The Art of Man Must Wack

The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. LAGOS—Wednesday, December 15, 1996 11:00 am. In the cramped sitting area o Murpnis Jazz, on Adeniran Qgunsanya Stree; at Surulere, the scene is set for the preview o q four-hour home movie,Owo Blow . It is the quintessential Lagos story: Femi, whose social-crusader father has been thrown in jail because of his egalitarian views aniad outspokenness, anand whose equally forthright mother batt ; every sort of domestic upheava drifts aimlessly in the cruel metropo From motor park to drug joint to red light district, he ambles along with life, and ends up becoming the leader of a tough robbery cjang except that he Dpssesses a soul, and this complicates TIS trial when he finally runs short of he law. Qwo Blow is produced by Wale Fanu and directed by Tade ogida!,. for m«ny years a producer with the Nigerian Television Authority, (NTA). Fanu who runs Cinekraft, was the cameraman for the popular television soap opera, Mirror in the Sun, while (H.ENDOKA Quarterly on the /!/»><VOI3@No2> Video Tunde Kelani, the current head of intrinsic flaw in the product than to the marketers Mainframe Productions, another motion fact that just about every corner in Lagos on the brood. pictures outfit, was the cinematographer. or Onitsha was the location for a new © Glendora That teledrama was produced and home movie with a similar ambition, only Review directed by Lola Fani-Kayode in the mid- differently marketed. In 1996, the motion 1 980s. The screening at Surulere goes picture in Nigeria (largely in the southern on for so long I cannot wait to determine part of it) was in dubious bloom, the sort who the tail-credit lists as scriptwriter; but that, in part fueled the epic ambition of the presence at the venue of Reverend Fanu's movie. M.A. Aderinkomi, author of the Yoruba Of course, the country was in the grip drama Gbewiri (another story of a of the Sani Abacha terror, and the streetboy who becomes a pickpocket in economy, crippled since who-knows- the 1970 Lagos), signposts a continuing when, now lay supine or prostrate. The narration of city lives. Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), Forging A Tradition "had done its worse," as Lagosians would To attempt a four-hour screen say. Moral codes having long broken into narration suggests more than an artistic gleaming smithereens, or having failed integrity that would rival Satyajit Ray's or to take roots once Nigeria did, rulers and Akira Kurosawa's; it also awakens the the ruled were involved in just any scam viewer to the prevalent reality in the film that could secure the next day. The saga industry which, in the real sense of the of advance fee frauds, called 419 after term, existed only in name. There was the relevant section in the penal code, actual demand for the kind of had put Nigeria's name on the map of unmitigated pathos that Owo Blow served the world of iniquities; it was the time of its audience, and if it didn't create an Gbd/ue ('browbeat any idle face'), of extraordinary rave, it was due less to an Mugun (the fall guy) and 'the Guy,' (the Taiwo Olunlade Sola Olorunyomi Akin Adesofean Sanya Osha Forthcoming in ltaruba Ideas Vol. l No 2 > Esilofeun KinniOIusanyin on the prominence of women in Yoruba & Fon Religion > Bisi Ogunsina on the notion of women in Yoruba proverbs > Afeintunde Abinyemi on invocation through orifei > Rev. Fr. Ilesanmi on a critique of Ifa > Dele Layiwola on Yoruba tragic drama > Lloyd Weaver on speak of the devil Ayo Opefeyintimi on immortalising Awolowo through > panagyrics ' " £'l¥*iff > Adeboye Babalola on Ogundele (Lagbodoko) f > Mabinde S. Olanrewaju on the place of indigenous language i ': I- "' ' if4? literature * > Reuben Abati on Awolowo and Abiola > Dipo Irele on Yoruba logic in Yoruba Language Plus interviews with Professor Lambo and Suzzane Weng cr Yoruba Ideas is a bi-annual journal of contemporary thought on the Yoruba world view It seeks to illuminate aspects of an expansive mind whose resonances actively inform even current theories and practices of the culture. Subscription Information YORUBA IDEAS R O. Box 50914 Palomo. Lagos. Ni8eria http:Wwwwglendora-eCulture.com smart-aleck.) In passing, it should be noted the displacement of celluloid films by the that a movie entitled Gbd/ue came out at videos. The 1990s were the decade of this time, and was screened at the National the video movie. In two works—Ti Oluwa Theatre where viewers discovered that the Ni lie (Tunde Kelani, 1994) and Violated story had nothing to do with that title! (Amaka Igwe, 1996), the Yoruba Abacha and his family and friends were traveling theater and the university-based stealing public funds on what we can now departments of theatre arts, the two confirm was an hourly basis; citizens sold dominant traditions in the home video 'pure' water inside traffic jams—anything, phenomenon, came together. This just anything to beat the devil of hunger alignment signaled the initiation of the and intractable want. standards by which what now passes as In the midst of all this, a curious filmmaking will be measured. I will practice that began surreptitiously in 1986 explain this in due course. when a once-upon-a-time cartoonist, Traditions have a way of creeping Muyideen Aromire, unsuccessfully onto the throne. The entrenchment of a submitted the video cassette of his drama, tradition, like a historic moment, does Ela/n (Tiger), to the National Film Censors not always require drama and heraldry. Board for vetting had captured the street The video movie, in spite of the socio- imagination. Since the cost of making a economic conditions surrounding its film in the regular 16mm celluloid gauge emergence as a clearly second-rate form, had precluded filmmaking as the books is actually a plausible moment in a long, and Hollywood stipulate, adventurous or dynamic, self-reversing history of visual enterprising filmmakers now resorted to culture production in Nigeria. When recording their stories in video cassettes Ogunde swore to suppress the bug, he and selling them as mass products. That was delivering a moral duty to the film a was the format in which Ekun was recorded. form that had secured his career and The late Hubert Ogunde, then a member those of others. But he was not alert, as of the censor's board, reportedly said that people working through history scarcely such a video would pass as film over his are, to the irony of his situation. The film dead body. Ogunde died in April 1990; medium in Nigeria, at least as it from 1991, when Nek Videos Limited showcased the works of Ogunde, Isola released the video Aje N)ya Mi (My Mother Ogunsola, Adeyemi Afolayan, Lere Is A Witch), the march of video movies to Paimo, Moses Olaiya Adejumo (Baba the Jerusalem of filmdom became Sala), Oyin Adejobi and others in the unstoppable. The most telling success of Yoruba film group, was itself an this turbulent revolution resides in the overlapping movement in stages. There transformation of the name of the censor's was the movement from the stage to the board: it is now known as the National tube, to the radio, to the recording disc, Film and Video Censors Board. Is the and on to the photoplay series (Atoka). general public taking note? The nature of work in the 1970s through That was the impetus for Fanu's the 1980s was frenetic. This pulsating commendable extravaganza. In fact, by energy was reflected in the assortment of then, the arbiters of tele-visual tastes at media in which work was done. For the NTA, who would insist on sponsorship example, Baba Sola's comedies came from Lever Brothers or Patterson Zocchonis in all manner of styles and formats: the before a soap opera could get on the air Alawada magazine series or the NTV in the age of commercialisation, were comedy half-hour on Wednesday manning the last ramparts against the evenings. Such was the pace that these video onslaught. A few days after that practitioners thought that it was natural, screening at Murphis Jazz, Adeyemi that all snakes were edible. Afolayan (Ade Love) died. He was one of These, after all, were exponents and Nigeria's foremost filmmakers, having inheritors of the proud legacy of the- started his craft in the early 1970s with Yoruba Traveling Theater, a sixteenth- Ola Balogun. One of his colleagues century tradition of itinerant performers attributed his demise to a heartbreak over that, in spite of the diligence of the <GLENDORA REVIEWxAlricmi Quarterly on the /ta><Vol3@No2> <99> missionaries in the early twentieth-century, colonial preoccupation with mere came back with vigor when Ogunde ordinances. But nothing major established his Folk Opera Party in 1944. happened: under the controversial From the 1940s through the 1960s, this chairmanship of the filmmaker, Eddie practice witnessed a real golden age due, Ugbomah, the corporation funded a at once, to sustained urbanization in number of films, but these were mainly Yorubaland and the enthusiasm of the the chairman's own products. It took cultural anthropologists to undo the many years to build the film laboratory demolition work of colonialism and in Jos; equipping it has taken many Christian evangelism. Under the direction more. These days, under the direction of the Great Troika—Hubert Ogunde, of Dr Hyginus Ekwuazi, himself a film Kola Ogunmola and Duro Ladipo—the scholar, the Nigerian Film Institute has Yoruba dramatic art became a tradition.

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