Prof MOYO OKEDIJI, a Nigerian scholar at the University of Texas in Austin, United States, pays tribute to a renowned artist and award-winning television producer/director Moyo Ogundipe, who died on March 1. He was 69.
out of an entire lifetime, if you can get a good five-minute cut, that’s a treasure,”Moyo Ogundipe reminisced last time we spoke in the middle of the summer, in Austin, Texas. We were looking back and looking forward. “Of all the precious moments you collect into your priceless cuts of memory, the most important moment is now,” he concluded. We were reading a painting he was giving me as a parting gift. The title of the painting: “An Opera: Xylem of Being.”
2004
Moyo Ogundipe climbed out of his bed and, totally nude, sauntered from bedroom to sitting room where I lounged sipping my coffee really black, dragging on a Turkish cigarette. I surveyed him from head to toe, before rebuking, “Next time, could you wear something, please?”
“Was it for real?” he asked. “It really happened, right? This is for real?”
“What is for real?” I responded.
“What happened yesterday? Did we really have that mind-blowing opening of my solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum? Did we have such an unbelievable crowd at the reception? Did the interview with television stations really take place?” he asked me. I had never seen him so excited before. “You need to calm down, Sir Mo,” I responded.
1989
“Do you know the meaning of all this bombing?”Ogundipe asked me. He did not wait for me to answer. “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s now totally an American world,” Ogundipe said. “Moyo, you have to go to America. You’ll love it. We must go to America and enjoy its fleeting years of freedom. It’s going to be available for next 20 years and it would be gone. Let’s go to America.”
“But what is Bush bombing Saddam got to do with it?” I asked him.
“This ongoing war (The Dessert Storm) is the official start of a world dominated by America. Let’s go to America and watch it happen. You’ll love it. The US will be the centre till 2020.”
2020 sounded so futuristic in 1989. I told him, as always, “America, not for me.”
1974
I was a first-year undergraduate at the University of Ife and was having an interview for a summer job at the WNTV (Western Nigeria Television) in Ibadan. I arrived Ibadan the day before my interview schedule. The television authorities lodged me at a guest house in Apata, far from the location of the WNTV. The Director of Programmes, who did the interview, assured me that they would find my “art gifts” useful at the Art Department of the television station. He asked his administrative assistant to type out a contract for me. She offered me coffee and I accepted the offer, thus she set aside the task of typing my contract letter to make me the coffee. I sat patiently, waiting, for her to get out the coffee things, but every second ticked like an hour. I just wanted my contract.
In walked a young man, certainly some 10 years older than me, but a century ahead of me in terms of polish, poise and personality. He wore jeans pants and a tan jacket over white shirt with no tie. He nodded in my direction and smiled at the lady making my coffee, who said: “He is waiting for you, Mr. Ogundipe. Please go inside,” nodding in the direction of the office of Director of Programmes.
He said: “Thank you,” to the woman, opened the door and went into the DOP’s office. I asked the lady, “Who is that?” She answered: “Mr. Moyo Ogundipe. He just interviewed for position of deputy producer.Both of you share the same first name of Moyo. And you are both artists. He graduated from the university where you are studying.”
“Oh, that’s the Moyo Ogundipe?”I exclaimed. “I’ve heard so much about him.”
1978
I returned to the university at Ife after graduating to start teaching and begin a career in the world of art and academy. Locally, I was stoking a reputation for making bad posters and my services were in high demand. I loved drawing these black and white phantoms, and if you wanted to make posters of them, good luck. Theater and drama directors including, Ola Rotimi, Chuck Mike, Wole Soyinka and Kole Omotosho were already working with me to make bad posters for their productions.
1979
“Mo, how you dey?”Moyo Ogundipe knocks on my door. I lived in the Boy’s Quarters of Dr. Kole Omotosho, a professor of African languages and literatures at the University of Ife. With me, in one tiny room, lived Lolu Akingbola. He was a colleague of Moyo Ogundipe at the WNTV at Ibadan. Lolu was famous nationally as a gifted newscaster. But one day, Lolu became part of my world at Ife.
I returned from classes one day, and packed my car at the side of the house as usual. I opened the door, and saw a man in my bed. It was Lolu Akingbola. He was sleeping and I did not wake him. Later in the evening, he woke up and we shared a drink.
“Here,” Lolu announced. “I’m here to join you.”
“What of your work at the Television House?” I asked.
“I’ve given it all up,” Lolu said. “To come and join you at Ife.”
“Sure. That’s really what you wanna do?” I asked him.
“At least for now,” he responded. “Suits me,” I agreed. He knew what he wanted.
Two weeks after Lolu left Ibadan to move in with me at Ife, Moyo Ogundipe knocked on the door. I gave him a cold beer, and Lolu joined us. “So, this rascal is now living with you,” Ogundipe said, as we began to talk art, drink and smoke.”Yes,’ Lolu declared. “Na Ife man dey now o.I de my jejeley here with Moyo.”
Ogundipe narrated his plan to use the television to stage a grand return of Fela to Nigeria. Fela was living a nomadic life as he moved to find a home for his music. Soon after Fela left Nigeria for Ghana, the government of Ghana was deporting Nigerians from Ghana.Fela left Ghana for a short spell in the United States. The military regime in Nigeria had destroyed his properties and business in Lagos. Fela just returned from Berlin where he caused a sensation with his 50-person band, creating a permanent atmosphere of wahala that was waiting to scatter in such an explosive mix of music, entertainment and heroic sexuality. What was often understated at that time was the progressive politics, which was Ogundipe’s favorite interest in Fela’s music.
“Fela,” Ogundipe informed me, “is now available in Lagos and I want to stage a nationwide promotion of his music.” “Good,” I responded. “Where you come in, Moyo, is this.” Ogundipe paused for effect. “I want you to make the meanest of the bad posters you’ve ever made for me. I want it now because I want the promo to start now.” “We’ll do it,” I assured him.
Six weeks later, the lavish show opened at the Amphitheater of the University of Ife, in 1979. It was a huge success for Fela’s career and a made for television feast rounding up the seventies.
2000
Ogundipe had completed his master’s degree at the esteemed Maryland Institute College of Art, and I had just joined the Denver Art Museum as a curator for African and Oceanic arts. I was passionate about showing the new art works that Africans were producing, and I wanted to bring the new art to Denver. It soon became clear to me there was no better strategies than for me to bring Moyo Ogundipe in conversation with existing works in the Denver Art Museum. He decided to move from Maryland to Colorado after we talked.
I went with my friend Elizabeth to pick Moyo Ogundipe up at the Greyhound Bus station in Denver, CO. It was early February morning, but it was not snowing or even chilly. His load was light: only a few paintings rolled up and a small traveling case. I drove him back home. The two-bedroom apartment was perfect for us both. I showed him his bedroom, and showed him my bedroom. The sitting room we held in common as studio and study. We stayed like that for four of the most productive years for both of us.
That evening, as we sat down to unwind after dinner, and we began to celebrate with wine and smoke, listening to Fela’s “Open and Close, I explained my mission to him.
“Sir Mo,” I called his attention….
“Please, please, ah beg, ah beg. Na you knight me!” he remonstrated as usual.
“Seriously, Sir. Mo,” I said. “I need from you the meanest solo show at the Denver Art Museum. Even if we have to start from the scratch, from going to get paint and canvas from the stores, take a long sleep and we begin work tomorrow.”
Sir. Mo nodded and we raised a toast to a great show.
Six months later, Moyo Ogundipe’s solo work was showing and he was the toast of the art world at the biggest art museum of the Rocky Mountains. And now he was standing before me in the nude pondering the faint line between real and dream.
2017
“Our friend, Moyo Ogundipe has passed on this morning,” Tunde Fagbenle’s baritone announced. Something skipped in my mind as it said: “Out of an entire lifetime, if you can get a good five-minute cut, that’s a treasure; Moyo Ogundipe got a couple of good days,” looking into the galaxies of colours prancing in the musical notes of the fathomless operatic painting he gifted me.