Black Orpheus

Long after the last fire was put out in this old restaurant, the pot goes on smouldering. The band is in the area designated as the stage, tuning instruments. In a corner, a handful of young artists and intellectuals are arguing over some tedious philosophical point. Eau de Bohème, Édition Afrique. Liquor chases down smoke […]

The Conflict of Cultures in West African Poetry, Ulli Beier’s first essay in the maiden edition of Black Orpheus (September 1957), raises a crucial question that haunted the beginnings of African literature, one that has persisted till date. While the African writer fights against colonial subjectivization, he does so within the ambivalence of using the […]

On re-usiting history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I The moment you use something, you initiate its death. II The most significant threat to historical work is not its inevitable decay (which is often how it appears in academic and public discourse), but the fact that said interventions become dated and fall out of use. In […]

It’s not unusual, these days, to hear older writers eulogize the great critical tradition that heralded contemporary Nigerian writing, waxing nostalgic about a quality of literary criticism, which, in their estimation, has gone extinct. They chalk this regrettable state of affairs to the poor reading culture; and the understanding—or the lack thereof—of the dynamics of […]

On re-routing history 68-sh, 50-sh years later  I “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”  Heraclitus said that, and for the longest time, I thought it was just the sort of thing philosophers say when they are half-convinced that they are poets. The older I get, however, and the deeper I get interested […]

Agbarha-Otor is a short drive, twenty minutes at the most, from Ughelli, one of 24 communities that make up the Urhobo ethnic nationality, and also functions as the administrative headquarters of Ughelli North LGA in Delta State. The coordinates, for those interested: 5°53′N 6°06′E. I found a commercial bike rider willing to take me from […]

On re-modelling history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I When budgets get tight, the first thing that gets cut is the arts. People look at a literary journal or a poetry prize or some experimental performance thing happening in a hall and think, “This is cute, but is it really necessary?” Every time I hear that, […]

On re-counting history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I It is easy to miss the moment when an intellectual tradition starts to wither: there is no bang, no funeral, no obituary. Nothing grand. It just disappears, and one day, you look around and realise that everything is gone, via a slow, suffocating erosion. Black Orpheus was […]

It gives us some pleasure to present the digitized copies of Black Orpheus journal to the public for the first time. Over the last six months, we’ve worked with Archivi.ng, a Nigerian nonprofit digitizing newspapers and other culture materials, to scan all the copies of Black Orpheus journals we obtained as part of the Black […]

By Tádé Ìpàdéọlá Poets who are also scholars of poetry occupy a peculiar niche in the ineffable enterprise of memorable music and words. They are not rare birds in the West (or the Orient), but here in Africa, the sighting of one such personage is something to cherish. If granted the further pleasure of not […]