FESTAC ‘77… Somi And Her Fabric of Courage
Somi
Her allure swept across the room like a new broom. Draped in a monochrome jumpsuit, her enigma stuck out like the knotted braids she wore. Silence engulfed the air in that humid room at the Old Printing Press in Broad Street, Lagos, where Somi Kakoma stood with her band, her courage and an archive begging for awareness.
The music at the opening day of The Fabric of Courage, Somi’s week-long exhibition of the remarkable archives of the World Black Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC), which held for the second time it occurred, back in 1977, was a marvel to listen to. It marked the debut Lagos performance of the Grammy-nominated jazzist and her band on her tributary work on the late South African songbird Miriam Makeba, dubbed, Zenzile: Reimagination of Miriam Makeba.
The exhibition featured photographs from Marilyn Nance, the official photographer for the North American zone at FESTAC ‘77, as well as a feature of Tam Fiofori’s iconic crowd shots at the festival, and other salient records kept by the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC). And, ultimately, it casted a spotlight on one of the biggest ever global cultural activities held in Africa.
Somi, who thrives as a scholar, activist, musician and multi-racial personality, has been a ‘native’ of Lagos suburbs despite originally being from Uganda and Rwanda. Her 2014 opus, The Lagos Music Salon, was a quintessential toast to the erratic megacity that shaped that jazz album. And, her fascination with Miriam Makeba, the only female African musician to perform at FESTAC ‘77, led her to the building blocks of the exhibition.
At the Fabric of Courage, Somi and her band’s intriguing stagecraft lit up hearts as she channels her enigma in vibrant footwork, ululated bursts, and sharp tempo transitions that coloured her hour long performance. Her desire to champion Pan-Africanism across all generations of her listeners charged the exhibition, and notable stakeholders including veteran culture curator Jahman Anikulapo, theatre scholar, Professor Duro Oni; Marilyn Nance; and CBAAC Director-General, Aisha Augie; already passed the baton with a thought-provoking roundtable on the festival’s past and future.
In a special sit-down with Guardian Music, the 42-year-old chanteuse peels back her experience researching FESTAC ‘77 and organising the exhibition; her thoughts on building cultural consciousness and working with non-Jazzists; as well as her forthcoming projects and her effervescent lore for cultural storytelling.
What are you up to right now?
Well, I’m working on a new album. I’m also working on a, you know, well, people have been expressing interest in touring the exhibition and in other parts of Nigeria, which is cool, which wasn’t the plan necessarily, but I’m thrilled about the possibility but yeah, I’m working on my new album. I’ve got some other shows in America and Europe. And performances, I guess, just touring. I’m a writer. I’m a playwright. So, I’m working on two new plays as well.
Your own organisation, Salon Africana, produced the exhibition. Tell us about this your creative engine room
Salon Africana was a boutique cultural agency and record label before the pandemic. It was established in 2019. Initially, we were focused on bringing over African musicians, African artists on the continent or in Europe, who are kind of operating outside of pop, mainstream African music space, but we’re doing really beautiful work in jazz in alternative, alte as they refer to it in Lagos, just a different kind of music, right? They aren’t necessarily as visible to the Western music industries as, say, Afrobeats are. So, initially it was about holding space for those African jazz musicians, African art musicians, and African Alte musicians. And bringing them to do these more intimate salons in New York and then have an opportunity to talk about the work and so that’s where it originally that’s what I was originally doing. But with the plan of expanding of course, music is always sort of the marquee discipline, because I’m a musician, but understands holding space for the literary arts and various performing arts, dance and theater. So, initially, and we started doing these events, and we were in partnership with the Africa Centre here in New York. And then the pandemic happened, and obviously, live performances changed.
And we decided to lean into the record label side of it. Through which I released my last two albums. And now that we’ve had a chance to kind of regroup and want to re-engage in terms of curating live experiences that really still hold space. We decided to start doing things that work on the continent. I’m personally very interested in the archive you know, how we think about, how we care for or don’t care for, or engage with the archive of our cultural heritage on the continent and how that might inspire contemporary culture today. I had been doing some research on FESTAC, which really came out of what I’m doing on Miriam Makeba, because it was by looking at her history around the continent that I realised she was the only woman named at first and I was like, Well, why is that there were other women and then it kind of grew from there. So this was the first activation and we’re thrilled and the goal is to continue to do work or create experiences in historic sites of cultural production across the continent. So this was the first being real printing press and obviously, responding to the archive of FESTAC as a Pan African space.
How did you manage to meet up with Marilyn Nance and conceive the idea for the exhibition in Lagos?
So, 2022 was when her book, Last Day In Lagos, came out. I first read about the book in the New York Times, there was an article about Marilyn Nan’s and of course, her editor Remi Onabanjo, I was curious and said I’d always known about FESTAC and would hear older people speaking about how amazing it was, and I would always be like, why isn’t there more? Like what are the stories, why is it that we don’t really celebrate, I was just curious and fascinated by FESTAC and I ordered the book based on that article I read. About a week after I received it, I got an email from an organisation called Center for Art Research and Alliances also known as CARA, in New York, they are partly a gallery, partly a performance exhibition space. It’s also a bookstore and, and a publisher. It was just a very new space. It’s only been here since 2022. But it was sort of an interesting kind of interdisciplinary, multi-hyphenate cultural space and endeavor.
And they reached out to me, because at the time they were hosting an exhibition by a South African artist, Naomi Younga, who had some part of his exhibition about Mariam Makeba. And because my play had been running in New York, many came to see the show. Many people who were passing through the exhibition were like, oh, you guys, should you guys should think about Sony coming here to do something because they were having, I guess, monthly performances in response to his work. And so when they reached out to me, I was like, , I’d never heard of them. I started researching them. And then I saw in this book that they were also a publisher, which I thought was very interesting, that they were doing multiple things in that way. And so anyhow, I ended up collaborating with them doing the performance in their space. They had invited Marilyn Nance, because I mentioned that I was a fan of the book. They invited her and then that’s how she and I first came into community with each other.
And so it was only a few months later that I actually started really researching FESTAC. It was probably seven months later actually, but I was in Nigeria that I came specifically to look at that history, which was December of 2022. And that’s when I started discovering this, the archive even in Nigeria. At the Center for Black and African Art and Civilization, also known as CBAAC in Lagos, many people weren’t even aware that CBAAC existed. I certainly wasn’t. And so then I discovered this whole archive they have there and I was like, let me lean into this because I just realized it was so vast. Anyhow, so the more I started thinking about the site you know, then you look at all the infrastructure that was made, FESTAC town or National theater or national stadium or even like a hotel and all these things were built because of FESTAC or it is to host all of the people who are coming from 50 to 15,000 black artists from around the world.
So I just also became interested in this idea of place, this idea of absence and presence, like how you have these like, you know, glorious structures who had this very weighted presence and history. But there’s a very profound sense of absence because these places aren’t being used anymore. And I just thought, what would it be to try to activate or respond to these spaces or respond to the archive? A friend of mine pointed me to the printing press as an interesting venue, because it also sort of suffers the same fate as many of those venues: Even Tafawa Balewa Square as well, which wasn’t built for FESTAC obviously, but because of its relationship to the history of that festival. So the printing press to me, you know, what is it to reactivate this space that was about original narratives, old narratives old stories that were first printed in Nigeria, and to then have the machines there as witnesses of these new stories and the ways that we’re kind of re-engaging with the archives. It is all very interesting and exciting to think about. So excuse me. So that’s how that sort of came about. And of course, I reached out to Marilyn Nance and her team, and they were thrilled about the idea of actually bringing the work back to Nigeria, as you know, she hadn’t been in Lagos since 1977, when she took the photos.
So to actually think about the fabric of courage as a way to show the work and also sort of as an official book launch for the book itself In Nigeria. You know, I had the Jazzhole store in Lagos. I was carrying it when it first came out, but I think most people didn’t really know about it here in Nigeria. So, it was great to be able to bring that the book and Marilyn and the and the images here and of course in conversation with Tam Fiofori with his iconic image of the crowd, and as well as bringing the book that Chimurenga in South Africa made which really was the first kind of anthology of literature from FESTAC. And then of course, bringing my own band to share my performance of Miriam Makeba and my reflections on her. I would like to believe people felt a very profound Pan-African space, you know, for people from all over the continent to be a part of it, from the diaspora and of course, Nigeria.
What else are you researching or planning to research?
Well, I think that my work has always been very invested in ideas of the archive of cultural memory and a place. Even if you go back to the year 2014 when I released my album, The Lagos Music Salon, which was inspired by my living in Nigeria, living in Lagos for almost two years, which is why I always have a tote till today, because it’s one of my homes. For me, the archive in that project was about the archive I was gathering, you know, t I feel like my work has become, in some way merged into like ethnographic surveys- contemporary ethnographic surveys and not in an old kind of anthropological way of thinking about things but in the sense of like, how do I be a witness of where I am, and a sense of place, and then how do I evoke the place? So gathering an archive of my time in Lagos, writing music that is in response to that archive, writing music that is in response to that place, my next record after that was Pity Deftly, which is about the African immigrant community in Harlem. New York City, and how they’re being displaced in the face of gentrification.
So what does it mean to witness their stories? I started collecting a lot of their personal stories of the African immigrant community here in Harlem and then writing music in response to that and then hoping to invite conversations around the contribution of that community over the last 4050 years to New York. In doing so, that evokes the archive immediately, and it also insists that we begin to look more closely at the archive, both the past and the actively made one and then think about Miriam Makeba, it’s the same kind of journey of thinking about her as a place as a site of knowledge, a site of information, and thinking about the ways in which her dislocation from her own archive has then you know, obviously inspired me as an artist, and, also as an activist in some way. Then to think about her archive and like, how do we reconstitute that into storytelling, both in music and theater, so you know my focus right now. I mean, I still am deep inside of FESTAC. I think other projects are emerging from that archive. But I’m also interested in looking at again, these historic sites of cultural production, what is it to look at, you know, all of the places in which looking at like, the history of the African Union, Haile Selassie, the history of Rumble in the Jungle, the famous boxing match in 1974 in Kinshasa. I mean, I’m just very interested in them, and for me, when I talk about those spaces; I’m talking about the performances and the art that happened as a part of those spaces. I’m not saying I want to understand this, you know, of course, I’m always interested in the political and economic and social context that frame those things, but I’m very interested in the actual art that was invited to take place there or that was made as a result of being there. And I think to me, we talk a lot about tuition for the visual arts in postcolonial spaces. We talk about what is it to bring stolen art of art and masks and various things that are of real value in during colonialism, what is it to return those things to the continent and to their cultural, origins, but then, it makes me think about what is the question around the performing arts.
Surely, we’ve sustained a certain type of the same kind of cultural violence, right? I think the difference is visual arts if there’s a tangible thing, whereas performing arts we’re operating from a place of the ephemeral, the fleeting, you know, it’s like what’s happening right now and then suddenly, it’s gone. And so our only recourse is actually the archive, the ways in which it’s documented and the ways in which it is preserved that history and the stories and those performances and that contribution is preserved. So, that’s my interest in the archive right now. It’s like how we have it across the continent. What is the archive of the African performing art of the performing arts in the African context? And how do we safeguard its history? And how do we become true custodians of that archive as a way of remedying the cultural violence that these artists of the past and present have sustained as a result of colonialism?
Are you willing to work with non-Jazz singers in promoting your cause?
It’s not that these projects are not meant to be nobler than anybody else’s art-making practice. You know, I don’t see it as such. I think that kind of suggests some sort of hierarchy to the value of what everybody is doing and just I, value so much of what people are doing. We can sit here and it sounds very heavy and cerebral and maybe intellectual or academic, right? But the real thing is, it’s only because you’re asking me to unpack some of the things that are in my mind, but there are ways that I think about how this might reverberate in other ways. However, for me, I am just interested in a certain type of storytelling and truth. And I hope that you feel that in the performance that it doesn’t feel like all I mean, yes, it can open up these other conversations, but I’m just interested in truth-telling from myself and others. And so, I guess then the straight answer is always being interested in collaboration with people who are working around or outside of and completely opposite from what I’m doing. You know, I think collaboration is an opportunity to learn. It’s an opportunity to grow. And I’m always open to that, and I’m always interested in that. And I always enjoy that. So yeah, I think the short answer is absolutely yes.
What’s your rehearsal process like with your band?
Well, I guess my rehearsal process. I mean, the band that I performed with in Lagos that’s my band. They’re based in New York and LA and, of course, it had a friend and longtime collaborator from Lagos, Phillip Uzor. The thing about jazz, like, yes, there’s a stretch of time where we’re really rehearsing the music, and then there’s a stretch, you start touring it around the world. And at some point, the process is about what you discover on stage. You know, once everybody understands the structure and the form and the changes, the chord changes, then it’s about how do we lean into the form and still kind of slow and find surrender. For me, I am always interested in a certain type of surrender, you know. And, when we are in a conversation on stage, it’s about what are the new things I can find in the music? Right, because if we’re doing shows, you know, every night stretches, weeks in Europe or in the US or wherever you want to find something new not seeing it the exact same way. Every single time. Of course, as I said, there’s the structure that we all understand but that particular performance you saw, I invited them to come and meet me in Lagos, that’s what brought them to Lagos. I shared the music with Philip who was also an incredible musician. And then there’s just a way that we understand the language, you know, we touch base, make sure everybody’s clear again, since it’s somehow a slightly modified group of musicians. And then we try to get at it. I don’t know if that’s a good answer. But basically, it’s the rehearsal process. The rehearsals happened so long ago. And then the touring is where it gets deeper and I think about it as getting juicy or really, it just gets juicy and juicy. Every time we have a chance to perform the music, it’s like a muscle.
Finally, tell us your deepest motivation. As an artist, what essentially do you want people to experience from everything you do?
Firstly, I’m going to go back and just tell you one other thing about my preparation process that I should maybe have mentioned, which is meditation. I tried to make sure I am centred, calm, and still before I enter the stage, that’s number one. But that also connects to this other thing about my inspiration that you just asked, which is, for me, there are two things that are happening- I want to be connected to something larger than myself. So, spirit, universe, God, you know, whatever that means, ancestors, for yourself, for readers, and myself. You know, I think it means a lot of different things to different people. So, just being connected to something larger because that’s what reminds me that the gift of music, of art is really that it’s something that comes from somewhere else. Everybody has different gifts and I’m grateful that music, storytelling and performance are some of my gifts. I also understand that these are things that were, as I said, as gifts, they were given to me and so I tried to be in service of the larger thing. That inspires me to share those gifts right and that larger essence is, Spirit, it is God that’s a driving part of my process and my profession. I would say specifically in African performance, and in the creation of a right of making art, and also in terms of what inspires me I’m inspired to be a witness. I’m inspired to tell stories that are obscured, that are forgotten, that are underserved, so I’m inspired to lift up the voices of people who feel voiceless. I’m inspired to witness myself as a human being, as a woman, as an African, as a Black person in the world. I think about how my voice and my way of telling stories might empower people from my community and people from outside of our communities, to have a keen sense of our humanity. I think I’m in-depth. That’s what inspires me to be a witness, to tell the truth and to connect to spirit.
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