By Eva Irewole
One of Lagos’ iconic event venues, the MUSON Centre, will this Sunday December 10, 2023 play host to a unique event tagged African Citations.
It is the new product by the multi-talented experimentalist performance poet, Akeem Lasisi, who says Sunday’s culture soiree is an exhibition of multimedia poetry tributes to outstanding people and institutions from different parts of Nigeria and the Africa continent.
Lasisi, who is also a journalist and an author, has used different media platforms to promote his various creative products.
But Sunday’s project is a continuation of tl engaging and strategic journey in oral forms as it experiments with the Yoruba’ oriki praise poetry – according to Afrocitations, on the platform of which the exhibition will be launched.
“AFRICAN CITATIONS pollinates the past with the present, the traditional with the modern,” Lasisi told TCN.
He added that the programme was also about celebrating icons who have positively impacted tge society.
“In some instances, the poet has had memorable encounters with the subjects. In some others, he only pays tributes from a distance, with their services to humanity being the bridge.”
Lasisi has experimented with some other Yoruba poetic forms in the past. In WONDERLAND, for example, he projects ijala, the hunters’ social poetry, while his award-winning NIGHT OF MY FLIGHT is a recreation of the Yoruba bridal poetry called ekun iyawo. The African Citations series, which echoes oriki, is thus a continuation of the trend.
“His musical and video poetry works that include ELELETURE, UDEME, ORI AGBE (For Wole Soyinka), JANTOLO and JANGBALAJUGBU are also an engagement with Yoruba oral forms,” the team working with Lasisi for Sunday’s event added.
The show is expected to be witnessed by art and culture enthusiasts, journalists, members of the diplomatic corps and corporate sector as well as those featured in Lasisi’s oral and printed renditions.
