EP03: Morrison's Black Book, Chimurenga's Festac '77 – "Unwritable Stories" in a Book Form Artwork

NKATA: Dots of Thoughts

I often wake up in the morning with thoughts reeling in my head. Thoughts inspired by a conversation with someone; something I read, heard, listened to (music/podcasts), a film I saw, a photograph I made, an essay/poem I wrote, or in broad terms, an impactful encounter. They exist as disjointed, scattered particles I often refer to as dots of thoughts.Thus, this podcast show is an attempt to articulate, to converse and to put in relation these floating thoughts. While it relies on random impulses, the podcast is structured by thought-prompts focusing on everyday issues across space, time and works of life. Though it is not a live podcast, it somewhat mimics this approach in that for every episode, the conversation, which begins as a monologue, evolves into a dialogue through a phone conversation with someone else in another part of the world (a friend, a colleague, relative, expert in a subject, creator of a work, originator of an idea). This ensures a broadening of the thematic and locational context of the conversation as a way of demystifying distances. It is a weekly show intended to be spontaneous (as much as technical requirements and logistics allow). Future episodes will feature intro/excerpts of new music tracks made by me. Other times, it will reference aural materials sourced from different corners of everyday life. It will be freshly served – nothing preserved in the freezer! Listeners are encouraged to join the conversation by leaving a comment on the episode in their preferred platform of listening. Selected comments will be addressed in a subsequent episode.Emeka Okereke (host)Available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Stitcher, Overcast, etc.

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NKATA: Dots of Thoughts

EP03: Morrison's Black Book, Chimurenga's Festac '77 – "Unwritable Stories" in a Book Form

April 29, 2020 • Nkata Podcast Station • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In Episode 3 of Dots of Thoughts (DoT), Emeka Okereke reflects on a book which preoccupied him of late: Festac ‘77. This book, “decomposed, an-arranged and reproduced” by Chimurenga the Cape-Town based Pan African art space/publishers, is a compilation of the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture which took place in Nigeria, in 1977. It was an epic event that Ntone Edjabe, founder of Chimurenga, placed on the same historical pedestal as the Great Pyramid. The Festival brought together some 30,000 black artists and scholars from 56 different countries of Africa and the Diaspora to present, converse and debate African/black art and ideologies.

Emeka Okereke (in Berlin) connected with Ntone Edjabe (in Cape Town) via a phone call to discuss the intentions, thought processes and conceptual positions which necessitated the book. Okereke suggested a descriptive premise as “anti-book” evidenced in the book’s unconventional form-content relation. Edjabe expanded on the analogy by referencing Toni Morrison’s Black Book as a significant source of inspiration. Like Morrison’s Black Book, Festac ‘77 set out with the audacious goal to put in book form an “unwritable history and story”. The foremost aim was to “experiment with new forms of writing that can capture the complexity, the epic scale of an event such as Festac ‘77.” A book that would account for the opacity, incomprehensibility, inconsistencies that are the crossroads of any foreseeable (African) unity.

“The experiment was not to write a book about Festac. The experiment was to write a book through Festac”, Edjabe inferred.

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People on this episode

Emeka Okereke

Host