Amaka served Ayinla Omowura Breakfast.
The Apala legend Ayinla Omowura was long dead before Quilox, a popular club and lounge in Lagos, was founded in 2013. Before Burnaboy sang about breakfast( a Nigeria colloquial for heartbreak), or popular bar owner and businessman Obi Cubana and Instagram blogger Tunde Ednut would be known in digital media. But this day, I stumbled upon a video where Ayinla sang about Amaka serving him breakfast in Quilox lounge in Lekki, Lagos, West Africa.
I know Ayinla's voice and tune too well to miss. It reverberated through our homes from Kaduna to Abuja because Maami was a connoisseur of Indigenous music and musicians from Epo Akara, Orlando Owo, Queen Salawa Abeni, and Eleemure, not to forget Mr. Fuji .ak.a Barry Wonder. However, like the Jacob paradox in the Judeo-Christian text, the voice was undoubtedly Ayinla’s. Still, the body was unmistakably Nigerian comedian Kenny Black ( click the link for the video). I was fascinated by the mimicry, the adaption of the genre of Apala, and the voice of Ayinla Omowura singing about contemporary love relationships in the way he would if he were alive.
Akin Adesokan, in his groundbreaking book "Everything Is Sampled: Digital and Print Mediations in African Arts and Letters," provided me with a comprehensive understanding and a new vocabulary to explain how different modes of creative practice, including adaptation, rely on digital culture and technology innovation for the invention and reinvention of cultural material that may not have lasted under certain circumstances to reach new audiences through the use of new tools.
The author discussed five modes of creative practices: curation, platform, composition, remix, and adaptation. The other creative practice that the author promises to explore in what he said would be Trichy is translation. It seems that translation could help many subaltern genres become known. Personally, I wonder if technology is the answer because even as "native" speakers of English, auto-generated content would confuse you.
Importantly, in his insightful analysis, Adesokan is not uncritical of the ethical issues, copyright, unequal relations, exploitation, and concerns that emerged from each creative mode of practice. His goal, it seems, is to steer our attention away from an obsession with dialectical reading that sets “cultural production” ( a term that the author jettisoned) or genre against each other. Instead, he seems more interested in asking us to consider the historicity of the form and a multidisciplinary approach to various cultural forms.
Posted on Facebook on June 22, 2024
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