June 29, 2005

Hello all, 

Greetings from Lagos . , my first visit here to this dense, spread out, cosmopolitan city of 15 million people. I'm loving it and having a great time. The people are warm and have a wonderful sense of humor. Their English is very musical as Yoruba is a tonal language and their English is too. It takes a while to catch it, but then I find myself adopting their flow. "When in Rome do as the Romans,”| as they are fond of saying here.

Each day is dense with meetings, interviews and experiences. Patience is necessary because the traffic is so bad, the infamous "go slows.” It can take you two hours to get from one side of town to the other. But on the way, kids are selling everything from CDs to garden clippers to baby baskets to the complete works of Shakespeare. So it's plenty stimulating to be in a traffic jam here. 

I met with the head of Kool FM and interviewed him about radio in . A very interesting guy managing a state of the art commecial radio station. Only 11 private stations in Lagos . Later, I met Dapo Lorunyomi who runs Freedom House and is planning for a big rollout of community radio stations. He says some 2,000 low power community stations are ready to go. 

Today, King Sunny Ade has called a press conference for Afropop. We will be able to meet many people in the media as well as artist managers. Besides collecting music and interviews for broadcast on Afropop, we are here on a listening tour to hear what the music community's needs are. My vision is to connect like institutions, like community radio station in U.S., with counterparts in Nigeria, festival managers to festival managers, music school to music school, so that it's a truly two way exchange and everyone is learing from everyone. 

After the press conference, KSA will take us to visit Charly Boy, called 's "punk rocker" by some here. He's also the head of the Nigerian Copyright authority. Then we go to Rhythm Radio that may become our broadcast parnter for Afropop Worldwide in Lagos . 

King Sunny Ade, a.k.a "Chairman," has a big program for us today but I hope to catch the rehearsal of Seun (Shay-oon) Kuti, the son of Fela Kuti and the brother of Femi by a different mother. Many people here in Lagos say Seun is the one who's sound and spirit are most like his father's. I hope to catch Femi's weekly Sunday jump at the New African Shrine. Sunday, Chairman has also asked me join him as his guest at one of the famous private parties he and his band the African Beats do every weekend here (the performance of KSA and the African Beats is in heavy demand every weekend) I am thrilled to see KSA play in his hometown.

After Lagos, Afropop Worldwide Board member Josh Mailman and I are off to Abuja , the federal capital, for a ground-breaking meeting on philanthropy that Josh has co-organized. Hosting the meeting will be the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank. I've invited Chairman too. After Abuja, we will take a road trip to Oshogbo , famous as an arts center. 

The Yoruba have been intensely urban people with a sophisticated culture for centuries. And they are proving to me that this urban culture is going strong. Poverty yes. Corruption yes. Piracy of CDs a big problem. But leaders here are woking on all those challenges.