Tam Fiofori aka Uncle Tam; photographer, documentary filmmaker, artist manager, poet, teacher, mentor, and Renaissance man, was laid to rest on Thursday, August 22, 2024, in his native Okrika. In this piece, filmmaker and writer, Deinbofa Ere contextualises and apotheosizes the life of an icon.
Verse 1
He lived with his soul
At times ablaze…
He was whole in his world of storytelling.
He took his eye, lent it to a camera; a mechanical device with an aperture and a shutter and click click click.. human moments were held still and captured, stories told.
He made us spectators; made us bear witness to events, made us see further than our eyes could. He made the coronation of the Oba Erediauwa appear larger and truer, grittier than itself.
Tam was an artiste in an artless space. Nigeria, after the excitement of Festac 77 and the merry go round changes in government saw the arts in decline….ever since.
It is famine or near famine for those for whom life was art.
Tam was heading for his prime. It would have been easy to don a suit and tie and die quietly in an air conditioned office as a DG.
Tam lived in his soul; wholly, for the cackle at the end of his laughter. Those who heard it knew it. He lived for the sheer joy of his work and others. Oh his work, for which he suffered, for which he tortured himself.
He did not quite believe in how f-cking good he was. He sought perfection that did not exist. He discarded what others would keep and he had a great fear of success; of the opulence and attention and grief it brought.
Don’t cry for Tam.
Not all who wander are lost, as it is said.
Verse 2
Tam came to this world, loved it, and lived in it. He held her keys, opened the doors and stayed, and has now moved on.
In the end when the light started to fade. Tam knew.
He became sallow. The cackle at the end of the laughter became rarer.
Visitors saw Tam, still stubborn, still in his little study and his small flat in Surulere.
The contact sheets and negatives caused great joy for him and anger too. For what was and what could have been.
Tam was a Collosus in the intellectual and the proper sense. He read, knew and just read. No Prof, no Emeritus, he didn’t need titles. He knew because he was active in making knowledge.
He wrote poetry as part of the beat generation in the company of Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Allan Ginsberg and others.
Yet he did not wear a chest full of medals to proclaim his past. He knew things. When he fell in with Sun Ra, and wrote the book of Sun Ra, he did for Sun Ra what Sun Ra could never do for him. He brought his light and elan and sprinkled it on Sun Ra. Sun Ra was the subject and Tam the master storyteller.
Tam and his beloved sister Gloria! She was the anchor, he the marabout and free spirit. She was the home he never made; the home he knew was always there. The warmth and the salve that helped heal all his battle scars. And he had many.
At the end the cackle faded and he went home on his terms.
Verse 3
Tam Fiofori was a hip, non-conformist and major human. He was a Soul rebel for all the ages. A human who went his way, his wings intact, his mind clear and his senses keen.
Longer than I have lived, Tam rolled in the company of James Baldwin (one of the greatest writers in English) when others were applying for steady Civil service jobs – he jaunted to Denver and New York, to cities the world offered; writing, telling stories, managing the great Sun Ra (Jazz Musician) among other journeys
You cannot freelance in Nigeria, someone told him once. Uncle Tam scoffed, slung his camera upon his shoulder and headed for the unknown.
The unknown brought forth documentaries and photographs that were beautiful, thoughtful and telling.
Tam Fiofori did not come to this world to faff around.
He did not make any promises to anyone. Not even to his great beloved sister Gloria. He saw life as it presented itself. And with his two hands and feet, a brain full of ideas, eyes that saw only the extraordinary – he headed for the wilds of the world.
Tam Fiofori came from a long line of Ijaw explorers, whose restless spirit saw them seek out what was beyond the horizon. Most never returned!
Tam Fiofori has returned home, to sleep among the sprits and other giants, amongst those that begat him.
What a man! Opu keme, a man who seized the keys of the world and opened all her doors.
Verse 4
“I am Tam Fiofori,” he said.
Enough said.
Stick around him long enough and you would learn. Look up the meaning of Truth (to yourself), of Soul, of Rebel, of Alaowei and of fearless. While at it; check how a man can be so kind and stubborn at the same time. Faulty and yet himself – he never lived a lie.
Where doors did not open, he stared down their hate with disdain. “Don’t you know I am Tam Fiofori?”
“Don’t you know that I will look in your eyes and tell you as I know and see it? I have no fear, don’t you know it? My lineage and the one before them have stared into storms and lived.
I am a story teller. That’s all. My life’s breath is drawn from that very simple fact.”
Misunderstood? Yes.
But no one living can accuse Tam of not being brilliant and focused and true. He was the artiste who shunned the limelight and sought knowledge and taught those around him as a guru would.
He loved his beer, his babes and his truculence.
Yet how could he live in this straitjacketed society and helplessly watch his beloved Niger Delta go to the thieves. How? He made stories of Odum (the water spirit), his photography found the habitues of the great Ijaw as they ought to be found: proud, beautiful, listless at times and let down. Yet his home was Lagos until the end.
Lagos could contain him…just.
Alaowei
Gen gen
Soul Rebel
Opu Owu
Big Soul
Big Spirit
Tam citizen of the world.
Nothing do you.
Dé na mu.
