Aduke Gomez and Toki Mabogunje, both poets and lawyers, will return to Freedom Park in November 2024, to continue their dialogue around contents of a book.
They will be taking on insights from Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, at one of six panels focused on 12 books at the 26th Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) running from November 11 to 17, 2024 with the theme: Breakout: Hope is A Stubborn Thing.
Parallels and Paradoxes is a publication of the long series of dialogue between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture, Daniel Barenboim, Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, and Edward W. Said, the eminent literary critic and scholar and a leading expert on the Middle East.
“The book was chosen because of its insight into a possible pluralism of Israeli and Palestinian societies”, declares Jahman Anikulapo, programme chair of the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) and the Festival’s curator and artistic director.
“The main thrust of this year’s feast is Hope and we can’t have a festival of ideas at this time and not find a way to accommodate discussions of peace in the Middle east. This book, which is so much about a sense of place, fits in”.
For the fact that the panel itself, sub themed: The Persistence of Hope will be moderated by the filmmaker Femi Odugbemi, it is considered one of the key highlights of LABAF 2024.
Here’s an excerpt from the Book:
The next question was. “Well, “what gives you the right to play Beethoven? You’re not German.“ So that discussion was going nowhere. There was an Israeli cellist in the audience who was also a soldier. and he was having trouble speaking in English so Daniel asked him to speak in Hebrew. He more or less said “I’m here to play music. I’m really not interested in all the other stuff that you guys are trying to push on us in these discussions about culture. I’m here to play music and I’m not interested in anything else and I feel very uncomfortable because, who knows, I might be sent to Lebanon and I’ll have to fight some of these people.” Daniel told him. “If you feel that uncomfortable, why don’t you leave? Nobody’s forcing you to stay.”
Last August, Gomez, a former banker, poet and playwright and one time head of the Lagos Film Office, moderated the reading of Toki Mabogunje’s This is Not A Diskoteke, a memoir on Mrs. Mabogunje’s early years working as a lawyer in the Federal Ministry of Justice. The book at once presents the inner working of the country’s civil service and provides an explanation for Mabogunje’s rise, 35 years later, to the Presidency of the bespoke Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“There was such a beautiful chemistry between them during that conversation”, Anikulapo explained. “So we thought to bring them back to take on one of the most instructive of the 12 books of LABAF 2024”.
