sometime in September 2004, Odia collapsed at a lecture hall on the Obafemi Awolowo institution just as he changed into about to deliver a public lecture. To the consternation of everybody latest, Odia passed out completely and only came back to recognition on the tuition educating hospital to which he had been rushed. The next time that I noticed him in person after that event, I asked him what precisely was the component that led to his crumple. His response to my query changed into, with the intention to talk, speculative and conjectural, not scientific and goal. This caused me to supply what i believed was a correct scientific and materialist explanation for that fall down. however to be able to soften the rigour of this "scientific" clarification, I spoke in Pidgin English: "Odia", I pointed out, "na poverty make you give way that day; no be lack of sleep, tiredness or small, small fever wey you been get the week earlier than; na poverty, pure and simple!"
i was enormously completely happy that Odia understood and took smartly the meant joke at the back of my suggestion of poverty because the cause of his collapse that day in Ife in September 2004. but the actuality is that i used to be also in earnest in my suggestion of poverty as the culprit, the nemesis. let me to start my lecture this morning from this remark. however earlier than doing so, let me very briefly "recognize" the person for and about whom we're gathered here in occasion today and tomorrow. Let me additionally note parenthetically right here that in the idiom or parlance of Nigerian English as a spinoff of the discourse of religiosity, to "respect" in Nigeria now capacity to glorify. i hope that it might be obtrusive at some stage in my lecture that my "appreciation", my glorification of Odia might be crucial.
Mr. Chairman, your excellencies executive Governors, fellow students, writers and artists, unique ladies and gentlemen, all protocols duly followed, let me delivery by means of announcing that it is a superb honour and privilege to had been invited to give this Keynote Lecture. but where does one birth with the task of "appreciating" Odia? it's one element to be one of the vital prolific writers of Nigeria and Africa of all time as Odia is, no doubt. He has produced greater than forty books of poetry, polemics, nonfiction prose, choreopoems stronger called "poems for dance drama" and cultural journalism. but it is something else utterly to even be one of the crucial progressive of the poets throughout a number of generations of poets in our continent. in addition, consider the incontrovertible fact that for greater than forty years from the 1970s when Odia begun writing to the present time, his productivity has been unceasingly sustained.
And there is that this additionally incredibly crucial aspect of Odia's mind as a bold polymath whose poetic and intellectual works are informed by using and breadth of researching, each for its own sake and in brilliant application to lots of the topics, subject matters and considerations of his works. for instance, in works like A apartment of Many Mansions and looking for Ogun: Soyinka regardless of Nietzsche, we encounter a very good parade of the ideas of the world's top-quality students and writers of the previous and the current, African, European, American and Asian, the likes of whom one rarely encounters in a single work with the aid of any writer. And yet, they are saying Odia went to Oxford and did now not finished his stories against the Ph D. Who wants a Ph D when he or she is already incredibly self-proficient to the highest feasible standards of better studying? These are all rare achievements however quoting Toyin Falola quoting Fela Kuti, let me say here th at "I by no means finish"! by no means finish what? "Appreciating" Odia!
I invoke Fela right here for one selected cause. Like Odia, he changed into immensely prolific; his productiveness turned into sustained unstoppably in the course of the three and half many years of the tumult of his lifestyles and music. however Fela's productiveness, his prolificness changed into deeply marked with the aid of his inventiveness in the genres, kinds and idioms of track. He was proficient in classical, "scored" traditions of song, but he went all over into musical and perfomative idioms of the heritage of African folks song to the sounds and smarts of the road. And this ordinary or formal inventiveness of Fela turned into expressed both throughout and within genres.
So it's with Odia, as it is also, I might add, with Soyinka and Osofisan. In Odia's selected case, it may well be argued that beyond writing within and throughout a couple of or diverse genres, he invented some new typical hybrids in Nigerian and African Anglophone poetry and prose. for example, take the medium or idiom of prose or, more mainly, nonfiction prose. It has been accurately accompanied that Odia is, amongst different things, a veritable polemicist. what is often unnoticed of this assertion is the proven fact that in lots of of Odia's polemical, nonfiction essays, he freely mixes idioms of discourse which are normally or normatively stored separate and aside: lengthy, circuitous ruminations with impeccable scholarly references right subsequent to tangential or side remarks that examine like Fela's noted "yapis" at the Shrine; looking analyses derived from close readings of advanced and challenging texts combined with passages of loquacious asides that one may discover within the "Amebo" idioms of the market and the oral social media.
I certainly not conclude but for now, make I cease there, nation people. The leading factor, i am hoping, has been vigorously argued: the work of Odia in the closing 4 a long time is a bountiful harvest it's worth celebrating, principally in opposition t the background of the indisputable fact that at age 70, he is nevertheless as lively and productive as ever. This leads me to the factor about poverty with which I started this talk.
Now, it could look that from the profile I actually have given here of Odia's workaholic way of life and productivity, his collapse at Ife in September 2004 was probably or arguably due extra to overwork and exhaustion than anything. Or else it was because of nothing greater than the vagaries of existence itself as embodied and lived in the frailties and vulnerabilities of our our bodies and their organs and tissues. So how does poverty come into the discussion? well, the reality is that poverty is so lots a constitutive aspect or expression of Odia's existence and id that it is universally taken as a right and on no account in reality made an object of critical discussion about him and his works. these days, in my lecture, I want to suitable this evasion or silence regarding the place of poverty in Odia's work and way of life. Put on the simplest level of a formal proposition, here's what i'm claiming and declaring right here: poverty did not select Oda; Odia it changed int o who chose poverty.
seeing that the details of Odia's early life are well well-known, some individuals could jump straight to the conclusion that I bear in mind in making this observation or statement the fact that Odia's early life as much as his young maturity turned into certainly marked by means of poverty and difficulty. for those who are unfamiliar with this element of our celebrant's youth, please read the short bio of Odia written by means of the organizers of this conference in the circulated/allotted application of court cases. but this is now not the poverty I take into account here. yes, abject, literal poverty may additionally have chosen Odia in his younger years with out watching for an invite, however once the celebrant, towards all the odds, became a university graduate and a suitable-flight journalist and member of the country wide intelligentsia, he may have parted enterprise with poverty continually. but he chose not to accomplish that. Let me put this across in a a bit of d istinctive method: Odia's skill, his work as journalist, media administrator and doyen may rather without problems have fetched him, if not enormous wealth, at the least a cushty existence in our nation.
in spite of everything, here is what almost everybody does who ever receives the rare opportunity to be a part of the cultural and literary elite in our nation: make it rich and develop into fortified in opposition t poverty as instantly as viable; if you can't turn into a billionaire, at the least develop into a magnate in double or triple digits. Odia did readily and brilliantly be part of the countrywide literati greater than forty years in the past, and this at the very top rung of the ladder. but he didn't half enterprise with poverty; quite, he embraced it and lived it, as Jesus Christ of Nazareth and his disciples did and as Mahatma Gandhi of India did. unlike these figures out of background and religion, Odia under no circumstances formally took the vows of poverty, however he could as smartly have done so due to the fact that poverty is this kind of remarkable point of his work, his lifestyles, his identity. permit me to place some flesh on the bare bones, the skeleton of this profile.
so far as you possibly can tell from the profile of his biography sketched with the aid of the organizers of this convention, the final time that Odia had an everyday, paid employment became 1999. That is a few twenty-one years in the past. One could say that in view that then, he has been self-employed, residing on revenue made by the Hornbill condominium of culture, the corporation he deploy to put up and distribute virtually all his works and produce dance dramas in line with his poems. but everyone knows that Hornbill apartment has no longer made it rich; as a rely of truth, there's low cost doubt that it become ever supposed to make Odia rich. meanwhile, rumuor has it that Odia neither has a automobile nor owns the residence during which he lives. i do know that as soon as upon a time long in the past, he did have a jalopy, but he now traverses Lagos and the country, either in public transportation or in rides with friends or associates travelling to the equal areas as himsel f. Most big of all, it's well commonplace that like some writers and artists of other locations and eras of human cultural historical past, Odia has had what you may name "purchasers", these being fans of writing, artwork and culture, who have supplied some material support for his needs and his initiatives. however precisely as a result of such assist via "purchasers" is normatively irregular and kooky if not from time to time compromising, Odia has stolidly maintained his independence of all "buyers" and because of this, his paintings and his intellect have remained his own. here's the coronary heart of the count during this lecture: poverty as a variety of wealth, a source of excellent emotional and ideological fortification in existence, art and way of life.
Of path, i am speakme here of poverty in a extremely special sense. I even have already given a hint of this variety of poverty by invoking the examples of Christ and Gandhi. I now add as a complement, the philosophical culture which holds that the handiest solution to be prosperous is to need and own as little as possible due to the fact the longing for wealth is regularly not most effective insatiable but additionally harmful of exact human capacities for compassion, fellow-feeling, altruism and the pursuit of public respectable. Let me put this across as easily as viable. Odia could somewhat simply have long gone into academia and turn into a celebrated student; he may have turn into a media executive of the highest caliber; and he might without difficulty have used the breadth and reach of his contacts among the many powerful and the prosperous of our nation and different ingredients of the world to turn into rich. but he selected to live and work, actually and ideologically, among the terrible and the deprived. amongst all contributors of the higher echelons of the modern Nigerian literati, he is virtually alone in making that alternative. here is giant in itself, but far more tremendous is the indisputable fact that it comes, in my opinion, from Odia's lifelong, virtually maniacal devotion to the notice. here's the 2nd, longer and more important a part of this lecture. Time now for me to go to it without delay.
Biodun Jeyifo [email protected]
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