Puzzling Makeover of Entrance Building to the Oba’s Chambers in the Palace of the Oba of Benin

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Visiting the palace of the Oba of Benin in October 2022 I was puzzled to find that the first building one encounters as one enters the chambers of the Oba has been redone in the style of Western neo-classical architecture, employing that style’s pillars evoking grandeur,a sense of grandeur that may be understood as fitting for a monarch.

I was puzzled.

What is the direct connection between neo-classicism-the emulation of Ancient Greek and Roman culture- and Benin culture?

None.

Will any Western monarch employ traditional Benin architecture in constructing their own palace,talk less such proud Asians as the Chinese, the Japanese and the Indians whose unique architectural forms are among humanity’s great achievements?

An idea even unthinkable by those people, so proudly and potently shaped they are by their own cultures.

In order to experience the grandeur of Benin architecture, one needs to appreciate the ancient walls of the palace of the Oba of Benin that still stand and the shrines visible there.

To see this architectural style in its unvarnished glory, however, one has to go to the palaces of such chiefs under the Oba as the Esogban of Benin in GRA and a palace on Siloko Road, near Ehaekpen junction, which is carefully maintained and beautified while keeping the lines, colors and visual symbols of traditional Benin architecture.

I’ve been so pained on this subject particularly since I was so well received in my visits to the palace of the Oba of Benin in October and November 2020.

How do I express my dismay on this subject in the context of my admiration for Benin culture?

[Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth]

I think i understand your pain but i am reliably informed that the gate to

bucking am palace here in London  was made by blacksmiths from awka.i understand your pain to some extent having spotted an oba stepping out of his  luxury car  into a fast food joint, junk food!

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

“A stitch in time saves nine”

If only you had got wind of the plans that were afoot ,  you could have forwarded your reservations about the recent renovations and the new features at the Oba’s Royal Palace that are not entirely to your liking and perhaps thereby succeed in  influencing the final outcome. Now it seems that your objections or regrets are coming too late in the day - or perhaps you expect the pillars to be pulled down and replaced by more glorious local architectures that reflect Benin Culture or maybe even something more up to date designed by David Adjaye ?

After all the hue and cry and all the bad air created about looted Benin Bronzes, some of which I espied on exhibition at the British Museum during the first week of August this year , all I can say is that it’s a very poignant point that you make here, poignant and distressful although it need not necessarily be the latter, just because you disagree about someone else’s aesthetics, sense of  personal self-esteem/ national pride, self-esteem ,prestige. cultural self-esteem, architectural self- esteem

As you are well aware, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction - and here we are surely not talking about “ mistaken identity” - time and place obviously do not permit you to conflate  an Old Emperor of Rome, even a reincarnated one, with His current , contemporary Highness, the Oba of Benin. 

I’m inclined to believe that every Black and Proud African should be whole-heartedly with you on this one, of course including His Black and Proud Majesty , the Oba of Benin himself , although he might have his own personal reasons  or  be acting on the advice of his advisers and councillors. It’s possible that the Roman-type architectural pillars are more expressive of the pomp and ceremonial glory befitting a modern, twenty-first century Oba of Benin. Why not?  But, if he does not advance any personal reasons, preferences that have determined his choice then I’m afraid that you would have to be in his shoes or to be sitting on his throne as HIM, in order to know exactly what he’s thinking or the thinking behind the decision-making.

 BTW, since this is not about looting intellectual property rights  or architectural designs of of ancient Greece and Rome I wonder how e.g.  Chika Okeke-Agulu would weigh in on this very sensitive issue 

 In this day and age, all over the world, there are monarchs and even little billionaire princes and princesses  who prefer the Bentley to the Rolls Royce - and until Nigeria starts producing that kind of quality car or airbus are you suggesting that Nigerian monarchs should revert to the ceremonial horse and carriage that was the latest thing in 18th century Britain  - and of course on special occasions is still very much and proudly too, the order of the day ?

Have you been to one of these, recently ( I love horses) 

Some traditional Music: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2z7AMRqtLM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9suCPWKWwLY

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thanks, Cornelius.

This is the problem: 

''It’s possible that the Roman-type architectural pillars are more expressive of the pomp and ceremonial glory befitting a modern, twenty-first century Oba of Benin.''

I wonder why architecture from ancient Rome should be seen as more befitting of a modern twenty first century Oba of Benin while architecture from old Benin, which created one of the world's most powerful works of art in relation to its monarchy, may be seen as not so fitting.

That  conception is deeply problematic in the light of the grandeur of the Benin artistic imagination across time which projects the monarchy in terms of a magnificent variety of sculptural forms, at various levels of scale.

Is what is at stake simply an issue of differences in ''aesthetics, sense of  personal self-esteem/ national pride, self-esteem ,prestige. cultural self-esteem, architectural self- esteem''?

With all due respect to the Oba of Benin, is what is at stake best localised to ''his own personal reasons  [ as he acts]  on the advice of his advisers and councillors'' requiring one to ''be in his shoes or to be sitting on his throne as HIM, in order to know exactly what he’s thinking or the thinking behind the decision-making''?

Is such an approach a demonstration of interpersonal senstivity  or a trivialisation of a serious issue or something in between? What may be understood as the frame of reference of the activities of the Oba of Benin and the Benin Traditional Council and other advisers the Oba works with?

My view  is that the Obaship and the Oba's palace are an embodiment of Benin culture and need to dramatise the creativity of that culture as much as  possible.

The Obaship and the palace are venerable institutions shaped by people existing within the progression of time, implying ideally a balance of continuity and change, ideally innovative change.  Does the importation of neo-classical architecture as the central building leading to or housing the Oba's chambers, the central building of the palace, demonstrate any innovation, particularly innovation suggesting the creativity achieved in Benin's world famous arts and its distinctive architecture? 

                                                           

                                                        

                             The New Front Part of the Central Building of the Palace of the Oba of Benin

                                                                     from

                                                              Alltimepost.com

Benin never had an automobile industry, so one cannot argue for innovation in such an industry, but Benin has an ancient artistic  and architectural tradition, one of the greatest in the world. Should the creativity suggested by that achievement not be reflected in the central building of the Oba's palace, the spatial and symbolic centre  of Benin culture?

Should the structure be rebuilt? I think so. 

Why?

A cultural centre of the level of significance of the palace of the Oba of Benin needs to be constructed in terms of the most enduring values, propjecting the union of the past, the present and the timeless, as demonstrated by the unique insights developed in relation to the culture's creative traditions.

 University College, London, for example, has a similar but even more impressive design than the building now constituting the Oba's chambers.

                                                                            

           

                                                                                             
The relevance of that design to UCL, however, is clear, being a Western university with its roots in the headwaters of the Western cognitive tradition in ancient Greece, where that style achieves a particularly iconic representation in the Parthenon.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Jakub Pala's picture of the Parthenon, ''a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art, an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization.(Wikipedia)

What is the direct relationship of such cultural linlks to the palace of the Oba of Benin, the symbolic centre of a civilisation with its own cognitive, artistic and architectural history?

As an example of the innovative use of the idea of pillars in African architecture, pillars demonstrating royal grandeur within high creativity, one may see the famous verandah posts of Olowe of Ise for the palace of the Ogoga of Ikere, in which human figures hold up the roof, the stylization of these figures and the spatial relationships between them greating a sense of silent majesty.

                                                                     

                                                          

The sculptural tabeleau is centred in the paradoxical figure of the Olowe and his wife, in which the power associated with the monarch is not depicted in terms of an obvious evocation of power on his person,  but through a combination of factors, visually powerfully but needing a grounding in Yoruba theologies of kingship to understand.

 His wife standing behind him, towers over him,

                                                 

                                                                                                                    

her face powerful in its bulbous stare, topped by a crown with a zig zag design akin to a flash of lightning

                                                   

 an imposing presence towering above  the feminine features of the quietly seated Olowe, his crown, topped by an elegant bird, images suggesting beauty and grace rather than power, 

                                                          

                                                               

paradoxes possibly evoking Yoruba ideas of royal power as grounded in feminine power, the latter's arcane potency symbolised by the bird, representative of the capacity for interdimensional  motion associated with feminine power in its arcane form, evoked by the expression, Awon Iya Wa, which does not simply mean ''Our Mothers'' in the conventional sense of motherhood but creative and destructive potencies embodied by the feminine represented by particular female figures, human and non-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial.

Olowe's approach is clearly very different from the European use of human figures as pillars, caryatids and atlantes, the differences between both forms demonstrating the originality of the artists.

It is such originality that should be aspired to by such a cultural centre as the palace of the Oba of Benin.

Related demonstrations of originality could invove comparsions between Olowe's iconic palace  doors, such as this one directly below centring an image which looks like an opon ifa, a divination board from the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, for exploring and shaping possiblities  at the intersection of matter and spirit, the face of the embodiment of this intersection and guide to interpreting its symbolic languages, the deity Eshu, inscribed at its sides, as birds converge, their beaks touching, above the divinatory platform, possibly evoking ideas of motion between dimensions and possibilities, as pursued by Ifa

                                                                           

                                      
                                           

              and other examples of Olowe's unique style                                                                                   

                                                                                          

                                 

                                                                                                         

                                    

which may be compared, for example, with French sculpture Auguste Rodin's famous Gates of Hell, dramatising scenes of hell in the Divine Comedy of Italian writer Dante Alighieri, topped by a version of Rodin's signature work, the Thinker, a figure crouched in thought, reflecting on the vagaries of human life represented by the varied agonies of hell, each reflecting the character of the life of the person suffering a particular unique punlishment for their own brand of sinful life, as depicted by Dante 

                                                                        

                    

in his  poem distilling Western culture from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the poem's time of composition in the medieval period, within a cosmological matrix unifying classical and Christian thought and arts, a continuity of tradition in innovative terms between the Greco-Roman and medieval Western civilisations, represented by Dante's poem and Rodin's 19th and 20th centuries in France that makes my point about the value of innovation in adapting cultural formations, particularly in relation to such a strategic cultural centre as the palace of the Oba of Benin.

thanks

toyin

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks, Augustine.

Even if the account of who made the gate were factual, which I doubt, that gate is powerfully emblazoned by a prime marker of UK identity, the UK's Royal Coat of Arms.

Even if the building I am referring to at the palace of the Oba of Benin were also visually defined in that way by the symbols of the Oba, it would not diminish the problems represented by the building.

                 

                       The New Front Part of the Central Building of the Palace of the Oba of Benin

                                                                     from

                                                              Alltimepost.com

I am not disturbed by the makeover of the gate leading to the Oba's palace, another new structural development at the palace, also marked by symbols of power, particularly since that gate has at its side a glorious ikhimwin, the tree used as a spiritual portal and boundary marker in Benin culture, in this instance enclosed within an ornate fence shaped by royal symbols of authority, even as the style of the gate may not in all instances derive from traditions of Benin metalworking.     

                                                                                            

Eating fast food may suggest deviations from African culinary styles, but are African dishes not also served in such places? Even if the food is not African, how possible is it to do without participating  in offerings from various cultures?

What bothers me in this issue is the wholesale importation of neo-classical architecture into such a strategic location in the Oba's palace, a focal point of Benin culture.

I did not observe any innovation in the appearance of this building, no effort to develop something suggesting perhaps a contribution of Benin architecture and aesthetics to the neo-classical importation.

Susanne Wenger and her artistic group created shrines at the Oshun forest in Oshogbo that blend Yoruba aesthetics of landscape and Yoruba conceptions of the sacred with new ways of representing spirit in such contexts, an achievement represented particularly iconically by the Ogboni shrine house, Iledi Ontoto, if I recall the name correctly.

If one is to integrate the non-African into an African cultural centre, is that not the kind of direction in which one should be going?

Something might not be quite right in the manner in which that building at the Oba's palace was conceived. 

Were the experts in Benin and African arts and architecture consulted?

Iyase-Odozi, whose work is inspired by Benin textiles, Peju Lawiyola, whose artistic pedigree is rooted in her mother's art as a daughter on an Oba, if I recall correctly, Charles Gore, author of a book on Benin shrines, Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, who has published on Benin mud art, Paula Ben Amos, who has published on various aspects of Benin art, Phylis Galembo, who has made superb pictures of priests and priestesses in Benin traditional religion, Norma Rosen, author of a wonderful article on Olokun symbolism, and more.

I doubt if such experts, in different parts of the world, being adequately mobilized in relation to this project, that the consensus would have been the current outcome of stark importation of neoclassical architecture into the structure leading into the Oba's chambers.

The liturgy of the Holy Aruosa Cathedral in Benin is described by one view as an adaptation of  Christianity to  Benin culture but the architecture of the cathedral  is certainly not an importation of such classics of Western architecture as the Gothic cathedrals of Amiens, Notre Dame, Canterbury and others. It is distinctively Benin in its own style of own dramatising spatial grandeur.

thanks 

toyin 

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[Mr. E. B. Jaiyeoba]

Dear Oluwatoyin,

Your finding is not surprising to me. 

Eclectism is prevalent in most of our contemporary architecture as desired by the clientele in the Nigerian society. The most prominent client is the different levels of government- local, state and federal government. Contrary to the expectation of liberal democracy, 'big' government dominates private entrepreneurship; economic experts argue that it is one of the characteristics of developing countries. Government at different levels have not found it necessary to publicise and interrogate architectural design of projects. They prefer to treat them like construction projects that are mostly awarded to cronies who may not even be qualified architects or when awarded to architects maybe without necessary content in the brief/programme. All the distinct stages of architectural services are crashed in little time to fast pace the design award to the anointed local or foreign architect or firm, often foreign for large scale projects. Actually, projects of public and cultural importance like palaces should become subjects of public debates through architectural design competitions. Of course, this rarely happens for government projects at all levels. Then, architectural conservation and heritage management is yet to be taken seriously in this clime. Just like history is not taken seriously as evident by the ban on the study of history as a subject that was recently reversed, architectural history and conservation is not prominent in the architecture curriculum beyond western documented history of architecture and a bit of the vernacular and traditional history. Private clients too mostly desire 'modern' architecture with a few coming up with copied ready-made designs that they want reproduced in our context. This is noticeable in our highbrow residential estates and prominent commercial buildings. The understanding of conservation even among elites and administrators is low with many believing that whatever is old should just be made new or outrightly demolished irrespective of historical importance of the architecture. In fact, the relationship between architecture, history, conservation, heritage management, museums and tourism are rarely understood. 

It will be interesting if you can find out the process of arriving at that building in the Benin Palace.

Babatunde JAIYEOBA

E. Babatunde JAIYEOBA PhD

Professor of Architecture

Department of Architecture

Faculty of Environmental Design and Management

Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria

ebj...@oauife.edu.ng; tundej...@yahoo.co.uk. +234 8037880023

  

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

Here are some glorious scared structures 

Out of curiosity I checked out what the famous Benin City National Museum could possibly look like from the outside, and was surprised to see no pillars or colonnades looking like palm trees, elephant tusks, etc and that, just like the entrance to the Oba’s Palace, the museum's modest outer appearance  whets curiosity about the treasures we are to find stored inside. In fact, to me,  from the outside, the Benin City National Museum, faintly resembles the exteriors of the main Stockholm Public Library

Hopefully, you and I and all of us agree that The Oba of Benin’s Palace is not supposed to be a museum exhibiting current cultural artefacts along with some of the glories of the past , nor is the entrance to the palace with the colonnades and pillars that remind some people of ancient Greece and Rome ostensibly designed to conceal the cultural treasures that we are to suppose are to be found within the confines of the palace. 

True , “ the apparel oft proclaims the man”  - which does not mean that we should be deceived by exteriors  and externals ( hence Jungle Negroes mock some Black British Policemen, who they suspect of being allied with an oppressive White Supremacist Power structure by  referring to them contemptuously as  “coconuts”, that is, brown outside and white inside…

Steel Pulse - Prediction

[Michael Afolayan]

Oluwatoyin -

Thanks for your relentless pursuit of intellectualizing on an aspect of our cultural relics - architectures of the palace. Like Professor JAIYEOBA, I am not one bit surprised that you were ushered into the palace of the ancient kingdom with a "modern" architectural smile. My own interpretation, however, of why this is the case is slightly different from that of the learned Prof. My humble opinion on this is that it is a reflection of a systemic problem. What you observed is a blatant display of our collective attitude to the preservation of our antiquities. This is a generic observation that applies to all aspects of our sociology. It is for the same reasons that we kill the old without having the capacity or the wherewithal to even bring in the so-called modern. Our concrete traditions, including ethos, norms and values are relegated to the background, and the foregrounded "newtons" are neither modern, modified, nor in any way traditional. We are left with nothing concrete but some mirror images of something foreign, even to the foreigners. We have attained membership of many worlds but citizens of none. Sadly, when we take this misnormal to the realm of the sacred, like the palace, we desecrate our histories, stories, and, unfortunately, ourselves. Sankofa is the mythical bird of the Akan people. It means "Go back for it." Until we learn to "go back" our antiquities and us have no future. 

Just thinking loud . . .

MOA

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Correction: Not " scared"  but SACRED structures

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Just another aside.

First of all, this good piece of news. His name is Frederick Akpoghene

Second of all, Costa Rica just beat Japan who beat Germany, four days ago…

Many thanks for the profound observations/diagnoses from Professors Babatunde Jaiyeoba and Michael O. Afolayan…

We are still dealing with the psychological and you may call it the post-colonial neuroses, if you will. 

 “What’s in a name?”, asked William Shakespeare or was it Wole Soyinka? As far as intellectualising about our malaise goes, some people sometimes go as far as starting off with our names, that essential or non-essential part of our identity, some names/ nomenclature even tell long histories, in some names we find ancestries, which deity is worshipped by the family, whole genealogies, even noble lineages, - as in the Bible, x who begat y and what happened all the way down the line. But take for example the name Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, no argument, that’s a real African name for you and impressive too. Remember Malcolm X being asked in that interview, about the X , “ What is your real name?”

I say some people, such as Ayi Kwei Armah, who asks the pertinent or impertinent question - either in Fragments or Why are we so Blest? ( I can’t remember which one and I can’t remember the exact wording either ) “ What happens to the soul of an African child who grows up being called Mike”?”

The same kind of cultural imperialism that accompanied the US invasion of Iraq  - one of the American soldiers asks his Iraqi colleague  “ What’s your name?” - he’s informed  “ My name is Abd al-Aziz  “ - but this is too much for the American because all he hears is the last part of the name  which sounds like ' asses'' so he says, “ I’ll call you Mike” and that’s it.  The American’s dilemma is understandable too. Imagine if somebody's name translates to “ chicken anus”  in your own language,how would you feel about having to address such a one on a daily basis?  

The main point to be made here is that it would seem that globalisation goes with the territory known as Nigeria and Nigeria is in tune with globalisation, so Nigerian  music has “ progressed” from Apala to Afrobeat  and no one’s complaining about lack of electricity to support the microphone, the electric guitars,horns,  drums, percussion , synthesisers 

My Ghanaian friend was mad at the Swedish lass who travelled all the way to Ghana with her tourist camera and had only taken a few shots of monkeys climbing up trees. He was furious. “ What about our skyscrapers, why didn’t you take any pictures of those!?“, he yelled at her.

Here are a few videos put together by proud Africans who want to show that Africa has not been left behind when it comes to beautiful buildings, skyscrapers y’all : The Africa they don't show us on TV

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

The Palace of Emperor Haile Selassie

Royal Palaces in Africa

Presidential Palaces in Africa

Must admit that No 10 Downing Street looks more humble than The White House

BTW, I suppose that if the country could afford it, after winning the next election, the average African President would like to have an official residence like the White House, an official or private jet like the US President's official plane and a car like the one known as “the Beast” 

Pillars from Ancient Greece or Rome, or mere colonial villas, we must admit that the Oba of Benin's Palace is not doing too badly , in terms of modesty and humility…

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Very great thanks Prof Jaiyeoba for your perspectives, robustly fed by your long standing architectural vocation and scholarship.

If eclecticism is creatively done, would that not contribute to both the inspirational source and the new synthesis being created?

Benin culture, over the centuries, has achieved growth through creative eclecticism. This creativity involves reworking the new, the imported, in terms of a design orientation representing endogenous creativity.

The Holy Aruosa Cathedral, for example, is inspired by Christianity, but the architecture, and, I understand, the liturgy,  is Benin.

The palace of the Oliha, at Siloko Road, I think, one of the chiefs under the Oba, is  partially reworked using design elements, such as potted plants,  that are not part of traditional Benin architecture as I understand it, but these are subsumed within  traditional Benin aesthetics.

The palace of the Esogban of Benin at Ogiesoba Avenue in GRA is magnificent in its use of newer and older elements in the dramatization of the sense of spatial grandeur enabled by traditional Benin architecture.

In the light of such creative developments within Benin architecture, I am particularly puzzled about that cultural anomaly carried out in the palace of the Oba. 

The issue is quite sensitive, on account of the discursive framework in terms of which the Oba and the palace exist in Benin culture. 

A critique of his palace on such trenchant grounds may be seen as a critique of the Oba, particularly in the delicate subject of sensitivity to the ancestral achievements and enduring creative genius of Benin of which he is traditionally understood as  the primary custodian and embodiment.

The pictures of the new palace are very visible online. I have seen one critique, by architect Sam Oboh, of the problematic logic of its design. I wonder why I'm not seeing others.

I shall be sending the essays I have written on the subject on Facebook and here, along with links to the debates they have inspired, to the palace librarian, Honourable Benjamin Omuemu, who graciously took me round and if possible, send it to the Benin Traditional Council and the Oba.

One view holds that I should have shared my misgivings with the palace and presented their response along with my critique and that I have not been fair to them by doing otherwise.

Do I have any satisfactory answer to that?

great thanks

toyin

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thanks Cornelius.

At the risk of being seen as an excessive complainer, allow me to mention that the siting of the Benin museum makes it more of a decorative than a functional institution where most people in Benin are concerned.

It’s cited at the center of a roundabout without access except by car. No overhead bridge. Meaning if one is not mobile one has to navigate the river of speeding cars to access the museum, a deadly situation.

Certain strategic things need to be done to adequately foreground the tourist potential of Benin, one of these being the relocation of that museum or the provision of a bridge to it.

It ought to be by the side of the road,like the British Museum, so one may walk easily into it from the street.

Thanks 

Toyin 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks, Michael Afolayan.

The puzzle about the palace of the Oba of Benin is that not only has Benin culture been synonymous with the preservation of positive cultural values, the Obaship institution preserves many of its timeless values, and many aspects of classical Benin civilization are tenaciously sustained within the rapacious development of Benin, as the city expands exponentially at  various former boundaries, as places like Ekenwan and Ugbowo which one represented the outskirts of the city have become heavily built up, with ceaseless vehicular traffic indicating the level of human activity.

The Oba's palace also demonstrates strategic features of classical Benin culture, such as the sacred ikhinmwin tree at the entrance, which I will show in another post, ancient walls and various shrines, as are evident in a video I shall post later,  along with the awesome grandeur and complex symbolism of the Oba's coronation rites,  creative continuities that make that importation of unmodified neo-classical architecture as the central building of the Oba's palace even more puzzling.

The Ezomo of Benin is an openly  ardent Christian, but he is the proud maintainer of his family's ancestral shrine, of the ikhinmwin tree  in front of it as well as of the glorious iroko in front of his compound; Chief Ebengho, the Oyenmwensoba of Benin, runs an awesome shrine, a glorious multi-room complex serving several deities under the matrix of his Ifa priesthood, a shrine of remarkable aesthetic force of globally distinctive power, wonders I recorded in pictures and videos and am posting online.

I would describe classical Benin culture generally as still luminous, making me wonder about the puzzling issues  in the remaking of the Oba's palace.

thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/668999487.4158024.1669540547073%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Chika Okeke-Agulu]

Toyin et al,

The problem you identify with the sorry mimicking of Graeco-Roman architecture in the Benin palace is systemic, but it also says something about the cultural sensibility, consciousness, and politics of the current Oba. Demas Nwoko has shown for years how one might create monumental and residential structures based on Edo and Igbo traditional architectural material and form in his design of the Oba Akenzua Cultural Center, Benin (though the final design was compromised by government officials who strayed from Nwoko's design in parts of the building). A lot of it is ignorance, the neo-colonial complex, and poverty of architectural training in Africa; our architectural schools never paid serious attention to our indigenous architectures as a source for new ideas, and so the only recognizable modern architectural style in West Africa was the so-call tropical architecture of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew who built the defining structures of post-independence WA. Many of Nigeria's architects, and other European builders followed them or did worse with their impoverished versions of the International Style. Hassan Fathy, and Demas Nwoko (his buildings never require airconditioning, because he incorporated traditional air flow systems; and his stabilized laterite blocks helped with heat conduction, etc), were lone voices in the architectural wilderness. Only in the past decade have we seen a vigorous effort by a new generation to do what Modernist writers and artists already did (with tradition and language) several decades before, and that is to design assuredly new structures informed by indigenous technologies, materials, and aesthetics. The Burkinabe Francis Kere (who won architecture's top prize, the Pritzker this year), Nigerien Miriam Kamara whose star is ascent (and who's designing the Bet-bi museum with which I am involved in Senegal), and of course David Adjaye, are showing what is possible. Who knows. Now that they are designing acclaimed buildings around the world by drawing on West African art and architectural idioms, maybe the likes of the Oba may be compelled to see value in traditional Edo architecture. 

Chika

[Harrow, Kenneth]

i like chika's answer a lot, but it leads to a key question. the architects he named, adjaye for instance, never limited themselves to vernacular styles. why would they? are the materials the same as mud and daube or other natural materials? i agree with those bemoaning an unimaginative imitation of old colonial models of authority—nobody wants that. but the notion that an "authentic" expression has to conform to some older traditional vocabulary is incredibly restrictive.

i know of some places where that kind of thinking in enforced: regional styles in france and in england are required. you know why? because there are maybe a hundred million tourists a year who want to see that regionalism. imagine if you owned a home and wanted a creative style.

the same is true, has always been true, for african dancing: imposing only traditional dance idioms on contemporary dancers turns them into performers for tourists, and stifles their creativity.

we said similar things in the 1950s of a few african authors who were imitating european styles: they never really prevailed.

let the caged bird fly. let the african architects fly already. they don't need to be making indigenous references to be worthy.

on the other hand: a building, especially a govt building speaks. what do you want it to say? french classicism says "l'etat c'est moi," i am the state and the state embodies power and authority and truth and justice and blah blah.

in the u.s. we reinvented the same vocabulary, so state capitals all repeat the same tired rhetoric. adventuresome architects like maya lin who designed the vietnam memorial in d,c, freed us; the conservatives insisted on another "patriotic" piece to share the honors since they couldn't understand the notion of art or freedom.

i had one last thought on this. i agree with those dismayed by the notion that an architectural idiom that evokes colonialism or its masters is indeed the wrong choice for a country with a colonial past.

maybe i could reduce this to one phrase: what would fanon say? never a simply return to the past for a free africa.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chika Okeke-Agulu <okeke...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2022 2:58 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Puzzling Makeover of Entrance Building to the Oba’s Chambers in the Palace of the Oba of Benin

 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

Interesting what  I gather Professor Babatunde Jaiyeoba suggests,  that the vetting of tenders and the awarding of contracts for construction projects could go a long way in obtaining the most desirable results.. 

It's a very similar kind of problem being faced in other parts of Africa. I actually lived directly opposite the Sierra Leone National Museum - a very modest building and a treasure trove  - at the epi-centre of Freetown a few feet away from the Cotton Tree , the Law Courts, opposite which I.T.A. Wallace-Johnson used to hang out with Pa Ashwood and some of the other Creole Elders. By the time I was fifteen years old I was an expert on all the exhibits housed at that Museum, especially the mysterious Nomoli soap stone carvings, said to have been carved in utter darkness. About that period, Malcolm Seisay is my witness, because he and my four brothers and my Yoruba grandmother lived at 37 Westmoreland Street - directly opposite that museum etc whilst my mother and  my Scottish stepfather were busy constructing bridges etc in the provinces. ( Malcolm’s dad George  was one of Sierra Leone's finest gentlemen -a C.I.D. Superintendence who first brought Schaeffer dogs from Scotland Yard to Sierra Leone  - by the time of the 1967 coup - he was the director of prisons - and - compassionately - issued blankets to his father-in-law  Pa A.J. Demby who had been incarcerated by a slightly later coup by the so called “ National Liberation Council” under Andrew Juxon-Smith … which I think paradoxically appointed Malcolm’s uncle Tinga Sesiay as Counsel-General in New York  - Tinga with his Swedish wife Gunilla and their baby son Joe  stayed with my  family in Freetown for a few months when they arrived from Sweden… and my brother Harold stayed with Tinga in New York in the early 1970s   - just a little piece of history, the tip of the iceberg…as they say, still waters run deep, and there’s so much more important, even astounding stuff, as yet, left unsaid…a rule of thumb : don’t fear the one who is not afraid of you - but if he is afraid of you? Fear him! 

 In Sierra Leone, an Israeli firm ( can’t quite remember whether it was Dizengoff or Lorenzetti) built the Sierra Leone House of Parliament  - true, we actually have a parliament in that country, as we struggle along with what’s being so eloquently being discussed in this forum : the fruits of democracy ( by their fruits shall ye know them…The State House , once the official residence of the Governor-General and now the residence of Sierra Leone’s president , is also a building that has an interesting history: many things happened therein…

Just in case you’re wondering why I always accord you your full titular respect and not just the chummy “ Toyin”, it’s because there is more than one Toyin around in this USA -Africa Dialogue Series and although “all men are equal “ in principle, but in practice, and not just in Heaven or in earthly dictatorships such as eulogised in Animal Farm, “some are more equal than others”.

Take Your Royal Highness, the Oba of Benin for example, even if you are on very familiar terms with him, as you could be with Prince Harry, do you address him by his first name? No. Of course not. In Old Persia  ( “the shadow of God  Himself walking on this planet  earth” or  in Ancient Egypt  - he was on exhibition at the British Museum in August,  you would have had  to humbly please request to ask permission to first bow down and kiss the dust in front of his Pharaoh's feet, in the best interests of your  very survival.

I’m not on such equal fraternal  terms with the other one fondly called “ Toyin” by his contemporaries , not on such friendly & equal fraternal  terms as to dare to have the impertinence of addressing the Ojogbon as if we are or were equals, on equal footing, despite the fact that I am older than him. Furthermore, both of us know that “ familiarity breeds contempt” - and of that I am well aware. As the Last Poets put it, You play a little too much with them, they say "Fuck you", flatter that puffed-up pompous semi-literate idiot just a little and you’ll hear him referring to you as “ vermin”  - and not just behind your back mind you. 

With reference to the Ojogbon, just imagine if I could say ( but not in jest) “ Despite the fact that I am older and wiser than him”.  Or equally  God Forbid, “ Older and Better” - than him ! 

You  recall  that in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar Act IV Scene III that was the cause of a heated quarrel between Brutus and Cassius 

Worst case scenario ,  some years ago my Indian friend told me that he no longer sleeps with his wife. Why?, I asked him. “ Familiarity breeds contempt “ was his answer. 

Having cleared that up, now to the matter at hand: 

Taking into consideration the wisdom in necessity is the mother of invention, now that you mention it ( The Benin National Museum as a tourist attraction) one wonders to what extent it was a tourist attraction boosting the Edo State Treasury, before this awful deterioration in the security situation. This awful deterioration in the security situation also raises questions such as does Edo state have its own homegrown security outfit / self preservation - defence units or militias such as the Yoruba States’  AMOTEKUN ?

As Bob Marley wailed, “half the story has never been told” and we should appreciate hearing from you and others, the answers to the other question with reference to the looting of the Benin Bronze Treasures  which presumably could never have happened  but for a very sorry security situation in the kingdom, back then.

And what does that tell you Watson? 

It’s a question I should ask my man Biko  ( I don’t hesitate to address him by his first name because his other Brother ( same spirit) Steve Biko is not physically present here  - so I ask him the question anyway : What about the looted Benin Bronzes ? I anticipate his answer because I know him so well. He’s going to say , repatriation of the bronzes to where they are from, and where they belong - and that will be followed by his favourite word : REPARATIONS. Concerning the latter, I have been wondering lately, has he been in touch with  Hilary Beckles:?

Here he was,  sounding off on BBC Hardtalk 

[Chika Okeke-Agulu]

Ken,

In matters of expressive culture, I would not look to Fanon ("On National Culture"), or to Locke ("Legacy of the Ancestral Arts") before him, for guidance. Both had a functionalist view of anti-colonial culture without an articulate view of its aesthetic, its expressive form. Both are necessary for the arts. On the Oba's palace, it is not just architecture that evokes colonialism (which is bad enough), it is one that effaces a people's heritage, histories, and traditions--which is all the sadder because Edo culture has a sophisticated architectural tradition that can fund new and culturally embedded royal architecture, especially for an institution that prides itself in upholding Edo culture in the present. The palace is a public building, a statement about the culture and kingdom of Benin. The American and British and French and German public buildings he noted keep a certain neo-classical aesthetic because it forcefully makes the argument about the continuity and dominance of the so-called western civilization that supposedly came from Greece, via Rome. Of course, Oba and his palace officials may decide to identify with this rhetoric of power. But it does not make it any less problematic, given what they claim to represent--as guardians of Edo culture, traditions, and history.

[Harrow, Kenneth]

For me the use of architecture to express the “rhetoric of power”—well said—matters a great deal, especially when it is state power. Matters, as in, i generally dislike it.. the worst example of said rhetoric, for me, is the italian style of architecture under mussolini, neofascist, exuding power. Power pass power, as saro wiwa put it.

On the other hand, the modernist expression of the university of ife is one of the most exhilerating possible, and it isn’t oppressive but liberating.

What do we want from a state building? In america, most people probably thrill to the monumental, the neoclassical styles that have from the imagination of the masses. But there are exceptions, as i pointed out, the vietnam war memorial being a famous and successful one. The classical model celebrates war and sacrifice and the rhetoric of nationalism. This is bred into our children in schools, with flags and national anthems and models of men dying for their country—give me liberty or give me death models.

Surely we can imagine a better world. Why would it repress edo culture to turn to a non-edo expressive idiom, or to use it in a non-conventional fashion? This is a discussion that begs for architects to chime in….

Ken

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chika Okeke-Agulu <okeke...@gmail.com>

Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2022 12:23:29 AM

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks for that rich excursion through highlights of African architectural history, Chika.

 The more I reflect on the subject, the more  I am in shock.

“

Things fall apart the center cannot hold?”

This situation suggests the urgent need for a photographic inventory and public record of all traditional buildings in Benin in the name of preserving historical memory,the primary evidence  of Benin’s achievement in architecture.

If even the very heart of the cultural network of Benin can be so affected, who knows what the future holds?

There should be a legal framework protecting historic buildings in Nigeria. This should  include all buildings representing traditional Benin architecture.

In the name of preserving historical and cultural memory,some buildings should be preserved unaltered, at least in their essential structures as long as they are strong enough to remain standing even if with the help of later restoration and reinforcement.

Even within such a cultural center as the Oba’s palace,new buildings may be constructed but does the cultural centrality of the location not suggest that the cultural inspiration represented by that centre needs to be significantly reflected in new buildings in such a space, since there is a world of difference between such culturally representative spaces and other locations without such referential value?

There is a world of difference between the palace of the Oba of Benin and the office of the governor of Edo state, where Benin is located, for example.

Susanne Wenger and her team demonstrate great artistic and architectural creativity in in the Oshun forest making it a visual microcosm of Yoruba cosmology.

Is that not the kind of value represented by the Oba’s palace?

Apart from the problem with the remaking of the Oba’s   chambers, going over the video I made as I was taken round the palace grounds and which I will post online soon, I get the impression that the palace needs help with landscape maintenance in order to maximize its relatively large space, a lot of it demonstrating what may be described as ceremonial grandeur.

There is a need for a landscape maintenance team of the caliber of those who reworked and maintain  the landscape of the University of Benin, where superb landscaping integrating fields and trees is evident.

The palace might need a professional maintenance team, advised by experts in various disciplines, from various aspects of  Benin Studies to architecture and landscaping, an operational and advisory network possibly sustained through a worldwide fundraising drive.

Thanks 

Toyin

On Tue, Nov 29, 2022 at 1:03 PM Chika Okeke-Agulu <okeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ken,

In matters of expressive culture, I would not look to Fanon ("On National Culture"), or to Locke ("Legacy of the Ancestralof  Arts") before him, for guidance. Both had a functionalist view of anti-colonial culture without an articulate view of its aesthetic, its expressive form. Both are necessary for the arts. On the Oba's palace, it is not just architecture that evokes colonialism (which is bad enough), it is one that effaces a people's heritage, histories, and traditions--which is all the sadder because Edo culture has a sophisticated architectural tradition that can fund new and culturally embedded royal architecture, especially for an institution that prides itself in upholding Edo culture in the present. The palace is a public building, a statement about the culture and kingdom of Benin. The American and British and French and German public buildings he noted keep a certain neo-classical aesthetic because it forcefully makes the argument about the continuity and dominance of the so-called western civilization that supposedly came from Greece, via Rome. Of course, Oba and his palace officials may decide to identify with this rhetoric of power. But it does not make it any less problematic, given what they claim to represent--as guardians of Edo culture, traditions, and history.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/94b1e81e-dfe2-4015-91e6-7c69ffe4d979n%40googlegroups.com.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

After considering all that you say in this your last post that I’m responding to, I guess that you are fast approaching the landscape/ garden architecture denouement as you have outlined in Landscape and the Sacred in Benin-City - an enthralling, consummate atmosphere of a magic, beauty, mystery, nature habitat, to replace the drab and the mundane , enough to match anything Amos Tutola could have imagined or written.

I wonder if there’s anything to be learned from the Renovation of Stockholm’s Modern Museum (shmile, an irrelevant or irreverent smile) merging tradition with the new look without having to go all the way back to the First Vikings or the Golden Age of the Swedish Empire, when Sweden was a Mighty Power in Europe, like Uncle Sam, kicking ass everywhere, Gustavus Adolphus and the 30 years war etc.

First of all, a Spanish architect Rafael Moneo designed the new look, Modern Museum in Stockholm.The architects that supervised/ did the overseeing of the restoration were Swedish)

Of course, there’s a world of difference from the nationalism perspective and the aesthetic outlook -  and maybe, so there should be, between The Royal Palace , the National Museum and all the other museums  and . e.g , one of Wole Soyinka’s favourites: The Drottningholm Palace Theatre…

Re - my last post, lots of mistakes and just for the record, I’ll correct two of them.I was hoping to smoke him out but he’s still in his corner, breathing hard, so I had better hasten to correct a few errors before Sir William Bangura starts to holler.

1. Andrew Juxon-Smith’s organisation was called “ National Reformation Council” ( NRC) and not “National Liberation Council”. I must have been thinking of Chairman Arafat and the PLO. I suppose that good churchman Juxon-Smith must have probably had Martin Luther’s ”Reformation'' in mind and not a much stronger idea such as LIBERATION  - the liberation of his motherland ( from insanity). The current president ( Julius Maada Bio ) is a strong Roman Catholic and should therefore consider Luther anathema. If anything, Sierra Leone’s President Bio (stiff upper lip) is probably thinking / toying with the idea of the resurrection, the resurrection of Ancient Greece and Rome in the form of neo-classical architectural styles to add some finishing touches to the State House that he's occupying at the moment. In his spare time, when he is not busy waging war on the oppressed opposition, he probably dreams of kick-starting a Sierra Leone version of  the Renaissance, thumbing through some of the classics of that period, possibly thinking of himself as a reincarnation of the Emperor Julius Caesar, although that would not be according to sound Catholic Doctrine. In the history of Sierra Leone so far, it took a daredevil like the late Foday Sankoh to introduce the concept of REVOLUTION into that nation’s public political vocabulary, by nicknaming his militia ” Revolutionary United Front. In the beginning he must have fancied himself as Sierra Leone’s Che Guevara  sent by the either the Almighty or the devil to set the captives free, until he started alienating the peasants and rice farmers in the countryside  with his “cut-han “, his hand & foot amputation policies. There’s our own Ibrahim Abdullah’s Bush Path to Destruction (1998) after eight years of that war, followed by Lansana Gberie’s A dirty war in West Africa ( 2005) three years after the war ended

2. It was probably Pa Shaki and not Andrew Juxon-Smith that appointed Tinga Seisay, Consul-General to the United States

This evening The Great Satan managed to beat Iran with a lone goal that was clearly offside.

Cameroon, Ghana , Morocco, Senegal, have done a great job. 

Sweet Talks

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Beautifully said Ken.

Perhaps an expressive idiom becomes Edo when it expresses Edo realities.

The Vietnam war memorial you reference has the names of departed or missing Vietnam war vets inscribed on it, that referentiality combining with the abstraction represented by the smooth surface on which it is inscribed to elevate the list of names to the level of the mythic, as I am able to put it.

Wenger and her associates created Yoruba religious art that is very different from classical Yoruba art, as has also been done by Osi Audi, as is done to a degree by Victor Ekpuk for Cross River Nsibidi.

How realistic would it be for the Oba’s palace not to centrally refer to Edo culture?

Projecting this culture in new ways, in terms of references or style or both, would be great.

Thanks 

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BL1PR12MB519193DB212F17F349940E36DA129%40BL1PR12MB5191.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.

[Chika Okeke-Agulu]

Toyin, 

You probably know that Susanne Wenger fought with her life to save the Osun grove and the sculptures/structures she and her "Sacred Arts" group built there in the early 1960s (a project which, btw, her then former husband and funder Ulli Beier disliked because she apparently strayed from the largely non-figurated shrine buildings she was supposed to rehabilitate and renovate). Her's was an innovation, but one that is, by every measure culturally embedded, and that's why, in their baroque intensity, they still seem like natural outgrowths from the verdant grove. In any case, she used every connection she had to secure World Heritage status for the grove, and that is why it is still there today. On the other hand, the Ogiamen Palace, the only palace in the Edo kingdom of ancient provenance--a masterpiece of Edo traditional architecture said to go back to the founding of the Oba dynasty--is still standing, though badly taken care of, even after the late colonial government declared it a national monument. Hopefully, a new initiative I am aware of will help with its proper restoration and conservation.

Chika

[Harrow, Kenneth]

by the way, for me oshogbo and the shrine and forest are magical. my student kayode ogunfolabi took me there; we were long in the mist. it was a truly magical experience, once in a lifetime.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2022 5:03 PM
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfPY4GGhMr7xfuq9C7dhtYPYFMNEdeiiMVQy8%2BTp61_i_Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth]

Mr Hamelberg you write beautiful history  if I can describe  it as that. Thanks very much. I have to check  your name  on Amazon.i am curious

[Harrow, Kenneth]

i second toyin's praise of cornelius's writing. most of all i want to encourage him to give us his memoir going back to those early days when the study of african literature was in its infancy, and sierra leoneans were playing such an important role. eustace palmer, and espcially the brilliant lemuel johnson. to think that cornelius links that world with the nigerian letters of that period is enormously exciting.

somehow cornelius seems to remember everything,

and for those of us who care about african literature and the inception of its study as a field, it would be so important.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: 'Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2022 10:41 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Puzzling Makeover of Entrance Building to the Oba’s Chambers in the Palace of the Oba of Benin

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAP9m8j%2BXABPeBEdyr8wbMBxHDAtRn%3D_KH63VyrwM%3DsuFwm1-Dg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks Ken.

I expect you are referring to

Augustine on Cornelius’ remarkable post.

Thanks 

Toyin

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

“yesterday's just a memory tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be”

Literary and philosophical matters should of course remain  literary,  philosophical , political, sociological spaces in which the intrusive “ I” or  “i” does not enter. However, for example I was in Bakana during the 6th of August Presidential Elections in Nigeria and know exactly what happened there and of course can report about the general mood in the runup to that election, in the then Rivers State and Imo State, not as a foreign reporter working for Dagens  Nyheter which reported that event  with this bold, patronising blah blah blah  headline: “ A Triumph for Democracy." 

So, you see, being actually there makes quite a difference. Then you don’t have to interpret anything. You know. “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.” Malcom X said that .

About the pillars supporting the edifice of the Oba’s Palace or the design and inscriptions on his personal coats of arms etc, should not be my prime concern in a country that is presumed to be a Republic. The dethroning / deposing of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi Former was bad enough , even if the powers that be in the Naija Republic have the authority to do what they did. 

I’m sorry. Whenever I chip in with the anecdotal - mostly as an aside, it’s only nostalgia that everybody including me could do without.  I could also chip in with what has so far not been written in any history book, whether by Falola or spy-catcher or anyone else - and that’s what’s so difficult about the task of writing a genuine memoir covering even that very short period 1965 - 1971 and the longer period 1972 to circa 1986,  including 1981-1984  when I lived in Nigeria, and 1986 to circa,1996 , 1996 - circa 2003, if it’s the  unalloyed and even ( of necessity) slightly fictionalised, unexpurgated  truth that we’re after,  where does the buck stop?  Isn't it the same story with everybody? Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if the great men of history, such as  the Prophet Moses, Jesus of Nazareth had penned their autobiographies to put all doubts to rest? As things are the only living testimonies available to us today are - for me a prime example, Nahjul Balagha

On a certain day at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm , when I was completely out of my mind - well I had first refused to shake hands with Jerome Holland the USA’s African- Ambassador to Sweden when I was introduced to him ( I told him to get the hell out of Vietnam )  and later on at lunch I had told Dr. Davidson Nicol to “ Tell the TRUTH”   - I was being serious - but started slightly coming back to my senses when he asked me, “ Cornelius, how is your mother?”  - at which point I left the table …. And that’s another story….

There are some stories you could tell, even shorti stories, and you find your body floating down the Thames, shortly thereafter. As Nixon said, 

“He said nobody knows me

Nobody understands

These little people were good to me

Oh I'm gonna shake some hands” ( Line ‘em up)

Yesterday,  I bought “ William Wilberforce  - the Life of the Great Anti-Slave trade campaigner.” - by William Hague ( 557 pages ) 

My premier text on Nigerian history up to covering   the Biafran Secession, remains “The Story of Nigeria” by Michael Crowder …

Sierra Leone was the first British Colony in Africa  and for the longest period of time  - 150 years. The UK left their imprints, a good functioning educational system, a good functioning and learned and independent judiciary, even a railway system,  a  round the clock  24 hrs electric current supply ( no sporadic,epileptic fits)  and running water at least until 1961 when Sierra Leone became Independent. 

The story of colonial Nigeria  which only became a colony in 1914  - and for only 46 years)  is so intimately linked with that of Colonial  Freetown, Sierra Leone which was the administrative headquarters of British colonial West Africa …

“back to those early days when the study of african literature was in its infancy” you’d get insightful insight and summary from the first few issues of African Literature Today Edited by Eldred Jones. About the Anglophonic penchant for interpreting some of what was going on through the lens of Jung & Freud, F.R. Leavis and Arnold Kettle - and for poetry Gerlad Moore  check  Imeh Ikkideh’s review of Dathorne’s review in Volume 4 of the aforementioned journal….

When Wole Soyinka was arrested, Professor Eldred Jones spearheaded the  protest demonstrations, collection of signatures  and other actions for his release : there were almost equal numbers of Igbo and Yoruba students on the FBC campus  at the time and for collaboration about this you could ask Kenneth Ofodile… I was at Legon in Ghana, when the Nigerian Civil War ended

[Harrow, Kenneth]

for feminists, and for some time now, the slogan is, the personal is the political.

a memoir is not a history, not a substitute for a history, not a lesser version of the truth. it is an opening onto an individual, and the world that person constructs through describing it, through his or her, ok, their) discourse. cornelius's memories are not necessarily nostalgic, but nostalgia is just fine in my book.

it isn't a question of getting the facts right, as if facts somehow existed apart from the one pronouncing them, framing them, giving them meaning.

there is no view of events which is they described, i.e., mediated, that doesn't entail interpretation. we can both see the same event, and read it in our own ways.

cornelius' personal history has come to us over and  over in his recollection of what he had experiened in his younger years. as an editor i would be less interested in how this emends the historical record, less interested in the politics of the archive, less in filling in the blanks of eldred jones's or some other writer's accounts of those works, including my own, than in the figure of the cornelius whose vast storehouse of life's experiences, of music and poetry and figures and encounters, provides an exciting and unique world. the world of cornelius hamelberg, why not?

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2022 8:01 AM
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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

And when that world impinges on other worlds, ay, there's the rub

Less than complete honesty - as in this case -  would be incomplete and would not be personally satisfying. 

So, advise me please : what should be left out ?

And in the genre of the confessional ( we’ve got to leave the good Catholics out of this, since after their confessions and a few Hail Marys, they too believe just like every not so pious Jew after Yom Kippur, that their slates are wiped clean like the bottoms of  new born babies, wiped clean of transgression, maybe transgender too, and sin) in the world of libel and slander, and other types of immorality, how judiciously does one  navigate those awful , embarrassing, remorseful episodes, in retrospect, writing in retrospect, when we are all so much wiser, without distorting what was the immediate - and that immediate effect still reverberating and splashing around till today`? 

I presume that  Jesus would have commenced penning his  autobiography for posterity sometime after his resurrection, in defiance of his weak apology, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed”...

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ( Keats) 

For authenticity, we also have Sahifa Sajjadiya ( The Psalms of Islam )

BTW,  I’d send Ken first drafts, weekly, if he had the stomach for it and if there is a secure way of doing so ( right now I believe there’s an evil jinni in my computer)

https://www.youtube.com/@flamencoguitarsale/videos

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Just beautiful on autobiography from ken and Cornelius 

A growingly rich thread 

Thanks 

Toyin

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

i wonder if it would help to imagine an interlocutor? whom are you addressing? maybe someone informed on your topic? your "ideal reader"?

as for sins and confessional; it isn't that so much as baring yourself before the public, which happens every time we open our mouths and voice our opinions.

send me whatever comes out and i will try to read it; please write me privately cornelius. har...@msu.edu

k

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>

Sent: Thursday, December 1, 2022 12:56 PM

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

 Reality and memory

No problem. In the beginning was the word. And the word was free.Freedom in Fiction takes care of everything

Lou Reed : I was visited by the power and the glory

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks, Chika, for your striking description of the work and person of the great Susanne Wenger whom I was privileged to meet once.

My first encounter with her work was Ulli Beier’s The Return of the Gods:The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, superbly illustrated with his pictures, luminous with his perceptive responses to the art of her school and its relation with Yoruba cosmology, one of the best books on Orisa cosmology.

Books by Wenger herself and the book length interview with her are not as well known as her art and architecture but the books represent summits of writing at the intersection of spirituality, art, architecture and landscape, an engagement with the intrinsic values and universal resonance of Orisa spirituality that ranks with the work of the greatest masters of world  spirituality, a reimagining of the spirituality unsurpassed even by Soyinka’s magnificent contributions to that body of knowledge, with A Life with the Gods being her most uncompromisingly powerful book, enriched with the magnificent pictures of her photographer co-writer, but a book which ideally is approached along with a grounding in Beiers book about her and her other texts, along with more immediately accessible works by others such as Bolaji Idowu’s Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief, lucid and comprehensive, the best book length survey of the cosmology and Soyinka’s seven stanza poem in Credo of Being and Nothingness, henceforth published on its own as The Seven Signposts of Existence, distilling Orisa mythology and philosophy into brief, luminous stanzas constituting the best short summation of the cosmology known to me and one of Soyinka’s best poems, simple, profound, memorable. 

Wenger’s books represent for me the acme of depth and sophistication in Orisa cosmology, integrating immersion in the verbal and visual arts, ideas, practices  and inspirational landscapes of the spirituality with breadth of intercultural knowledge, great conceptualization and inimitable expressive force, an achievement which familiarity with the efforts of other creatives in the tradition helps one better understand and appreciate.

The books of hers known to me are

A Life with the Gods

The Sacred Groves of Osogbo

The Timeless Mind of the Sacred 

Adunni a book length interview with her. Don’t recall interviewer’s name.

Beier’s The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, is priceless for appreciating her work bcs of Beier’s imaginative identification with Wenger’s vision from its earliest years, enriched by his superb pics of her growing creativity along with that of her Yoruba collaborators of those years, as he masterfully dramatizes the imaginative force and inspirational power of Yoruba cosmology, particularly in relation to its visual reworking by Wenger and her school.

Wenger also has some short essays and interviews, all superb, providing unique insights into central concepts and practices in Orisa cosmology, such as Olodumare, the ultimate creator, and Ogboni, the cult of the Earth.

Thanks too for the info on Ogiamen’s palace. The palaces of Benin chiefs are architectural landmarks, necessitating preservation and visual and verbal documentation. A world of their own bringing alive the values of the culture.

On another note, Cornelius engagement with the subject of the Oba’s palace suggests the universal resonance of the subject, reaching beyond Benin to the individual histories of interested parties as these histories intersect with broader cultural trends.

Great thanks 

Toyin

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[Harrow, Kenneth]

thanks for this wonderful posting toyin a.

if i were still teaching i would b e following these suggestions in readings for my students, and especially for any grad students interested in this key side of yoruba culture and its bearing on the literature.

i want to re-thank toyin for providing us all with his evaluations of these important texts.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

---

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Sent: Friday, December 2, 2022 1:04 AM

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Great thanks Ken.

I encountered Beier’s book on Wenger at what was then the Bendel State Library in Benin-City, which had no photocopiers, so I would copy the book out by hand,so memesmerizing it was for me.

I eventually got my own copy but voluntarily burnt it, along with my entire library of non-Christian spiritual literature and related fiction covering all the major religions to Western magic and esotericism to African spiritualities to Marvel Comics dealing with magic, in the process of an exorcism by a Pentecostal friend helping me sever links with spiritual powers which I had attracted to myself or opened myself to across a period of intense spiritual work, combining Western Magic, Orisa and other African spiritualities, Tibetan Buddhism and others in thrice daily invocations leading to specific productive  outcomes but which I was not mature enough to cope with, being openings into realities outside conventional experience.

I became a Born Again Christian of the kind that distances themself from non-Christian spiritualities, seeing them as actual works of the Devil or as potential windows for such evil works and for whom even non-Pentecostal Christian churches are suspect, the orientation of my Pentecostal exorcist friend, but can one exorcise one’s own soul?

The spirits and I eventually met again as my thoughts turned to my old interests and I resumed my multi-religious journeys.

I bought my second copy of Beier’s book at Oba Market in the center of Benin City, at a book stall alongside food sellers in a market where one had to navigate muddy pathways to get to precious books, acquiring the book for what I understood as practically nothing relative to its price while pretending to haggle seriously with the book seller as I tried to give the impression the book was of negligible significance to me so as to reinforce my drive to lower its price, one of the best Africana books published by Cambridge UP, it’s sturdy  hardback and beautiful jacket still in clean shape. 

I next encountered the book behind glass as a special book requiring particularly careful

handling at Oxfams bookshop in Cambridge.

All those books are part of my spiritual and philosophical journey. I studied them intellectually and as matrices of spiritual practice.

Their beauty for a self-help practitioner such as myself is that they provide forms of logic for Orisa spirituality, moving it beyond simple reliance on tradition to clarifying or suggesting rationale for its thought and practice.

The only writer I know who is Wenger’s equal in expounding Orisa spirituality is Soyinka, eventually distilling the sensitivities he cultivated through that immersion into a broader philosophical and spiritual orientation in which the Orisa influence is unmentioned but the soaring power of the spiritual heights he has climbed through such orientations blazes forth in new constellations, his earlier,more experimental but still very powerful work along such lines represented by the poem Idanre and the play A Dance of the Forests, and his most mature expressions there as known to me being  the play Death and the Kings Horseman and the poetry of Credo of Being and Nothingness and the essays in Myth, Literature and the African World, while his greatest non-Orisa spiritual texts known to me are the poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt and the autobiographical The Man Died. 

It’s always inspiring to discuss books and other creativities with those who love them, vital to making life meaningful.

Thanks 

Toyin

[Biko Agozino]

The columns that many attribute to ancient Greece and Rome were first developed by ancient Egypt and continues to be revived across Europe and North America:

Egyptian Revival architecture - Wikipedia

Egyptian Revival architecture - Wikipedia Much of the early knowledge about ancient Egyptian arts and architecture was filtered through the lens of the Cl...

Goody supports this with evidence of the theft of African history, including archiotecture:

'https://sex.ncu.edu.tw/members/Ho/study/2012spring_WesternCivilization/the%20theft%20of%20history%20JACK%20GOODY.pdf

Biko

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[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Thanks for the link to Jack Goody's  Theft of History. 

George Jackson called it Stolen Legacy. 

Sprague de Camp in The Ancient Engineers points out  as well that the

orders of  " classical Greek temple columns" are from Egyptian temple columns

inspired by the  lotus, papyrus and date palm.

This of course brings us to the reality that  Africa scholars who do not

pay attention to ancient  Egypt, do so at their intellectual peril.

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html

Chief Editor- "Africa Update"

www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali

Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries

2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies

 University of Texas at Austin

2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   

New York African Studies Association

Founding Co -Chair. Sengbe Pieh AMISTAD Committee

Founding Director, African Studies, CCSU

 

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Subject: [WARNING: Suspected Phishing] Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Puzzling Makeover of Entrance Building to the Oba’s Chambers in the Palace of the Oba of Benin

 

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[Chika Okeke-Agulu]

Biko,

The neo-pharaonic (and a bit of Art Deco) movement in architecture (with Egyptian pylon facades, papyrus/palmiform columns and capitals, etc) was a mostly 19th and early 20th-century phenomenon that was relatively limited in scope and that had far less impact in Western public architecture of the modern era than Graeco-Roman architectural design. The Egyptians and Greeks did not invent or use the arch; rather it appeared first in Mesopotamia but was refined by the Romans who also developed from it the dome. These two elements--the arch and dome--along with the Greek and Roman orders and pediments are the key elements of most public buildings in Europe and America since the Renaissance. The Oba's palace building under discussion includes the Greek pediment, (the triangular facade) and transmogrified Greek Corinthian orders (columns/capitals). There's nothing I can see from the exterior that is connected to Egyptian pharaonic architecture.  

Chika

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

Thanks for the link to Jack Goody's  

Theft of History. George  James called 

[Toyin Falola]

This is a wonderful trend.

Chika, can I commission you to do a textbook on this?

TF

                                                        

                             The New Front Part of the Central Building of the Palace of the Oba of Benin

 

                                                                     from

 

                                                              Alltimepost.com

 

Benin never had an automobile industry, so one cannot argue for innovation in such an industry, but Benin has an ancient artistic  and architectural tradition, one of the greatest in the world. Should the creativity suggested by that achievement not be reflected in the central building of the Oba's palace, the spatial and symbolic centre  of Benin culture?

Should the structure be rebuilt? I think so. 

Why?

A cultural centre of the level of significance of the palace of the Oba of Benin needs to be constructed in terms of the most enduring values, propjecting the union of the past, the present and the timeless, as demonstrated by the unique insights developed in relation to the culture's creative traditions.

 University College, London, for example, has a similar but even more impressive design than the building now constituting the Oba's chambers.

                                                                            

           

                                                                                             
The relevance of that design to UCL, however, is clear, being a Western university with its roots in the headwaters of the Western cognitive tradition in ancient Greece, where that style achieves a particularly iconic representation in the Parthenon.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Jakub Pala's picture of the Parthenon, ''a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art, an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization.(Wikipedia)

 

What is the direct relationship of such cultural linlks to the palace of the Oba of Benin, the symbolic centre of a civilisation with its own cognitive, artistic and architectural history?

As an example of the innovative use of the idea of pillars in African architecture, pillars demonstrating royal grandeur within high creativity, one may see the famous verandah posts of Olowe of Ise for the palace of the Ogoga of Ikere, in which human figures hold up the roof, the stylization of these figures and the spatial relationships between them greating a sense of silent majesty.

                                                                     

                                                          

 

The sculptural tabeleau is centred in the paradoxical figure of the Olowe and his wife, in which the power associated with the monarch is not depicted in terms of an obvious evocation of power on his person,  but through a combination of factors, visually powerfully but needing a grounding in Yoruba theologies of kingship to understand.

 His wife standing behind him, towers over him,

                                                 

                                                                                                                    

 

 

her face powerful in its bulbous stare, topped by a crown with a zig zag design akin to a flash of lightning

 

                                                   

 

 an imposing presence towering above  the feminine features of the quietly seated Olowe, his crown, topped by an elegant bird, images suggesting beauty and grace rather than power, 

 

                                                          

                                                               

 

paradoxes possibly evoking Yoruba ideas of royal power as grounded in feminine power, the latter's arcane potency symbolised by the bird, representative of the capacity for interdimensional  motion associated with feminine power in its arcane form, evoked by the expression, Awon Iya Wa, which does not simply mean ''Our Mothers'' in the conventional sense of motherhood but creative and destructive potencies embodied by the feminine represented by particular female figures, human and non-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial.

Olowe's approach is clearly very different from the European use of human figures as pillars, caryatids and atlantes, the differences between both forms demonstrating the originality of the artists.

It is such originality that should be aspired to by such a cultural centre as the palace of the Oba of Benin.

Related demonstrations of originality could invove comparsions between Olowe's iconic palace  doors, such as this one directly below centring an image which looks like an opon ifa, a divination board from the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, for exploring and shaping possiblities  at the intersection of matter and spirit, the face of the embodiment of this intersection and guide to interpreting its symbolic languages, the deity Eshu, inscribed at its sides, as birds converge, their beaks touching, above the divinatory platform, possibly evoking ideas of motion between dimensions and possibilities, as pursued by Ifa

 

                                                                           

                                      
                                           

              and other examples of Olowe's unique style                                                                                   

                                                                                          

                                 

 

 

                                                                                                         

                                    

which may be compared, for example, with French sculpture Auguste Rodin's famous Gates of Hell, dramatising scenes of hell in the Divine Comedy of Italian writer Dante Alighieri, topped by a version of Rodin's signature work, the Thinker, a figure crouched in thought, reflecting on the vagaries of human life represented by the varied agonies of hell, each reflecting the character of the life of the person suffering a particular unique punlishment for their own brand of sinful life, as depicted by Dante 

                                                                        

                    

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[biko...@yahoo.com]

Teach sista Glo, teach! I was going to include Stolen Legacy by James in the references but when I checked, I found that he did not include architecture in the loot perhaps, because the pyramids are too heavy to be smuggled to the British museum, as the meme goes. I was also surprised that Goody did not cite James at all nor did he mention Diop in his fat book. The theft is on going.

Diop warned us in Civilization or Barbarism to be careful of dismissing any aspect of culture in Africa as foreign because when you scratch the surface, you will find African origins of civilization. With reference to architecture, he remarked that the best example from ancient Greece was a one room affair known as the School of Athens compared to the complex structures erected by Africans about 6000 years before there was anyone called Greek and Greek philosophers privileged Africa as the site of Atlantis. 

Same goes for the desire to attribute some designs to Mesopotamia when the place was obviously populated, ruled, and at least influenced by Africans for thousands of years and the Hanging Garden of Babylon is nothing compared to an obelisk that has stood the test of time. Emeagwali cited Asante elsewhere to show that Egyptian systems of writing predated those of Sumeria by at least three hundred of years. Ditto for Christianity as a stolen legacy weaponized by Europe.

Okankuzi Chika, na your field be this. So, carry go. But if you are right that the Kemetian revivalism in European architecture started in the 19th century, there is evidence of copy copy even before Christ, that will make the plagiarism a fashion of more than 200 years and counting. Now who is the copy cat?

Instead of bellyaching about who invented the wheel first (Africans did that too), let us look beyond the facade of the gate to Wakanda and demand for the abolition of monarchies across Africa in preference for radical republican democracy at all levels. Yes, democracy is also original to Africa. Down with the monarchy! Not just the gate.

Biko

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