Welcome to Ajibogun Mayowa's blog.: Look out for - Diary of a Decent Girl

Welcome to Ajibogun Mayowa's blog.: Look out for - Diary of a Decent Girl

Look out for - Diary of a Decent Girl

SPAN hosts 2017 festival

Society for performing Arts in Nigeria (SPAN) is set to host the 2017 edition of SPANFEST with the aim of offering exceptional opportunities in dance, music, theatre and visual arts to talented Nigerian youth and to celebrate 50 years of vibrant existence of Lagos State and its citizens.

The SPANFEST which was tagged My Beat, My City (iluu mi, Ilu mi) scheduled for 18th -23rd November is meant to create world class performing arts festival with the vision to train performing artistes in 5 days of intensive music dance and drama workshop, and 5 days of mind blowing performance-packed event.

Speaking with journalist at the press briefing, Founder of SPAN, Sarah Boulos said “African people are known to have a very rich cultural and artistic expression that has shaped the artistic world for centuries, especially in the area of dance, drama and visual arts.

 “Since the existence of SPAN in 2005 we have dedicated ourselves to impacting and enriching lives through empowering youth in skillset development opportunities that can help them build careers as well as facilitate the continuity of African art, opportunities through expression, training, inspiring, and empowerment in other to be able to unleash their creativity.

According to her, “The festival will be modern day experience of the great “FESTAC 77” which will showcase performances and presentation in various forms such as Spoken Words, Dance, Music, Theatre and Dance competitions.

Also, a 6-day workshop will be held at SPAN Agidigba Community Centre.

In line with the program, Award Night features critically acclaimed cabaret masterpiece swing and jazz, a fashion show, and orchestra performance, among others, at Muri Okunola Park and EKO Hotels and Suites.

 “As part of our plan to take the festival audience on a ‘journey of wonders’, SPAN will bring together artistes to make ground breaking presentation, mixed up in an alchemy that will inspire audience, invigorate artists, stimulate the industry and forge productive relationships around the globe..”

“Our 12 years journey has been recommended and recognized by several international bodies for transformation brought to the performing Arts Industry especially in the area of education and presentation.

Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com

Hangmen also die: Art as a Revelation to Nigeria Political system

Title: Hangmen also die

Author: Esiaba Irobi

Genre: Play/Tragedy

Original Publication: 1989

Country: Nigeria


The hanging yard of a prison in Port Harcourt in Izon State ushers in the play. Yekini, the prison hangman, defies all threats and persuasion maintaining his ground not to hang seven young men condemned to death. His refusal to hang them was prompted by the fact that he has been battling with his conscience over his job as a hangman, and most importantly, the feeling
within him that those young men do not deserve to die. His attempt to make the Superintendent give details of the crime and all the circumstances surrounding the crime of those young men, leads to a flash back.

The flash back takes five phases of the play. Within these phases, action shows the condemned youths as graduates with good grades who are forced to take to violence by

Art exhibition explores influences of African design

ATLANTA — A new exhibition opening in Atlanta encourages visitors to abandon their preconceived notions about Africa and explore the creative efforts of people using design to bring about change on the vast continent. “Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design” opens at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art. It defines design broadly and delves into the continent’s diversity and vibrancy through more than 200 works by more than 120 artists from 22 countries.

Immediately upon entering is a display of Kenyan artist, Cyrus Kabiru’s “C-Stunners,” a collection of wearable eyeglass sculptures crafted from everyday objects — wires, screws, shoe polish tins. The pieces are not corrective eyeglasses in the literal sense but are meant to help “correct” the perception of Africa, High Museum curator of African art, Carol Thompson said


Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com/

Creative work of Nigerian artist Nnenna Okore to exhibit in London

October Gallery, London, announces a new exhibition by Nnenna Okore. The exhibition holding  from 26 October to 2 December 2017 will be her third solo at the gallery

The proverbial Igbo axiom Ụkwa Ruo Oge Ya Ọ Daa, references the theatrical falling of breadfruit from the mother tree. The plummet of this tropical fruit, known in Igbo as Ukwa, not only indicates the height of its ripening phase, it also sparks the genesis of a new trajectory – the decaying stage.

Symbolically the fallen Ukwa represents metamorphic

The Politician's were uncovered in Niyi Osundare's Socio-political Poetry

Niyi Osundare, a prolific Nigerian writer, poet, essayist, playwright and social critic wrote The Politician’s Two Mouths against the backdrop of the prevailing political climate in Nigeria during the Shehu Shagari-led Second Republic overthrown by the Buhari-Idiagbon junta on December 31, 1983.


The poem was first published in 1984 along with other socio-political protest poems in an anthology titled Village Voices by Evans Brothers (Nigeria Publishers) Limited. Village Voices also contains

How to kill a Writer

When Simon Davis of the great Conde Nast Traveller magazine stepped down as Word of Mouth editor in the international magazine, it was to enable him do a bit of ‘prancing about’ and follow the footsteps of Alexander the Great in visiting the Oasis of Siwa in Egypt. He is a roving tourism journalist visiting great destinations allover the world.

When a Woman a Loves a Poet

Last night,my mother whispered to my ears..
Alabi,you have grown to become a man-
The moment one find his purpose on earth,
He becomes a man.
Your father has bequeathed his seeds unto you,
Your *oguro* will rather come from a poe-tree than palm-tree.

If t'is be my last breath on earth,
I'd leave imprints of a female on your  footsteps,
See ! A man is triggered by what he sees,

A woman tri-guard,by what she hears...
Chasm...charm...words.
That was all your father needed,
to get even *Okara* on his mat.

But what happens when a woman sees petrichor-
in none but a poet ?
Her afterlife becomes painted on a stage,
When others see scars-
She see stars.

When a woman loves a poet,
She's forever young-like *ewe abamoda*....
Her ears reverberates with the echoes of a mic,
Her dreams recurring in bonfire cracks...

Alabi,tell her-
Tell that woman that makes you dance on river beds,
A woman who loves a poet is a deity,
Her magnamity is equal to that of-
*Oya Okara*,the acclaimed woman of *Olukoso*..
*Olomu-roro*,the icon of *Saki Okere*..
*Efunsetan*,the fierce woman who has gold in her grove...
*Orompoto*,the monarch whose name rings a bell in *Oyo*...
A poet is a warrior,
Haven't you heard that *ireke oni-ibudo* ?

A poet has no basement,
Today in Calabar,tomorrow in Kalabari..
But once the abyss of a poet's heart lurch,
Not even fireflies can invade it...
Or haven't you seen how Nkechi beam radiantly than the morning sun,
Nkechi- the mystery behind Komolafe's undying poe-tree ?

Behind every successful man,
is a woman whose *gele* reaches the sky..
Behind every acclaimed poet,
is a woman whose colours ignite the pact of Osumare..

Tell her,
whisper to Desola in the streams of darkness,
She is a magic-
she who loves a poet.


*©BALOGUN YUSUF GEMINI.*

Lagos Theatre Festival: An Avenue for Creativity

City of Lagos will be agog come February 27 to March 4 2018, as lovers of performance art and craft will witness and be treated to another annual 5 days of feasting on theatrical performances tagged: “Lagos Theatre Festival”, an open space performance act to drive home and nurture creative art in our teaming talents.The Lagos Theatre Festival, introduced by British Council in Nigeria is to build capacity in the Nigerian theatre sphere and solve the issue of a lack of performance spaces through identifying available nonconventional spaces.

These nonconventional spaces include open spaces, cars parks and restaurants among others, where performances were adapted to fit these spaces. In essence, the festival adapts performances to harmonise with the space, rather than the more common remodelling of spaces to look like conventional theatres. The Lagos Theatre Festival was part of the UK/Nigeria 2015-16 season by British Council Nigeria, which was a major season of arts in Nigeria aimed at building new audiences, creating new collaborations and strengthening relationships between the UK and Nigeria. British Council partnered with First Bank Nigeria, which is promoting the creative arts in Nigeria through its First Arts initiative, for this festival.

 As theatre practitioners mentioned that lack of performance spaces, as the main issue working against the growth of the sector, the Lagos Theatre Festival after running for 5 years with 4 successful festivals is regarded as one of the most

Ikeogu Oke: The winner of 2017 Nigeria Prize for Literature

Writer, poet and journalist, Ikeogu Oke has been declared winner of this year’s NLNG- sponsored The Nigeria Prize for Literature for his book, ‘The Heresiad’.

Out of 184 entries received for this year’s prize which was pruned down to final three, Oke won the prestigious prize by beating two other contenders, Ogaga Ifowodo (A Good Mourning) and Tanure Ojaide (Songs of myself: Quartet).

Oke’s The Heresiad, published by Kraft Books Ltd, employs the epic form in questioning power and freedom. It probes metaphorically the inner workings of societies and those who shape them. Oke is a writer, poet and journalist. He studied at the Universities of Ibadan and Nigeria. His creative works include ‘Salutes Without Guns’, ‘The Tortoise and the Princess’

The Largest contemporary African art museum

The dream of having a large museum of contemporary African art has finally been realised. This dream, nurtured by former Puma CEO, art collector and now museum creator and patron, Jochen Zeitz, in collaboration with the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, has resulted in the Zeitz MOCAA – the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. The dream is now also reality for contemporary African and Diaspora artists. The largest of such venture on the continent, the museum is in a set of converted grain silos, overlooking the Atlantic and boasting a colourful past that goes back to part-funding by capital from slave compensation after abolition (where the owners were compensated).

The almost $37 million museum has met all expectations so far: to be spectacular, to employ Africans, to give African artists a voice and space in which to be visible and to be a sizeable draw on the city’s social and tourism calendar. The museum is a breath-taking example of converted industrial architecture, designed by British architect, Thomas Heatherwick. The museum’s executive director is Mark Coetzee, a white South African. It says a lot that it’s three white men at the top of the food chain when it comes to the largest such undertaking on African soil.


Source: https://www.vanguardngr.com

Argungu, The biggest fishing Festival

The Argungu fishing festival in its very first edition began in the year 1934, as a mark of the end of the centuries-old hostility between the Sokoto Caliphate and the Kebbi Kingdom. Alhaji Samaila Mera, the Emir of Argungu on Sunday said the popular Argungu Fishing and Cultural Festival would hold in March 2018 and feature polo as one of its events.
Mera made the remarks during a courtesy call by Francis Ogboro, the President of the Nigerian Polo Federation (NPF) and his officials to the Emir’s palace.

The four-day yearly festival held in Kebbi State is one of Nigeria’s internationally recognized tourism attractions. But unfortunately,

The Last Leaf (Short story)

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"

"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.

"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were
open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.

"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.

Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."

"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."

"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down."

"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."

"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."

"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."

"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."

"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

And hour later she said:

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."

The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wIn a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.

"She has one chance in