The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Photographer Who Documented a Long-Forgotten Pan-African Festival

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Forty-six years ago, a young photographer named Marilyn Nance got the opportunity of a lifetime. A student at the Pratt Institute, an art school in Brooklyn, Nance had never left the country. But she became one of the official photographers documenting a festival in Lagos, Nigeria, called FESTAC ’77. The monthlong festival featured artists from across Africa and the diaspora, and has been described as the most important Black cultural event of the twentieth century. But, on returning from the festival, Nance didn’t find any takers to publish her photos, and fifty years later, few people know it took place. “I thought I would be talking about FESTAC in 1978, not in 2022,” Nance told the staff writer Julian Lucas. “If some tragic thing had happened, everybody would remember. . . . But I guess maybe there was no investment in celebrating Black joy.” A collection of Nance’s photographs from the event was published late in 2022, in the book “Last Day in Lagos.”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Forty-six years ago, a young photographer named Marilyn Nance got the opportunity of a lifetime. Nance was a 23-year-old student at the Pratt Institute, an art school in Brooklyn, and she had never left the country. But she became one of the official photographers to document a festival called Festac 70s. which was held in Lagos, Nigeria. Festac was huge, an arts and culture festival featuring artists

from across Africa and the diaspora. Nance spent a month soaking up the atmosphere and preserving its spirit in photographs that are only now being published in a book called Last Day in Lagos. Marilyn Nance talked with our staff writer, Julian Lucas, about her experience and why so many of us have never heard of Festac 77.

Festac 77 was, it was like Woodstock. It was like a biennial. There were art exhibitions. It was like the Olympics, because we all marched around a stadium in our national dress. It was a meeting of African folks from all over the world. All our roots and our part in black culture and Africanian culture was incredible. And I looked around, at this sea of black faces, and I have never seen a collection of black people, larger than New York, larger than America.

And this is the largest collection of black people I had ever seen in my life. And I felt the earth moved. I felt that there was a place here for us. We are not Nigerian. We are not African, but we are in African people. This is the motherland. You were involved in the black arts movement from a young age, and I wonder if you had a sense of the significance of this festival. before you went.

I did, but I never thought that I would get to be like this age. And I thought that I would be talking about Festac in 1978 and not in 2022. You know, I did not know then that it would be disappeared from history. I thought it was something that was so big to me and to all the other. participants that surely this would be something that would resonate for years and years to come. And I think that if someone had gotten, if there's some tragic something that happened, everybody would remember, but it was a joyful thing. And I guess maybe there was no investment in celebrating Black Joy.

It's taking place here in Nigeria, in Africa. Welcome, welcome, ladies and gentlemen, you are... It's really extraordinary how much it's been forgotten when you see your photographs and you see Stevie Wonder, Miriam McCabeba, Sunrah in this wonderful procession of nations. But I've been witnessed to a lot of extraordinary events. And it points to the fact that a lot doesn't get said. And I knew that. I knew that even as a youngster.

I knew the way that our lives were regarded, and I knew differently. And I think that's why I said upon becoming a photographer, because there are things that I saw that I just wanted. other people to witness as well. But making the photographs is one thing. Getting them seen is quite another thing. They want the oil, but they don't want the people. They want the oil, but they don't want the people.

They want the oil, but they don't want the people. They want the oil, but they don't want the people. They want the oil, but they don't want the people. I wanted to ask you about a great photo you took of Queen Mother Moore. I love that picture. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about her and why it was so significant that she was there at the festival. At the making of that photograph, Queen Mother Moore was greeting, you know, making some exclamation, which I wish I remembered, but I have the photograph. I don't know what she said.

But. So it's a really regal photograph of her. And what I loved after reading about her was this is someone who had been an activist since the Scottsboro Boys, who had been part of Marcus Garvey's movement, which of course was so centered around returning to Africa. And then decades later, here she is in a very different cultural political moment. Well, I wouldn't say different. I would say it's a continuum. She talked about reclaiming your African personhood. She talked about reparations.

And she was the connecting thread. There were numbers of distinguished elders. That was her position. And Joseph Delaney, who was there from, who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. There was Ernest Critchlow, Natty Kumar, Elder musicians, young people, there was a whole continuum of the black creative spectrum. You know, in the visual arts, the spoken word, Jane Cortez was there, Melvin Edwards.

I mean, just... Since you're mentioning all these artists and performers, I remember reading that at one night in the Festac Village where the delegates were staying, Stevie Wonder came and just hung out with the delegation. What do you remember about that? Well, I don't even remember how we knew that he was there, but there he was. It was almost like a campfire situation, except for there was no fire. I don't remember what he said, but we were just like, oh, Stevie Wonder, Steve he wonder, you know. All of the action was in Festac Village, because all of the delegations, all of the contingents were there, And there was music.

I mean, I would lay down and like, I'm exhausted, but then you'd hear drums over here and music over there. You could not rest in Festak Village. And maybe Stevie heard about that. Showed up with Samela Lewis and Lewis Farcon and Jeff Donaldson. It's not like I have a fantastic memory, but I do have photographs. And that's how I remember. I astound people with my, air quote, memory.

But I see these images a lot. There was Mozambique, uniformed and military outfits, reflecting their difficult armed struggle for independence. The sneakers they wore lightened their feet as they did traditional dances. From Europe came the Afro-Swedish and the Afro-Irish. Several hundred blacks from the United States participated. I wonder if you could take us to the Parade of Nations, the opening ceremony. Some of the kind of most immediately spectacular

photos in your book are from that. You know, 54 countries. You have Malian Cora players, traditional masquerade performers, singing groups. I mean, like, we've only seen those images in books, but there we are. And they're real people. And they're looking at us, like, we've only seen these people like in movies or in books, we were just all staring at each other. Like, we're here. An element of culture shock, I'm sure. Yeah, and it wasn't, it was like I was looking at the parade of nations. I was part of that parade of nations.

We were just amazed at each other. Africa. Continent of Fudge. And I know it wasn't just a bluish. Black cultural festival. It was Black and African. Could you explain that? Algeria was represented, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia. These are countries on the continent of Africa that may not have claimed blackness, but they're African. And then there were people from the diaspora who claimed blackness, including I was really surprised.

to see the Australian contingent. Because we had been educated to believe that Australians were Asian or I don't know what we were told. But here they were dark-skinned people at a black and African

festival. And I was like, hmm. Photographer Marilyn Nance, talking with Julian Lucas on the New Yorker Radio Hour. We'll continue in just a moment. On stage in the Nigerian National Theater, Sunrom,

and his orchestra. There's a great picture of Sun Ra's rehearsal shed in the book with people just climbing on ladders, crawling to look underneath the wall, standing on tires. To me, that really gets at what the festival was about and what your method of photography is about this. There's not really a boundary between the spectator and the action. You're part of it all.

I was one of those people. like I don't think I got on any ladders or anything, but I got down load to make some photographs. People crowded around the rehearsal sheds just to see, you know, what folks were doing. That one image points to maybe three or four roles of film of that one rehearsal. It was amazing just to see, like, acrobatic troops. The Flying Souls.

The flying souls, but there was a troop, and I'm not sure what country they were from, where this man was doing things with his body and bending. And like, I'm looking underneath and finding a space. And no one made space for me because I had a camera. I had to find a space like everyone else had to find a space. I wonder if you could say something about how this book came together. How did Last Day in Lagos get made 45 years after you flew back? Well, first of all, last day and Legos kind of came out of my, knowing that I had work that I wanted to share with a younger audience.

There was a group called the Brooklyn Photo Salon. Young photographers in Brooklyn, I was like, Brooklyn Photo Salon, young people are doing, let me see what's going on. And so I started going to some of the meetings and introducing my work. I did a lot of networking, a lot of talking and going places. I wasn't like sitting waiting to be discovered. But it was in Johannesburg. I was presenting the Festac Photographs at the Black Portridges Conference in 2016. And I was there with my husband, Al Santana, my archive fellow.

Valerie Caesar, and the artist Valerie Maynard. We did the panel on Festac, and there was a panel of young people, and Ola Remy, Ono Banjo was on the panel. This is your editor. Right, my editor. And I introduced myself to her after the panel was over, and I said something about Festac, and she was like, of course I know what Festac is.

I'm Nigerian. Anyway, when she looked at the work, she said, like, I want to do a book. She recognized it's important. Right away. And my joke to her was like, Remy, I'm going to let you discover me. You are still taking. It's true.

I mean, where will the whole Western world be without Africa, our cocoa, our timber, our gold, our diamonds, our plutonum, our whatever, everything. You are, it's us. I am not saying it, it's a fact. And in return for all... Well, there's something kind of elegiac about your title last day in Lagos, because this was the last festival of its kind, a high point of this Pan-African spirit that wasn't repeated. It's been 45 years.

as you mentioned, since Festac. And I wonder if you could say something about what happened? Why didn't these photos come out? That's not my business. I did what I did. Ask them, right, whoever them is. Ask the historians. Ask the publishers.

Ask, you know, all those people who ignored the work. I mean, I did the work. I didn't hide it. Did you try to have them publish? when you came back? Yeah. What happened? How did people respond?

It's not, I can't tell you how they responded, but I had to go on living. So I started working in advertising. I've taught school. I've worked as a teaching artist. I pretty much know my worth. I know the worth of this culture. I know the value of this event. Even if you don't know it, I know it.

I just had to wait until, like, a new generation came. I think things happen and roll out when they're going to happen. And maybe this is the right time for this. Well, I think that's a great place to end. You have a good radio voice, Steve. Thank you. You have a great radio voice, though. Make me sound good to it.

Marilyn Nance's photos of Festac 77 appears. in Last Day in Lagos, which came out recently. And Julian Lucas is a staff writer covering culture of all kinds for The New Yorker. The music and clips we heard are from a Festac 77 mixtape compiled by Chimarenga in 2020 and reproduced courtesy of Chimarenga. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us.

See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Walton, Rita Green, Adam Howard, Calalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Ingofen in Puccibewele, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Harrison Keithline,

Mike Cutchman, and Meher Batia. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund. Thank you.