By Chris Ihidero
I was hanging out with friends this past Friday evening when, as usual, Nollywood became the topic of discussion. My friend’s wife wondered why people like me (since I masquerade as a filmmaker when not writing for this newspaper) had not changed Nollywood. It got me wondering whether I wanted Nollywood to change at all. At its core Nollywood got it right from the outset and its core needs no changing. This is what I have come to believe and accept as my relationship with Nollywood has grown over the years.
Coincidentally I had started reading Jay Z‘s Decoded a few days before this hangout. For whatever reason I had missed out on reading the book when it was released, perhaps I don’t hold rappers in high enough esteem for me to spend valuable time reading whatever it was they wanted to say in a book. However, when I saw a copy on a friend’s desk last week and had nothing to do at that moment, I picked it up and flipped through the pages. By the time I had browsed through a few pages I knew I had been foolish to have ignored this book. My taste in hip-hop is pretty framed by the great sounds of the 90s. The music produced in that Golden era remains quite influential in my life. While Jay Z had started doing his stuff by the late 90s, he didn’t feature prominently in my hip-hop engagements.
The part that immediately caught my attention while browsing through the book is the part where he talks about commercialization of art. Many times I have heard ignorant arguments about how Nollywood producers make films to make money rather than making artistic films, whatever that means. Jay Z’s take on this captures the essence of Nollywood and is worthy of a full quote: ‘There was maybe a time when people in hip-hop made music only because they loved to make music. But the time came when it started to pay off, to the point that even dudes in the street started thinking, ‘F#ck selling drugs, this rap shit is going to be my hustle!’ A lot of people came to hip-hop like that, not out of pure love of music, but as a legit hustle, another path out of the hood. I’ve reflected some of that in my music because, to be honest, it was my mentality to some degree – when I committed to a career in rap, I wasn’t taking a vow of poverty. I saw it as another hustle, one that happened to coincide with my natural talents and the culture I loved. I was an eager hustler and reluctant artist.’
That’s the truth of Nollywood laid bare. The Idumota businessmen who put their money on a risky business venture that is, twenty years later, a global phenomenon, were eager hustlers, not artistes. And there’s nothing wrong with this.
There’s nothing wrong with seeing an artistic expression as nothing more than a legitimate hustle. Purists would rather artistes starve to death in the service of art, forbidding them from extracting maximum value from their artistic work, making profit sound like a bad thing where art is concerned. I do not deny that Nollywood needs improvement in many areas. In fact I often say that some of the films many of my colleagues put forth are preposterous, to say the least. But surely the audience can easily correct that. If a producer/director makes films that make you want to puke, isn’t it the right thing to do to stop watching films from said producer/director? And if a big chunk of the audience feels this way and start boycotting his/her films surely he/she will be out of business in no time. Why shouldn’t there be a Jenifa Part 7 since, apparently, there’s an audience that buys into Funke Akindele‘s films? Why should she make Jenifa ‘better’ for those who insist it makes no sense? Why can’t it be seen as a legitimate hustle and nothing more? Shall I make this clear: art is relative and if it has an audience, I say LET IT FLY.
I like the notion that the redemption of society should be the prerogative of the artiste. It makes me laugh. Somehow, our humanity must be sustained by our books, films, paintings, music, dance, theatre and poetry while the artistes responsible for this sustenance slowly starve to death, munching sand and sipping gutter water. Jay Z again sums it up beautifully when he says: ‘There’s this sick fascination with the dead artist, the broke artist…or artists so conflicted about making money from their art…This is a game people sometimes play with musicians: that to be real, to be authentic, you have to hate making money…’
Nollywood started as another kind of hustle for those great Idumota marketers, a means to making more money from another venture outside their electronics merchandise. Nollywood has retained that format largely and shouldn’t lose it for all the redemption in ‘authentic art’ heaven, whatever that nonsense means.
