Tolu Akanni describes himself as “a visionary and dynamic youth with a rare and unique passion sent on a mission to bring out the best in people to the end of seeing men live up to their full capacity.” He is a blogger I first encountered through his place at El Fiz Concept. I liked his writing style and his drive to succeed in his business seeing that he was also a student at the same time. Since then he has started another blog Lobby Experience, where he chronicles his daily experience 100 days to his graduation. He also plans to publish a book titled “A-Z of Life Lessons” from his life so far. The book will be launched in Lagos on July 9, 2010 at Terra Kulture in Victoria Island.

YOU CAN READ THE BOOK EXCERPTS HERE…

Like I have determined to, I got an interview with him in order to promote his work and let you guys meet another budding writer and motivational speaker. Meet Tolu Akanni:

- When and why did you begin writing?

I started writing March 2009.

This was a time when people were writing “25 things about me” on Facebook. I chose to write mine from a different perspective, so I did “A-Z of school: 26 things that made school life fun in our days” a piece that focused on my primary and secondary school experience.

- When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I saw a writer in myself when I started having up to 40comments on my Facebook notes with people asking for more. In fact, the editor-in-chief of Mitre Magazine, Mr Olumide Aregbesola featured that “A-Z of school” in the premiere edition of the magazine that was published August 2009.

- What inspired you to write your book?

I started writing in my internship days, and when I got back to school I took hold of my transcripts and I realised I had missed out of the ‘first class honours’ train and having straight ‘A’s in my 2 concluding semesters won’t get me there.
Having it at the back of my mind that I had fallen short of the promise I made to my father and myself, I sought out for a leverage, I knew there was success in me, but that conviction wasn’t enough, I had to prove myself to my world, I needed to build a resume that would speak for itself.

As at that time I had my articles published in 2 magazines, I was a creative writer for Skye High, I was on the board of Mitre magazine, I was running a blog (http://el-fiz.blogspot.com), ‘Tolu Fiz Akanee’ had become a household name on Facebook for publishing captivating notes.

Taking my writing to the next level was one thing I could hold on to.

- Do you have a specific writing style?

Yes!! My writing style is a complete departure from the conventional. I like to write like I’m having a casual conversation with the reader. I enjoy being random and I like publishing my text in short hand. So my style is freestyle.

- How did you come up with the title?

After writing “A-Z of school” “A-Z of CU” “A-Z of ‘tired’s” “A-Z of Lagos”

The ‘A-Z’ thing was already my brand, so since the book focuses on my experiences within a period of time in my life, ‘A-Z life lessons’ came up.

- Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

My writing skills was birth out of hours of discomfort in the Lagos combi commuter bus a.k.a Danfo during my internship days, and this book is simply a compilation of articles that were written at such moments.

Life is meant to be enjoyed. Momentary discomfort is allowed, it is what you make out of it that counts!

- What books have most influenced your life most?

Think big by Dr Ben Carson

How to think like a billionaire by Donald J. Trump

Life as I see it by Leke Alder

Parable of Dollars by Rev Sam Adeyemi

- If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

Mr Leke Alder

- What book are you reading now?

Branding Unbound by Rick Mathiesin

- What are your current projects?

I’m running my consultancy outfit: El Fiz Concept.

El Fiz Concept is all about brands, events, business consultancy and concept development.

I’m on the executive board of Mitre magazine.

I’m working on a monthly poetry show ‘An evening with the poet’ under the hospice of El Fiz events in partnership with Restruct Consults.

- Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.

Skye high.

Skye high summer 2009 session was a major turning point in my writing career, that’s where I met my coach in the school of writing, Mr ‘Yinka Adeleke.

- Do you see writing as a career?

I won’t stop writing till I draw my last breath. Writing is a form of relaxation to me, it’s something I fall back to after my regular career day.

So writing is more of a part-time career for me.

- Can you share a little of your book with us?

The book makes you appreciate the undiluted thoughts of a 21st century 20year old. Appealing to all audience that appreciate ‘youthfulness’, It is a product of a selection from my 365day old archive, and it goes a long way in reflecting my multifaceted experience within that period of time.

I also have contributing chapters from friends who were with me those 365days.

It’s a blend of poetry, short stories and motivational text; it enjoys a quality blend of photography with each chapter having its unique pictorial expression.

It speaks of comfort and discomfort, it speaks about the constant and the constantly changing, it talks about our everyday lives. It’s a book you would want to read, keep and re-read.

- Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Keeping up with delivery standards. There are things I write and people love and appreciate it so much that I find myself doubting if the next will keep up to standards or even beat the last.

- Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?

Leke Alder. He’s the smartest and deepest author I’ve ever come across, his concepts are out of this world and his delivery is simply unique.

- Who designed the covers?

Photography was done by Mr ‘Wale Adenuga of Unlimited works.

Graphics design by Mr Ade of Rebirth Media

- What was the hardest part of writing your book?

I did the writings over time, so the main task was developing a unique concept for a compilation, and finding a graphics designer to bring it to life.

I want to appreciate Mr Ade, he brought out the beauty of the book like he was sitted right there in my mind.

- Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

My life is defined by influence, I’m a product of influence, if I had not had the privilege of meeting the members of my creativity team, there would have been no book!

First it was ‘Jaye Aderounmu of Restruct consult who impressed it on me that my compilations were publication worthy. Then Omoge black took the photography to the next level, Dupe Macaulay of Tecknicoleur designs was a major plus to the team.
Lesson learnt: you can’t rise above the level of your association. Tap into networking.

- Do you have any advice for other writers?

Be dissatisfied with your current position, surprise yourself then your world will be equally surprised.

- Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

This is just the beginning.

___________________________________

First posted on my blog, www.mynewhitmanwrites.com

Fela on Broadway/Photo: Monique Carboni

NYT theater critic, Charles Isherwood, fires the first volley in the Fela! backlash, and I must say about time too; like a Barack Obama inevitably losing some luster, i thought the backlash against Fela! was also inevitable; the more rave reviews a musical about a radical Nigerian musician garnered, the more its Bradjelina-adopted-African-orphan existence on Broadway became a “big girl now” and, alas, its protective skin of white guilt/political correctness begins to peel.

For covering fire for his contrarian mad dash, Isherwood hijacks a line from David Mamet’s problematic–check Alyssa’s review–new play, Race – “I know there is nothing a white person can say to a black person about race which is not both incorrect and offensive,” and that said, apart from Isherwood’s concerns about the whole disneyficationof Fela’s milieu, taking a pair of scissors to the article, Isherwood’s  bone of racial contention seems to be:

…the emphasis in “Fela!” on the spectacle of African culture tilted the show a little too closely toward minstrelsy. It evoked an unsettling feeling I can’t say I ever had before at the theater…. In contrast with characters in recent plays like Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined” and Danai Gurira’s “Eclipsed” — both of which explore the hard experience of African women by depicting fully developed lives caught in trying, sometimes terrible circumstances — the women of “Fela!” are largely festive window dressing.

Attired in eye-catching, vibrantly colored, flesh-baring ensembles, with their faces painted, they strut around the stage and the theater looking exotic, imperious and sexy. So too do the male members of the ensemble, who also bare a lot of flesh but have little to do other than sing and dance.

Hence my discomfort. The presentation of African culture as a feast of exotic pageantry has the potential, at least, to reinforce stereotypes of African people as primitive and unsophisticated, albeit endowed with astounding aptitudes for song and dance. Although some of the dancers have individual moments, none are given individual voices; sometimes they simply drape the stage like gaudy décor. And the way the dancers weave in and out of the audience repeatedly seems ingratiating, a sort of seduction that almost sexualizes the performers… In frolicking so exuberantly among the theatergoers, “Fela!” sometimes seems to turn its ostensible characters into flashy sideshow entertainments, to elevate sensation over substance.

Readers threw 108 comments back at him along with an invaluable window, for me at least, on everything I find fascinating about the tangled web of ideology, rationality and representation. But before getting into that, as a Nigerian (who through Fela’s lifetime only visited the Shrine once and on a night Fela didn’t even play) my prior analysis on the musical (which I saw in Dec ’09) is here and it squashes as well as preserves some of what Isherwood just said. Scanning the litany of comments, the closest thing to the position I’d take on the issues of representation raised in Fela! is echoed by commenter 95, who spits this:

Fela was such a complicated and in many ways deeply misguided individual it is very hard to conceive of a Bway show approaching his story in anything but the most superficial way. The feel-good African exuberance that seems to dominate the show is something that could be re-created on a Bway stage, but it reflects only one side of Fela and that side only partially. It is wrong to fault the show for turning Fela into a fetishist, because, he himself was a fetishist who turned himself into a fetish. There was undoubtedly authenticity and enormous courage in that, and brilliant musical innovation, but there was not much in the way of engagement with the real problems of Nigerians–at home or in the world.

That comment goes with the below excerpt of  my thoughts after viewing Fela Kuti – In Concert and the documentary Femi Kuti: Live at the Shrine:

The Shrine in its present reincarnation feels like a self watering flower pot for growing the good ganja that is Afro-beat music and the concessions its political dimension has to make to the patriarchal, bottom barrel, mass consumerist leanings of free market economics is already constructed into the music and embedded in its imagery. Fela’s genius was his ability to smuggle all of life’s frustrations, a political agenda, and, most importantly, a potent patriarchal and sexual iconography under the body paint and masks of negritude and Africanism. The sexual and the political are therefore co-dependent forces in Fela’s brand of Afrobeat – and Femi’s too.

In other words, what Isherwood misconstrues as signifiers of the primitive, the hypersexualization of the performers, the spilling of the performance off the stage and into the audience (no doubt something Bill T Jones thought would substitute for the call and response dynamic in Fela’s music) and the overall seduction of Fela! wasn’t all invented by Bill T Jones and co, but are all aspects of the Africanist politics, beliefs and iconography via which Fela frees himself from middle class values to embrace patriarchy, turn his female dancers literally into brides or priestesses of an Orisha, creating a context in which they are the objectified fixtures of that Orisha’s shrine (the Orisha in this case being the spirit of Fela’s dead mother I would imagine) and within which the their objectification is “permitted” and their sexualization merely a by product.

All the above results in an overall seduction that’s uniquely Fela’s own brew and he used it to fuel Afrobeat’s engine and mass appeal. Call it Fela-economics. That said, Isherwood can be forgiven for not knowing how deeply embedded Africanist trappings and the fusion of Yoruba deification turned sexuality are in Fela’s milieu, but he shouldn’t be forgiven for staying in the evaluative box that refuses to see Fela, as one would any other Western artist, as intuiting his own business model and simply being a business man. In other words, Isherwood is not wrong for imposing a Western framework on Fela! He just imposes the wrong one.

Out of the 180 sticks and stones thrown at Isherwood, these pile stand out. In reaction to Isherwood’s assumption that the musical should be substantial in addressing Africa, commenter 38 fires:

The play has no obligation to speak for all of African culture–can’t be done, and no one should expect it to. “Fela” is a portrait of a particular figure, a Nigerian musician whose shows were known for their spectacle. As a devotee of Fela’s music for 25 years, I found the portrait of him to be faithful and well-researched. The play captured magnificently the excitement, aura, spectacle, and delicious grooves of a Fela show. Would Mr. Isherwood fret about “Mamma Mia” misrepresenting “Scandinavian culture”? Of course not–everyone knows that play is just entertainment on Broadway, as is “Fela.”

…or substantial in the vein of Lynn Nottage’s “Ruined” or Danai Gurira’s “Eclipsed,” commenter 83:

My question is why would ‘Ruined’ be your inspiration for going to see FELA!? There is no logical connection…unless Africa is one undifferentiated mass to you. Would you go see a musical set in France just because you’d seen a play set in England? People need to interrogate their own (mis)understandings of the continent instead of blaming a brilliant musical production because it didn’t serve up their one-size-fits-all vision of Africa and Africans!

In addition, commenter 100 thinks Isherwood is asking too much of this musical:

Of course Broadway isn’t going to give genuine Nigerian culture an outing. That’s not what it’s there for. Broadway gives Broadway entertainment under the thin guise of a window into something else. Was The King and I remotely accurate about Siamese culture or history? (Music: Rodgers, choreography: Robbins) Was there anyone in New York who knew that country at all, and knew how phony it all was? Phony but wonderful. Sixty years later, Thailand is a major tourist destination and Thai restaurants are all over the city and the land. The show helped to make Americans curious. Fela may do the same vis-a-vis Nigeria or even the impossible complexities of enormous Africa… Broadway chews up other cultures and spits them out, the way birds chew the food they bring home to nourish their young. The other cultures are not hurt by this – the taste arouses an appetite for more.

Commenter 34 couldn’t shake the feeling of “cultural tourism” in attending FELA! and suspected what provoked Isherwood’s reaction was the “somewhat puzzled look on a sea of upturned white faces … as if neo-colonialism was happening…” Commenter 43sees the term “minstrelsy” as the only frame of reference Isherwood could use to explain his discomfort with seeing an unapologetic black sensuality – “… the players on stage are commanding and in command of their sensuality — not shuckin’ and steppin’ as minstrelsy would imply.” Commenter 94 brings it home:

I am sick and tired though of hearing white people tell me how to behave “properly” so as not to reinforce stereotypes. In Nigeria, women dance by shaking their back-sides, sorry if it makes some middle-aged white man uncomfortable, but that’s just how we do it….I don’t complain when I see white people line dancing!

Commenter 57, who worked with Fela in the 80s, speaks of a “mother-fucker Fela,” but it is commenter 89 who mentions the other radicals in the Anikulapo clan that deserve a mention, if not a Broadway musical of their own:

Fact is, in the world we are today, Nigeria is really too far away from America for a serious and commercially successful treatment of the kind of issues the reviewer seems to be looking for in America. Fela was really just an anti-authoritarian and a magnet for the young and restless, but putting him up in too much a serious way as some sort of human rights hero would be a bit much. I mean, in real life Fela had two siblings, Olikoye and Beko. Olikoye was a Professor of Pedriatrics who did excellent work in public health education and public health administration. Beko was also a medical doctor who was a REAL leader in human rights issues throughout most of his adult life. None of these guys married 27 wives. They were disciplined and worked SERIOUSLY the way an ACLU guy or an AMA guy would work. Beko went to prison for his opposition to governments probably as much as Fela did. If someone was doing “serious” work on the topic, they would have to include these gentlemen (since Fela’s mother came into the show). But that is a lot of serious work. For a lot less money. And much smaller audience. So, just enjoy it show. It’s a musical.

And, hmmm…,  commenter 102 thinks, perhaps, Isherwood and NYT are up to something:

It seemed VERY peculiar to me that the Times, more than two months after the opening of “Fela!,” felt the need to provide revisionist “balance” to all the praise the show has justly received. It’s almost as though the paper wants to provide cover for reactionary theatergoers (and Tony voters) who don’t want any challenges to their conventional notions of what a Broadway musical can and should be. I sure can’t remember any reviews expressing retroactive misgivings about, say, “Billy Elliot” a couple of months into its run.

Literature is always a minority affair. Even in the blogosphere where we are continually inundated with massive proliferation of voices and concerns. Yet, a literary blog posses more danger to structured scholarship than any other kind of blog. The idea of a literary blog is to widen access to works of art and extend the reaches of critical activities. But the word ‘critical’ is used guardedly here because the supposed democracy of the blogosphere, which admits of individuated (oft exaggerated) rights of voice within the multitude of voices, can also translate to ‘uncritical’ adventure for the blogger-reviewer! The danger is that the peculiar character of blogosphere as a site of discourse, its nature of immediacy, might not lend a strong, well thought-out spine to literary opinions and commentary and therefore might create a situation of ‘attenuation of taste and conservatism of judgment, to borrow words from Ronan McDonald.

Yet the blogsville should not be a place where literature goes to ruin. And Nigerian literary bloggers, it seems, still cede the rights of place for critical erudition on, and dissection of, literary works to a few (rarefied) academic journals, a small number of e-zines devoted to literary activities and (although less ebullient nowadays) art pages of newspapers. Most Nigerian literary blogs approach the treatment of literary materials with a reportorial light-heart rather than academic diligence. It is just as well. It is however hard to find a blog devoted entirely to profiling Nigerian writers-their biographies and their works- in the way anglocamlit.blogspot.com is doing for Cameroonian Anglophone Literature.

Molara Wood’s wordsbody is perhaps the most popular literary blogs in Nigeria and one whose views are taken seriously by a lot of readers. Although Wordsbody covers the broad spectrum of the arts, its literary slant is quite noticeable. The blog’s last entry is in December ’08 and it announces the Farafina’s Visual Arts and Literature Event. This event included a film screening of MW’s own ‘Molara Wood in conversation with Ben Okri’. It will be greatly rewarding however to visit her old posts.

Somaila Isah Umaisha’s everything literature is one of the most vibrant, most engaging literary blogs in the country. The latest post explores the link between sports and culture through the background of recently concluded National Sports Festival in Kaduna. Umaisha reports that the culture content of the Sports event included 300 contemporary performers and 200 cultural performers, a festival play, The Royal Chamber, written by award winning playwright, Yahaya Dangana and a festival poem read by Alkasim Abdulkadir, the national publicity secretary of Association of Nigeria Authors. The report is accompanied with photos from the events.

Kingsley Keke’s poetry blog, Poetivation posts a poem ,’Life’, dedicated to his new born niece, Rihanna, ‘and every newborn babies(sic) in the world’ The short poem traces the growth of Rihanna from the yoke to uterus to labour and the breaking forth ‘like a rushing of tap’. Such imagery.

Onyeka Nwelue of Castle of the Writer reproduces a paper he presented at PAGES as part of the exhibition, ‘The World is Round’. The paper is titled ‘The Writer’s Work as Geographer’. Nwelue in the paper discusses how the joy of seeing description of a recognizable place in a book enhances a reading pleasure. He describes how he (together with friends) has discovered to his pleasure that the house Chimamanda herself used to live in matches one described in Purple Hibiscus as Aunty Ifeoma’s .He concludes that ‘fictionalizing real settings with the real names can help a city, a country by luring more tourists into it’. A good read though a little not as deep as expected for a topic that describes a creative symbiosis between literature and the map.

Eromo Egbejule of The Barbecue Republic reviews Oyeka Nwelue’s book, The Abyssinian Boy, situating its thematic concerns in ‘the social political cum ethnic cum religious links between Nigeria and India. The book gets his critical rebuke for its excessive use of flashback device and incredibility in the part where a 62 year old woman in a Nigerian village is said to be gay. Aside this textual harm as noticed by the reviewer, the review is generally sympathetic and the book is predicted to win an award this year.

Jude Dibia’s JUDE DIBIA discusses the protest of gay rights activists to the Nigerian law makers in relation to the proposed bill that legalises arrest of suspected homosexuals by the Police. Jude Dibia examines the protest of these ‘invisibles’ against a repressive law within the context of his novel, Walking with Shadows about challenges of the homosexuals in an unaccommodating society.

Osondu Awaraka of Incessant Scribble posts to announce his relocation to the US and its enabling possibility for more efficient blogosphere experience. He also announces the list of books he’s waiting to review on the blog; these include Helen Oyeyemi’s The Opposite House, Habila’s Measuring Time and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come.

Wole Oguntokun of Laspapi(laspapi.blogspot.com) announces the continuation of Soyinka’s Death and King’s Horseman at Olivier Hall of the National Theatre, London till may. Wole Oguntokun who is better known for his light-hearted column, The Girl Whisperer, in ‘Life’ magazine of Nigeria’s The Guardian on Sunday ,( The Girl Whisper is also posted on ‘laspapi’) is a Lagos based theatre director and consultant to the research crew of National Theatre London on the play.

The two ladies of The Bookaholic Blog post a short review of Doreen Baingana’s Tropical Fish- Tales from Entebbe. Describing the arresting nature of the book cover, the blog also notices that Ms Baingana’s effort is bold as it tackles ‘hard and sensitive issues such as faith, cohesion, religion, evolution of culture…’and so on. You might want to read the review to prompt your search for the book.