Nigeria Votes!

Nigeria Votes!

Ulli Beier Akanji, Omoluabi, Ijimere Okunrin Meta. Sun're O

Meeting Ulli in 1962, with his small orange-coloured Cetron car, was by accident. He had come to visit his friend Duro Ladipo who was operating a beer parlour called ‘Popular Bar'. Ulli would have a stop-over to have one or two glasses of his favourite lager beer, Star. As he later narrated his campus experience to me during my visit to him and Georgina in Australia in 1985, he was more than happy to leave the campus environment. He succeeded in convincing the authority of the institution to approve his newly designed extra mural classes that afforded him to travel to many towns and villages of the then western region, organising lectures. It also gave him the opportunity to meet many Yoruba oral historians, priests and priestesses, Obas, artists and artistes. He never liked living with the university expatriate staff. He was more interested in meeting people outside the campus. Earlier, he was a founding member of the Mbari Club which though short-lived, in Ibadan at the back of a Lebanese restaurant called ‘I.Mudah' - and later at Adamasigba area. Other members included Ezekiel Mphalele, J. P. Clark, Bruce Onobrakpeya and others.

Theatre patron

The Popular Bar in Osogbo was transformed to Mbari Osogbo. But Mbari later was re-christened Mbari-Mbayo, meaning "When I see - I shall be Happy" in Yoruba. Duro Ladipo who had lived in the north and returned to his birthplace - Osogbo - as a pupil teacher, also ran the Bar and managed the Ajax cinema which was situated near Latona Street, all in Osogbo.

Ulli also met dramatists like Kola Ogunmola and Oyin Adejobi. I remember watching Kola Ogunmola during his performances at the newly established Artists and Writers Club where he performed as a lead singer and an acoustic guitarist. He had two groups: A Dance band and a Drama Group. Ogunmola's most popular play was ‘The Palmwine Drinkard' which was an adaptation from Amos Tutuola's book.

Usually, there was a kind of envy and jealousy among the three dramatists as each tried to ‘woo' Ulli but he was more interested in what Duro was doing. He would raise funds for productions of Ogunmola and Duro. I remember him staying at our rehearsals from evening till early morning while preparing our production of ‘ObaKoso' in readiness for the ‘Berliner Festwochen' in 1964.

He met Georgina in Nigeria and soon she became another strong supporter of the theatre. In collaboration with some of us, we usually designed our costumes and back-drops.

Ulli in Kijipa

I remember when Ulli came to take pictures at the annual Ori-Oke Festival in Iragbiji, my hometown, without knowing we were going to work together in future! He had come with his first wife, Susanne. Dressed in the local ‘Kijipa' Buba garment, he would be taking pictures while the wife would stay with the priests and the priestesses. Some of these photographs appear in Nigeria Magazine 1968.

After our Summer Experimental art school in 1963, it was he, who found us funds to buy materials for the continuation of our works until such a time when we were able to buy our own art supplies.

After leaving the theatre in 1966, I was staying in one of the apartments in his house on Ibokun Road, Osogbo. There, I was given space to do my works and sometimes I travelled with him as a research assistant. I was particularly with him while doing a research on the links between Ijero, Aramoko and Okuku. It was he who introduced me to people like ‘Uncle (Ambassador)' Segun Olusola, Akin Euba and Segun Sofowote during the days of THEATRE EXPRESS. We performed the play ‘Morning, Noon and Night' at Traverse Theatre Club in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1967. Ulli was instrumental to the possibility of staging that production.

My mentor

When he donated his artifacts collection to the defunct Institute of African Studies, he insisted that the collection must remain in Osogbo. I curated the collection for nine years (1967 to 1976) before it was relocated to another place by the Institute where it was vandalised. It was the late Jacob Afolabi who was in charge of the collection at the time.

I make Ulli my mentor for many reasons. Like a spiritualist, he had no lust for material things, he loved cultures of the world, he saw himself more as a universal being and more closely as a Yoruba man that he really was. I remember him for his love for traditional Agbegijo Theatre of Masks, for his literary works and for always willing to help promote works of known artists and writers, most especially of the so-called Third World. He has influenced me in the area of documentation of our oral literature. It was from him that I derived inspiration to build up my own collection, now known as ILE-ONA.


Muraina Oyelami, Eesa of Iragbiji and master Osogbo artist, was one of those that attended Ulli Beier's art workshops in Osogbo in the 60s. (Culled from http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/5688244-146/story.csp)

Ayonsola: The Yoruba Marriage!

As Told To Paola CAboara Luzzatto by Adunni Olorisa (Susan Wenger)

Iya Peju had a very good drummer. His name was Ayonsola. It was his music that had helped me to reach a deep participation in the ritual. Ayonsola had realised this, and he had come to my house to thank me. A strong tie was quickly established between the two of us: I felt helped by his music, and he felt stimulated and protected by me. He started to send his children to my house: this is a special way of communicating within the Yoruba culture. The child comes in and says: “My dad wants to know if I can come and play with you today”. I am always grateful when people send me their children, even for a few hours. I became very attached to one of his daughters, a 9-year-old little girl. People used to say she looked like me, and I felt she was similar to me in her personality. She could dance incredibly well, with a perfection of movements that was almost frightening, and she was incredibly sensitive.

Ayonsola accepted to come and play for our group. I was very strict with him, I asked him not to allow anything or anybody to interrupt him once he had started. My relationship with Ayonsola became very intense. We felt at first that this was good for both of us. His music helped me to carry on the rituals and to lead the group; my intensity helped him to reach a deep level of concentration.

My divorce from Ulli was by now official and I decided to get married to Ayonsola according to the local custom. It looked like the most natural thing to do. I was not discouraged by polygamy: I was aware that in a good traditional Yoruba marriage polygamy meant independence and respect, without jealousy and without possessiveness. Ayonsola had only one wife, she was the mother of the 9-year-old girl who used to come and play and dance with me. Jealousy was not an issue: we spent many afternoons together, myself and his wife, making batiks and cooking and talking about everything.

Ayonsola turned out to be not a good traditional husband. I didn’t know that two previous wives had already left him, which is very unusual in Yoruba culture. Ayonsola’s need to dominate me turned out to be very deep and destructive. Our relationship became a drama, actually a tragedy. What was happening? The tension between the two of us was something more complex and more destructive than jealously between the wives. He was an incredibly intense musician, he would overwhelm me with power. I needed him during the rituals. He needed me when he was playing, but he felt controlled. We were so dependent on each other that we started to feel resentful and enraged. He wanted to be stronger than me. Within a short time our life became a struggle.

Maybe because of his need to receive inspiration from another source, Ayonsola started to smoke marijuana and to drink gin. He became more and more devious and violent. He started to ask me to use some of his “magic mixtures”. That time was past for me: now I knew that my strength consisted in not using any magic mixture at all. It was from time of my solitary walks in the woods in Igbajo, when I abandoned my scared chain in shrine, and I saw the clear sky behind the trees. I felt had received a clear message about what was good for me, and I always respected it. I was resisting Ayonsola’s attempt to push me into drugs, drinks and magic, but he was violent, and I was afraid.

Ayonsola knows which is the most powerful, subtle, destructive tool he can use: to spoil what is sacred for me. One day he takes the drum that we use in our ritual, and says that he is going to sell it. For me this is unbearable, I felt a flashing rage, and I throw myself on the drum. He pulls it towards him and I pull it towards myself, then I fall on the floor, still clinging to the drum. Ayonsola leaves laughing, I lie on the floor in the house for a long time, and for a long time I can still hear his laughter. I loose consciousness. When I wake up, I am not sure I am still alive. After some time, I realise I am, but I am also sure that something has been killed inside me.

I ask for the divorce according to the local custom. This time I am really alone. But there is in my nature a need for solitude, which in some way is for me also a need for freedom. I have felt like this every time the tie with a man was becoming too close. I now understand this about myself: I have to live alone.

Excerpt published in commemoration of the 2010 Osun Osogbo Festival (August 27). Taken from the book,‘Susanne Wenger: artist and priestess’ by Paola Caboara Luzzatto (Firenze Atheneum, 2009). Culled from (http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/Books/5609319-146/story.csp)

Setting forth at dawn!