CULTURE PEOPLE, PEOPLE OF CULTURE
You must have heard it and read online that this or that person does not need any introduction. I must confess that as harmless as the assertion is; it is not always true. The subject of my attention needs to be introduced properly to the generation that did not have the opportunity to watch or participate in the Ajo Productions of 1986!
Yomi Layinka the actor, director, sometimes writer/critic, broadcaster, filmmaker, interior decorator/failed architect, motivational speaker, festival organizer, culture activist, pseudo intellectual, etc…In his usual modesty, he adds that he is the rolling stone that gathered little moss. Now balance the above with this next statement. “As further evidence of my rolling stone status, did I tell you I’m in the middle of a PhD in Political Communication? I am writing on ‘The National Question and Political Communication in Nigeria: A Study in the Mediatization of Politics’. I should be wrapping up next year”
That my dear readers is the eclectic nature of our subject. Our electronic conversation is akin to the Ozidi Saga told over many days and nights. Since I was asking the questions and he was typing on his cell phone the process was long drawn. We just hope you will get to know our Yomi Layinka, the husband of Bisi and baba Fẹla,.
The first question I sent to him by text was how would you describe the cultural landscape of the 70s & 80s
He responded with a long response worth every letter in the words
Yomi Layinka: The cultural landscape of the seventies and eighties was one in which I literarily woke into as a teenager. During my last years in St John’s Grammar School around 1973/74, I got introduced to a giant of an actor called Segun Bankole who was then playing the lead role in Ola Rotimi’s ‘Grip Am’ an English adaptation of Oladejo Okediji’s ‘Gbe Ku De’ at the luminous Ori-Olokun Cultural Centre in Ile Ife. That was where Ola Rotimi, the legendary playwright and director was consolidating his towering reputation as Nigeria’s foremost stage director with a stellar dramatic oeuvre that included such productions as the inimitable ‘The Gods Are Not To Blame’, ‘Kurunmi’, ‘Ovonramwen Nogbaise’ and others. It was in the hallowed confines of this cultural workshop that I met and ran errands for the likes of Jimi Solanke (of the fiery and enigmatic stage presence), Peter Badejo (who went on to become the nation’s pioneer star dancer/choreographer. Badejọ’s international career was consecrated by the award of Member of the British Empire (MBE) by the British Monarch). There was also the beautiful sleek dancer, Bose Tsevende (née Ayeni). I can also recall the multimedia artist Rufus Orisayomi, the ethnographic film maker, Frank Speed and the several great actors who were to rule the Nigerian theatre roost like Kola Oyewo, Peter Fatomilola, Laide Adewale, Tunji Ojeyemi and the late Segun Akinbola, the technical theatre maestro who was to become a monarch, Alade-Okun of Alade-Idanre. These titans of acting and dancing and the stage would later perform along with me and in productions that I directed either on stage or in movies.
In the mid-seventies, in Ibadan, there was the Unibadan Masques, University of Ibadan’s School of Drama acting company under the leadership of Africa’s first professor of Thestre Arts, Dr Joel Adedeji and the Caribbean Theatre scholar and technician, Dexter Lyndersay . The company continued to flourish in the late eighties under the direction of Yemi Ajibade, the Nigerian playwright, actor and director who, after settling in England in the 1950s, made significant contributions to the British theatre and the canon of Black drama. The likes of Victor Akappo and Ayo Oluwasanmi were members of this company.
In Osogbo, the Austrian artist, Susan Wenger who with her former husband Ulli Bier had turned the town into a huge tourist and cultural center with his endless workshops and international cultural exchange programmes and her scared art movement built around the sacred groves of the Osun river and its deity. In the middle seventies all through the early and mid-eighties Osogbo had produced a legion of globally renowned visual and performing artist(e)s artistes including Twin Seven-Seven, Tijani Mayakiri, Jimoh Buraimoh, Yinka Adeyemi, Asiru Olatunde, Muraina Oyelami, Bayo Ogundele.
Up north around 76/77 at the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies of the Ahmadi Bello University, Zaria, there was a similar burst of creative energy. There I met the budding scholars like Yakubu Nasiru Harry Hagher, Setley Daze and Zikky Kofoworola as well as dancers like Richard Tsevende, Joseph Beegu, Sabo Mohammed and others. Out on television and radio in Kaduna, there were the stars like Kasimu Yero and youngsters like me, Julia Agha (now Prof Julie Umukoro) featuring in drama programmes and on live musical shows fronting for the likes of Bala Miller and Elcados. What most of the younger folks may not know is that I speak enough Hausa to get along. In fact, I speak enough to escape an ethnic cleansing if caught out on the other side -J
Back in Southern Nigeria, I was part of a cultural renaissance that had enveloped the nation after Festac ’77, that global celebration of Black and African cultural heritage and its preforming arts. We had just started the Unibadan Performing Company (UPC), under the directorship of the iconic “Uncle B’, Bayo Oduneye who was later to head the National Troupe of Nigeria after Chief Hubert Ogunde’s pioneering turn. With me in UPC were the likes of Sam Loco. Toun Oni, Ajayi Olatide, Jumoke Fashola (now of BBC), Kunle Famoriyo, Clarion Chukwurah and Joke Muyiwa. Within this same period, the Osogbo Art Scene was bubbling as was the Ife cultural circuit regaining its verve after the glorious Ori Olokun era of Ola Rotimi. The Unife Theatre was in its elements with the usual convocation plays presented by a stellar admixture of cast made up of lecturers, students and professionals. So too was the Unilag Cultural Centre dishing out its own exciting wares where Bode Osanyin held sway as the resident playwright and director with Duro Oni as its Technical maestro while the likes of Segun Ojewuyi, Moji Sodunke (now Bamtefa) were coming into light. It was indeed a giddy season of creative ferment that also saw the emergence of new and bold entrepreneurial initiatives in cultural journalism with the arrival of newspapers like the Democrat, the Comet and the Guardian..
Just as there was a rash of literary, visual and performing art expression so followed a new crop of exciting literary art historians, reviewers and critics. This new burst of creative and literary scholarship found expression in these culturally aligned newspapers who for once seemed to understand that newspaper could not claim to reflect the totality of a community’s interests if t only privileges the political and business stories while treating their cultural and artistic expression with condescension. The likes of the Guardian Literary Series gave room to scholars to demonstrate their theoretical rigour of the critical exegesis and canonical annunciations, there was enough room for others whose writings were more accessible because they reviewed recent performing arts events, art exhibitions and titbits about urban culture and lifestyles. In this latter group were a few names that soon caught my attention. Week in week out, I began to look out for their writings and interventions. The attraction was largely because of the freshness and breeziness of their style, the lyrical quality of their prose notwithstanding the grandness or density of their subject matter and of course, the novelty of their unknown names. Quickly enough, I made out the name of Ben Tomoloju in the area of cultural journalism and a certain Toyin Akinosho whose ubiquitous opinion essays I began to consume like a weekly dosage as if recommended by a doctor.
Was that how you were invited to join the Committee of Relevant Art (CORA)?
Yomi Layinka: Toyin and I became very close and dear friends, lived happily ever in the same Festac Estate until one day when he requested to see me at home, about five or six minutes away from his. With his typically bulging eyes whenever he has a titillating idea playing in his head, he proceeded to tell me about his proposal for us both to set up the Committee for Relevant Art, CORA. We would then bring in a few other friends and colleagues including the visual artists, Tunde Lanipekun, Chika Okeke-Agulu and the journalist, Jossey Ogbuanoh. Before I could fully digest the concept and proposed activities, he had named me President and himself Secretary. Just like that! That is how CORA was born.
The first art Stampede subsequently held on June 2nd, 1991 in the courtyard of his 3rd Avenue home in Festac. Others followed in quick succession across Lagos until I relocated to Ibadan a few years later when perhaps the only ‘offshore’ version was held at Demas Nwoko’s New Culture Studios pulling together publishers, writers, scholars and critics.
Are you still active in CORA?
Yomi Layinka: I am only just tangentially active, usually as an invitee or guest whenever the current officials reach out to me.
What will you say was your major achievement as CORA President
It would be that I am the founding and perhaps only President of CORA. While Toyin Akinosho was and remains the moving spirit, I was the face of the organization, moderating every one of its quarterly stampedes even well after I relocated to Ibadan. I can humbly claim that I shaped the image and initial direction of its interventionist character within the culture sector of the nation. Its original objectives included being a Think Tank and Policy Interrogation Platform.
Once you arrived back to base in Ibadan what happened.
I joined the newly established Unibadan Performing Company (UPC) on 1st Sept., 1980 the very next day after the epochal Ogunpa flood disaster that ravaged Ibadan. I resumed and joined Sam Loco Efe (now late) as one of two Senior Artistes and Stage Manager of the company. One of my first projects was to act as the alternative lead actor (to Sam Loco) as Sanmi Ajao in Wale Ogunyemi’s ‘The Divorce’ with Clarion Chukwurah as the female lead in the role of Tayo.
What kind of person was Uncle Sam Loco?
Phew! A very contradictory character who was at once a hugely talented and iconoclastic but carefree actor who gave the wrong impression that talent was enough! I always wished that his undeniably huge talent came along with an appropriate dose of exemplary, professional self-discipline.
I want to assume Death and the King’s Horseman is one of the plays you are passionate about. I recall you explain the connotation of the threonodic essence to us one evening…I will like you to restate it
Hmmmn… I am not sure i can remember in what context I did. In any case, I think Soyinka himself in the preface to the play has explained the threnodic essence of ‘Death’. “’Threnodic essence’ can be defined as “a presence or quality of death and lamentation.” For Soyinka, “threnodic essence” not only is the demonstration pertaining to the two cultures, but also comprises much of the meaning and theme of Death and the King’s Horseman.”
Therefore, what attracts you to this particular play?
Like most admirers, I fell in love with ‘Death’ primarily due to Soyinka’s high-octane and skillful ‘definition’ of African tragedy in this work; the lyrical grace and poetic grandeur of the play; the unusually frontal role assigned to his female heroine, Iyaloja. In addition, his heightened focus and magisterial engagement with the luminous fringes that exist between the living, the dead and the unborn – recalling aspects of Soyinka’s old theoretical formulation as encapsulated in his pivotal essay titled ‘The Fourth Stage’.
What shapes cultural directions at the State level apart from the cultural centers where dance and productions predominate?
Philistinism shapes cultural directions in contemporary Nigeria. Ever since the country succumbed to the forceful takeover of its leadership cadre by an anti-intellectual, nihilistic band of soldiers and their civilian cohorts, cultural institutions, policies and practices at both national and state levels have continued to suffer debilitating consequences.
This tragic reversal of fate has been due primarily to the abject quality of attention given to the sector by our political leadership, starting with the military and made worse by their civilian successors. As the cliché goes, you cannot give what you do not have. Since our governors are generally bereft of any conception of the place and role of culture in a people’s self-apprehension, they think little and care less for what becomes of the sector.
Beyond their deployment for airport displays and courtyard entertainment, institutions meant for the promotion of the arts and culture in most states have been rendered comatose. With barely little or no fund allocation, is it any wonder that the sector is replete with dilapidated structures, ill-motivated and frustrated staffers who are simply hanging by the threads of the creative hairs?
Bad as the funding challenge is however, it is in my opinion, nowhere near the most critical problem of the sector. The fundamental issue as I see it is the sheer lack of understanding, and lack of appreciation and respect for the arts, for culture workers and everything that constitutes the cultural economy of our states.
That lack of respect is best exemplified by observing the very condescending circumstances that usually attend to the appointment of the Commissioners and Advisers to the supervising Ministry of Information (with Culture being only a poor appendage). In fact, most appointees to this ministry consider it below their par; in fact, some think it demeaning!
Will it be a fair question to ask what you would do if in a position to transform cultural directions
The first thing I will do give notice and publicly declare myself as an artist not only proudly bred in the cultural sector but whose governance choices would be guided by a philosophy that is rooted in our cultural worldview. Next is to surround myself with those whose knowledge systems are similarly embedded and better developed in those codes. More practically, I will privilege a distinctly high degree of creativity as a governance paradigm; every decision and action must pass the basic test of creativity, innovation and excellence – whether in terms of project conception, administration and/or funding. Once my team knows that, our driving ethos is ‘radical creativity’, the quality of thinking and consequently output should make it fairly easier to redefine the environment within a very short time. Once the work culture is creative/excellence driven, we should be able to push through otherwise tough transformational ideas and programmes. I actually tried and succeeded in applying this management and development framework when I worked for four years as COO of BCOS between 2011 & 2015. By radically updating the ‘look and feel’ of the station, we were able to escalate its rating from also-ran to the top of the class (as conducted by a national rating agency, the MPS). This claim can be verified!
So from acting, directing and management you ventured into Television production. Please take us through the journey
Well, yes I off started as a free-lance actor on television in Kaduna in the mid/late seventies, then joined the Kwara State Council for Arts and Culture as a Drama Organiser in 1976 before heading to the University of Ife where I studied Dramatic Arts, specializing in Directing. As a student, I was involved in many departmental productions as well as the annual convocation plays directed among others by Wole Soyinka, Caroll Dawes, Biodun Jeyifo, Kole Omotoso and Femi Euba. I later joined the Unibadan Performing Company as a Senior Artiste playing lead roles and stage managing most of the company’s productions.
In 1982, I became one of the pioneer Producers of the newly established Television Service of Oyo State. I was to write, produce and direct scores of plays, drama and entertainment series. By 1986, I was invited by the ace broadcaster, Mike Enahoro to direct a 26-episode drama series ‘Winds of Destiny’ broadcast on the network of NTA and sponsored by UBA. About a year later, I directed ‘Legacy’, another series on NTA network. Sponsored by NNPC, it introduced some new faces who were to become major players in Nollywood including Richard Mofe-Damijo, Fred Amata, Kanayo O. Kanayo and others.
In-between, I featured in some of Fred Agbeyegbe’s plays including ‘Woe Unto Death’, KAPO’s production of ‘Kongi’s Harvest’ at the National Theatre.
By the late eighties, I had moved into Marketing Communications producing corporate documentaries and TV commercials for advertising agencies, multinational, multilateral, financial and manufacturing institutions in and outside Nigeria.
I was a Snr Programme & Research Manager with Degue Broadcasting Network, the Executive Producer with Swift Studios before teaming up in 1991 with my friend, John Momoh to establish Channels Television as its Co-founder and Executive Director.
I have since founded and chair the Board of Media Strategies Limited, a firm of communication strategists and consultants to corporate, national and international clients including the World Bank.
Let us just say, it has been a fairly long but interesting multi-sectoral journey within the larger creative and communications industry.
So why did you not continue at Channels
Like in a failing marriage, we soon ran into the waters of unrequited trust, which ended in the ocean of irreconcilable differences. So, I left in order to avoid any fights and to protect my mental health.
I’m quite happy and indeed proud of what my former partner, his wife and their team have made of our nascent idea. John and I remain friends and colleagues and I continue to wish him, Sola and Channels all the best.
Will it be wrong to say the interview you and John had with IBB turned attention to Channels TV
It definitely launched Channels as a company and fundamentally paved the way for securing our operating license.
Can you take us down memory lane about the process, the production and the people’s reaction to the interview?
These are materials for my memoirs o😜
Oh, there are the scintillating details of how we ‘casually’ secured the appointment through Chief Duro Onabule; of the brainstorming sessions that generated the questions among our editorial team; of the drama of how John and I spent the eve of the interview on the same hotel bed in Nicon Noga, Abuja – he sleeping off at about 2am in order to avoid red eyes and I writing on (sometimes confused about what to add and what not to and especially how to ask those tough questions without being ‘rude’) until I finally dropped my pen at about 6.55am; of how we could not get the manuscript typed because Nicon business office staff did not resume before we headed for our 10am appointment at Aso Rock; of how at the end of the interview IBB teased us about how he thought our grilling would be tougher than it turned out😜; of how NTA frustrated our efforts at transmitting the programme on its network; of how all major newspapers and magazines feasted on the interview in the weeks after the transmission. Stories of intrigues, subterfuge and overcoming.
Let me simply say for now that it was a most exhilarating experience preparing for, travelling from Lagos to Abuja and finally recording a TV interview with a sitting military President. Union Bank eventually sponsored the nationally syndicated programme courtesy of the late writer, Abubakar Gimba who happened to be IBB’s relative From Niger State.
Why do partnerships in the media breakdown faster than partnerships in other areas
Unless you have proof, I’m not sure if it is empirical that media partnerships are more prone to breakdowns that in other sectors.
In any case, like all marriages, some work and other dint for a variety of reasons including breakdown of trust, lack of commitment, social tensions and other value-laden challenges. I guess that each case may need to be specifically interrogated to determine the predisposing factors.
So how did the transition from the arts to politics happen
I’ve always been quite an active, if not fastidious, political animal. From the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), I was a member of leftist Alliance of Progressive Students (ALPS) along with the likes of Dapo Olorunyomi, Femi Falana, Greg Obong-Oshotse, Bola Bolawole, Funmi Adewunmi, Shenge Rahman etc. As a further demonstration of my political inclination, I voted for recently deceased Balarabe Musa and the PRP in the 1979 gubernatorial election in Kaduna. I subsequently became a closet Awoist.
By 1999, I got involved in the campaign and subsequent election of my friend, Otunba Niyi Adebayo as governor of Ekiti. Then worked with another friend, Otunba Gbenga Daniel to emerge as Governor of Ogun. By 2011, I found myself working for another friend and egbon, Senator Abiola Ajimobi who became governor and asked me to serve in public office with him, first as Chief Operating Officer of BCOS, then as Special Adviser (Communication & Strategy) and finally as Special Adviser (Ibadan Media City Project) which I still currently promote as a public private partnership project.
So, I’ve always been interested in how our nation is governed and the socio-economic principles that influence our policy choices.
Just by the way what do special advisers do?
As Obasanjo once infamously said, a Special Adviser in Nigeria largely advises in his or her area of competence but the Principal is not bound to accept the advice, particularly when it does not flatter the ego or coincide with the Oga’s self-interest🤷🏽♂️
Well, let us conclude this conversation by returning to you time as an actor. If you were going to write your own version of the Actor Prepares what kind of topics will you treat?
My tips and topics to the actor as s/he prepares…
- Engage the Play by reading to understand the universe of the play.
- Decode the Character by
*digging beyond the surface to discover the DNA of the character including his/her interior (psychographic) as well as the exterior (socioeconomic) location in the universe of the play.
* Searching for and determining those subliminal and physical attributes that shape the personality of the character
* Knowing the character’s relationships with other characters and how those interactions influence the course of the drama
- ‘Listening’ to and responding to the Director’s cues and scenographic plans not like a robot but like a partner in the process of a creative intercourse.
- Explore the stage and the space beyond the camera by filling the ‘void’ with meaning and impact on the audience/viewer.
- Create and project a character whose memorable stage or screen personality sticks in the minds of the audience long after the curtains have fallen.
A quote from Anton Chekhov: “If you want to work on your art, work on your life”
