Saturday, August 11, 2012
Nollywood Reloaded and Gone Digital
My article Nollywood Reloaded was first published over two years ago by Modern Ghana, Nairaland and other websites and I am bringing it up again as a wake up call to some Nollywood directors who have abandoned their studios to run restaurants, to return to their locations and complete their abandoned movies. The world has gone digital and Nollywood is the first African digital film industry.
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Registration Early Bird Deadline Ends August 31!
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Nollywood Reloaded
Nollywood actually crashed, but Nollywood is now reloaded with the resurgence of the trailer-blazers and the emergence of new kids on the block such as Chineze Anyaene whose film IJE, the Journey has redefined Nollywood and if she had submitted it for the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Kunle Afolayan would have been second best with his movie The Figurine.
Chineze Anyaene’s IJE has taken Nollywood to places Nollywood has never been before with official selection in 18 international film festivals and winning five major awards, including a coveted award for Best Picture and another one for Excellence in film making.
Mahmood Ali-Balogun's 35mm film Tango with Me is an ambitious psychoanalytical film with the major crew from Los Angeles, Hollywood; and over N80 million budget without sponsors.
Chico Ejiro, the Mr. prolific in Nollywood is about to shoot the most challenging movie in his career, Sunset in Darfur.
Zik Zulu Okafor is doing new movies of outstanding quality.
Then some Nigerian young Turks of the film industry Faruk Lasaki, Didi Chika, Chike Ibekwe and others have been selected for the Babylon International film workshop and they were at the International Film Festival Berlin (February 16th-20th) and now preparing to show the clips of their film projects at the Zuma film festival in Abuja from tomorrow Sunday May 2, 2010, in Abuja.
The two filmmakers I have interviewed are Faruk Lasaki who is making a film on the Niger Delta, with the working title of Port Harcourt and Chike Ibekwe, whose film Letter to the Professor is featuring the lionized first African Nobel Laureate in Literature, Prof. Wole Soyinka. The budget for one of the films is over two million euros.
A Young Nigerian director has done thrilling film where the lovers were engaged in real live intimate intercourse. But it is not indecency?
The real films are coming to take the Nigerian film industry to the next level in competition with the best in the world.
Not in quantity, but in professional quality.
This is it, Nollywood Reloaded.
CUT!
~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, aka Orikinla Osinachi.
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Friday, August 10, 2012
Jackie Chan Breaks Stone With Bare Hand On German Show
See the famous action film star Jackie Chan breaking bricks with his bare hand and it is not film trick or movie stunt. He is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts. Jackie Chan has been acting since the 1960s and has appeared in over 150 films.
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Did a White House Official Violate Iran Sanctions?
9 Aug 2012 20:49 Africa/Lagos
A Most Dangerous Hypocrisy
Did a White House Official Violate Iran Sanctions?
WASHINGTON, Aug. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A report published by the Washington Post on August 5, 2012, by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, reveals that David Plouffe, a senior White House advisor who was President Obama's 2008 campaign manager, received $100,000 speaking fee from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran's government, which has provided technology that has helped the regime to track down and suppress dissidents in Iran. The report goes on to say that "a subsidiary of MTN Group, a South African-based telecommunications company, paid Plouffe for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, a month before he joined the White House staff."
The Post's report is more than an embarrassment for the Obama administration. If that wasn't enough, White House officials shrugged off the scandal by saying "it is not unusual for Washington figures to receive similar fees for speeches." This lays bare hypocrisy at the heart of U.S. policy towards Tehran, not to mention a double standard in U.S. media coverage of the efforts of other prominent Americans who have sought to undermine, rather than benefit from the regime in Iran.
In recent months, a stellar group of high-profile U.S. national security and political figures have been criticized in the mainstream media for occasionally receiving compensation from Iranian-Americans who are U.S. citizens, to speak in favor of establishing democracy in Iran, and in defense of the human rights of thousands of Iranian dissidents in Iraq, who are members of the main Iranian opposition group, known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK). The MEK is a secular, democratic group dedicated to a non-nuclear Iran, which has provided the U.S. with critical intelligence concerning Iran's atomic weapons program and interference in Iraq. Yet the group languishes on the U.S. list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" despite meeting none of the statutory criteria. It is unarmed and renounced violence in 2001, both of which seven different U.S. agencies confirmed after a 16-month investigation and screening of its members in Iraq, where the group is woefully encamped.
To placate Tehran, the Obama Administration has defied U.S. Court rulings to delist the group so far and instead has chosen to investigate a group of unimpeachable Americans for expressing outrage over the blatant breach of the human rights of 3,200 MEK members in Camp Ashraf and now in Camp Liberty. These defenseless men, women and children were massacred twice in 2009 and 2011 by the Iraqi forces, acting at the behest of Iran. No less than 49 residents, including eight women, were killed and hundreds wounded. Ironically, the media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, has mercilessly condemned these former officials.
Now it is revealed that a senior advisor to President Obama was paid to speak to a company linked to the regime in Tehran, which successive U.S. administrations have classified as the world's leading state-sponsor of terrorism. This regime has been directly responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan and is now financially and militarily supporting the murderous Assad regime.
Where is the outrage? Why has the administration looked the other way while its top campaign strategist receives blood money from a company under scrutiny for its role in monitoring and suppressing the Iranian people? How can the media abet a Treasury Department fishing expedition against a former Director of the FBI, a former U.S. Attorney General, a former Homeland Security Secretary, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and others who have only urged the administration to live up to its commitments to protect these dissidents based on a written agreement with each and every one of them and consistent with its international obligations?
SOURCE Association of Iranian-Americans in New York & New Jersey
CONTACT: Moe Alafchi, 1-888-718-7557, malafchi@aol.com
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Hillary Clinton Is Really Looking Great Visiting Nigeria
Is Secretary Hillary Clinton getting younger or older?
Is she not going to be 65 on October 26? But she is looking twenty years younger when she arrived Nigeria Thursday August 9, 2012.
She really enjoyed her African tour as the ABC even commended her "Informal Diplomacy" and showed her dancing happily in South Africa. Secretary Clinton is so full of life!
I thank God she is looking great in spite of the awesome challenges of her job as the 67th United States Secretary of State, and she is really doing a great job and I rate her as the best U.S Secretary of State since Madeleine Albright. Secretary Clinton has achieved some remarkable successes in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe since she assumed office on January 21, 2009.
Remarks Following Expanded Meeting with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan And the National Security Council Hillary Rodham Clinton Secretary of State Presidential Villa Abuja, Nigeria August 9, 2012 Well, thank you very much, Mr. President, and those were extremely kind and generous words. But I appreciate that you know how committed the United States and the Obama Administration is to our partnership with your country. We consider it absolutely vital, and through our bi-national commission, which, as you mentioned, has helped us to expand and deepen our cooperation on a full range of issues, we are working on economic matters, the improvement and the productivity of agriculture, education and health, security, the diversification of your economy, and so much more. We intend to remain very supportive on your reform efforts. Thank you for mentioning the work we did together on the elections. We’re also very supportive of the anticorruption reform efforts, more transparency, and the work that you and your team is also championing, because we really believe that the future for Nigeria is limitless. But the most important task that you face, as you have said, is making sure that there are better opportunities for all Nigerians – north, south, east, west – every young boy and girl to have a chance to fulfill his or her God-given potential. And we want to work with you and we will be by your side as you make the reforms and take the tough decisions that are necessary. So thank you, Mr. President, for this meeting. (Applause.) PRN: 2012/ T69-24Tweet
How Novelists Can Find the Right Agent
4-Week Intensive Online Course For Learning to Query and Find the Right Agent for Your Completed Novel Manuscript.
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She Will Innovate Competition: Technology Solutions Enriching the Lives of Girls
Competition News
Intel Corporation and Ashoka Changemakers are launching this online competition to find the world's most innovative solutions that equip girls and women with new digital technologies—enabling them to live healthier, smarter, and more meaningful lives.
Submit your solutions, or nominate a project, to empower women around the world. The final competition deadline is August 15, 2012.
Three winners will each receive a cash prize of US $10,000.
Join us in congratulating our Early Entry Prize winners:
Guidelines and Criteria
Who should enter:
The competition is open to solutions from around the world, with special consideration for innovations developed for women by women aged 18 to 34. We can only accept your entry in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
Intel employees are not eligible.
Why you should enter:
- Join Ashoka Changemakers’ global online community that supports the impact you are making on the ground.
- Gain visibility with our community and our competition partner, Intel Corporation.
- A chance to win!
What you can win:
- One of three US$10,000 cash prizes in unrestricted funding to boost your project.
- One of two US$500 cash prizes (if you enter before July 18, 2012).
How to enter:
- Take a look at this video or read these step-by-step instructions.
- Read these tips about how to make your entry stand out.
Read all the fine print below to learn more about how you can win.
Competition Guidelines
The competition is open to all types of individuals, organizations, and collaborations from all countries as long as solutions apply directly to bettering the lives of women through information and communication technologies. We consider all entries that:
- Reflect the theme of the competition: She Will Innovate: Technology Solutions Enriching the Lives of Girls.
- Identify innovations that accelerate women’s socio-economic progress by empowering them with digital solutions to improve women’s health, education, and well-being.
- Indicate growth beyond the conceptual stage and have demonstrated impact and sustainability. We support new ideas at every stage and encourage their entry. The judges are better able to evaluate programs that are beyond the conceptual stage and have demonstrated a proof of impact.
- Are submitted in English, Spanish, Portuguese, or French.
Please complete the entry form in its entirety and submit by August 15, 2012.
Assessment Criteria
Winners of the She Will Innovate: Technology Solutions Enriching the Lives of Girls competition will be those that best meet the following criteria:
Innovation: This is the knock-out test; if the work is not innovative, the judges will not give it a high ranking. The entrant must describe a systemic or disruptive innovation with the potential to give women access to income-generating opportunities, health care, or education through digital technologies. The best entries will be those that demonstrate a substantial difference from other initiatives in the field and have the possibility for large-scale, global replication.
Social Impact: It is important that the competition entry provides a system-changing solution for the issue it addresses. Some entries will have proven successes at the local level, while others may have already engaged millions of people across the country. Initiatives must maximize the opportunity for collaboration in engaging women, their families, and their communities with tech innovations. The best solutions will have demonstrated impact, as well as the potential for scaling-up and replication.
Sustainability: The proposals must have a clear outline for reaching long-term goals and securing financial backing—entries should describe not only how they currently finance their work, but also how they plan to finance it in the future. They should also have a realistic time frame for implementation. Proposals should highlight the support they have received from both the public and private sectors.
Competition Deadlines, Procedures, and Rules
Online competition submissions are accepted until August 15, 2012. At any time before this deadline, competition participants are encouraged to revise their entries based on questions and insights that they receive through the Changemakers online discussion. Participation in the conversation enhances an entrant’s prospects in the competition and provides the community and the judges with an opportunity to understand the entrant’s project more completely.
There are five main phases in the competition:
- Entry Stage: Beginning June 6, 2012, entries can be submitted until 5 p.m. EST on August 15, 2012, and throughout this stage anyone can participate in an online review discussion with the entrants.
- Early Entry Deadline, July 18, 2012: Entries received by 5 p.m. EST on July 18, 2012 are eligible for the Early Entry prize.
- Entry Deadline: August 15, 2012, 5 p.m. EST
- Online Review and Finalist Selection, August 15 – October 17, 2012: Online review and discussion continues. Simultaneously, a team of Ashoka staff and shortlisters, followed by a panel of expert judges, nominate the 10-15 best and most innovative entries as finalists.
- Voting and Winners Selection, October 17 – November 7, 2012: The Changmakers community votes online to select three winners from the field of finalists
- Winners Announced, November 14, 2012: The Changemakers competition winners—the finalist individuals, organizations, or partnerships selected by the Changemakers online community—will each receive a cash prize of US $10,000.
Prizes
Early Entry Prize:
Early entries received by July 18, 2012 will be eligible to win one of two cash prizes of US $500. Being an Early Entry Prize winner does not preclude you from winning the competition in any way, nor guarantee finalist status. All entries will be evaluated on an equal basis at the completion of the entry period according to the Changemakers criteria.
Winners:
Three winners, as selected by the Ashoka Changemakers online community to best exemplify the competition assessment criteria from the pool of finalists, will each receive a cash prize of US $10,000.
She Will Innovate Idea Award:
$5000 awarded to the most innovative early stage initiative that shows great potential for social impact and sustainability.
Winners will be announced November 14, 2012.
Participation in the competition provides the opportunity to receive feedback about your solution from fellow entrants, Changemakers staff, judges, expert commentators, and the Changemakers community. Showcasing your market-based solution, and the challenges involved in creating social impact through community engagement, advises potential investors about how best to maximize the strategic impact of their future investments.
Disclaimer—Compliance with Legal Restrictions
Ashoka complies fully with all U.S. laws and regulations, including Office of Foreign Assets Control regulations, export control, and anti-money laundering laws. Any grants will be awarded subject to compliance with such laws. Ashoka will not make any grant if it finds that to do so would be unlawful. This may prohibit awards in certain countries and/or to certain individuals or entities. All recipients will comply with these laws to the extent they are applicable to such recipients. No recipient will take any action that would cause Ashoka to violate any laws. Additionally, Ashoka will not make any grant to a company involved in the promotion of tobacco use.
Click here for the complete details.
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Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Top Annual Entertainment Events in Nigeria
Top Annual Entertainment Events in Nigeria
The following are the top annual events in Nigeria in no particular order or rank.
1. Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria (MBGN)
2. Calabar Carnival
3. Lagos Carnival
4. Abuja Carnival
5. African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA)
6. Eko International Film Festival
7. AFRIFF International Film Festival
8. Abuja International Film Festival
9. iREP International Documentary Film Festival
10. Lagos Book and Art Festival
11. Garden City Literary Festival
12. Arise Magazine Fashion Week
13. Hip Hop Awards
14. Nigerian Entertainment Awards
15. Tava Awards
16. Rhythm Unplugged
17. Summer Jam Fest.
The above top annual entertainment events in Nigeria are based on their popularity online and offline for attracting local and international audiences in terms of general entertainment and for the public friendly environment of the location of each event and the commercial benefits to the organizers, sponsors and host communities.
The organizers and sponsors of the international film festivals and carnivals need to up the ante of their events to fully realize the social and economic benefits, because these events can create thousands of jobs and generate millions of dollars through the commercial activities at the venues and environs and the patronage of the hospitality industry as popular international film festivals and carnivals have become million dollar international tourist attractions in the U.S.A, UK, France, Italy, German, Brazil, South Africa and other countries. Well informed sponsors can really maximize the potential benefits of these annual events as sponsors do at similar events in America, Europe and Asia. For instance, automakers and dealers can use international film festivals and carnivals to promote and market their cars and SUVs since these vehicles are integral parts of the film industry used by the production crew and cast. In fact all products and services used in the society can be exhibited at film festivals, including household goods, because a film festival is the celebration of life in motion pictures. So, all the products and services we use in life can be exhibited at the venues of film festivals.
Film festivals are also appropriate venues to launch and promote new or ongoing products, programmes and services of private and public organizations. Governments can show documentaries of what they have done for the citizens and private companies can show commercials of their products and services as short films or documentaries at film festivals and engage the audiences in focus or target group discussions during interactive sessions before and after screenings.
Companies making electronics and beauty products can promote and market their products and services at the music events and of course the book publishers, book sellers and printers and the manufacturers of paper, printing machines and packaging machines can use the book fairs to promote and market their products and services to the participants and attendees.
For Further Inquiries and Consultation on the potential benefits of these annual events in Nigeria, contact Nigerians Report by email: publisher@nigeriansreport.com
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FELA: 15 YEARS AFTER..... Constructing Fela’s Dramatic Narrative for Cinema
FELA: 15 YEARS AFTER..... Constructing Fela’s Dramatic Narrative for Cinema
~ By Femi Odugbemi
For a nation with a vibrant motion picture industry, our response to the colossal resource that the life story of late Afrobeat impresario Fela Anikulapo presents is unsettling and queries our understanding and our appreciation of the narrative drama and approaches to which the “Fela phenomenon” lends itself. It is a damning reality that more than a decade and half since Fela’s death, not a single local production, feature or documentary or stage, has profiled any aspect of Fela’s life or captured the essence of his struggle. Our reluctance to embrace this incredible life story for its powerful dimensions of gripping drama and historical significance may be the greatest failure of our blossoming creative industries. Fela was the soundtrack that helped Nigerians confront and get through the worst of times with the military dictatorships and political avarice of corrupt regimes. Fela was about sex, an unsophisticated mating call captured in the sensuous gyrations of scantily-clad dancers in chicken-mesh cages. Fela was about drugs and addictions and the high cost of communal rebellion. Fela was resistance to systemic corruption and the oppression of power. Fela was a sacred communion between artist and audience – male and female, black and white, educated and illiterate, pimps and prostitutes, pastors and players, addicts and artistes. Fela was much more than the sum of his parts –he shouldered enormous risks and with unimaginable courage did things the rest of us can only dream of. The Fela story in film, is a narrative mirror that will afford us a glimpse at the naked soul of our national character from the prisms of our political history. Telling the “Fela story” is elusive to many filmmakers for daunting reasons. Firstly, it is a narrative that transcends the strict relation of facts and chronology yet affirming a personal vision that is both objectively informed and subjectively charged. And with an audience already fed fat by popular myth, the research exposes the filmmaker to an overload of myth that may or may not be historically false! Thus, there is from within the creative wells of the innocent narrator a contradictory insistence on both accuracy and license.
It is in the end a balance of understanding between biography and myth. The narrative of Fela’s life and times therefore is less about music than about a consciousness – his music was the soundtrack steering our experience of his philosophy and politics. It is trite but significant to repeat the obvious -Fela was a highly multi-dimensional subject with a varied audience.
The second challenge of creating a narrative of Fela’s life arises from grappling the very complicated character himself, as a protagonist and the various contradictions his life presented: The son of a reverend gentleman, who became the High Priest of the caricature “Shrine” that was home to his fiery performances.
A classicallytrained musician with a privileged education in England, who became the creator of a violent fusion of jazz layered with rich rhythmic percussions and lyrics in the colloquially visual pidgin language most accessible to the deprived and disadvantaged populations of Africa. For a filmmaker, a director, or storyteller trying to create a narrative of Fela, the daunting challenges in the immediate beginning will be to define what Fela was, what people’s expectation of that narrative would be and exactly what part of his life you would isolate to dramatise in the narrative.
Published on Jun 25, 2012 by Dvworx
Femi Anikulapo Kuti is no doubt a living legend whose music has helped to sustain Afrobeat with new energy and inspiration for upcoming musicians. Who is the Femi Kuti that we do not know?
Normally, biographies tend to take a portion of the subject’s life and try to dramatise it in a three act structure; whether it is documentary, drama, stage play or biography as a musical, the concentration is on aspects of the subject’s life that are most impactful and not usually the whole of the life.
The creative or interpretative challenge is to demonstrate certain values or incidences that are representative of the subject’s character and values, but more than anything, of the subject’s impact on a community or on an institution.
Strangely enough, I have been somewhat fated to experience at very close quarters a few brilliant visual narrators struggle to define the dimensions of Fela in a motion picture narrative. First, was celebrated documentary director John Akromfah of Smoking Dog Films UK, who has spent the last decade or so trying to piece together enough footages to construct a documentary narrative of Fela from a perspective that defines what his music and personality means historically and culturally.
I spent many hours with John in Accra ruminating on the difficulty of a Fela narrative simply because his life unfolded in measures drama unlike that of any regular biographic subject and the incidences of his life were so profound that they demanded individually in of themselves a film! For example, the whole story of how Fela’s house was burnt by soldiers and the drama and tragedy of that incident is a three-act film on its own!
And one loaded with intrigue, suspense, action and characters that were as compelling as any fictional explication could conjure. Before I met John though, I had also watched the French documentary Fela Kuti: Music is the Weapon by StephaneTchal-Gadjieff and Jean Jacques Flori.
That was shot in 1982 and basically focused its narrative on Fela as avant garde, urban revolutionary whose music is inspired by the politics and poverty of his country. It was an interesting effort and I have since screened the film at one of our monthly documentary screenings at IREP. But that effort had a typical problem of films about Africa produced by filmmakers from outside of the African experience –its perspective betrayed a measure of condescension which I am sure even Fela himself would have found uncomfortable at best.
As I have stressed time and again at the iRepresent Documentary Film Forums, the abiding challenge for Africa in these narrative expression has always been who is telling the story of the African experience and from what perspective? My second memory of interrogating a motion picture narrative of Fela’s story is the aborted autobiographical film The Black President produced by Fela himself and directed by veteran professional Alex Oduro. Of course the bulk of the footage already shot was lost in the inferno that erupted after soldiers invaded Fela’s home in Idi-Oro in the “unknown soldier” saga.
But the bits I had the privilege of viewing from the rescued footage gave interesting insight into what Fela himself viewed as the most engaging drama of his life. He obviously viewed the irony of his upbringing in a strict Christian family and the African cultural ethos he would embrace in latter life as the heart of his biographical narrative –the son of the reverend gentleman now the Ifa priest of the Africa shrine! If there was anything that was clear from that, it was that Fela himself had an acute sense of the drama of his own life and wanted the opportunity to steer the narrative of its historical archiving.
The contradictions was truly the narrative of the drama of Fela. For any storyteller, the more interesting aspect of Fela’s subconscious motivations as the central character of this narrative must be his rugged individualism which ensured that his political interventions, for instance, as founder of the political party “Movement of the People” (MOP) may be his best forays in improvisational art, because he simply made it up as he went along.
Yet in his espoused political philosophy, he projected an idealistic view of what constituted political revolution and saw himself in the mould of transformational political heroes like Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, Cuba’s Che Guevera and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah. My next encounter with the ‘Felastory’ as film was several months ago when UK filmmaker, Steve McQueen, came into Nigeria to walk the physical spaces of the Fela legend and recce locations for the shooting of the much-rumoured feature. I was McQueen’s local fixer. We visited the sites of Fela’s life story –from the old family house in Abeokuta to his resting place at Kalakuta Republic in Ikeja.
Steve McQueen, a wellawarded experimental film director had, prior to his visit, buried himself for months in everything and anything he could find as research on Fela. Yet, by the time we would sit and talk with Femi Kuti and hear the inside stories of Fela taking a coffin to Dodan Barracks, the seat of government in 1979, McQueen had found a slice of narrative in Femi Kuti’s reminiscences that best demonstrated Fela’s most enduring character profile –his contradictions -courage, daring, impetuousness, recklessness all wrapped in a bravura that left his most rabid antagonists speechless! My most recent and perhaps most rewarding encounter with a narrative of the Fela’s story, however, was the most filmic though not designed for film.
The award-winning Broadway play, FELA! produced by Shawn Jay Z Carter, Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, which came to Nigeria and played to sold-out audiences at the shrine and at Eko Hotel Victoria Island, Lagos. It was perhaps the first definitive explication of Fela’s biographical narrative that may also now have defined the smartest creative approach. FELA! on Broadway expressed the narrative of the Fela phenomenon in a three dimensional presentation that I think may finally have defined how all storytellers in the motion picture realm must layer their profile of Fela’s life story. The music is one dimension. Fela’s Africanist ideology is a second dimension.
And of course his confrontational activism is the third dimension. Fela on Broadway revealed that rather than looking for the events and timelines in Fela’s life to guide or form the three act structure of the narrative, perhaps the dimensions of his experiences can be tracked in small digestive capsules, with the music being representative of melodic timeline of the story’s structure. Going forward, everybody that seeks to create a narrative of Fela must now speak to those three dimensions, whether it is film, book, play or musical.
What FELA! on Broadway did was create for us a template with which to attack the biographical narrative of this African colossus. In this milestone of the anniversary of his passing, Fela’s life story looms as an important part of our history we owe the future generations of this country to experience. The timelessness of Fela is demonstrated in the unprecedented global acceptance of his Afrobeat music.
Today there are over 100 Afrobeat bands in global hotspots like New York, Paris and London and Hong Kong. The music is finding definition and new expressions. The blasting of horns, the violent beat and the jazz defined solos, have all become a staple of world music.
The most interesting revelation of my encounters with the Fela story, 15 years after his passing is that the narrative is open-ended. His consciousness is like a body of prophecy that is gradually, but continuously manifesting long after his death.
The things he talked about -our country, the confusion, the political defections, the lack of democratic ethos, the poverty and the corruption are still there. When Fela labelled himself the Black President, maybe we were mistaken in imagining that he fell short of his ambition at his death. His voice is immortalised as that beacon of popular leadership and courage for Africa and Africans in the diaspora. Now, we need filmmakers and visual storytellers who will immortalise in cinema, a Fela narrative structure that acknowledges the dimensions of his impact and honours the “truth” of his character.
~Femi Odugbemi is Co-Founder/Executive Director of i-Rep International Documentary Forum and MD/CEO of DVWORX Studios Lagos.
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Nomoreloss Warns Dirty Singing Hip Hop Artistes in Nigeria
Nomoreloss Warns Dirty Singing Hip Hop Artistes
The young Nigerian musician Muyiwa Osinuga, popularly known as Nomoreloss who is also one of the judges on MTN Project Fame West Africa is not happy with irresponsible hip hop singers in Nigeria, because of their dirty songs. In an interview with Street Talk in the current edition of My Streetz magazine, Nomoreloss said that his concern for Nigerian music presently is the rampant obscene behaviour of the majority of the young artistes who have a penchant for pornographic songs and music videos.
“My concern for music right now are the use of words by the artistes who don’t censor their lyrics and those that cannot be bothered to write any. My word to them is this; YOUR CHILDREN WILL ONE DAY PLAY BACK YOUR WORDS AND SEE HOW YOU DAMAGED LIVES”.
These irresponsible Nigerian hip hop artistes are more driven by hunger for fame and money than talent, because most of them have little or no education in the basic rudiments of music and are only desperate for fame and fortune. And since pornography is a very popular merchandise in Nigeria, they simply produce pornographic songs and videos to sell to legions of Nigerian youths and pedophiles who are among the most promiscuous people in the most populous country in Africa where over 500, 000 people are infected with the HIV and living with AIDS. But these deviant fringe of Nigerian entertainers would not have been so irresponsible and wayward if the so called National Broadcasting Commission and other authorities like the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria and the Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON ) have not failed in the regular monitoring and evaluation of the programmes on radio and TV stations in Nigeria, because the desperate Nigerian radio and TV stations don’t seem to have rules and regulations on what they broadcast. They just play anything given to them by these desperate artistes who simply use their whims and wits and some money to get the corrupt Nigerian radio DJs and TV VJs to play their useless hip hop ditties called songs in regular rotation. These pornographic music CDs and videos are terrible and should not have been accepted for public broadcast. But these unscrupulous DJs and VJs who apparently have no better sense of judgment don’t care about the grave consequences of these pornographic songs and videos since most of them are voyeurs who enjoy the sexual abuse of impressionable and vulnerable children and young adults who listen and gyrate to these dirty songs and watch the obscene music videos. No wonder these ignorant and nonchalant children and young adults end up with mass failures in their school examinations and damaged lives as Nomoreloss noted.
~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
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