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Lagos: A cultural and historical companion

2015; Oxford University Press; Volume: 114; Issue: 457 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/afraf/adv053

1468-2621

Olly Owen,

African history and culture studies

As the saying goes, ‘You don't go to Lagos to look at the bridges.’ West Africa's commercial hub is more often seen as a functional place to pursue fame and fortune than an object of consideration in its own right. Those who have looked at Lagos as an object of study (most famously the architect Rem Koolhaas) take it as an exemplar of self-ordering chaos, a lesson in anti-structure. Kaye Whiteman's book, built on a long lifetime's intimate acquaintance with the city, by contrast looks at Lagos in more careful and respectful terms, historicizing this great world city and foregrounding it as an important site of the production of creative culture. The story begins with the city's historical and cultural foundations, between the Atlantic and the hinterland, a product of the competing interests of both. It highlights what is often forgotten: the city's pre-Nigerian civic history as a crown colony in which not only European ‘palm-oil ruffians’ but returnee slaves from Sierra Leone, Brazil, and the hinterland became wing-collared dignitaries. Chapter 2 underlines the importance of topography: Lagos, like its mercantile cousins Amsterdam and Venice, is a watery city, and Whiteman explores the significance of islands and mainlands, creeks and canals, ocean currents and sandbars, in creating the city which overlays them and which continues to remodel, sandfill, and recreate the relationship between land and water itself. The story then moves back to social change, as colonial Lagos moves into an Edwardian modernity that encompasses tramways and electric light, but also a tightening of racial segregation and colonial subjugation, and takes us through the development of commerce to markets, malls, and industries in the twentieth century. Chapters 4 and 5 – on literature, and music and film respectively – are particular highlights, in which the energy and creative vibrancy of Lagos is related with relish. Poets, painters, novelists, and highlife or afrobeat musicians all bloom into life here, although there is much more to be said about Nollywood, and the book does not delve into more recent musical scenes such as Naija hip-hop. But it is a tribute to the author's sense of what really constitutes Lagosian and Nigerian culture that legendary nightclubs, newspapers, and the linguistic art form of Lagos pidgin itself are also all documented here.