Authors@Google: Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky

A Different Utopia Project for a New Kalakuta Republic 2003
By Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid  

In a world of constant upheaval and continuous transformation, sometimes we look to music as a way of escaping the problems of the world. Fela did the opposite: his music was about immersion in the ebb and flow of the conflicts that described and circumscribed the nation state he inhabited. His home was Nigeria, a place of so many contradictions and fictions that it might as well exist as a story, a fable spun from the fevered imagination of a very strange storyteller. The name "Nigeria" itself is an inheritance from a colonial past bequeathed to the confused and angry people who found themselves confined and defined within its borders after the colonial powers decided what would be the best route to economic balance between Europe and Africa. As a country, Nigeria and most of the Sub-Saharan continent were created on maps drawn on a palindrome of political and economic expedience - all of which did not involve those who were most relevant to the process: the people who actually lived there.  

"The Metropolis strives to reach a mythical point where the world is completely fabricated by man, so that it absolutely coincides with his desires. The Metropolis is an addictive machine, from which there is no escape, unless it offers that too...  Through this pervasiveness, its existence has become like the Nature it has replaced: taken for granted, almost invisible, certainly indescribeable..." Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York  In the world of post-colonial Africa, what Fela did was foster a unique circumstance - he created a utopia. His "Kalakuta Republic" was a way of producing a space that reflected his desires as an African to build an independent cultural zone, a place that literally, following the definition of the term "utopia" didn't exist. The "Kalakuta Republic" was essentially a space that reflected his values and needs - something all too rare in the post World War II African political and cultural landscape. It was an artificial place in the midst of an artificial situation what could be a better metaphor for contemporary Africa? Place one mirage in front of another and you get a hall of mirrors, a place where reality comes only by design, and that's a good starting point to look at the "Kalakuta Republic" By creating a social space bounded by and founded on African needs, he had to secede from the imaginary space of mass culture that was called "Nigeria" to create a new story, a new fiction founded on music, and culture indigenous to the people who lived there. Fictional spaces and imaginary cities - new forms demand new functions - that's what Fela told us with his Shrine Project. The logic of the "Kalakuta Republic" flows from a twisted cross-roads of modernity on the edge of the post-modern: where other young countries like Brazil would bring in someone like Oscar Niemeyer to construct a new capital like Brasilia, or Le Corbusier, at Chandigarh, India, in the 1950's or the United States with Pierre L'Enfant's 1791 design of Washington D.C., Nigeria, with Fela, was pressed by so many demands in so many different directions that his new city had to improvise on the spot in response to a scenario where, to say the least, the people running the government didn't want a new more dynamic architecture to represent their "new" nation state. Unlike the European notion of  "Utopia" as a planned and designed place of Reason and Rationality bequeathed from Thomas Moore, Plato, and Francis Bacon. Fela's "republic" would be made invi al city blocks. The city Fela found himself in was a "found-object" to be manipulated and remixed at will, and essentially, that's what provides the foundation for my investigation into his concepts of architecture.  

The "A Different Utopia" project imagines a remix of the architecture of Fela's "Kalakuta Republic" along lines imagined by proportion and ratio - it poses two different cultures in conflict, and like a dj, it asks them to understand the rhythms of the different cultures that inspired the structures that Fela engaged. Thesis, Anti-thesis - Synthesis. "A Different Utopia" is a dialectical triangulation between the forces of modernity and it's fixed forms, and the fluid dynamic needs of a critique of post-colonial reason and rationality. The original "Kalakuta Republic" attempted to secede from Nigeria several times, and in this day and age when artists like C.M. Von Hausswolf arbitrarily create nation states with their own passports, and artists collectives routinely create collective fictions of nation-states, like , well, all I can say is that art-history has caught up to people like Fela. The philosopher Santayana said in his 1905, "The Life Of Reason" collection of essays and observations: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." A "Different Utopia" is meant to highlight the linkages between the urge to create your own space and the world context of living in a highly regulated contemporary information culture. What happens when you can access different versions of the past, and sample them? What happens when the culture you live in is dispersed throughout the globe and you are left to play with the fragments? That's what this project is about. Diaspora and convergence, reality in the 21st century as a nomadic flux based on the dynamic interaction of many cultures in the same space - living, working, and breathing at the same time. Different kinds of reason imply different modes of thinking about how to exist in an environment that denies you any and all aspects of "subjectivity." After all ‚ that's what nation states are about: there are subjects, and there are rulers. What I propose in "Different Utopia" is a landscape based on Plato's "Republic" the text is remixed and reconfigure eems, and we're left to our own devices to actually engage the songs of freedom that Fela made room for in a post , and now , neo-colonial world  

utopia \U*to"pi*a\, n. [NL., fr. Gr. not + ? a place.] 1. An imaginary island, represented by Sir Thomas More, in a work called Utopia, as enjoying the greatest perfection in politics, laws, and the like. See Utopia, in the Dictionary of Noted Names in Fiction.  2. Hence, any place or state of ideal perfection.  Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary,  1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc. 

It was in 1985 that Fela created his "Kalakuta Republic" in which he essentially christened an autonomous zone where the rule of law in Nigeria was left at it borders. In essence, what he did was take his idea of a nightclub and turn it upside down and inside out - there was no invocation of pleasure in his declaration of independence. As always, Fela was a trickster, and even in the case of attempting to set up a new country that comprised only several city blocks, he thought of creating a new relationship between himself, language and the way he lived in a world governed by rules he felt did not apply to him. He needed a term to describe the thought process of living in a post-colonial mentality, and that's what the Shrine and the Republic were about: "It was when I was in a police cell at the C.I.D. (Central Intelligence Division) headquarters in Lagos; the cell I was in was named "The Kalakuta Republic" by the prisoners. I found out when I went to East Africa that "Kalakuta" is a Swahili word that means "rascal." So, if rascality is going to get us what we want, we will use it; because we are dealing with corrupt people, we have to be rascally with them."

In Platos "Republic" all aspects of living in the Utopian City are governed by rules of proportion and ratio (ratio, of course, being the root word of "rationality" and the psychological impact of the arts, and contemplation of forms that are both visible and intelligible - it's the same myth that drove the making of the film "The Matrix" but its a story that was told several thousand years ago: shadow and act, phantom and fiction ¬ the future "Republic" in Plato's story would be governed by people who had seen past the shadows of an illusion and tried to bring light to people whose imaginations had been chained. Fela publicized in some of the flyers for the "New Afrika Shrine" Republic something similar to the "Republic" that Plato had said so long ago in his "myth of the cave" (Book VII) of the "Republic"  "When ruling becomes a thing fought over, such a war - a domestic war, one within the family - destroys these men themselves and the rest of the family. pp199 

It's this kind of internecine conflict that led to the destruction of Fela's compound, and in a way, the digital reconstruction of it that takes place in my project is a blue-print for a different rhythm, a different ratio - a different drummer. The "Kalakuta Republic" I imagine is one of pan-humanism based on a universal architecture of networks and correspondences, it is an environment based transactions placed in a web of coded languages and vernacular systems. In our information based economy, we inhabit a world where the structures we inhabit reflect our desires in so many ways - they are flexible, modular, and above all else - transitory. Goethe and Schelling said so long ago "architecture is nothing but frozen music." "A Different Utopia" inverts the question and asks: what happens when you dethaw the process? It's a project based on Tony Allen's 1979 record "No Accommodation for Lagos" and incorporates the afro-rhythms he used for that project to create a map/blueprint of an "imaginary city" based on the proportions of beats and pulses that the artist Ghariokwu Osunlila (who designed many of the covers for Fela and Tony Allen's Afrika 70 collaborations) would imagine - a cartoon universe where sounds of an imaginary landscape built of ratio and proportion defined the record cover sleeves to reflect the same concerns George Clinton and Pedro Mayer (the artist who designed many of the Funkadelic record cover sleeves) an Afro-Futurist landscape of sonic fiction made to be more real than the "real" that the musicians invoked with their sounds. As Fela wrote in an advertisement in the magazine "Punch" in 1979, the Shrine was meant to be a place of new values: "After a long battle with the authority, we are staging a big comeback at the new Afrika Shrine... We want the authority, the news media, the public and everybody concerned to know that Afrika Shrine is NOT A NIGHTCLUB  - it is a place where we can worship the gods of our ancestors." 

He went on to blur the lines between Church and Shrine with a 7 point description: 

a) The Church is an ideological centre for the spreading of European and American cultural and political awareness The Shrine is an ideological centre for the spreading of Afrikan cultural and political awareness. 

b) The Church is a place where songs are rendered for worship.  The Shrine is a place where songs are rendered for worship.  

c) The Church is a place where they collect money.  The Shrine is a place where we collect money.

d) The Church is a place where they drink while worshipping ("holy communion").  The Shrine is a place where we drink while worshipping.  

e) The Church is a place where they smoke during worship (burning of incense). The Shrine is a place where we smoke during worship. 

f) The Church is a place where they dress the way they like for worship.  The Shrine is a place where we dress the way we like for worship. 

g) The Church is a place where they practice foreign religion.  The Shrine is a place where we practice Afrikan religion. 

Another quotation:  "And finally, in the very last episode, the Tower of Babel suddenly appears and some strongmen actually finish it under a new song of hope, and as they complete the top, the Ruler (of the Olympus, probably) runs off making a fool of himself while Mankind, suddenly understanding everything, finally takes its rightful place and right away begins its new life with new insights into everything..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons.

In the here and now, "A Different Utopia" is a bridge between the visions of reason that held together Europe and Africa, the U.S. and Nigeria and proposes a philosophy of rhythm. The text becomes shareware. The beats and pulses, bass-lines and sounds, they are threads of a sonic tapestry woven out of desire and dreams. They are vanishing points on the landscape of the imagination - that's to say that they're points alright, but they punctuate a different architectural syntax, a place that Rem Koolhas would call the "culture of congestion" or that Tony Allen would simply call "No Accommodation." Here, the soundlines and vectors of an invisible social sculpture become indexical - they're signifiers of meaning at the edge of understanding. Ratio and rationality, rhyme and reason ‚ these get remixed again and again. In a "Different Utopia" the Santayana phrase becomes a new axiom: those who do not understand history remix it to create their own.  

============================================================================ "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free...." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe   Port:status>OPEN wildstyle access: www.djspooky.com  Paul D. Miller a.k.a. Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid  Office Mailing Address:  Subliminal Kid Inc. 101 W. 23rd St. #2463 New York, NY 10011 

Felasophical views on Femi Kuti – Broadway deception

Felasophical views on Femi Kuti – Broadway deception

A Basic Aikido philosophy states that the strength is not in muscular force, but in flexibility, timing, control and modesty, its humanitarian purpose is to purify one’s aggressive reactions to conflicts of ego, “But people will say Femi, you don’t take the kind of risks Fela took…” this witty statement by Omoyele Sowore, that was meant to be followed by a question, will lead to a (no)interview with the son of the Afrobeat legend, Femi Kuti at the Fela! Broadway performance in New York. Before the arrival of the question that never came, revelation came; one could sense plenty ghosts of pretense past all came knocking at Femi’s heart for freedom, but for a Femi who is always on guard, swiftly seek escape routes to cover his open sore, like a boxer he counter-attacked “Who says?” having no clue of who Sowore was, he went on with his jabs “…Are you talking as a Nigerian or as a fool or as a naïve person?” amidst his many rehash “Do you want me to be killed like my father before you know that I am taking risks? you have to apologise before i answer your questions” Femi categorically stated that absolutely nothing was wrong with a Fela! on Broadway which was what concerns me the most and eventually prompted the coming alive of this piece of writing.

Fela! On Broadway.

"Moneymaking and historical memory are allies in the extension of capitalism. You cry with one eye and wipe it off with a cold beer, leaving the other eye open for gambling."

Toyin Falola, Nigerian historian

Folk heroes will at one moment or the other pay the price they refused to pay while alive, Bob Marley did, even Che Guevara did pay the marketable price he owe the world, and now it’s perhaps the time for Fela Kuti despite his Felasophy. Fela! Will be on Broadway till the 2^nd of January 2011 and tickets range from 59$ to 127$. According to sources from Wikipedia “Broadway theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Broadway Theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York.” And according to The Broadway League, “Broadway shows sold approximately $1.02 billion worth of tickets in the 2009-2010 season, compared to $1 billion in the 2008-2009 season” in essence the dialectic of shows on Broadway is primarily linked to how much rather than how well, and this fundamentally go against Felasophy.

Some purists may find this development derailing, because more than a musical rhythm, Afrobeat is a rhythm of “otherness” realized largely in songs and lyrics, but also in cultural and political actions. Most acolyte of Afrobeat and its protégés often think of Afrobeat as a tool for speaking out the obvious truth in the name of the masses, but Afrobeat is above all an aesthetics of cultural politics. Its performance is equally characterized by the creation of a liberal cultural space that is admissive of a free discourse of society’s fears, doubts, and inhibitions. Now that Fela is on Broadway – or rather Broadway is on Fela – there is no reason to appear condescending about that; it will be fair enough on the legend and his legacy, to make way for a free discourse on the pros and cons of these “goodwill” that might require us to “cry with one eye and wipe it off with a cold beer, leaving the other eye open for gambling."

Femi Kuti, Seun Kuti and many other legitimate personalities have lent their voices to the pros of having Fela! On Broadway, which is the reason why I focus more on the cons for a balanced discourse. Even though I have not seen this show after a brief encounter with (the choreographer) Bill T Jones during a US tour in 2008, but knowing what a Broadway show entails and the publicity claim of it being “the true story of Fela Kuti” is deafening. Here I speak solely of its significance and not a reviewer of the show. The grandeur of Fela Kuti diminishes, as I’m certain that its exploitation on Broadway will certainly drain off deep content to attract consumers, and so its power worn-out by the parasitic deconstruction of commercial productions. Afrobeat is the symbol of this Fela! for mass media. By associating a symbol with a product, rather than letting it exist as the signifier of its framing experiences, it is robbed of its meaning and sense of truth. The commercial exploitation of Fela Kuti and all that he represents will only help in widening the rift between ideals and festivity, between choice of words and the truth. It will therefore, assault the ideal realm and appropriate subjective significance of Felasophy, and might in the end lose its ability to inspire metaphysical truth.

A set of Fela’s ideological outlook referred to as Felasophy (as stated in Sola Olorunyomi’s book AFROBEAT! fela and the imagined continent), builds the basis at which Afrobeat lies, the Afrobeat as championed by Fela engage a broad spectrum of ideas such as the African art and civilization, notions of slavery and western technology; views on religion and colonialism; his reaction to multiple imperialism and collaborating elites; his vision of Pan-Africanism and his version of “what to be done.” Other concerns range from the nature of knowledge production and its distribution, architecture, spirituality, citizenship, economy and development, to traditional medicine and the use of herbs, the environment, the judiciary and administration of justice, international relations and a myriad of other domestic issues.

Femi Kuti's relation to this Felasophy is quite misleading, as one might already note that in the tribute version of “Water No Get Enemy,” one of Fela’s most anthemic songs, in which other American hip-hop, soul and funk stars collaborated with Femi Kuti, for the Red Hot Organization. A line was deliberately omitted from the track:
T’omi ba pa ọmọ rẹ, omi na lo ma lo was not translated, thus, If water kill your child, na water you go use was substituted by “we don’t want that now.” Fela's point, which is part of his Felasophy manifesto, is that, as opposed to monotheist beliefs, nothing is intrinsically regard to as good or bad, that as pure as water could be, it has its negative/destructive attributes. In censoring Fela’s intellectual property, Femi has apparently dealt with things “diplomatically and gracefully.” As he explained to the New York Times.

I want that brand called FELA!

Many factors inform the classification of Fela’s musical practice as popular (music) art, as distinct from mass (music) art. Mass art as it were, presumably panders to the whims of its clientele and does not engage them in problematizing their social situations in a manner that popular art does.

Sola Olorunyomi

In an interview conducted in 1992, Fela denounced Afrobeat as “a meaningless commercial nonsense with which recording labels exploited the artist.” With this latest development, Afrobeat steps one more mile away from popular music to mass music. It is imaginable to believe –or believable to imagine – that the son looks like his father, and aspires to transcend his role, then begins by evoking aspects of his symbolism, both in form and in content, until the son becomes the father of his own son and so on. Without any doubt in my mind Femi Kuti is a skillful musician and a major custodian of part of the Felagacy that most of us benefit. What however, makes it almost impossible and pitiable for Femi Kuti –as well as numerous proponents of Afrobeat ideals – is that, some are temperamentally apolitical and lacks the technical and intellectual capital required, to trail the path of the great Fela and the Afrobeat agenda. Voila the birth of a new age of Afrobeat for sale, that still sing on behalf of the masses and express a Pan-African yearning without a prior knowledge of the underline ideology from which Fela easily drew his vocabulary and allusions.

The American public has been flooded by an eternal parade of commodities and fabricated spectacles that keep it preoccupied with the ideals and values of consumerism. Traditional cultural values of Western society are already degenerating under the influences of corporate politics, the commercialization of everything and the impact of mass media. Fela! on Broadway is only but an accomplice in the collective viewing experience and consumer trends, without integrating it “in problematizing their social conditions,” which is the basic transformative experience in encountering Fela Kuti and his ideology. Now that Fela! Will begin national and international tours, in Which Lagos will be one of its destinations. Even though Fela drew his musical temperament from Lagos, but contemporary reality no longer thrives on the social context in which he did. Lagos is now a unipolar world of its own, with the abiding influence of the intellectual Lagos youth being determined more by Lady Gaga and Stock market, than Fela Kuti or Kwame Nkrumah. So, a dissimilar approach to FELA! In Lagos is not guaranteed.

Alternative chitchat also has it that following FELA’s! success on Broadway, the big screen is taking its turn on the legendary. Steve McQueen, the producer of the popular film “hunger.” That stormed Cannes festival in 2008, is presently working on a biopic movie still on Fela! He shall be writing the script, in collaboration with Biyi Bandele; one Nigeria’s most versatile and prolific writers in the U.K. ‘capable of wild surrealism and wit as well as political engagement.’ The movie will be based on Michael Veal’s book, Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon and It will be co-produced by James Schamus, who said ‘The Broadway show is pure joy, but Steve and Biyi’s vision is very cinematic and distinctive. Fela was a revolution figure in world culture’. To accompany the team, Fela will be played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nigerian-British actor who already worked on a fiction linked to Steve Biko “Red Dust” in 2004 and many others. If this production turns out to be a well-done, perhaps it will attempt redemption of the Fela imagery, and if it fails, the next thing is to expect an amusement park called FELALAND somewhere in the west.

In Nigeria it’s NETWORKING not butt-licking duhh !

History demands that we record dates when life on the planet suffer grave setbacks, and I’m still struggling to recover the day dignity, pride and honour fell off the Nigerian moral lexicon, when Nigeria become a fast food nation. Before I start blabbing like Dele Momodu on pendulum, I must say that I’m not an activist like Kayode Ogundamisi who find it easy to relentlessly sing revolutionary songs on facebook, neither am I a social change advocate who coin all sort of catchy, impractical or over practical easy-to-fall-for phrases to make over statements – like BLING, FIX NIGERIA, UNRULY, THE FUTURE PROJECT, LIGHTUPNIGERIA, ENOUGHISENOUGH and so many other nonsense in bold and capital letters – We have gotten to a point where it has in fact, become a crime in today’s Nigeria to attempt to write in a proverbial or poetic realm of a Chinua Achebe for example, or to keep a decent distance from one’s reader like Wole Soyinka will do in his non fictions. Only if I consider the people I address as a bunch of dick head-dumb ass that are not capable of any personal opinion of their own, nor do anything carrying great weight with their God given common sense, that I will want to ram my message into their brains like retarded kids from kindergarten.

"When I was a boy, getting to know a person because of what they could do for you was what my father called ass kissing. My mother called it social climbing. To me, it was brown-nosing. Now it’s called networking."
These are the witty words Dirk Wittenborn used in opening his raw and edgy article: When ass kissing became networking. In this I recognized the need to state how it concerns me and relates to my situation as a Nigerian youth. In the midst of the national youth euphoria that led to the birth of various awarding organization, and the coming-in-contact of the brightest and best, the most talented and most celebrated young Nigerians, to engage in serious conversations on how our generation could be relevant in the Nigerian regeneration, however informal and unrehearsed this coming-in-contact could have been, social networks like Facebook, twitter and other blog spots played a great role in hopping the pace of this awareness.

In no time, I found myself part of a generation of philistines, these lots –in identity crises and denied of belonging– behave more like disowned bourgeois rats, whose only true desire is to be part of something cheesy and ongoing. After few interaction (or should I call it networking) with few minds who were apparently brilliant, but still I found myself in not-just-ok-dot-com, my quick and keen clairvoyance told me that this networking or social climbing will only do more in decorating our long need for change in flashy colours, rather than truly empower such desire. This was not so difficult for me to recognize, as I have already been exposed to this trend that is often spectacularly staged as after show cocktails, during my tours in Europe or in the US. Nonetheless I have never felt OK with –or believed in– such organized match making that doesn’t come with a common enemy, and if a common enemy is not quickly established in any affiliation, it will be difficult to forge a common front in pursuit of common goals.

Since I’m not terribly in need of a name or a face, not planning to be featured in a musical video nor being a judge in a reality dance show any time soon, and the promise of easy life/good fortune never incite me that much, then I gradually degraded in rank to become an unenthusiastic component of the bourgeoisie, and naturally I wondered what I was doing in the midst of ass kissers. Let it be publicly known that I’m not oppose to ass kissing or networking, or whatever it is labelled as, it is normal that men and women fuck one another to get ahead –just as men and men or women and women do– which is the aspect of human comedy that I find too tragic to laugh about in Lagos. But when a student is literally fucking her lecturer for marks, when you are fucking somebody to get or keep a job, or someone fucks you for a flight ticket, a cinema ticket, or even to be auditioned for a role in a TV series that will eventually made you a role model. That for instant is a figurative straightforward and pleasurable one-off giving on both sides, only that it often comes with a burden and responsibility for those who sometimes feel shame, and at some point in life, one really need to separate sober matters from bread and butter dealings.

When you pretend to be my friend, to share my pain just for personal gain, even when I piss on you, you still won’t let go, then that is a terrible thing that brings to mind a terrible phrase in a reprisal mail once addressed to Matthew Ogunnola my good friend “… I have been trained that the show must go on, and I would lick the butt crack of a mad man if that is what it entails to have a great show.” Aww, now that leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and that must have been a slip of tongue, because that was from one of the organizers of these trendy youth programs that, in their words “seek to empower young people and redirect them towards adding value to themselves and society with strong positive images/messages.” As my people will say, ma fi oruko bo l’asiri, i.e. I will use his name to cover his shamelessness. This contrasting phrases if able to be juxtaposed, point out the complicity of these faction of the brightest and coolest Nigerian youth, and the use of their brainpower in scamming the rest of us, who might be duped by their use of attractive phrases that carries no connotation in itself, and hence, contributes greatly to the epidemic height of absurdity that is sweeping over the whole nation.

The sanious nightmare of creative people in Lagos, is the fear of victimization by these net-workers; for sure they know that a truly creative and conscious person won’t go to SWE bar or KOKO lounge thrice a week, won’t be seen -in see-as-i-gbensh dresses- on the road to their weekly red or black or green carpet events, but since there is all the time for their Mohammed to go to the mountains, they have began to take over the front seats of every artistic and intellectual happenings; from poetry, to a contemporary dance show, from classical music, art exhibitions to book reading. Meanwhile, most of these Lagos vultures don’t have the practical mind required to integrate into such gathering. Unlike the indispensable burden of a groupie, the creative person is particularly vulnerable to the toxic of these sneaky net-workers, whose only calculative ambition is to drive you into parties like giant termites, licking your ass just enough for you to feel like a celebrity that you are, to afford them the necessitated social climbing, waiting to be introduced to a friend of yours with a bulkier, juicier and better profitable curriculum vitae. Now that is what they call networking. Networking my butt!!!

For the sake of some offended readers, I think –even if not so sure– that there are of course, some truly brilliant and talented youth out there, and I can humbly say that I am one of them, those who have survived as coconut in cultural and economic terms, those who are also often tempted to network, but one could see a certain kind of coconut perpetuating the if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them phenomenon. To now to conclude with my opening realm of curiosity, When did the myth of making it on your own merit, gave way to who you know over who know you? When did the proverbial saying of a good name is better than gold or silver became an understatement in Nigeria? I guess it was when those who lick the butt crack of mad men, began to be so efficient in it, that they kick those with the right skills away from the seat, I guess it was precisely that moment, when this shameful act was re-branded as networking and our world became so meaningless, and most of those celebrated as our brightest and coolest youth are nothing but a bunch of harlots.

Re/Presenting dance practice in its whole nine yards

At this critical moment of the Nigerian cultural industry's reformation, little I wonder if re/presentation or re-branding will lead to any favourable end, the situation at hand is more than an academic matter. I foresee a fledging state to disorderly growth with fundamental deficiencies. Here already comes an era where there is near to an absolute absence of such thing as "the practice". Every individual now struggle for his or her daily loaf, and the driving force of every practitioner has been tainted by the survival game, the scarcity of sincerity to one's self and commitment to one's art can now be explained, due to the sole fact of being true to one's needs, wants and societal pressure in a nation that cares less whether you live or die. It sincerely makes no difference.

It is therefore, no news that the Nigerian dance landscape has been less than unfortunate in its guild legislation and the leadership of the numerous dance companies. In spite of conventional opinion, the basic element of this misfortune is the seminal absence of dignified artistic upbringing with intellectual rigour, in the social and cultural thoughts of our founding fathers, also the absence of dance literature and think pieces published in dailies and the corruption of other gatekeepers of culture who speaks for, about and around art gives no headway.

These little precisions are often ignored when we appraise the disinteresting art of Dance practice in Nigeria. More suicidal is the weight of reality in the contemporary development of this trade, suddenly growing at a period when there is a tendency to pious materialistic woolliness that clothes self centred opportunists, who for all they care, is to make themselves materially formidable and make all the money that is possible, for mortals of their calibre to make in a booming dance Market. Hence ,the Nigerian dance commerce is likely to produce more aggressive millionaires than selfless pioneers of the practice, and in such misdirection, the poor-at-mind who lack history and profound conviction, again and again become the visibles in public.

Could one be exact, if we point fingers at art journalism and the media for such misdirection, because against these threads of mediocre, are a hand full of sincere practitioners who defy popular opinion and thus, don’t make headlines, defaced by invisibility and anonymity. These few had become a coconut in cultural and economic terms; one can see a peculiar kind of coconut perpetuating the if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them phenomenon. Art journalism in Nigeria has been plagued with all the identifiable ills that faces today's Nigeria, the economic situation of the country and the absence of self worth, has left a wide range of practitioners with the 'survival instinct' resolution, when journalists are called upon to play their “third party” role in the making of an equitable art practice, the question of financial recompense instantly weighs more than a revolution.

Despite the "dance boom" and the grand illusion of reality TV shows that is presently sweeping over reality itself, dance aesthetics have begin to take a huge backslide. This single condition facing the subsistence of a genuine dance practice in Nigeria, points out the failure of art studies and the complicity of the critical process: how observations, analyses, literary interpretation, reviews, criticism and a serious academic readership of dance is so nonsensical. These questions have found their ways from dance into the art world at large, and this eventually call into serious concern of how dance continues to denigrate unto a realm critically disconnected from the rest of the arts, and the art world drastically disconnected from the social world.

I am particularly tired of Nigerian dances, because I think Nigerian dances are tired, I think they are all at a point where they are played out, or at least this phase of it. What we today refer to as cultural or traditional dances within the professional context, are in a complete fallow period, and continue to put me in confusion of definition. Many a time have I heard scholars and lecturers in the humanities, scold those of us involved in contemporary dance practice, as to how we have sheepishly followed the white man to forget our cultures.

However, one is tempted to ask if these numerous sub-styles (or to use the popular word; de-constructions) of the original traditional dances that they – most Nigerian dance scholars and proponent of "Afro-centric" ideals clamour for - a result of creative diversity or keeping traditions alive? Then, how come our so called traditional dances are only useful for cultural tourism and social events, peopled by pot-belly highly polished uncultured lots, who have no single clue of their own cultural significance. And how are these socialised and economically significant versions of our traditional dances useful for the emergence of critical discourses and a dignified dance practice? Dance literature to me seem to be a discipline that has been so busy trying to rewrite its past that it often overlooks the challenges of the present, which eventually leads to the disinterestedness of what constitutes "dance" in recent times, even in our own context and the very status aiding a true practice of it.

The primary value of academic studies of dance in Nigeria seems to be in their ability to build dance talkers, who will come on stage to mouth off their articulatory features of dance. Meanwhile dance occupations available out there for dancers, has nothing to do with pen and paper. Following the development of contemporary dance in Nigeria, then it was that dance practice began to trail new paths, a dance revolution began and practitioners began to understand that, dance movements may be without significance in themselves, and have gestural vocabularies without crossing into the borders of literary drama or pantomime. That dance can singularly embody or express ideas, emotions and tell stories without being taken over by other art genres. That dance as an art form, can be a case study for intellectual and critical discourse.

Today however, the possible growth of such critical discourse is thwarted by a near absence of publishing opportunities and related common grounds. Some of our most brilliant articles and reviews have sought refuge somewhere within the new media revolution, they are either found on facebook, on our blogs or other on-line platform for specific audiences. They cannot find a willing publisher and the numerous journals in Nigeria takes forever to publish a very-short review from independent writers, one can imagine that the space for analysis is downright anorexic. The Nigerian Guardian is a journal that will occasionally publish my often cerebral articles and interviews, but not when it's on debates pertaining to dance and criticism.

One cannot apportion blames in that direction, because come to think of it, where is the readership, who are those who patronises the cultural magazines of this world if not the cultural players and professionals, but here we are in a situation where there is an absence of objectivity and intellectual rigour in the industry. If the piece written on dance is not eulogising the personality of the dancer or choreographer, if it's not a promotional interview for cheap PR - that might possibly interest a wider range of Nigerians who might see it as an inspirational story - it might never find its way into a Nigerian journal. How sad. Although not absolutely, we occasionally come across overnight reviews that can be short lived; shallow, repetitive and overtly cliché-ridden, the best they do is to describe or re-narrate the performance at hand through the choreographer's note and intent.

However, dance practice cannot be developed without dance literature growing side by side, and dance literature cannot be developed without think pieces and essays relating to dance practice, which on the contrary tend to be absolutely absent in this country. Engaged critique and criticism that speak to the social, political and economic content of art (or to the absence of such content) are rare: writing that addresses the relevance of works of art in a world of global flows and interactions are rarer. That so little is published on these and related questions, points out the contribution of art journalism to the failing state of the arts in Nigeria.

Improvisation with MTO

Its an INVITATION

ARTiculate – So, as I was saying…

On several occasions have I been confronted that my performance makes no sense, especially by Africans, and other young thinkers that I have had opportunity to converse with, some of them often think that I summon escapist routes when I try to lay down the complexities of what I am trying to do, and why it is not easy and almost impossible for me to use literary forms of expression to explain an art form that is in no way literary in nature. The purpose of this little piece of writing is therefore, to try as much as possible to explain my work, for the benefit of those that I have at some point or the other had an argument or simple conversation with on such subject matter.

I will begin by saying performance for what it is doesn’t really mean much to me, even though I will admit without remorse that I am a performer anytime any day. Dance should entertain, in fact it must ENTERTAIN, but only a half witted fool will want to be a feel good element, dancing merely to entertain. So why then do i dance? For whom? For the audience? For myself? For the critics? or just to be part of a larger discourse of arts and humanity, to preserve life and preserve myself in the rising madness of a world we have no control over. The feeling of interaction is very important for me, not the kind of interaction that is embedded on a conversational style though, it is in fact a revelation of words left unreconstructed and unspoken, or a ‘coming to terms’ with worlds left un-reconciled in strains of my life. My personal experience as a living thing and my development as a strong dancer all come together to manifest themselves on stage, for that is the best place I could reconcile between my beliefs, my paranoia, my deliriums, my expectations and my existence.

I strongly subscribe to an art that reaches out to the audience as an experience rather than a storyline, whose goal is not to catharsis therefore, but rather, shock and psychic wounding; attempt to confront the audience with its own horror, to immerse it in the excretions of its own prevailing brutalities, the sanious nightmare of its 'condition hamaine.' Hence you could not say what the performance was about, only what it did to your psyche and to your mind. You could not summarize it therefore; you could only experience it. Still it is kind of difficult to close oneself up on a notion of liberty and indocility that doesn't come with regulations.

I am very interested in aesthetics and forms. The abstraction and patterns that are behind the actual structures of a work of art, matter to me tremendously, whether it’s in the music, in the video, in storytelling, in the mood, in rhythms or the emotion I pass through to the audience. It seems to me that I’ve always tried as much as possible to find means of enforcing my expression through different media and find parallels for them, without necessarily reconciling between them. The idea of narrative is very important, but not such that expresses itself through straight and easily comprehensible “storyline.” I segment my narratives and try to break them up with question marks, quotation marks, brackets or semicolons. I latter place them side by side as a means of juxtaposition, which gives each phrase its own individual significance even if it makes no sense as a singular entity, but I let my audience draw the sense from the entire structure of the piece.

It is not so much about finding a logic between point A to point Z of the entire structure, that is not what I really care about, it is the relationship between A to D and how it relates to C and T and so on, that I care about, to try as much as possible to establish a logical co-existence between them, and to sustain these separate worlds and forms. This doesn’t signify that there couldn’t be some forms of antagonism between them, that’s why I said “try as much as possible” to make sure that probable co-existence happens.

At other moments however, I also feel that, that doesn’t really matter, so far there is an organic or – as a matter of fact – inorganic flow that flows between them, I’m not just a slave to perfection, that’s not my preoccupation you must know. I attack my creations with a strong need to let something out. I turn myself inside out and what could be absorbed by my audience is the self/the perceived/the influenced/and the imposed identity of the embodied body, and to be able to ignite conversations between the past and the present, the ancient and the new, the child and the man. Therefore, I trust in my intuition when in the studio, it is very impossible for me to rationalize or explain things, as to why this and why not that, I let things explain themselves to me and not me trying to attach an explanation to them, and sometimes it takes a very long time to receive that explanation.

To take for example, there is no way – that I know of – for me to reconcile between my interest in pure dance, my public space performances and my various writings, which are usually in relation to views about social relationships that involves power or authority. But I know that I have a need to be able to articulate what I’m doing in words (written or spoken) and to be able to express myself in other means, to create a common space for our collective human experience. Which in my own case, are mostly traumatizing experiences, because it has to do with tragedy and loss and dispossession and pain and alienation. The sufferings that all these brings to ones existence is precisely what I am trying to grasp with. Rather than forming an enclosure around my existence, rather than reconciling or trying to find an explanation, one just has to let them operate and diffuse through possible means of performance or writings.

My role as a creative artiste or interpreter, is to therefore allow these sinister byways continue, to see them operating together and allowing them to play off one another, and to be able to record that in some ways, so that the canon of interpretation applies in different entities, whether it’s in poetry, performance or other forms of writing. All these at the end have to do with memory, with notions of co-existence. Realizing that our experiences are not exclusive, that we all live in a world where different things happen at the same time. The effort for me lies in my ability to hold them up together, rather than pretending to be a solver of problems.

I have sat in my father's balcony as a kid; watch the vendor pass every morning with new set of news papers, at least ten different brands, all with a minimum of fifty pages of "news" and "information" to be consumed and wallowed in. Now I muse over the utilitarian purpose of further news in art, of what realm or quality of information do we intend or pretend to pass through our art, and where will it last? In the same garbage can those ‘news’ papers end each day after few headlines read? Does that vendor really pretend to be an authentic information career or just another man seeking his daily bread? What about an art that spans from a school of dance philosophy, that seek to explore the body vocabulary, through physical and mental discipline, to traverse its spiritual and poetic universe which makes it possible to stage this transformed body as a place of resurgence, a place for the repossession of lost ancient memories, of new habits and as a place of refuge for the construction of a conscious thinking, capable of attaining liberation from the material world, and able create worlds, which is what fiction is all about.

Qudus with ASA at Olympia

Welcome to my LAGOS

1. What defines Lagos for you?

What define Lagos for me are just the informal people’s resourcefulness and the creative energies that flow around everywhere, every time. Lagos is like a huge musical comedy where people substitute roles, those watching now might be the biggest performer in the next minute. Sometimes when I am bored I just travel round the city in public transit and for a creative person, what more do I need to have a swell day. Each period of the day comes with a different flavor and emotion.

2. What distinguishes Lagosians from others in your view?

When you say “others” do you mean other states or other cities around the world? I’m not a huge expert of other states outside Lagos (in Nigeria). I was born here and I grew up here, until 17, I didn’t step out of that city, but after then, I have been to various cities around the globe and I tell you, I only felt a similar homely feeling in cities like New York, Johannesburg and Sao Paolo. I just don’t know what it is, but Lagos has a color that you can’t just define in few words.

3. What do you miss in Lagos when you are out of Nigeria or in any part of Nigeria for a period of one week or more?

If I compare Lagos to a place like Paris (where I am presently) for instance, I think people here have lost a certain kind of animal instinct that makes us all a living thing, that spontaneity that triggers our actions directly from the nerves and not the one that travels first through the brain. That is really what I fear to lose when I stay so long out of Lagos.

4. What do you think the experience would have been like if you were to be doing what you are doing for a living now anywhere outside Lagos.

Inasmuch as I love to be in Lagos, unfortunately I cannot do what I’m doing in Lagos for now, let me summarize it to say, being a Nigerian and being a dancer are two things that doesn’t go well together, so at some point I had to choose between Dance and Nigeria.

5. What is it that you think Lagos has got right?

That very thing that makes Lagos what it is, I think is a natural mystic, so Lagos itself should not try to find ways to comprehend it, we should only grow to its appreciation, because that thing might not be looking so much like our idea of a good and noble living, it might not be in building wide roads that contains 15 huge cars in a row, it might not be in perpendicular and beautiful architectures, it might not be in how organized we could be as a people, it might not be in the amount of tourist that comes in yearly – because if that is what Lagos is heading towards, I fear we might lose that very thing we’ve gotten right, if not why is Paris or London that I know so much yet to get it right even after acquiring all the aforementioned symptoms of a “good living”? Lagos I think has understood the wisdom of improvisation through organized disorderliness in town planning, and you don’t learn that in school.

6. What is Lagos not getting?

I think when we talk about what Lagos is not getting, then we can only talk about those managing Lagos, so in essence we are addressing the “government” I mean the formal government, because government has different meaning in Lagos. Lagos I think is making a basic mistake, i.e looking up to Dubai as the model, that is the biggest jokes I have heard in a while, as a creative person I deal less in artificial aesthetic values. if Lagos needs a practical model, I think it is Sao Paolo, no one goes to Sao Paolo for tourist attraction, yet millions of people pop in yearly, do you know how they did that? They invested in the people, in their culture, they made the night life one the best you could imagine, they invested in the energy that flows around, now you can say that is too abstract, but I think the Lagos energy is the exact thing the government needs to invest in, but unfortunately they won’t, Why? Precisely because it is not those educated (or middle) class or their kids and cousins who will benefit such project, because those who make Lagos what it is, usually don’t have a family in the decision room.

7. Take a look at the Lagos of your past and of the present and let me know what you think living in Lagos in the next fifty years would be like.

I don’t gamble, because I don’t see ahead of time, I don’t drink because I want to be in control of my actions, I cannot say what living in Lagos in the future will be like, the future of Lagos also depends on the future of our collective democracy, globalization, pop culture and capitalism. Do I think us going too far with the way we push things? Yes I do, do I think globalization and capitalism is pacing too much? Yes I do, and Lagosians are part of those who I call the “receivers” they are the ones in the receiving end of every action taken in the name of humanity, the assimilators, the consumers and the pendulum is already getting weak, I cannot say what it will be like but there are lots of things I wish will stop at some point, and wish we inculcate new habit and characters on the way; more respects for human lives, more respect for the rule of law, more attention paid to the kids and not just force them to formal schools when their heart is in fashion design, more alternative spaces created for all identified insanities that our kids want to be identified with, more security for both citizens and foreigners, price control and standardization of basic amenities that presently comes with awful prices, and finally I hope the people’s creative energies be compatible with the official Lagos energy, so as to avoid people fleeing from their beloved Land.

8. In a sentence or two, or more, capture Lagos.

My signature quote on Lagos - Every morning in Lagos, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle... in Lagos, when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.