Unchained Melodies, Art, and African Awakening

The African Freethought Music and Art Festival is a dream come true because for some years we have been contemplating and pondering how music and the art enterprise could be used to further the values of humanism and freethought, or better how the humanist and freethought movement could incorporate music and other artistic facilities in its work, campaigns, and programs. Thanks to the support of many including those far and near, that dream is becoming a reality. African freethought music festival is birthed. African freethought festival has come to stay.

For too long, nontheistic organizations have focused on faulting and criticizing religious doctrines and actors. Of course that is an important obligation. The nontheistic movement has been preoccupied with bemoaning how religion or theism has hijacked, dominated, and driven the moral, and yes the art enterprise. But limited attention has been paid to getting a seat at the table with faith groups, and highlighting alternative goods that the humanist and freethought movement could offer. This event is an effort in that direction. Titled Unchained Melodies, Art, and African Awakening, this event invites us to explore and celebrate songs, rhythms, and art forms in free and unfettered ways.

In situating these welcome notes, I am using the metaphor of the Talking Drum. The Talking Drum is one of the oldest musical instruments in the region. It exemplifies renditions that speak and convey messages, nuggets of wisdom, and pellets of insights. It shows that drumming is not merely a production of sound or rhythm; it is some performance or composition, but also a means of communication and information, a form of conversation and discussion. The Talking Drum entertains, instructs, nourishes, and awakens. This musical instrument speaks and has communicated messages and instructions over the ages.

This event is meant to get the public to know, appreciate, and listen to the humanist and freethinking talking drums, to skeptical, rationalist rhythms and lyrics that beckon us to free ourselves from dogmas, to think and rethink received knowledge and ideas, to create, recreate, and reexamine beliefs and assumptions that too often encumber social, moral and intellectual progress. The freethought talking drum nudges us to interrogate ideas and practices taken for granted, and given a free pass as a culture, religion, tradition, or philosophy; those ideas and impulses that continue to shape our lives for good or ill. The talking drum instrumentalizes humanism, and musical humanism. It awakens to those realizations that enrich our humanity.

Humanism is rooted in the power and ability of humans to express and actualize themselves, their potential and possibilities to communicate, exert, and exercise their minds, ingenuity, rights, and values. Freethought stands for a thought that is free, and freedom that is thoughtful. Over the years, assumptions and communications have turned into cultures, traditions, religions, and philosophies that hamper thoughts that are free or freedom that is thoughtful. Music and art should be deployed to resist these dark and destructive tendencies. We must deploy the talking drums, performances, compositions, and improvisations to further a cultural renaissance, human development, and enlightenment. 

At a time when Nigeria is experiencing unprecedented socioeconomic difficulties, the role of freethought music and other artistic forms cannot be overemphasized. Nigeria needs talking drums, the freethinking talking drums, to speak and communicate those uncomfortable truths that we tend to avoid, ignore, or refuse to hear at our own peril. 

The African continent needs alluring tunes of the talking drum to combat witch-hunting, ritual abuse, religious extremism, ethnic bigotry, poverty, and underdevelopment. Africans need to explore the role of music and other forms of art in addressing these existential threats and challenges. Africa needs the talking drum in harnessing thoughts, and ideas that are necessary for African awakening and emancipation. I invite you all, young and old, male and female, students and teachers, parents and Guardians, able and not so able, rich and poor, to join hands in celebrating and inspiring humanist and freethought sounds and songs, lyrics and rhythms, poems and prose, unchained melodies and art across Nigeria and beyond.

Leo Igwe was a corganizer of the African Freethought Music and Art Festival