Raheem Oluwafunminiyi (Abere, Nigeria): »Inheriting an Artistic Legacy: The Duro Ladipo Museum at the CBCIU (Nigeria) and the Construction of Perpetual Image«

Postcolonial Nigeria witnessed the flowering of theatre groups and stage plays based in particular on the historic Yoruba popular travelling-dance theatre troupe which dates back to pre-colonial times. One of the most prominent pioneers is the late Duro Ladipo (1931 – 1978), who both wrote his plays in the Yoruba language and dramatized them on stage. He founded the Mbari Mbayo Club in Osogbo, southwest Nigeria, in 1962, which became a hub for diverse artistic and creative transactions and from there, launched an acting career that took him on several tours across the world beginning from 1964 in Berlin. Duro Ladipo died in 1978 after a brief illness and is remembered occasionally during his anniversary mainly organised by his family.
In February 2020, the Duro Ladipo Family and the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), a hub established for the preservation and promotion of African culture and tradition based in Osogbo, cemented several years of friendship which led to the formal opening of the Duro Ladipo Museum where the late thespian’s Estate is deposited. Earlier before this time, the CBCIU had inherited Duro Ladipo’s Mbari Mbayo in order to conserve, preserve and transform the club into a tourist attraction. Drawing on fieldwork at the CBCIU and through oral interviews and the use of extant literature, I show the way by which the Duro Ladipo Family negotiate and construct the image of the late thespian to actuate a fixed narrative of a deity reincarnate. I further show how the CBCIU as a cultural space help to concretise this narrative through its bulking display of Duro Ladipo’s «fetish» within this museum. Lastly, I argue that the CBCIU, through its acquisition of the Duro Ladipo Estate, stand as a worthy inheritor of an artistic legacy that perpetually seeks cultural relevance today.