ktravula – a travelogue!

A Poem as a Dreamer and Pacifist

By Ikeogu Oke

(Being the Acceptance Speech for the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature)

 

The Way I Want To Go

What you do you must do on your own.

The main thing is to write

for the joy of it.

– Seamus Heaney, “Station Island”

 

Father has called and warned me not to go

The way I want to go:

“It is no life you spend among the trees!”

Mother as everyone at home agrees.

And good opinion says the trend of the era shows

That those whose pen must feed must write in prose.

 

“To write in verse,” they say, “is agony.

For poets,” they press, “do not make money.”

 

And I have given thought to what they say,

While alone and headed on my way.

The wisdom of the world and age apart,

The truly wise must listen to his heart.

And yet the poet should not deny his pain,

Or fail for lack to stress his fair bargain.

 

For if poets do not make money,

Then, neither does money make poets.

 

O World, Thou Choosest Not

O world, thou choosest not the better part!

It is not wisdom to be only wise,

And on the inward vision close the eyes,

But it is wisdom to believe the heart.

Columbus found a world, and had no chart,

Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;

To trust the soul’s invincible surmise

 

Was all his science and his only art.

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine

That lights the pathway but one step ahead

Across a void of mystery and dread.

Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine

 

By which alone the mortal heart is led

Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

 

– George Santayana

 

Let me proceed by thanking all of you for honouring the invitation to attend this event, and the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited without whose commitment to the growth of Nigerian Literature we might not have gathered here.

I am grateful to the panel of adjudicators for the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature for pronouncing my entry, The Heresiad, as the winner, vindicating my expectation. I believed the entry rule which stated that the adjudication would be based on merit. Merit is a value to which I am strongly attracted and cherish highly but which, alas, Chinua Achebe described as “quite often a dirty word” in our country. And I believe its entrenchment in the affairs of our nation, beyond such adjudication of literary prizes, can have far-reaching transformational effects.

In a world in which we do not always get what we deserve, and fortune does not always favour the most qualified or hardworking, I think we should all feel humble and appreciative for any success we achieve. This, besides happy, is how I feel as the recipient of this honour. To the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, the members of the Advisory Board of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, and the award-giving judges, I say, “An award-winning poet salutes you!”

I thank my publisher, Kraft, our chef of delicious books, for indulging my insistence on perfection. I thank my fellow poets for a great contest, especially my fellow finalists whose calls to congratulate me for winning was for me the hallmark of literary sportsmanship, a profoundly moving gesture. I thank my father, an unceasing fount of fond memories. He taught me the virtues of hard work, steadfastness, self-belief, self-denial and sacrifice. Without his lessons I might not have devoted twenty-seven years working on The Heresiad, running a compositional marathon and expecting no reward beyond the satisfaction, after crossing the finish line, that I had run a good race. I thank my family, especially my wife and children, for enduring the quirks of a restless poet.

The first of the poems I have furnished as an epigraph to this speech has served me as a literary manifesto since I wrote it about fifteen years ago, as a response to the concerns expressed by those who thought my career choice of poetry was a waste of time and tantamount to entering into a life-long pact with penury. Poetry is the only healthy narcotic on earth. I am happy to be addicted to it as shown by my refusal to be swayed by such concerns. I have invoked the poem here hopefully to arouse the contemplation of how one’s resolve to pursue one’s dreams in spite of such concerns is the best decision that can lead to a fulfilled life.

The second, a sonnet by George Santayana, is my polestar of inspirational poetry. I have invoked it here because I believe its cardinal themes of vision, faith, self-belief and resolutely acting on one’s dreams reinforce and anticipated similar themes in my own poem.

That way, we can all see that if I were to say, as part of the use to which I wish to put this historic opportunity to speak to you, that vision, faith, self-belief and resolutely acting on one’s dreams are virtually all one needs to attain one’s purpose in life, and perhaps inspire those among us who still have the courage to dream dreams, especially the young, I would not be a solitary voice in some poetic wilderness.

So you can see that some master, far wiser than I, had said it before me. And that the veracity of his words, even when subjected to logical scrutiny, is proof that the poet does not lie whether he speaks for faith or reason, or in any circumstance whatsoever. And that he perhaps deserves our attention more than we are currently inclined to give it to him – in our own interest.

And need I, as one of such other circumstances of proof that the poet does not lie, point out that the experience I relate in “The Way I Want to Go” regarding my family and “good opinion”, took place only in my imagination, even though it hints at real behaviours? My family members will disavow it if their idea of truth is confined to the literality of events, and infer that the poet lied, and if they lack the understanding that the truth as spoken by poets may be but need not be literal, in the sense of being a rendition or reflection of a physical occurrence or phenomenon.

In the wake of my announcement as the recipient of this honour, I spoke with someone who shared with me the challenges he is facing in becoming a successful writer. From our conversation I drew a hint – I believe rightly – that he would like me to lead him into the secret to success in the literary vocation.

I have also been asked repeatedly, “What kept you going all these years?” by various individuals, some of whom are interested in becoming writers. I believe the question seeks to elicit a similar response from me to that of the acquaintance who shared his challenges about succeeding as a writer with me.

Unfortunately, I do not know the secret to success. Nor do I think that writers would have a different secret to success from the rest of humanity. If I knew such a secret, I would readily reveal it to end the difficulties we all face as human beings in making our dreams fructify. And, not knowing any such secret, I offer these admonitory words, drawn from the depths of my personal convictions, in lieu of my ignorance.

Believe in yourself. Commit to a dream only you have the last say in its survival, so you may not despair even if you must stand alone in its pursuit, ignored by the rest of the world. If they tell you that your dreams are impossible, ignore the first two letters and move on with your dreams. Give all you have to what you do and love it with all your heart. Do it with your whole heart, with integrity, seeking first the kingdom of excellence for which other things should be added to you. But still plan to end up only with the satisfaction of having laboured for the love of your vocation, in case nothing more is added to you. Time is too precious to waste doing something you do not love even if it brings you fortune.

In life you will meet people who will try to snuff out the candle of your dreams. You will meet people who will help to keep it burning. I have been fortunate to meet more of the later type of people and I hope that becomes your lot too. But you have the final say as to how long the candle of your dreams will keep burning, regardless of what others tell you. And never forget that the fruits of vicious dreams often harbour the bitter taste of comeuppance.

There is no greater mission in life than making others genuinely happy, bringing them healthy joy. You are a success however you are able to accomplish this. Those you bring true happiness will ensure your success by patronising the means by which you do so.

Never accept the circumstances of your birth as a limitation to the realisation of your dreams, even if they are more fraught with lack, more underprivileged, than mine. From the age of twelve, in secondary school, I was constrained to earn all the money I paid as school fees from menial jobs because my parents, though responsible and firm in their resolve to give all their six children a good education, could never have earned enough to do so owing to inhibitions imposed by their own underprivileged backgrounds.

I can even say that I am proud of my heritage of an underprivileged background for teaching me the invaluable lessons of self-denial, of delayed gratification, and the transcendence of hard work, far better than I might have been taught had I come from a privileged background. And these, in my view, are important lessons for success.

And if, in spite of the privation associated with being lowborn, I can arrive at the privilege of being the recipient of this extraordinary honour, so can any child born of poor parents, any parent in fact. It can be any child who can set forth at dawn1, set their goals and priorities right, pursue them with single-mindedness, and be ready to crack their palm kernel if no benevolent spirit2 shows up to crack it for them. It can be any child who understands that, as Thomas Carlyle said, “Perseverance is the anchor of all virtues.”

Also, that I stand here today disproves the charge that Nigeria does not reward merit, excellence or hard work. My experience that culminates in this event is proof that it does, that it is actually a land of possibilities in which even improbable dreams can come true in spite of the crying need to make it “a more perfect union” as the former Unites States President, Barak Obama, once said about his country.

It is an experience more sour than sweet, more painful than joyous. It includes waking up one morning about sixteen years ago to realise that my severance benefit from my first job from which I was retired prematurely and placed on pension at thirty-three years, after fifteen years’ untainted service, had been trapped

– and it remains trapped – in Savannah Bank, following its closure for an alleged breach for which the depositors who bore the brunt of the precipitate closure by the authorities were not responsible. It includes being persecuted out of several jobs by bosses averse to propriety in the workplace.

But what does my current experience say? The same land that can rip hope out of your breast can restore it in manifolds if you will not give up on it.

 

I have a story,

I shall tell it without vainglory,

A story to inspire,

And light men’s souls with fire.

 

The primary role of the poet is to create beauty with words, like other types of artists whose primary roles are to create beauty through their various mediums of expression. Yet, we know that art is hardly, if ever, unalloyed with functionality. That it is almost always applied and hardly pure. That even its affective function implicates inherent applicability, if utilitarianism. That it is hardly ever strictly an ornament.

And, as poets and other forms of artists, I think we should never cease to ask ourselves if we should be satisfied with merely creating beauty through our work in a world in which ugly occurrences constantly threaten such beauty. To pose it as a question: Should we plant gardens and allow them to be overrun with weeds, or adorn our world with our work and overlook its being blighted by injustice and other ills that may threaten its peace? Or, put differently, can we not be cultivators of beauty as well as what Niyi Osundare calls “the eye of the earth,” using our work to police the earth against harm, while engaging in other possible activities to improve its lot and cultivate its wellbeing? If we say yes to the former and no to the latter, which should be surprising especially for the former, then why do we praise Pablo Neruda’s Spain in Our Hearts3? Why do we commend Pablo Picasso’s Guernica? Why do we acclaim Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story, Wole Soyinka’s A Play of Giants, and many more of such remarkable works of art which meld their originators’ love for creating beauty with their interest in championing a better world? A Stradivari violin, an Amati, are beautiful objects. But from that beauty we extract music, and our world is better off for it. Art is basically an instrument for transmitting aesthetic pleasure. But it can transmit more. And artists can consciously make it transmit more for the betterment of our world.

If permitted a singular use of metaphorical license, I would describe The Heresiad as a mirror of a poem as a dreamer and pacifist, among other germane inferences that may be drawn from the work. For while defending the various freedoms I think we should all uphold as humans, those freedoms that form the bedrock of liberal values, especially freedom of expression, it urges their exercise with sensitivity to the legitimate feelings and interests of others. And even in the face of an offensive breach of such sensitivity, it encourages supporters of the offender to pacify the offended by acknowledging the offence. It then urges the latter to show leniency, as in the last of its following couplets spoken by one of the loyalists of Reason seeking to prevent the execution of the death sentence pronounced on the author accused of heresy in the poem as an aftermath of his exercising one of such freedoms:

 

And though I have the will to face their five,

And help our protégé to stay alive,

I’ll rather urge their anger, just but high,

To view his error with a lenient eye.

(Canto II, lines 197-200)

 

And even in the face of an imminent armed confrontation, the poem creates a hero, Reason, who makes a personal commitment to pursue his interest in saving the author without recourse to arms. Thus:

 

And Reason, mounted on a higher ground,

Waited, as his anxious thoughts unwound,

And while he waited muttered to himself

 

(As he focused on a granite shelf):

“I still think that strife cannot be proper;

No weapon fashioned for my use shall prosper;

I’ll go, unhurried, with the one they seek,

Though his hope may now be worse than bleak;

 

If the power of thought cannot avail,

Then the force of strife must not prevail;

If persuasion cannot help our cause,

Nor, I think, can any lethal force.

To explore the argument of grace – I go,

And take my thoughts for arrows and for bow!”

(Canto III, lines 607-620)

 

Here, then, lies the essence of the poem as a dreamer and pacifist: its simultaneous envisioning of the de-escalation of conflicts strictly by conciliation and their resolution through personal commitment to eschew the use of arms. In fact, it offers these, within and beyond the bounds of verse, as general principles for engendering peace in the world. They are also reflections of my belief that, though as artists we must fulfil our primary obligation to create beauty through our work, we can also make art more useful by using it to stimulate the evolution of a more liveable world. The poem does the latter by promoting peace (in a context that integrates respect for life) among countless options of such engagement open to artists across the world. And I have tried to do the former by creating such a book-length poem whose every line can be sung and set to music, making it a book-length art song, a musical epic in four cantos that may also be described as a literary symphony in four movements. I call it operatic poetry, a new genre of poetry intended to open new frontiers for its enjoyment. For I consider its action, drama and music primed for realisation – and to be realisable and awaiting realisation – as opera. And I clearly anticipate the materialisation of this artistic vision like the world which, as Santayana reminds us, Columbus found without a chart.

I might not have entered for let alone won this prize but for a friend and fellow writer who read the manuscript of The Heresiad and asked me to submit it for the prize, describing it as “a magnum opus”. Though flattered by the description, I hesitated, explaining that it was unpublished and needed more work before I would consider it publishable. He later wore down my resistance with his gentle insistence. Would we have been here today, I on this side of the proceedings, but for his special encouragement? I doubt it.

To this inspiring friend, Wale Okediran, I dedicate this prize, and to many others like him who offered various forms of encouragement for the twenty-seven years I worked on The Heresiad.

“We must always give back,” Nadine Gordimer, my friend and mentor, said to me at our last meeting before her demise in 2014. To this friend I have given back a token of a poem, entitled “Goodwill and Destiny”, that is also a song. But I have modified it to the following lines for the purpose of this speech and have had it set to music, which I consider the worthiest companion of poetry.

 

I crave your indulgence to rise and join me and let us read and sing it as believers in the value of goodwill, friendship, gratitude, and as a song of universal brotherhood, and to the glory of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Limited, my Muse, the Ebony Pearl, and Nigerian Literature, addressing the fourth and sixth lines respectively to the male and female next to us as we read and sing:

 

We are what we are because of others

With whom the heavens steer our lives like rudders.

And may the heavens gift your life a rudder

Like this brother from another mother;

And may the heavens gift your life a rudder

Like this sister from another mother.

 

________

Footnotes

  1. The phrase “who can set forth at dawn” alludes to a title of a memoir by Wole Soyinka entitled You Must Set Forth at Dawn.
  2. The phrase, “ready to crack their palm kernel if no benevolent spirit shows up to crack it for them”, alludes to a remark by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart about those whose palm kernels have been cracked by a benevolent spirit not knowing that the cracking of palm kernels is hard.
  3. A translation of Espana en el Corazon (Spanish), the original title.

_______

Ikeogu Oke is the winner of the 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature (Poetry) for his volume The Heresiad

A Poem as a Dreamer and Pacifist was published on February 7th, 2018, with the tags , , , , , under the Literature, Poetry category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

The Train to Busan

Apparently, there is a horror movie of the zombie kind, made in Korea, with the above-named title.

I discovered this by chance, through Sarge Lacuesta, a Philipino writer with whom I’d attended the Pyeongchang Humanities Forum in Seoul and Pyeongchang in late January. We had been informed a few minutes earlier as we sat in the Orchid Room at the Westin Chosun Hotel that a planned trip to Busan later in the week would take us through a newly commissioned bullet train ride from Seoul.

Train to Busan, the movie, Lacuesta said rather enthusiastically, exhibited some of the best of Korean cinema which, according to him, had come into its own over the last couple of years, with compelling visuals showcasing the brilliance of Korean storytelling. It would be my first time of hearing of Korean cinema and I expressed same to him. When we were young, in Nigeria, we saw lots of Asian movies, but it was hard for us as kids to tell which was Japanese or which was Chinese. When we grew up a bit, we could recognize Jackie Chan and knew that he came from China. For the other films we watched, it was enough to enjoy the synchronized violence of the entertaining martial arts the movies were known for. As an adult, of course, I’ve since figured out that some of the biggest brand names in electronics came out of Korea, from Samsung to Kia to HiSense to Daewoo to Hyundai.

I’ve also come to learn more about the really impressive story of the Korean entertainment industry, from Psy of the Gangnam Style fame (we did visit Gangnam too) to G-Dragon, Taeyang, and the many other popular K-Pop stars the country has blessed the world with. The Busan Film Festival, as well, has come to represent one of the most impressive annual gatherings of artists and moviemakers from all around Asia, making great and beautiful movies for a global market. These are things I knew little about until I visited Korea for the first time.

I never did see the movie Train to Busan though I intend to in the coming weeks. Neither did we encounter any zombies on the really comfortable train ride from Seoul to Busan and back (how often do you get to use fast internet on a moving bullet train without paying extra for it?). But a few weeks after I returned home, I was able to travel back to Busan a, nd to the Korean film universe through the current blockbuster Marvel movie Black Panther. Those who have seen it will remember some of the most action-packed scenes took place in Busan and featured phrases of Korean and fine pictures of Hangeul calligraphy.

The event I’d gone to attend in Busan was called New World Literature Beyond Eurocentricism, and it featured conversations with some of the city’s finest artists, writers, scholars, on the direction of the arts and literature in languages and schemas other than the ones dictated by English and other European thoughts. I enjoyed it. My recent knowledge of the successful and dynamic movie and literary culture from Korea – I realize now – is a fitting coda for that fascinating trip.

____

All photos taken at a Book Café run by Kim Soo Woo, Korean travel writer and translator, one of our hosts in Busan.

The Train to Busan was published on February 5th, 2018, under the adventures, Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Lunch At Beomosa

The Beomosa Temple is one of the oldest and most renowned temples in Korea, and in Buddhism. It is located on the slopes of the Geumjeongsan Mountain and was built around 678AD. The original temple was burnt down during the Japanese Invasion of Korea in 1592, but others have been built on the same spot to replace it, with renovation efforts done on some of the items that survived the inferno. One of its most famous treasures is a larger-than-life statue of Buddha, located in one of the halls, where tourists and visitors come to pray or meditate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was at Beomosa, pronounced like [po-mo-saa], recently, visiting with writer and scholar colleagues from different countries who were in Busan for a literature festival/workshop titled New World Literature Beyond Eurocentrism. It was a chance to discuss issues of relevance in the global conversations around the direction of literature. I was on a panel with writers from the Philipines, China, Mexico, and Korea my contribution focused on my work as a writer and linguist in Nigeria and the challenges of African language literature. (The title of this my recent interview with AfricanWriter.com makes the case perhaps more concisely).

The name of the temple – Beomosa – means “Nirvana fish” in Korean, named after a fish reputed to have been found in a river on top of the mountain – a river said to have housed Buddha himself at some point in prehistory. It was my first time in any Buddhist temple, and a rare privilege to have my first visit be at one of Buddhism’s holy places. I learnt a lot about what Buddhism is and what it’s not. It was also interesting to learn that its purpose “to end all suffering” had long been wrongly translated. Our guide said that the better translation would be “to end all unsatisfactoriness”, which made more sense. Most religions of the world profess a kind of longing for the afterlife. Or, at the last, some sort of paradise. In Buddhism, that is an enlightenment that can only come from within. Not by prayers to anyone, not even to Buddha, but a pursuit of an internal state of transcending human disquiet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our guide was a young monk, about 27-ish. He was born in Korea but spent much of his childhood and adult life in the Central Illinois area around Champaign, attending the University of Illinois, Urbana. His accent gave him away pretty quickly, though, according to him, this was the first time he would be using the English language since he returned to Korea just three years ago to become a Buddhist monk.  The language of the temple (and of the environment) is Korean and Chinese. He provided us an overview of the temple, its ancient and contemporary history, and his role as an apprentice monk. A question I wanted to ask, but didn’t, was how he came to the decision to leave the modern life behind in America to become a monk in this remote part of the world. What I managed to ask was whether there are people who begin this journey to become a monk and then give up half-way. The answer is “yes”, but his passion and conviction left me in no doubt that he wouldn’t be one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The temperature in Busan on the day of the visit felt like Antartica, but it was around -12 degrees. Not much of a difference to the Nigerian who has been familiar with only two seasons: wet or dry, each hovering around 30 degrees Celsius. Korean travel writer and translator Kim Soo Woo had looked at me with motherly concern earlier in the morning as I came out of my hotel wearing about four shirts over the other. “This won’t be enough,” she suggested. “It would be reaaaaaly cold.” Do I have something else to wear on these four shirts before putting on a jacket? I went back into my room and found a sweater I had thankfully brought along from Lagos, so I slid into it. And yet, on this mountain, beaten left and right by the chilly wind that still managed to pierce deep into my bones through the clothes, I wished that I had more clothes to hide under.

The monks had a special outfit which, I suspect, also had inside insulation. They seemed comfortable in their skin and in this environment. The temple would certainly be a more interesting place to visit in the fall or at any other time of the year, but they didn’t seem discomforted in any way. When it was lunch time, we gathered into the dining hall, and into an inside room open only to the elderly monks and their visitors. It was another rare privilege. On the wall of the dining room is the “meal chant”, in Korean, Chinese, and in English, which says:

Where has this food come from?

I am ashamed of eating it.

I will take it as medicine

to get rid of greed in my mind

and to keep my physical being

in order to achieve enlightenment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was delicious food, but I don’t know if the spirit of Buddha would have appreciated this concession of mine to the purpose of food as more than just a means to enlightenment.

 

 

 

 

Lunch At Beomosa was published on February 1st, 2018, with the tags , , , , under the adventures, Travelling category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Another Kind of Poverty Gap: The Erosion of Language Diversity

(Being a paper delivered at the PyeonChang Humanities Forum at the Seoul National University Seoul, South Korea, on January 20, 2018 by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀ṣún. The audio recording of the talk can be found here)

 

Ẹ káàrọ̀ o. Good morning. Annyeonghaseyo.

First of all, let me express my profound appreciation to the organisers of this event for choosing me out of many to be here, among all these important people from around the world, to give you my own perspective on an important discussion. These are precarious times. And to be here in this place at this time to give a talk on a topic that is dear to my heart, is an honour. So, thank you. As we say in my language, adúpẹ́. I bring you greetings from West Africa.

I am here to speak about poverty. But before you assume that I am going in a predictable direction you have been familiar with from watching cable news from your different parts of the world about Africa, let me advise that you set a different expectation. My talk is about a different kind of poverty, one caused by exclusion, and one relating to one particular type of exclusion: language.

I come from Nigeria, a country of about 170 million people with over five hundred different languages and cultures. It is a place that offers as diverse a landscape in terms of both viewpoint and attitude to life. On the one hand, binaries can be found: The north is mostly conservative while the south is mostly liberal. The north is mostly arid and desert while the south is mostly rainforest and humid. On the other, we have an assemblage of cultures and languages which range from mildly intelligible dialects to distinct languages with no discernable cognate, even when they live around each other. This has made my country, Nigeria, a country created from a British colonial experiment, a very interesting place. From what I have read, this is not the same as what obtains here on the Korean peninsula, where Korean is generally described as a “language isolate”, with no discernable genetic or genealogical link with any neighbouring tongues.

Human migration and mandatory inter-mingling of tribes ensured that we are all exposed, in some way or the other, to characteristics of each other’s culture. Through warfare, conquests, and other forms of domination, a number of us have also become subservient, linguistically, to some larger languages around the country, such that, before the British came to colonize the whole swathe that makes up the country Nigeria, a certain linguistic mosaic had emerged. A mosaic, because it was not just one language which every others must speak, but several big languages, and several small ones, each occupying a particular space in the society, fulfilling particular roles in facilitating contact.

I bring up the linguistic character of my hometown to create an image in your minds of both diversity and richness. Even many decades after the colonial processes that were set in place to create a homogenous society out of colourful and diverse peoples, the mosaic is still evident, though not in as bold a colour as was many years ago. The changes started with colonialism, and the prevailing mindsets of the invading strangers from Europe and newly “educated” Africans that our languages could be discarded without consequences. It was a gradual change, reinforced with every government policy, every textbook recommendation, every change in the educational syllabus, and every recommended dress code in government offices. Today, we are a people whose worldview is being conditioned and defined by competence in a new language, English, to the exclusion of our own.

Let me address an important irony: that which concerns the fact that I am presenting this talk in English and not in my own language. I have, after all, advocated that Nigeria’s president use his own language (Hausa/Fulfde) whenever he is out of the country. If I were the president of Nigeria in this instance, Yorùbá nìkan ni mo máa sọ. Aá fi sílẹ̀ fún àwọn ògbifọ̀ láti ṣàlàyé (I’ll be speaking only in Yorùbá, leaving it to the translators to explain). This is a suggestion borne out of my belief that the head of state represents the country and its multilingualism. His or her decision to speak the nation’s language outside shows a pride in the language and provides jobs for translators living in that foreign country while portraying a complexity of that country’s cultural landscape.

The irony comes because the purpose of my talk here is to advocate for a return to the local language use and support, and to explain why I believe that the poverty of imagination is equally as tragic as a poverty of the stomach. You, my hosts in Korea, don’t seem to have this dilemma. Your language is one (unless we discuss the widening gap that is happening between the version spoken here in the South, and that one spoken in the North). You don’t have too many dialects of the language, and citizens of this country do not have hundreds more competing for attention. But you are also lucky in another way. Even though English is spoken here as a second language, Korean still holds an important place as a vessel for the culture of the people. You can think in the language. You can conduct all your daily activities in it. It has a distinct writing style, and children are taught how to use it. And big technological giants care enough about it, and your buying power, that they carry it along with every new tool they create.

This is not the same for the languages in my country.

The problem, like I mentioned earlier originated in the over-simplistic tools we chose for dealing with diversity, and in colonialism. But it has also been carried along by an attitude of the population that rather than assert individual identity or spend valuable time developing each language through use in literature and other means of transmission, we might as well surrender and adopt English as the only “uniting” language. Don’t ask me how successful that drive for unity is. But the result is a gradual attrition of local languages. As at the last count, about twenty-seven languages in the country are either vulnerable, critically endangered, or severely endangered. It doesn’t look like the situation will improve anytime soon because unlike what obtained in the country a couple of decades ago, we no longer teach local languages in schools. The new students we produce from schools each year will only claim English as their first language. This doesn’t mean that they will be accepted abroad as first language speakers since the term “native speaker” is imbued with more than mere language competence, but with both political and cultural characteristics. I’ve spoken about this in other forums. This leaves us, Nigerians, and many other post-colonial outposts around the continent, at a terrible psychological, social, economic, and even political disadvantage.

A more noticeable example of this kind of poverty comes with technology, which is my current focus as a writer and linguist. In some ways, it will be proper to look at the progress of today’s modern inventions through the lens of colonialism, carried into every part of the world on the back of convenience. From my part of the world, where we consume technology much more than we create it, a pattern has emerged. The new technological tools created to make life better for us are monolingual in nature. For an environment where thousands of languages are spoken, this is grossly deficient. And there’s no poverty as great as one that prevents a person from interrogating life in the language with which they are intimately familiar.

When I was in the university between 2000 and 2005, I used to wonder why Microsoft Word underlined my name with a red wriggly line whenever I typed it. But the answer was simple: Microsoft simply didn’t recognize a Yorùbá name. As long as the name wasn’t an English name, the red wriggly line showed you that something was wrong. So when I wrote my long essay, I did it on a project called a Multimedia Dictionary of Yorùbá Names. It was my way of introducing Yorùbá names to technology. Ten years later, I expanded the project to a fully functional and crowdsourced multimedia dictionary to which people can add new names, and improve current ones. And I did this not just for Yorùbá this time, but under the umbrella of what we called the African Language Project, we want to document all African languages and other intangible cultural materials like names, customs, norms, and words. As at this moment, there is no multimedia dictionary of Yorùbá on the internet. None that Africans can access on their phones at a moment’s notice. We are trying to create one. If more Africans who do not speak English at all, or as a first language, cannot interact with technology in their own language, then they are being left behind in the progress of technology. And that’s a powerful kind of poverty.

Around Nigeria today, there is barely any ATM machines that one can use in a local language. This means that people who only speak a local language will not put their money in banks, since the process of getting it out is onerous. Because of this, they are excluded from the big economy and thus remain poor. In a part of Northern Nigeria, poor farmers who need to work with modern implements have to first learn English before they can understand how to read the manuals. I know a couple of my friends who are working on artificial intelligence applications that can help these farmers communicate in Hausa and get access to all they need in a language they speak. But these efforts are far in-between. There’s a lot of work to be done, not just with widening the access that technology provides, but also in reading and producing literature, in engaging with participating in and discerning the details of our politics, and engaging with our everyday life. Like we say in Yorùbá, ọwọ́ ara ẹni la fi ń tún ìwà ara ẹni ṣe (“we have to use our own hands to fix our own issues”).

There are different kinds of poverty, all of them damaging to the dignity of man. A deprivation of language is one that is more pernicious than the rest because it deprives not just the body, but also the mind. The world is a colourful and delightful place to be in because of the multiplicity of languages and culture. I do not want to live in a world where only ONE language is spoken. That is a world that has lost its storehouses of wealth. We are all richer by the experiences we share from participating in each other’s cultures, language, worldview, and way of life. By working hard, and fighting hard in my own part of the world, to make sure that the movement of technology does not leave us behind in our own languages, we attack poverty, and build a new and exciting future that better reflects the mosaic; the colours, and the realities of the African – and our global – existence.

Thank you for listening. Kamsa hamida.

Another Kind of Poverty Gap: The Erosion of Language Diversity was published on January 21st, 2018, under the Academic, Linguistics, Observations, Opinion category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

More than Ashẹ́wó: Kalakuta Queens Remembered

by Ọpẹ́ Adédèjì

 

One of the living Kalakuta queens, Ọláídé is on stage with Fẹ́mi Kútì and Yẹni Kútì, two of Fẹlá’s children. They are passing the microphone around reminiscing about a time when Fẹlá was alive. They speak fondly of him, as if he stepped out of the room and would be back any minute. They are smiling. It feels like we know Fẹlá personally, beyond the music and stories we have read of him. Bọ́lánlé Austen-Peters looks tired. She stands by the trio who keep praising her genius and creativity. She has just explained to the audience that intense rehearsals had been on since October and that the show started airing in December. They have one last show before they come back in April during the Easter break. Behind them, the complete cast and crew of Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens stand, still in their beautiful costumes, smiling at the audience. In a bit, we are allowed to climb up the stage to take pictures with the cast.

Ọláídé, one of the surviving Queens from Kalakuta Republic, seated to the far right in blue, while Fẹ́mi Kútì speaks and Yẹni with Bọ́lánlé Austen-Peters look on.

I particularly find the man who played Fẹlá – Ọláìtán Adéníji – intriguing. Apart from the fact that he did a great job with producing a close imitation of Fẹlá’s voice, mannerism, and movements, it is commendable that he has had no history or career in acting. He is an afro-jazz vocalist and saxophonist and prior to this time, definitely not an actor. The audience is awed when Bọ́lánlé says that his role as Fẹlá is his first acting role. Fẹlá, or rather Ọláìtán, smiles a modest smile. I take a picture of him. He is darker than the real Fẹlá but the resemblance is there.

On Terra Kulture’s website, they describe the event as a thrill of a lifetime. While I agree with this, I wish they had used a more adequate description. Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens was a thrill of a lifetime and more. It was a spiritual experience. I feel that this is the only way to capture its essence in a few words and evoke a true emotion.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the unveiling of several sexual harassment conducts against well-known members of the public and celebrities, especially in Hollywood, and the conversations around consent and feminism on social media, Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens is a timely production. It seems almost like Bọ́lánlé saw what 2017 had in store for women when she started preparing and doing research for the show a year ago. I can only imagine what extensive research and investigation she must have put into it because of Láídé and Fẹ́mi’s remark that the play is exactly what happened in real life. There is an emphasis on the ‘real life’. This leaves me short of words.

Bọ́lánlé explains that, while Fẹlá is continuously being praised for his incredibly unique music that has outlived him and promises to outlive us, no one ever talks about the women who stood by him. After his death, they sort of became relegated to the background, and their roles ignored. It was almost as if they had never existed in the first place. Every year in October, Felabration is celebrated widely in Lagos, and perhaps other parts of Nigeria, with musical performances, art exhibitions, stage plays, film shows and several other acts. But none of these acts recognize the 27 women who became his wives, who were an entourage of his band and more than anything, the inspiration behind some of his music. Bọ́lánlé’s introduction of this narrative to Fẹlá’s living story is brilliant.

The play details the scorn these women faced from being with Fẹlá. Láídé says this. She tells us some of the adventures she had with Fẹlá and the other queens. She narrates the story the way a grandmother would tell stories to her grandchildren. This is not to say Láídé is in any way an aged lady. She is merely in her 60s but looks at least a decade younger. It is almost impossible to imagine her as the troublemaker Fẹ́mi calls her. (In return, she calls him “Ọmọ-ọmọ Ìyá Àjẹ́” – a nickname that continues the moniker that used to be attached to Fẹlá himself: Ọmọ Ìyá Àjẹ, meaning “the son of the witch-godmother”. The witch-godmother was Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì. Ọmọ-ọmọ means “grandson”). She tells us of the numerous times the police arrested her and the queens, of how the queens beat the Ghanaian police officers who had arrested them, and how they were eventually deported to Nigeria. She says this amidst our laughter. Many times during the play, the women were referred to as prostitutes – ‘ashẹ́wó’ the policemen often screamed into their faces. Láídé who has probably heard this one too many times in her life, reminds us blatantly and continuously that the queens were not prostitutes. ‘We were not prostitutes,’ she says. But the relevant question here is not ‘who were these women?’ The question is, ‘why were they so keen on supporting Fẹlá? They supported him to the extent that they were raped and beaten by police officers. Why were they so ready to give it all up, in order to stand with this rebellious musician? And why did Fẹlá marry all 27 of them?

“Sister Ọláídé”(right), as many people in Kalakuta Republic knew her, was a close confidant of Fẹlá’s mother, Mrs. Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì (middle). Both of them are pictured here with Fẹlá’s lawyer (left) during one of Fẹlá’s court appearances. <b>Photo credit:</b> Kalakuta Museum, Lagos.

Fẹlá Kútì was absolutely nothing without his queens. Ọládọ̀tun Babátọ́pẹ́ Ayọ̀bádé writes in the dissertation the ‘Women that danced the fire dance: Fẹlá Kuti’s Afrobeat Queens, Performance and the Dialectics of Postcolonial identity’ that the women were indispensable actors in the making of Afrobeat music as well Fela’s rise to prominence as a musician and activist. The author adds however that their collaboration with Fẹlá’s anti-government ideologies as well as their often-eroticized stage performances made them special targets of state-organized violence and earned them contempt from the Nigerian society. In this play we see state actors vis-à-vis Nigerian police officers continuously demeaning and harassing them. On why they have been ignored by history despite their critical role in elevating Afrobeat music to a global level, the author writes: ‘they have been imagined as indecent underclass women undeserving of Afrobeat’s collective memorializing or as collateral damage of Fẹlá’s political and personal excesses.’

The play ran for nearly three hours. Starting around past three, music from a live band serenaded us while the lights were still on and people networked, or caught up with old friends. The music gave off Yorùbá party vibes that I felt were just right. This set the stage for the play. But the Fẹlá vibes did not start here. At the entrance, there is graffiti and the words “Afrika Shrine” inscribed. In the ticketing area and beyond, you are welcomed by photographs of the Kalakuta Queens, of Fẹlá and some of his more famous quotes like “water e no get enemy.” This gives you goosebumps even before Fẹlá’s incarnate walks on stage. When it is time for the play to begin, the lights dim. A eulogy of Fẹlá opens up the show, intensifying the mystery and its spirituality.

There is a tendency to criticize Nigerian stage plays – at least the popular ones, as being too musical in nature. Critics ascribe the stunted growth of Nigerian theatre to this, poor plots and terrible acting.  Theatre critics also attribute the lack of growth to lack of theatres and other like spaces. While these concerns are valid, Bọ́lánlé Austen-Peters has carved out a niche in musical stage plays that continues to thrive. The construction of the new Terra Arena where Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens holds, further reduces the dilemma. Previous BAP productions: Saro and Wakaa the Musical held at the Muson Centre. Muson is a great space, but it is not necessarily homely. I find that what the less than spacious Terra Arena theatre does is to make things somewhat informal and yet attractive. Brymo’s concert in December attests to this. And this, I feel, is one of the reasons Kalakuta Queens was such a hit. Characters from the play sometimes walk from amidst the audience unto the stage. The audience itself is more often than not a part of the play in the way we raise our hands up in salutation to Fẹlá, sing along, and cheer with every performance.

When they perform for the first time, they are dressed in white costumes their faces painted in different colors, shapes and lines. They dance in red light and other times in blue, green and yellow lights. Their entire look, from their natural hair wigs to colourful costumes and bead ornaments made the play authentic. It was increasingly important for me that the originality of the entire play went beyond Ọláìtán’s close resemblance to Fẹlá. I wanted to feel this same sense of originality with the other characters. BAP did not disappoint. In 1983, Bernard Matussière took some beautiful shots of the Fẹlá queens. In the main, their portrayal by the actors in this show hews as close enough as possible to a true approximation of their appearance, skills, and dance dexterity. Around the world today, several stylists and fashion icons have drawn inspiration from the bold makeup and hairstyles of Fẹlá’s wives.

The beauty in their choreographies and dancing cannot be overemphasized. Their moves certainly mesmerized the audience. Through the show, I imagined their motions being trapped into an art frame and exhibited like photographs. Though Fẹlá’s 10 to 20 minutes songs have a life of their own, the dance these women brought to accompany them gave a deeper meaning to what it means for a song to be alive. It is without a doubt that the dancing of the Kalakuta queens made Fẹlá’s songs a complete package back then, as they did on stage during the play. It was a whole new level of energetic, sensual and majestic.

The play is hilarious. Think of the way in which Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn’s Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is hilarious, the way in which it showcases a Nigerian polygamous home and is still poignant but not crude in the messages it passes. It is in this same way that Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens is hilarious and serious at once. The women struggle and compete for Fẹlá’s attention. They plot against and fight with one another, often using music and dance to pass on their messages. They find a common rival in the beautiful Malaika, the woman from London who says she has come to study Fẹlá and the queens, particularly the queens. They become agitated when they notice that Fẹlá has fallen for her, and that she has gained monopoly over the Kalakondo. As with when they stand with Fẹlá, they unite as one in order to throw her out of the Kalakuta Republic. It is interesting though, that while the women stand with Fẹlá when he is arrested, Malaika does not, further establishing her traitor-hood.

A particularly interesting scene is the court scene. After Fẹlá is arrested the first time, he is taken to court and charged with the abduction of the girls and possession of marijuana. He pleads not guilty and the judge asks the lawyers to present their case. The court clerk is a side-splitting character who seemed to overdo his role but still got the audience laughing. The claimant’s counsel presented witnesses who were emotionally inept at giving a clear and concise testimony. The first witness, Láídé’s mother, cries all through her testimony at the witness stand. The second witness is an aunt to one of the queens, Lará. Though she does not cry, she still presents a poor testimony in poor English. The two women stare at Fẹlá accusingly. While they can prove no clear case against the musician, there is another perspective when Lará’s aunt reveals that her niece is underage. On this count and on the count of being in possession of marijuana Fẹlá is convicted and sentenced.

The women call Fẹlá ‘king’, ‘Black President’ and ‘Abàmì Ẹ̀dá.’ He calls them his queens. He says, “I love all my queens. They are unpretentious and are ready to battle with me. Without them, I am nobody”.  When Fẹlá decides to marry the women, he does not do it for selfish reasons. He learns that his queens are unhappy because despite standing by him, despite being dancers, singers and activists in their own right because they are women, they would never do right by society. People would continue to mock them and refer to them as ‘ashẹ́wó’. So he felt the right thing to do would be to marry them. At first, people – his lawyer, Tunji Braithwaite inclusive – try to dissuade him from marrying the twenty-seven at once. He is told that he would be prosecuted for bigamy. But this does not move him. The women are delighted to hear he is going to marry them. In an article on She Leads Africa, Halima Bakenne writes, “Marriage offers some form of validation for women in Nigeria and maybe even other parts of Africa. It is believed that irrespective of what a woman achieves, she is nothing without a man.” This succinctly describes the motive behind Fẹlá’s marriage to the queens. A priest conducts the marriage ceremony. This is followed by a brief performance after which the show ends.

One of my favorite scenes in the play is Ihase’s performance. After the police destroyed their house and abused them, they were taken to the hospital. At the hospital, Ihase broke into soul-wrenching music. Her powerful voice reverberated across the quiet, still hall. In this same scene, Fẹlá is being treated on a gurney and behind him, in the projector, his spirit is depicted as coming out of his body – death and later on, as the music intensified, returning. Fẹlá Kútì later confirms that his father had mentioned that he once died and returned. This scene is also painful to watch. It reminds me of war-torn countries and daily domestic and street violations of women in Nigeria. It reminds me that sexual assault and domestic abuse are still endemic in our society, just as they were in the 80s. It reminds me that while most of the world has joined in on the #MeToo movement, Nigeria is still lagging behind.

There are so many take-homes from this stage play, like most stage plays and generally from Fẹlá’s life. Despite his many flaws and the seeming patriarchal nature of his relationship with the queens, he never disrespected them. He treated them equally. Their place in history has been reintroduced and there’ll hopefully be more public recognition and appreciation for their role in his life story as time goes on. When I climb the stage to take a picture with Láídé after curtain call, I smile at her and kneel beside her. I say to her: ‘thank you for sharing your story with us.’

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The play/musical Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens ran from mid-December 2017 to January 14, 2018 at Terra Kulture Arena. It is billed to return in April 2018. Photo credit: KTravula.com, Tobe, and Kalakuta Museum.

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Ọpẹ́ Adédèjì dreams about a lot of things but most especially about bridging the gender equality gap and working with the United Nations. If you do not find her writing, you would find her reading a novel. She is the co-founder of Arts & Africa.

More than Ashẹ́wó: Kalakuta Queens Remembered was published on January 18th, 2018, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Art, Drama, Literature, Observations, Review category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.