Jad Abumrad

Nigeria at that point was flush in oil money and they wanted to sort of come out as the center of the black world.

And so they invited...

Stevie Wonder, Sun Ra, Audre Lorde, all of these different cultural icons from every different discipline to come to gather in Lagos for an extended cultural festival.

And it's one of the most amazing gatherings, and it's really hard to summarize because it was so many things at once.

It was beautiful and joyful.

It was also kind of a sham.

There was a ton of fraud.

And it's run by a dictator for, you know, I think what some would say the wrong reasons.

Yeah, he had a nine-point list that he presented to the committee.

I think the committee brought him on because they really couldn't not have him on it.

He was the most popular Nigerian musician, most popular African musician at that point.

So they had to include him in some way.

He comes in and basically says, here are the nine things I need to be in place if I'm going to participate.

One of them was to feature Nigerian artists.

Another was to...

create a kind of educational curriculum around FESTAC that was all about African pride and African history.

There were all of these things that were basically around educating the people, not simply making this a good time, a good dance party, but let's actually make this an educational teaching moment about sort of African history.

And of course, the committee said, no, we just want you to play.

And so he stormed out and he created very famously a counter Festak so that as Festak was happening across town, he would play every night at the shrine.

And, you know, if you are a black intellectual or a black musician at this moment and you're coming to Nigeria, the person you want to see is.