INSPIRE AFRICA... Something is wrong with us!
Sometimes, i tend to think that something is Freaking wrong with us! Consciousness seem to have disappeared from our moral dictionary, we often forget to take pride in who we are, forgetting that we are so worthy and beyond doubts, this is coming more from our so called artiste and men of ideas who are supposed to be the once to lead the way to such discovery.
I am sick and tired of an African musician basing his greatest achievement on bringing Grammys home, for who? Likewise an African film-maker or Actor whose greatest aspiration is to win the Oscar award or be in Cannes festival. If we then decide to go a bit further we will see similarities in other aspects of our lives as AFRICANS. I hope that if there is a true infusion of consciousness, add to the power and influence that our artistes has and become more and more reflective of our societal reality, more educating that people starts to see themselves, and inspire Africa to dream through popular works. Nollywood for example is popular cinema, and what it can do beyond Hollywoodian aesthetics is to inspire people to see this new dream of African renaissance, instill confidence in the people, for them to see that they are good enough and give a hype to everything local. I believe by now, we should have entered a faze of that renaissance.
We have to know where we were coming from, what we are running away from, we have to know where we have been, what our history is and we have to reflect it in the art of whatever we are doing.
Why for example do we ill-tag products “Made in Aba” why can't they proudly put their sticker on it, they have the technical expertise, just raise the quality, work a bit more on it rigorousely, like the artisan in little town in Italy or China would do, work on the stuff, put his name on it, be proud of it instead of putting or immitating someone else’s name like Nike or Hike or Kike... which makes it turn out to be an inferior version of the original one. Meanwhile, if we can inspire ourselves to take pride, we know the technique, all we have to do is apply ourselves as who we are, truthfully and believe me, it will be different, new, people would want to see it and people would buy the idea, the concept, they will buy the consciousness, it can be a shoe but it’s a concept and that is what sells not the form, with all of these we can avoid the stumbling back into where we have been.
If we refuze to take pride in who we are and give priority to our local expertise and initiations, dictatorial institutions and propagandist machandizes like Grammys or Oscar or Nobel price will continue to be the dictator of what standard and aesthetics should “be”, while this is the concept of capitalism in the shadows of globalization. Globalization in contemporary understanding, which at the same time is very capitalist in nature, is the standardization of what taste should be, its like *bling bling* is good, its pretty, ok, this old wooden traditional thing is ugly, that is what you should like, this is what you should reject - now there is the flip side of it, which makes it organic and becomes an elitic product, only for those who can afford it, only those who belong to a certain social class or national hierarchy are previledged.
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