A taste of samba-calypso, trans-migratory rhythms on World Poetry Day 2025 in Lagos
Evicted Maroko echoes through the ages in Soyinka’s new music
By Anote Ajeluorou
SOOTHING South American samba and calypso rhythms, both in music and poetry, filled Terra Kulture Theatre Arena, Lagos last Friday, March 21, 2025 in an evening the event patron and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said should have been tagged ‘An Evening with Cuba’ as ‘Special Guest Nation’ at this year’s World Poetry Day, and not Soyinka. Originally tagged ‘Providus Bank Poetry Cafe: An Evening with Wole Soyinka,’ it is held to ‘celebrate one of humanity’s most treasured forms of cultural and linguistic expressions and identity,’ according to UNESCO. With ‘Poetry as a Bridge for Peace and Inclusion’ as global theme, the event was designed to ‘promote linguistic diversity, creative expression and the enduring influence of poetry in bridging social and cultural divides.’ The event was curated by culture communicator Mr. Jahman Anikulapo.
However, the Lagos event had ‘Sand Dune and Ocean Bed: The Template of Dispersal’ as theme to amplify the historical and cultural connection between the homeland country Nigeria and Cuba, the guest nation where a huge chunk of unwillingly Africans were dispersed centuries ago, but whose descendants returned in musical and poetic homage. Powerful performances in Lagos saw artists both from Nigeria and Cuba entertaining the mixed audience of Nigerians and Cubans. The Latin American country’s Ambassador to Nigeria Miriam Morales Palmero and other embassy officials joined Soyinka and the MD/CEO of Providus Bank Mr. Walter Akpani in an evening of fun and memory. Providus Bank has sponsored World Poetry Day in straight six years.
Also lending her voice to the global significance of World Poetry Day 2025 is UNESCO’s Director General Audrey Azoulay who said, “Arranged in words, coloured with images, struck with the right metre, the power of poetry has no match. As an intimate form of expression that opens doors to others, poetry enriches the dialogue that catalyses all human progress, and is more necessary than ever in turbulent times.”
The evening echoed with samba and calypso rhythms from the Cuba artistes delegation and the echo of trans-migratory poetry from the homeland poets. While the South Americans filled the hall with their samba and calypso rhythms with piping wind instruments, especially the group Camarata Cortes from Cuba, with its classical music performance aesthetics, the Nigerian performers went on remembrance route, tracing how the ancestors of their Cuban counterparts landed on foreign shores have journeyed back home for the special performance. Indeed, the presence of both parties on the same stage bore out the them for this year’s celebration, ‘Poetry as a Bridge for Peace and Inclusion’, serving effectively as cultural ‘bridge’ for the two countries united in historical commonality of displaced people.
Cuban Ambassador to Nigeria Miriam Morales Palmero (left, with red beads adorning her neck); Prof. Wole Soyinka; MD/CEO, Providus Bank Mr. Walter Akpani; director of Camarata Cortes quartet, Jose Lius Cortes; a member of Camarata Cortes and Emiliano Sardinas at World Poetry Day… in Lagos
The Lagos World Poetry Day celebration was also significant, as Soyinka attested, for being the first year into the ‘Second International Decade for People of African Descent’ declared by the UN General Assembly on December 17, 2024, both to mark the end of the first decade that started in 2015 and the beginning of the second one, which has as theme ‘People of African Descent: Recognition, Justice and Development.’
Created by the music director, Jose Lius Cortes ‘El Tosco’, the Camarata Cortes’ performance bore out the saying that music indeed is a universal language as nearly the same piping wind instruments pelt out different but harmonised and appealing notes that majority in the audience swayed and nodded to in grateful appreciation. The director’s own composition was also romantic in its allure and danceability.
The all-ladies Camarata Cortes quartet and its director got the audience transported to Cuba and the Americas, as they dished out tunes after tunes from the region, particularly Cuba and Brazil notable for the samba and calypso tunes. The last note, with its seeming ‘call and response’ style from the director and his music team mates was electrifying. And when the poet and solo musician Emiliano Sardinas (Repenista) took the stage, it was clear proper samba/calypso rhythm had come to Lagos. The all white-clad Camarata Cortes ladies, graceful and elegant in their piercing, piping music, with passion flares in their eyes, would seem to have prepared the stage in advance for Emiliano’s entrance. With his powerful voice that carried with him the spirit and resonance of his adopted continent through the seas back home to his ancient roots, Emiliano embodied the unmistakable samba and calypso rhythms of the Americas. And then he performed the ultimate act of the returnee when he knelt down in worshipful reverence for perhaps touching down at last in the homeland. It was both humbling and touching gesture.
Earlier, a bata dance group had ushered the audience into their seats, entertaining the August visitors in its Yoruba-themed performance before Rotji Gokir performed a poem titled after the theme. Yusuf Balogun (Aremo Gemini) then took the audience on the destructive voyages that saw the ancestors of the guest nation performers taken away in Africa’s first wave of international dispersal centuries ago. But he affirmed how undying the spirits of those taken were and why a rebirth of the homeland has become inevitable. Wole Alade also entertained with his saxophone before Chinelo Nworah also took the stage and continued the migratory story, just as guitarist and poet Kafayat Quadri took the migratory story a notch higher, wondering what people who leave actually hope to find on the other side when they go in search of a dream in far-off places when ‘what you’re searching for is right here, nibi’. Tijani Usman’s audio-visual display on the wide screen enhanced his performance with visual effects that trace the pains of slavery during the middle passage, and the sweetness of freedom borne on the back of heroes and heroines who fought for it. Evelyn Osagie brought up the rear for the Nigeria poetic delegation before the Cuban guest performers took over.
There was Alex Pausides, with his Uli Beier-like looks or even Socrates, performed in his native Latin tongue before Edelmis Vega’s very elegiac poem reminds of the ephemeral nature of life and it’s uncertainties before Ifa priest Israel Dominguez took the stage to pay homage to his avatar and the universality of the human race.
Prof. Wole Soyinka addressing the audience with a dejected Maroko old lady evicted in 1990 in the background PHOTO: ANOTE AJELUOROU
EARLIER, patron of Providus Bank Poetry Cafe, Soyinka drew attention to the sad reality of displacements or migration – positive or negative – happen in different guises but impact humanity in profound ways. Taking a cue from the celebration’s theme, Soyinka said migration, whether through the oceans (the centuries’ old Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) or sand dune (recent trans-Sahara desert and Mediterranean Sea to Europe for better livelihoods), have implications. The Nobel laureate in literature, however, also drew attention to a particular displacement that took place some 35 odd years ago in 1990 when Maroko, a suburb of Victoria Island, Lagos, now Oniru and part of Lekki Phase I, was destroyed and its inhabitants displaced.
As one with an ever fertile mind that busily explores the gamut of artistic range, Soyinka has come up with a music, not unlike satirical music he made back in the 1980s as Nigeria slid into anomie, ‘I love my country, I no go lie’. This time it’s Maroko that caught the literary genius’s attention, and he titles the music ‘Image in a Month of Abstinence.’ The telling image is that of an old woman who sits dejected and forlorn, alone by her life-long, wretched possessions scattered about her, not knowing what next to do about her upended life: ‘Ecce Homo! Guard this image close./ It defies originality, mocks discovery,/ Banal as cast-off attire. Only/ An old lady sitting on a stoop…’ The refrain to the music is also telling in the rank oppression that the common man suffers in the hands of the rich and affluent: ‘Maroko, what an encore/ To resound at this hour of frailty/ Is compassion/ Out of fashion?/ Roofs only for the high and mighty?’
On the broader scale of celebration, Soyinka told his audience about slavery that still persists in various guises, “So Cuba is here both as a reminder, a tragic instance of our history on the African continent, but also as a spur to the continuing recollection that the task is not yet over, that that aberration known as slavery is still very much with us not only externally, but internally on the African continent.
“I should remind you that this particular commemoration is being done in honour, first of all, of the United Nations Decade of Remembrance for the Enslaved people. Simultaneously, the commencement of a second decade of the United Nations programme for the descendants of enslaved people. Hence the title, the theme, which we tried to wrap around today’s presentation, ‘Sand Dune and Ocean Bed.’ I’m very glad that the curators began, shall we say, with the positive side of migration, of dispersal. It’s not all negative, it doesn’t end always in a cul-de-sac.
“However migration takes several forms, voluntary migration and there is violent migration, violent dispersal with no volition at the beginning, the middle and the end. Hence the global recognition of the great harm that was done to the African continent, the hard-core resource centre of slavery, of that criminal tendency of humanity to enslave other people.
“European culture and civilization owe a lot, far more than is generally acknowledged, to the African continent. The route by which this cultural exchange took place is of course one of anguish. But again it is also a reminder of the resilience of humanity.
“We should remind ourselves also, when we talk about dispersal, which is what slave trade, slavery, has in common with the word, migration. Dispersal. We ought to ask ourselves from time to time how does it begin? Not where does it begins, but how?”
Providus Bank’s MD/CEO, Mr. Walter Akpani praised the longevity of the project, saying, “When we started this we weren’t even sure if we were going to have the next edition. But after the first edition, I promised Prof. Wole Soyinka that we would not stop it. Today, World Poetry Day 2025 is the day when voices converge to remind us that poetry is not just a nudge, it is a force of nature, it’s a movement and, in its purest form, an echo of the human spirit.
“The theme of today, ‘Sand Dune and Ocean Bed: A Template of Dispersal’ speaks to the internal forces of change: migration and evolution. Like shifting dunes sculpted by the wind or the ocean beds ever changing but grounded with depth, poetry moves with currents of time, carrying voices across borders, shaping minds and fostering unity in diversity.
Guitarist and poet Dr. Kafayat Quadri
“Today as we celebrate poetry in our discourse, let us also celebrate the power of dispersal in ways ideas travel and the way change, though sometimes unsettling as it may be, is the bedrock of renewal. Let this be a call to everyone, to the poets, to keep writing, breaking new grounds with work. Seek to touch the world with your words, take on new adventures with your art and leave a lasting impression for future ambassadors.
“As the dunes shift and the tides rise and fall, let us remember that dispersal is not disappearance. It is an expansion. It is the spreading of influence. It is the promise that every word, every effort, every thing has the power to reach distant shores. Let poetry continue to be one of our bridges, one of our beacons and our boldest expression of what it means to be alive.”
Ambassador Palmero was also excited about the honour done her country as ‘Special Guest Nation’ of the celebration, assuring that the moment has forged stronger unity between both nations in ways too numerous to count.
“Welcome, distinguished guest, dear friends and poetry lovers,” she said. “It’s an honour to address you on this very special day in the beautiful city of Lagos where we are celebrating the sixth edition of World Poetry Day 2025. I would like to thank Wole Soyinka and the MD of Providus Bank Mr. Walter Akpani for giving us the opportunity to be here today to share the stage. This gathering is the beginning of the Second Decade for the People of African Descent but also symbolises the reunion between two sister nations – Nigeria and Cuba – united by history, traditions and blood. Poetry has brought us together at this momentous. I would like to express our most sincere gratitude to Nigeria for the love and affection with which they always welcome her children. This gathering is a testament to the power of poetry to bring us together to celebrate our shared humanity and to strengthen the bond that unite us together across the ocean.
“Cuba and Nigeria share much in common. Majority of our traditions, Yoruba culture and religion are the same – and today I come with the national dress of Cuban mixed with the royal red beads of a Yoruba princess!”
Notable culture persons at the event were Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, Joke Silva, Femi Odugbemi, Bankole Olayebi, Samuel Osaze, Kunle Ajibade, Makin Soyinka, Dafe Ivwurie, Dr. Obari Gomba, Aj. Dagga Tolar, Toyin Akinosho, Amara Chimeka, Aduke Gomez, among others.
