Aduke Gomez and Toki Mabogunje are set to reconvene at Freedom Park this November in a highly anticipated event at the 26th Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF). The duo will delve into Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, a book chronicling conversations between music director Daniel Barenboim and literary critic Edward W. Said.
The panel, themed “The Persistence of Hope,” is one of six scheduled discussions focusing on select books at LABAF 2024 and will be moderated by the filmmaker Femi Odugbemi.
Jahman Anikulapo, programme chair of the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) and the festival’s curator and artistic director highlighted the book’s relevance, stating, “The main thrust of this year’s feast is Hope and we can’t have a festival of ideas at this time and not find a way to accommodate discussions of peace in the Middle east. This book, which is so much about a sense of place, fits in”.
The event, running from November 11-17, aims to foster dialogue on peace in the Middle East under the broader festival theme “Breakout: Hope is A Stubborn Thing.”
Here’s an excerpt from the Book:
The next question was. “Well, “what gives you the right to play Beethoven? You’re not German.“ So that discussion was going nowhere. There was an Israeli cellist in the audience who was also a soldier. and he was having trouble speaking in English so Daniel asked him to speak in Hebrew. He more or less said “I’m here to play music. I’m really not interested in all the other stuff that you guys are trying to push on us in these discussions about culture. I’m here to play music and I’m not interested in anything else and I feel very uncomfortable because, who knows, I might be sent to Lebanon and I’ll have to fight some of these people.” Daniel told him. “If you feel that uncomfortable, why don’t you leave? Nobody’s forcing you to stay.”
Last August, Gomez, a former banker, poet and playwright and one time head of the Lagos Film Office, moderated the reading of Toki Mabogunje’s This is Not A Diskoteke, a memoir on Mrs. Mabogunje’s early years working as a lawyer in the Federal Ministry of Justice. The book at once presents the inner workings of the country’s civil service and provides an explanation for Mabogunje’s rise, 35 years later, to the Presidency of the bespoke Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
“There was such a beautiful chemistry between them during that conversation”, Anikulapo explained. “So we thought to bring them back to take on one of the most instructive of the 12 books of LABAF 2024”
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