CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AS PANACEA FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL INCLUSIVENESS
Tar Ukor
Comr Tar Ukor, (a.k.a Mambissa) Artist Director and Chief Executive Officer, National Troupe of Nigeria was in Makurdi the Benue State Capital to unveil the first swange orchestra of the National Troupe 30th year anniversary. He spoke against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution he’s currently undertaking across the country.
What is culture?
Culture is organizing your daily existence in a sustainable way using the tool of technology of the particular age to make life agreeable; to make society develop, expand production and raise the level of leisure, to help the people create a product that sustain your existence in a very pleasurable manner whether on health issues, housing , education, transportation, agriculture and a whole gammon of what makes life useful and gives a human consciousness of compassion and sharing with each other or the other person for equal civilization
How have you been able to reinvigorate and usher in vibrancy in the troupe in line with guiding philosophy of the Buhari administration of mobilizing and developing culture for national cohesion and national integration?
First, I am lucky because I am one of the founding management staff of the National Troupe of Nigeria in 1989 under the Iconic illustrious guru of African theatre and Yoruba dramatist specificall , late Papa Hubert Ogunde, during the Ibrahim Babangida military regime, when the Ministry of Information was headed by Late Prince Tony Momoh, I was then the Head of Station of NTA, Uyo. So, NTA seconded me to work with papa Ogunde as an artist and dancer. We stayed in his village, Ososa, near Ijebu -Ode, in his family compound, and that was where the National Troupe officially took off. So, here I am thirty years later taking up the mantle to revive the original vision of Papa Ogunde.
So how did you meet the National Troupe?
I met the National Troupe totally comatose, but we have been through hard team work and a clear vision of what the Troupe should do and not do. We rebranded the focus in line with the Federal Government policy of Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) which started in 2015 -2020 which focus was; give culture to the people and let them feel the impact of government programmes and government policies and interpret it such that who benefits from your programme. This we successfully did. Right now, we are in Benue with some members of the National Troupe of Nigeria to unveil the first orchestra of the National Troupe and it 30th year anniversary.
Now, we have commercially focused the orchestra that can give you suku, merregae to Pachanga to swange to makosa to high life or to any brand of music that the world is willing to listen to and to make people happy that they want to get up and dance. So, we are retooling the National Troupe to go away from community programming to commercial programming with the parameters of who we are as Africans or who we are as Nigerians. So, ours is trado-modern orchestra that made it, you could play swange music with your guitar, your local trumpet and still integrate it into modern orchestra, using western instrument such that you don’t have to be Tiv, to be able to dance to swange music. The band is structured to local and vocal arrangement and the instrumentation to a point that you dance and you are not able to know that it is swange of the Tiv people, but you know that it is good music. So, this is the rebranding we are talking about.
How prepared is the National Troupe ready to take Information and Communication Technology (ICT) following digital switch-over of broadcasting in Nigeria and coping with the new normal?
Again, just on the 20th day of March, 2021, diplomatic and business community in Abuja, sought the collaboration of National Troupe and Benue is our first point of call, that we are coming with a children creative theartre. This is commercial based, because government can no longer give us money for entertainment. Rightly so, the digital space is looking for content. The new demand of technology. Corona virus pandemic has retool the orientation of culture towards what we can do as National Troupe, limited gathering of people in a space, but you still put this into tip bits and electronically transmit. For instance, if I have a conversation with you and I do a piece of musical outfits with limited number of persons I can bring this and edit in a studio and put it out for the world to listen to and have their leisure space.
Basically, the National Troupe is now looking towards sustainability, how do we sustain ourselves with competing interest. So, my focus now is, I don’t wait for government to give me overhead or capital, what can I do as an entertainer. Others are surviving without government money, so there are spaces, as people want to listen to something, so why don’t enter into that space. And as they enter the digital space to listen to us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, their mobile data is running and if all over the world, one million people are able to plug in to listen to our folktales, folk songs, music and we make USD1million from one million people a year by one million hit that is a Million dollar, if it two million people that USD2Million, imagine USD2million in hands of the National Troupe as money earned from entering the digital space to compete with others at the level of excellence.
I have been in music for 46 years. I have no excuse not to put the best out there to the world from Nigeria and I do put out the best.
How do you rate the Nigerian Music and culture market most especially the Tiv Kwaghir?
Nigeria has the most of the plethoras of cultural brands, large markets of cultural brands from different ethnic groups in Nigeria, the bata music from Yoruba, Atilogwu from Indigbo, Swange from Tiv, Koroso from Hausa/Fulani in Kano, Agidigbo from South west, the ekonbi from South/South among the Calabar and Ebibio people and Anang. You have cultural forms in music, songs, dances that can help and of course back home again the gargantuan brocade that the world must see is the Tiv Kwaghir. Take Kwaghir to the media and digital space, you will capture the world.
How do you intend to leverage on this monumental feat by utilizing indigenous community theatre tradition and exploitation of economic aspects by generating wealth , jobs and raising young talent from the home front on the whole kwaghir value chain and the swange orchestra and why the choice of children as your COVI-19 campaign using culture for social integration?
First of all , the Covid-19 pandemic like I said earlier, has created a new normal that is a paradigm shift, that is, new way of doing things , and until scientist are able to bring up remedy that can best solve the spread of Covi-19 and ways we can survive, culture cannot die because of pandemic, because even in ancient days, we had pandemics, the plagues in Egypt, Sodom and Gomorrah, even the flood, so this is not the first time we are experiencing pandemic, so this cannot stop us from reassessing platforms of communication. Like you know, entertainment is communication, once it has edutainment, that is educate the people and enlighten them. Infotainment, that is as you are informing the people and making them pleasurable in terms of the things you are giving them.
So, the binding super glue in cultural pleasure and satisfaction is edutainment, infotainment and entertainment based on exploiting the aesthetic values that society holds together.
What is the Tiv kwaghir is the best in the whole world and as I travelled around the world, the nearest that have come close to the Tiv Kwaghir is the Chinese dragon theatre, as great as Chinese dragon theatre is, it costumes is not up to the Tiv Kwaghir theartre, you can give the Chinese dragon theatre, 40% in terms of genre, that is the mask theatre, next is the Japanese ‘Kabuki’ theatre which began in 1603 which deals mostly in popular traditional form of Japanese drama, kabuki features dances, song, mime, colourful costumes, heavy makeup , and lively exaggerated movement to tell stories about historical events. But the singular Tiv Kwaghir of Bantu origin has traversed from Ethiopia through Southern Africa, Zambia to the Congo to Nigeria to the Benue Valley today now own by the Tiv people is that intrinsic indigenous theatre tradition of passing informal education, knowledge from one generation to the other. I come from a kwaghir family and kwaghir is own by the village. It is not one person’s intellectual property, that is the beauty of it. It is the village consciousness, community consciousness , so it has a value chain, those who designed the costumes, the idea creators, that is the script writers , the sculptures themselves; who sculpt the ‘ajigbe’( that is the mask) and the beauty of it is that they are able to represent the characteristics of that issue they are dealing with, the material they are dealing with , if it is human fallible or weaknesses, human anti-social behavior and how to make society resent such behaviour. Kwaghir is a school of life and there is need for effort to preserve the kwaghir and the support of the Governor Samuel Ortom is commendable towards pushing for and the success of of inscription of Kwaghir by UNESCO that was achieved in 2019.
The miracle and magic of Tiv Kwaghir is that the word kwaghir is a Tiv word , but the Japanese understands it beyond the aesthetics of culture, it helps to socialized the people, educate mostly Children, in terms of poetry recitation among others and we must be seen to celebrate, through annual event, to avoid it from delisting and this will have a value chain in terms of weaving of clothes , to drums among others.
Wow, beautifully captured