Recently, the United States of America Naval Forces Europe and Africa Band who were on tour of Nigeria, were hosted Chief Dr. Nike Davies-Okundaye of Nike Arts gallery.
While visiting Nike Arts Gallery, the band performed an assortment of classical and traditional songs from their Maritime Winds Quintet and Topside Brass Band.
Musician 3rd Class Micheal Wallace, a drummer in the brass band, described the experience: “As a drummer and an overall musician, being in the motherland is a very sobering experience. Seeing (music) in its raw form and looking at it in a broader perspective, it all makes sense,” said Wallace. “The rhythms that you hear from the lower notes and the higher notes, and seeing it evolve to the current form of jazz today is really special.”
The gallery’s musicians, which included Jesse King Buga, a popular Nigerian artist, joined the band in song and dance. During an impromptu session, Buga also stood in as the band’s conductor and taught them a traditional Yoruba piece.
Performing at the gallery gave Wallace time to reflect on his first trip to Africa, when he visited Ghana and bought his cherished djembe drum.
“I cried the first time that I came to Africa —getting an instrument from the motherland, the source, you can not beat that,” said Wallace. “Coming here to the art gallery, where we have memorials for our ancestors that were lost fighting the fight for racial equality is really an experience that you will never ever forget.
Okundaye, commonly called “Mama Nike,” created the Nike Art Foundation of Nigeria to enhance African heritage, help rural women earn a living, and to encourage youth coping with negative influences. It includes exhibitions in Abuja, Kogi, Lagos, and Osogbo. Today the gallery is amongst the largest reservoirs of indigenous Nigerian artwork collections in Nigeria and is currently the largest privately-owned art gallery in Africa.
Although she grew up in a village in Nigeria, Okundaye credits her early success to the United States, where she said that she was encouraged to bring something back to Africa that would benefit her people.
“I said if God ever gives me the opportunity, one day I would like to create a place where artists can meet their own voice,” said Okundaye. “I’m an artist myself, but I want to thank the American government for giving me an opportunity to travel to the United States in 1974 to teach the artists in the Haystack Mountain Craft School. So, it was my first breakthrough.”
Similar to Wallace and Buga, Okundaye is passionate about what she does.
“Music is art and art is life, so the two of them march together. Art is our heritage,” said Okundaye.
In conjunction with exercise OE23, the NAVEUR-NAVAF Band visited the Lagos Art Gallery as a part of a series of local community events that seeks to deepen community relations between the United States and Nigeria.
The Nigerian Navy is hosting OE23, the largest multinational maritime exercise in Western and Central Africa.
The exercise takes place across five zones in the southern Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Guinea – stretching from the West African island of Cabo Verde to the Central African shores of Angola, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).