The Mbari Club was a centre for cultural activity by African writers, artists and musicians that was founded in

Ibadan Ibadan (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Oyo State, in Nigeria. It is the third-largest city by population in Nigeria after Lagos and Kano, with a total population of 3,649,000 as of 2021, and over 6 million people within its me ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

, in 1961 by

Ulli Beier Chief Horst Ulrich Beier, commonly known as Ulli Beier (30 July 1922 – 3 April 2011), was a German editor, writer and scholar who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and p ...

, with the involvement of a group of young writers including

Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded t ...

and

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature. His first novel and ''magnum opus'', ''Things Fall Apart'' (1958), occupies ...

."Ulli Beier" (obituary)
''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...

'', 11 May 2011."Mbari Mbayo Club"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''. ''

Mbari The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is a private, non-profit oceanographic research center in Moss Landing, California. MBARI was founded in 1987 by David Packard, and is primarily funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ...

'', an

Igbo Igbo may refer to: * Igbo people, an ethnic group of Nigeria * Igbo language, their language * anything related to Igboland, a cultural region in Nigeria See also * Ibo (disambiguation) * Igbo mythology * Igbo music * Igbo art * * Igbo-Ukwu, a ...

concept related to "creation", was suggested as the name by Achebe. Among other Mbari members were

Christopher Okigbo Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding postcolonial English-language African poet an ...

, J. P. Clark and South African writer

Ezekiel Mphahlele Es'kia Mphahlele (17 December 1919 – 27 October 2008) was a South African writer, educationist, artist and activist celebrated as the Father of African Humanism and one of the founding figures of modern African literature. He was given the ...

, Frances Ademola, Demas Nwoko,

Mabel Segun Mabel Segun, NNOM (born 1930) is a Nigerian poet, playwright and writer of short stories and children's books. She has also been a teacher, broadcaster, and a sports woman. Biography Born in Ondo City, Nigeria, she had her secondary school ed ...

Uche Okeke Christopher Uchefuna Okeke (; April 30, 1933 – January 5, 2016), also known as Uche Okeke (), was an illustrator, painter, sculptor, and teacher. He was an art and aesthetic theorist, seminal to Nigerian modernism. Background Christopher Uche ...

Arthur Nortje Arthur Kenneth Nortje (16 December 1942 – 11 December 1970) was a South African poet. Life Nortje was born in Oudtshoorn and went to school in Port Elizabeth, where he was taught by the acclaimed writer Dennis Brutus. After school he studied ...

and

Bruce Onobrakpeya Bruce Obomeyoma Onobrakpeya (born 30 August 1932) is a Nigerian printmaker, painter and sculptor. He has exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and the Malm� ...

.Oyekan Owomoyela
''The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945''
Columbia University Press, 2013, p. 129. ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'' in an obituary of Beier noted that "the Mbari Club became synonymous with the optimism and creative exuberance of Africa’s post-independence era. Fela Kuti made his debut as bandleader there, and it became a magnet for artists and writers from all over Africa, America and the Caribbean." In the words of Toyin Adepoju: "Coming to birth in the flux of the preindependence and immediate postindependence period in Nigeria, it brought together a constellation of artists whose work embodied the quality of transformation embodied by the aesthetic of creation, decay, and regeneration evoked by the Mbari tradition."Toyin Adepoju
"Mbari Club"
in Carole Boyce Davies (ed.), ''Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture: Origins, Experiences, and Culture'', ABC-CLIO, 2008, p. 665. Closely connected with the literary magazine ''

Black Orpheus ''Black Orpheus'' (Portuguese: ''Orfeu Negro'' ) is a 1959 romantic tragedy film made in Brazil by French director Marcel Camus and starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello. It is based on the play '' Orfeu da Conceição'' by Vinicius de Morae ...

'', which Beier had founded in 1957, Mbari also acted as a publisher during the 1960s — considered to be the only African-based publisher of African literature at the time — producing 17 titles by African writers. Mbari published early works by Clark, Okigbo and Soyinka, poetry by Bakare Gbadamosi (''Okiri'', 1961),

Alex La Guma Alex La Guma (20 February 1924 – 11 October 1985) was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation (SACPO) and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against ...

(''A Walk in the Night and Other Stories'', 1962),

Dennis Brutus Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 – 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games due to its racial policy of apartheid. ...

(''Sirens, Knuckles, Boots'', 1963),

Kofi Awoonor Kofi Awoonor (born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams; 13 March 1935 – 21 September 2013) was a Ghanaian poet and author whose work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people and contemporary and religious symbolism to depict A ...

and

Lenrie Peters Lenrie Leopold Wilfred Peters (1 September 1932 – 28 May 2009) was a Gambian surgeon, novelist, poet and educationist. Biography Peters was born in 1931 in Bathurst (now Banjul) in The Gambia. His parents were Lenrie Ernest Ingram Peters and Kez ...

, as well as translations of francophone poetry. Brutus was chosen as winner of the Mbari Prize, awarded to a black poet of distinction, but turned it down on the grounds of its racial exclusivity.

History

Founded in 1961 by a diverse group of writers, visual artists, musicians and actors, and active throughout the 1960s, the Mbari Club was originally located in Ibadan's Dugbe Market, on the site of an old Lebanese restaurant that was converted into an open-air performance venue, an art gallery, a library, and an office. While celebrating the creativity of Nigerian talent in the newly independent nation, Mbari "was an international environment, attracting artists from across Africa and beyond". The premieres of Soyinka's ''The Trials of Brother Jero'' and Clark's ''Song of a Goat'' were staged at Mbari, and internationally renowned artists were also invited to play or exhibit their work, including

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hug ...

Jacob Lawrence Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...

and

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...

. The club also initiated writing competitions. As recalled by

Lindsay Barrett Carlton Lindsay Barrett (born 15 September 1941), also known as Eseoghene, is a Jamaican-born poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer, whose work has interacted with the Caribbean Artists Movement in the UK, the Black ...

, secretary of the Mbari Club from 1966 to 1967: "We were in a historic, literary setting ... when the civil war 967–70broke out and disintegrated everything."

Mbari Mbayo

In 1962 a similar club based on the same concepts, called Mbari Mbayo (the name this time reflecting a

Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...

phrase meaning: "Were I to see, I would rejoice" or "When we see it, we shall be happy"), was developed in

Oshogbo Osogbo (also ''Oṣogbo'', rarely ''Oshogbo'') is a city in Nigeria. It became the capital city of Osun State in 1991. Osogbo city seats the Headquarters of both Osogbo Local Government Area (situated at Oke Baale Area of the city) and Olorund ...

— about 50 miles northeast of Ibadan — by dramatist Duro Ladipo together with Beier and Mphahlele. Ladipo converted his father's house into an art gallery and a theatre, where he produced his plays. Artists who emerged from the Mbari Mbayo Club in Oshogbo include

Twins Seven Seven Twins Seven Seven, born Omoba Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki (3 May 1944 – 16 June 2011) was a Nigerian painter, sculptor and musician. He was an itinerant singer and dancer before he began his career as an artist, first attend ...

, Jimoh Buraimoh and

Muraina Oyelami Chief Muraina Oyelami (born 21 February 1940) is a Nigerian painter and drummer of Yoruba descent. He was among the first generation of artists to come out of the Osogbo School of Art in the 1960s. He was a drummer and actor with the theatre com ...

Mbari-Enugu

The Mbari-Enugu Club of Eastern Nigeria was established in 1963 and like Mbari Mbayo was particularly a platform for sculpture, painting and literary performance.

Selected list of people associated with The Mbari Club

* Frances Ademola *

* J. P. Clark * Vincent Akwete Kofi *

* Demas Nwoko *

* Ibrahim el-Salahi *

Legacy

In June 2016 the Ibadan Literary Society (IBS) was launched, modelled after the Mbari Club. In December 2019, ''The Mbari Clubs and Nigerian Modernism'', an exhibition focusing on the Mbari Clubs in Ibadan and Osogbo, took place at the

Barbican Art Gallery The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhib ...

in London."The Mbari Clubs and Nigerian Modernism – Into the Night tour"
Barbican, 11 December 2019.

References

External links

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

. * ’Tunji Olaopa
"The spirit of Mbari Club"
''Punch'' (Nigeria), 23 September 2018. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mbari Club, The 1961 establishments in Nigeria Arts organizations based in Nigeria Arts organizations established in 1961 Poetry publishers Nigerian culture