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Ulli Beier, the German whose archive will form the nucleus of the Centre for Black Culture
and International Understanding (henceforth referred to as the Centre), was completely at
home in Yoruba society and thought highly of its culture. After he left Nigeria, first in 1966
and finally in 1974, he consistently sought to make the other societies in which he lived and
worked understand the luminosity of not only Yoruba verbal and plastic arts, but also of its
wisdom. In his connections with the arts and cultures of various other societies, from India to
Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands to Aboriginal Australia, he always crossed cultural
boundaries in his efforts to connect these various cultures and their arts—and therefore
peoples. In all this, Yoruba culture and society was his base—the perspective from which he
viewed all other societies and cultures.
Perhaps most important of all, he was not an academic in the conventional sense of the word:
he sought to put in something into the cultures rather than merely study and write about them.
This was particularly so in the case of Yoruba culture and society, in which, from 1950 to
1966, he achieved the following among his other activities:
1) the founding of Mbari Club and its organ Black Orpheus; the publication of the first
modern Anglophone African literature texts;
2) the translation of Negritude poetry into English;
3) the cooperation with Duro Ladiipo (a Yoruba-language playwright and actor) to
redirect Yoruba travelling theatre from mere giddy entertainment into a vehicle of
cultural-historical education;
4) the founding of Mbari Mbayo in Osogbo;
5) the founding of Odu (a Yoruba journal of arts and culture in which articles were
published in the language and to which the traditional custodians of the culture also
contributed) and;
6) with Georgina Beier, the founding of the now world-famous Osogbo Art School.
The Centre will take its inspiration from all these activities: while it will do studies, it will
devote more energy, time and imagination to rejuvenating and transforming Yoruba culture
and society through, as said in the preamble above, cultural exchanges, exposures and
absorption. This, we must emphasize, can only be meaningfully done not through isolation,
but by intensive cultural interaction in all cultural aspects with other black cultures and arts,
as well as with the rest of the world. We also believe that it is only when one has a better
understanding of one’s own culture that one can meaningfully take from other cultures. Thus,
while Yoruba society will be the base from which the Centre will always take off and on
which it will always land, it will seek that reinvigoration through the knowledge,
understanding and appreciation of the cultural achievements of other societies. |
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