Thanks Chidi.
All these people were very publicly visible social, and largely political activists.
That kind of activity and visibility, however, represents one spectrum of achievement.
There are others, perhaps as important, but not as visible.
I wonder how may people know the Nigerian seller of film cassettes who, in order not to record a loss on unsold empty cassettes, decided to make a film using those cassettes, so my understanding of the story goes, that film being perhaps Living in Bondage, and hence was born Nollywood, what is now the second most prolific film industry in the world, the production values initiated by that film laying the foundation for the prolificity and mass appeal that define Nollywood as different from prior Nigerian film, as I understood this history.
Others whose work is foundational to Nigerian history but whom many don't know about include the Zaria Rebels, the members of the Zaria Art Society, such as Bruce Onobrakpeya, Uche Okeke and Yusuf Grillo who initiated post-classical Nigerian art in the tradition of art as mediated by university systems, that being my clumsy way of describing their achievement. Onobrakpeya's achievement, that being the one among them I am best informed about, ranks at a level uneclipsed by that of Soyinka in literature-though I doubt if his work has got up to half the scholarly attention that of Soyinka has got and even Soyinka's might have got more attention if he was a Western writer on account of the more vigorous development of the West's scholarly cultures- but how many outside art cognoscenti know of Onobrakpeya's achievement as well of his efforts in developing younger artists through his Harmattan workshops?
Without the impact of the Zaria school, the contribution of similar schools influenced by their values, such as the Nzukka, Ife, Benin and other schools in the flowering of modern Nigerian art might not have occurred or might have taken a different turn, a consideration suggesting the importance of the Zaria Rebels in shaping a central platform of Nigerian creative expression, the visual arts, an achievement strategic for the Africans' interpretation of reality, its relationship to economics and their contribution to related initiatives across the world.
Without the impact of the Zaria school, the contribution of similar schools influenced by their values, such as the Nzukka, Ife, Benin and other schools in the flowering of modern Nigerian art might not have occurred or might have taken a different turn, a consideration suggesting the importance of the Zaria Rebels in shaping a central platform of Nigerian creative expression, the visual arts, an achievement strategic for the Africans' interpretation of reality, its relationship to economics and their contribution to related initiatives across the world.
Going beyond Nigeria and the arts, how many people, anywhere, know the names of those who laid the foundations of today's medical knowledge, and, even in the country where he worked, England perhaps, how many know of William Harvey who discovered the fact that blood circulates round the body, and many others whose memory and celebration occur at different levels on the spectrum of visibility yet who are strategic both in their fields and to a greater or lesser degree in the lives of particular communities and the world as whole?
How realistic it to insist that only if one has the level of visibility of a Fela or a Martin Luther King Jr. before one may be rightly described as demonstrating a level of achievement pivotal to the development of humanity, either in terms of a society or a discipline in its effect on society and ultimately on the world?
Can one not be rightly understood as demonstrating in a unique and highly actualized form an aspect of creative human possibility even if one's work is not seen as historically pivotal?
These are some of my own ways of defining the impact of achievement in relation to levels of visibility, and therefore, of what should be seen as legendary and is so perceived within various communities and what has a right to be understood as legendary but might not be so understood.
toyin
On Tue, 8 Jan 2019 at 01:22, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi.opara@gmail.com> wrote:
Toyin,
What about in the cases of Fela Kuti, Gani Fawehinmi, Aminu Kano, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther-King and others, where there was uniformity of perception of these persons as(living) legends across segments?
CAO.
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