not my colleague. In fact, I can’t remember that we ever met and had a conversation. I’ve read the book. I’m glad he wrote it. It was how he saw things. It spoke for him. The fact that it caused so much controversy was proof that he touched certain nerves. That didn’t include my nerves.

In spite of the war Biafra was able to deploy its resources such that it developed its own technology to fight the war. But in spite of the fact that Nigeria won the war and despite the benefit of the oil boom, it can’t make a bicycle as yet. What do you think accounts for this?

  You are spot on. An admirable achievement of Biafra was the creativity it inspired among a population on the brink of decimation. The old saying that necessity is the mother of invention was ever so true about the Biafrans. But when they re-joined an economy which seeks to create wealth not by building or planting things but in importations, a curse of the oil boom, an economy in which business acumen means angling for contracts to make a quick buck, the creativity inspired by the Biafra spirit ended very quickly. At any rate it had never caught on in the rest of the country. “Waiting for Federal allocation” should be the motto of every state finance ministry in the land!

You wrote Then Spoke the Thunder some 10 years ago. At 80 do you still feel there are gaps that need to be filled? Is another memoir coming?

  I can’t see another memoir or the need for one. But there is a bitter story I want to tell, if I can work out a humorous way of telling it. It’s very much in my head.

Nigeria is holding another election next month. What are your fears and expectations?

  My hope is that we avoid violence. My fear is that the losers will automatically claim that the elections were rigged.

Between the two Presidential candidates – Jonathan and Buhari – who do you think is the better suited for the job?

  I’ve never voted in a political election in my life.  I thought I could not honestly say I was transparently objective and neutral if I cast a vote for one side or the other. I’ve always stopped short of concerning myself with who the better candidate is. I concentrate on watching out for transparency in the electoral process, on fairness and I patiently await the decision of the electorate.