Title: Festival of Songs & Drums

Author: Tekena Tamuno

Publisher: Newswatch Books Limited, Lagos (1999)

Pages: 141

Price: £12.00

Here is a welcome companion volume to the author’s exciting Songs of an Egg-Head. This work, in light or free verse, provides more penetrating insights into life generally and into the life-styles of a contemporary society with which the author is closely identified as a scholar and citizen. While in Songs of an Egg-Head, the focus was on a putative land (Labuja), here, in this collection, the searchlight is on its later (post 1982) phase (Kolokia). Indeed, Kolokia, land of discourse, famous and infamous, produced a steady stream of gifted spokesmen and women of the kinds refreshingly represented in their frank, public colloquia. This surely, is a panoramic view of Kolokia, as fascinating as that of Labuja—both immense gifts of Mother Nature waiting to be tapped by Man, if possible, for the optimum pleasure of the discomfited in society as well.

The representative characters here, gifted men and women of songs as well as deft drum specialists, performed brilliantly to the absolute delight of packed audiences during their popular festival. Through unmistakable songs and drums, they candidly depicted life’s ups and downs. They also clearly indicated varied responses to issues of comfort and discomfort on the one hand, and of pain and pleasure on the other.

About the Author

Professor Tekena Tamuno, a professor of history, was vice chancellor of Nigeria’s premier university, University of Ibadan, where he is currently a professor emeritus. He is one who finds the medium of light or free verse a charming vehicle of expression for his genre of social commentary and articulation of a philosophy of life. Born among a predominant population of fishermen, in an island community, he deeply loves the sea and its fruits. Yet subsequent experience outside his birthplace also made him quite aware of the abundant treasures of the land and air. His abiding interest in nature, in its multiple forms, in the delicate relationship between humans and the rest of fauna and flora, is undisguised.