Lindsay Barrett

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Lindsay Barrett
Lindsay Barrett (Ogidi, Nigeria, 1983).jpg
Barrett in 1983
Born
Carlton Lindsay Barrett

(1941-09-15) 15 September 1941 (age 82)
NationalityJamaican-Nigerian
Other namesEseoghene
Occupation(s)Novelist, poet, playwright, journalist, broadcaster, photographer
Notable work Song for Mumu (1967)
Relatives A. Igoni Barrett (son)

Carlton Lindsay Barrett (born 15 September 1941), also known as Eseoghene, is a Jamaican-born poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer, whose work has interacted with the Caribbean Artists Movement in the UK, the Black Arts Movement in the US, and pan-Africanism in general. Leaving Jamaica in the early 1960s, he moved to Britain, where he freelanced as a broadcaster and journalist, also travelling and living elsewhere in Europe, before deciding to relocate to West Africa. Since the latter 1960s he has been based mainly in Nigeria, of which country he became a citizen in the mid-1980s, while continuing his connection to cultural ventures in the UK and US.

Contents

Barrett initially drew critical attention for his debut novel, Song for Mumu , which on its London publication in 1967 was favourably noticed by such reviewers as Edward Baugh and Marina Maxwell (who respectively described it as "remarkable" and "significant"); [1] more recently it has been commended for its "pervading passion, intensity, and energy", [2] referred to as a classic, [3] and features on "must-read" lists of Jamaican books. [4] [5]

Particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, Barrett was a participant in significant drama and film projects in Britain, and became well known as an experimental and progressive essayist, his work being concerned with issues of black identity and dispossession, the African Diaspora, and the survival of descendants of black Africans, now dispersed around the world. [6]

One of his sons is the Nigerian writer A. Igoni Barrett, with whom he has also worked professionally. [7] [8]

Life in Jamaica

Lindsay Barrett was born in Lucea, Jamaica, into an agricultural family. His father, Lionel Barrett, was a lifelong farmer and senior agriculturist with the Jamaican Ministry of Agriculture; his great-uncle, A. P. Hanson, founded the Jamaica Agricultural Society in the early 1930s. [9] Barrett attended Clarendon College in Jamaica, and he has written that he was inspired to decide to live in Africa by a visit that pan-Africanist Dudley Thompson paid to the school in 1957: "In that visit he spoke eloquently of the cultural links that existed between Africa, especially Ghana, and Jamaica. He told us that the future held great potential for the restoration of our souls if we found ways to renew our links with the continent." [10] [11]

After graduating from high school in 1959 Barrett worked as an apprentice journalist at the Daily Gleaner [12] newspaper and for its sister afternoon tabloid, The Star. In early 1961, he became a news editor for the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, where his mentor was the Jamaican journalist and political analyst John Maxwell. [13]

Move to Europe: 1962–66

Less than a year later, Barrett moved to England, where he worked as a freelancer for the BBC World Service in London and for the Transcription Centre, [12] [14] an organisation that recorded and broadcast the works of African writers in Europe and Africa. [15] [16]

In 1962, Barrett went to France, and during the next four years travelled throughout Europe and North Africa as a journalist and feature writer. While in Paris, he was associated with many notable black poets and artists, including Langston Hughes, Lebert "Sandy" Bethune, [17] Ted Joans, [18] Beauford Delaney and Herb Gentry. [19] In 1966, Barrett's book The State of Black Desire (three poems and three essays "focusing on the theme of black alienation, exile, and black art"), [20] illustrated by St. Kitts painter Larry Potter, [21] was one of the first publications of the press of the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company. [22]

Barrett's first novel, Song for Mumu , was written between April 1962 and October 1966, and published in London by Longman in 1967. [6]

Writing in 2023 at the age of 82, Barrett would say: "I left Jamaica without informing any member of my family that I would do so in my nineteenth year and so my twenties were spent in absolute exile from the heart of my upbringing. Whenever anyone asked me then what my objective for the future was I always told them I would be going to Africa to find out what the true character of my history really was. I must admit that the decision to do so at that time was based on romantic assumptions and naivete rather than on any well considered realistic plan of action, However, in the five years that I spent in Europe at that time I underwent an apprenticeship in feature writing and freelance broadcasting that was unparalleled. Instead of pursuing formal academic training as most of my peers were doing at that time I became a fanatic devotee of creative writing." [23]

Migration to Africa: 1966 onwards

In 1966, Barrett travelled to Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 for the first World Festival of Black Arts, [24] where – described by Negro Digest as "the fireball from Jamaica" [25] – he organised a poetry-reading session at the US Cultural Center. [26] After the Festival, Barrett decided to remain in West Africa.

He took up residence in Nigeria that year, and has said that he was urged to go there by the writer John Pepper Clark, [27] whom he had met in London in 1961, and whose play The Raft had influenced Barrett's own decision to begin writing plays, particularly one called Jump Kookoo Makka (which, like The Raft, would be performed at the Leicester University Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1967). [28] [29] He has said: "I came to Nigeria directly because I was influenced by her literature. I came to Africa because I wanted to renew the spirit of ancestral hope. I felt that there was hope in knowing where you came from and that we could renew our links, that we could strengthen our systems." [30]

From 1966 to 1967, Barrett was Secretary of the Mbari Artists Club, which was "a hub of literary and cultural activities" in Ibadan: "We were in a historic, literary setting," he recalled, "when the civil war broke out and disintegrated everything." [31] He was Director of the East Central State Information Service during the Nigerian Civil War under Chief Ukpabi Asika. [16]

After a further stay in London at the beginning of the 1970s, [32] Barrett returned in 1973 to Nigeria, where he was a founding member of the Nigerian Association of Patriotic Writers and Artistes. He became a naturalised Nigerian citizen in the mid-1980s. [16]

He has worked as a lecturer and has taught at many educational establishments in West Africa, including in Ghana, at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, and at Nigeria's University of Ibadan, [12] where he lectured on the roots of African and Afro-American literature at the invitation of Professors Wole Soyinka and the late Omafume Onoge.

Barrett is also a broadcaster, particularly in Nigerian radio and television, [33] and has produced and presented critically acclaimed programmes on jazz, the arts, and Caribbean-African issues. He has been involved with many cultural initiatives, interacting with a wide range of African diaspora artists visiting Nigeria, including Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Cliff, [3] Jayne Cortez, [34] Melvin Edwards, [35] and others.

In London in the 1980s, he was part of Penumbra Productions, an independent production company, with members including Horace Ové, H. O. Nazareth, Farrukh Dhondy, Mustapha Matura, Michael Abbensetts and Margaret Busby, among whose projects was a series of films based on lectures by C. L. R. James. [36] [37] [38]

Writing

Summing up his writing career in an article on his 70th birthday, Barrett said: "I can remember a time in my early twenties when I lived in London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Tangier and, for a while in Tunisia and Libya, when I genuinely lived in a whirl of such oblivion that it appeared unlikely that I would ever witness my thirtieth birthday. For this reason I wrote at that time like one possessed and I still believe my work of that period represents the high points of my creative output. ... While the poetry and fiction that came later tends to be more cautious and formal than the fiction and poetry of my youth, in my journalistic output I seem to have become increasingly attached to formal reportage." [39]

Novels

Barrett's first novel, Song for Mumu – "an allegorical novel of desire, love, and loss" [6] – was published to acclaim in 1967 in London, where he took part in readings alongside writers associated with the Caribbean Artists Movement. [40] The reviewer in The Observer said: "Lindsay Barrett's prose has vitality; it's usually simple, often demotic, packed with images. He can convey sensuality that is innocent and tragedy that is no less frightening for being unsought." [41] A. R. Chisholm of the Melbourne Age described the novel as "violently, lyrically, movingly original: A primitive masterpiece." [42]

Song for Mumu was one of the first titles published in 1974 by executive editor Charles Harris at Howard University Press in the US, [43] where it was received favourably by critics such as Martin Levin of The New York Times , who commented that "What shines ... is its language." [44] Reviewing the novel for Caribbean Quarterly , Edward Baugh wrote of "the way in which it moves in worlds of magic and madness, myth and primitive ritual, not so as to exploit their strangeness, but to make them familiar, to emphasise their immediate reality, no less real than the reality of the natural and everyday. In his own distinctive way, Barrett is doing something not dissimilar to what, in their separate ways, Wilson Harris and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier have done". [45] More recently, Al Creighton writing in the Stabroek News referred to Song for Mumu as an "intriguingly poetic experimental novel", in the context of seeing Barrett as a disciple of Nigerian writer Gabriel Okara, "the virtual father of modern African literature in English". [46] Song for Mumu featured among 308 titles of "the greatest list of Caribbean reads" that was produced in 2020 by the Bocas Lit Fest. [47]

Barrett's second novel, Lipskybound, was published in Enugu, Nigeria, in 1977, and has influenced the work of many younger Nigerian writers who are interested in breaking the mould of traditional creative writing. As he himself described the work in 1972, having struggled for several years writing it: "It is an exposition of the heart of natural vengeance in the soul of the transplanted African and of the violent nature of the truth of his spirit out of necessity." [48]

Barrett's third published novel, Veils of Vengeance Falling, appeared in 1985 and has been used as a set book in the Department of English at the University of Port Harcourt. [11]

Plays and film scripts

From the 1960s onwards, Barrett authored many plays that were staged in England and in Nigeria. Jump Kookoo Makka was presented at the Leicester University Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1967 (directed by Cosmo Pieterse) and that same year Home Again was performed by Wole Soyinka's company. [6]

Over four nights in January 1973, [49] Barrett's play Black Blast! – an exploration of Caribbean history through music, mime and dance – was performed in London, the first play by a Black writer at the Institute of Contemporary Arts [50] (with an all-Black cast, [51] including Yemi Ajibade, Yulisa Amadu Maddy, Leslie Palmer, Eddie Tagoe, Karene Wallace, Basil Wanzira, and Elvania Zirimu, directed by Horace Ové) [52] and filmed for a special edition of the BBC 2's arts and entertainment programme Full House (broadcast on Saturday, 3 February 1973) devoted to the work of West Indian writers, artists, musicians and filmmakers. [53] [54] [55] Black Blast! was described as "ritual theatre with music and dance" that "expresses in terms of raw bodily experience the history of the Black peoples of the world through colonization, slavery and the complexities of the neocolonialist era". [49]

Barrett's And After This We Heard of Fire was produced by the Ibadan Arts Theatre in Nigeria in 1971. [56] In 1972, his theatrical collage of drama, dance and music, Sighs of a Slave Dream, was the first major production to be staged at the Keskidee Centre, in north London, performed by a Nigerian troupe under the direction of Pat Amadu Maddy. [57] [58] [59] It portrays the capture and enslavement of Africans, their transport across the Atlantic, and their suffering on American plantations. Various plays by Barrett have been performed at the Mbari Theatre of the University of Ibadan and on Nigerian National Radio. [33] His work was also broadcast in the BBC's Thirty-Minute Theatre radio programme. [60]

Barrett has occasionally written film scripts and commentaries, as for Horace Ové's 1973 BBC documentary King Carnival. [61]

Poetry

Barrett is in addition a poet, whose early militant poems dealt with racial and emotional conflict and exile, as evidenced in his collection, The Conflicting Eye, published under the pseudonym "Eseoghene" (an Urhobo name meaning "God's gift") [62] in 1973. That same year he produced a staged version of Linton Kwesi Johnson's poem Voices of the Living and the Dead at London's Keskidee Centre, with music by the reggae group Rasta Love. [57] [63] Barrett's subsequent volumes of poetry are A Quality of Pain and Other Poems (1986) and A Memory of Rivers; Poems Out of the Niger Delta (2006), both books published in Nigeria.

As editor and contributor

Barrett's work has appeared in anthologies, including Black Fire: an Anthology of Afro-American Writing, [64] edited by LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka) and Larry Neal, and Black Arts: an Anthology of Black Creations in 1969. He wrote the foreword to a new edition of Amiri Baraka's Four Black Revolutionary Plays: Experimental Death Unit 1, A Black Mass, Great Goodness of Life, and Madheart, published in 1997. Barrett has been an associate editor of several periodicals, including Afriscope (of which he was Associate Editor) [32] in Nigeria, and Transition Magazine in Uganda, and he was a contributor to seminal black British publications in the 1960s such as Daylight, Flamingo, Frontline and West Indian World . [6]

He has also contributed numerous short stories, poems, essays, and articles to journals that include Black Orpheus , [65] Negro Digest/Black World, [66] Revolution, Two Cities, New African , Magnet, The Black Scholar , Black Lines, West Africa magazine, and The Africa Report .

Journalism and non-fiction

As a journalist, Barrett has written on the conflicts and ongoing political circumstances in Liberia [67] and Sierra Leone, [68] [69] and was the co-founder, with Tom Kamara, of the Liberian newspaper The New Democrat. [70] He was a correspondent throughout Africa for the London-based news magazine West Africa for more than three decades, as well as working as a photo-journalist for a variety of publications. He has maintained weekly columns in several Nigerian newspapers over the years, including his widely read "From the Other Side" in the Nigerian tabloid The Sun . [71] Barrett continues to work as a political analyst and commentator on Nigerian current events. [72] [73] According to Ozolua Uhakheme: "In all the civil wars in the West coast of Africa, he has played the role of an interpreter of the essence for peace." [16]

Barrett has regularly written on music, literature, film and other cultural and social issues. [74] [75] [76] A long-time friend of Fela Kuti, [77] he wrote a Prologue for the 2010 Cassava Republic Press edition of the biography Fela: This Bitch of a Life by Carlos Moore. [78] Among Barrett's other book contributions are literary interviews, such as one with Chinua Achebe conducted in London in June 1981, included in Conversations with Chinua Achebe (ed. Bernth Lindfors, 1997). [79] In 2016, Barrett published a collection entitled Rainbow Reviews and Other Literary Adventures.

Barrett has also written books of non-fiction and biographies. [80] His articles appear regularly in Nigerian newspapers such as Vanguard , [32] [81] [82] Daily Trust , [83] This Day , [84] and The Guardian , [33] [85] and he also does reports for television. [86]

Visual art

In the earlier part of his career, Barrett was also on occasion a visual artist, as evidenced by his 1970s painting "Spirit Night", included in the exhibition Beyond Borders: Bill Hutson & Friends at the Mechanical Hall Gallery. University of Delaware (31 August – 9 December 2016). [87] [88]

Awards and accolades

Selected bibliography

Creative writing

As playwright and scriptwriter

Non-fiction

Book contributions

Further reading

See also

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  53. Walmsley (1992), p. 301.
  54. "Full House", Radio Times , Issue 2569, 1 February 1973, p. 15.
  55. Full House 03/02/73, BFI. Synopsis: "Canute James leads discussion among a mainly West Indian audience on West Indian culture and identity. BLACK BLAST!. James introduces 'Black Blast!' a theatre event, and its creator Lindsay Barrett*, exploring the colonisation of the Caribbean islands and its consequences through dance, mime and music (4.50). Performance of 'Black Blast!' (14.27). Discussion continues on issues raised by the 'event'. Edward Lucie Smith feels the piece was too simplistic and concentrated too much on race at the expense of class. Barrett disagrees (25.00)....*Note: James introduces the creator of 'Black Blast!' as Esu Gayne (??); the credit Lindsay Barrett appears on the screen."
  56. "Programs: A Department of Theatre Arts Production, A Black Trilogy: Dutchman, by Amiri Baraka The Fanatic, by Ben Caldwell and After This We Heard of Fire, by Eseoghene Barrett Arts Theatre, March 18-20, 1971". ML-77: Errol Hill papers, Rauner Special Collections Library Repository, Dartmouth Library.
  57. 1 2 "The Keskidee – a community that discovered itself. Islington Local History Centre celebrates the Keskidee – Britain’s first arts centre for the black community" Archived 17 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine , Islington Local History Centre, 2009.
  58. Lauri Ramey with Paul Breman (eds), The Heritage Series of Black Poetry, 1962–1975: A Research Compendium, Ashgate Publishing, 2008, pp. 153–154. Breman recalled: "Lindsay was an active member of London's very active black literature scene of the early 1970s, working as a journalist but prominent mostly as a playwright–I remember his Sighs of a Slave Dream performed at the Keskidee Centre in 1972, directed by his great friend Pat Amadu Maddy. The black literary scene was a very active one in the early 1970s: Frank John, Sebastian Clarke, Rudi Kaiserman, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mukhtarr Mustapha and Cecil Rajendra, the Malaysian lawyer who was the best organizer of events, were all living and working there, and Ted Joans was a frequent visitor, relishing his role as guru. Andrew Salkey was the eminence-already-grise. There were readings by all of them, lectures by visitors such as Soyinka."
  59. Mary F. Brewer, Lynette Goddard, Deirdre Osborne (eds), Modern and Contemporary Black British Drama, Palgrave/Macmillan Education UK, 2015, p. 23.
  60. "Listings", Radio Times , Issue 2628, 21 March 1974, p. 51.
  61. "King Carnival (1973)", BFI.
  62. Aruegodore Oyiborhoro, "Urhobo Names and Their Meanings", Urhobo Historical Society, August 2005.
  63. Mel Cooke, "Poet On Purpose - Linton Kwesi Johnson Reflects On Writing Beginnings", Jamaica Gleaner, 31 January 2016.
  64. "The Tide Inside, It Rages!" in Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal (eds), Black Fire; an Anthology of Afro-American Writing, New York, Morrow, 1968. WorldCat.
  65. Peter Benson, Black Orpheus: Transition and Modern Cultural Awakening in Africa, University of California Press, 1986, p. 75.
  66. Lindsay Barrett, "Reports Towards Pan-Africanism: Nigeria's Future in International Affairs", Black World/Negro Digest, October 1970, pp. 30–33.
  67. Lindsay Barrett, "History comes full cycle in Liberia", Vanguard, 21 January 2018.
  68. Lindsay Barrett, "Can UNIDO’s agribusiness dream build peace in Africa?" Making It Magazine, 21 August 2012.
  69. Lindsay Barrett, "Danger signals precede Sierra Leone’s election run-off", Daily Trust, 24 March 2018.
  70. Leroy S. Nyan, "Liberia: Reasons Why New Democrat Was Born", AllAfrica, 13 June 2012.
  71. "Lindsay Barrett speaks", 3 November 2005. Coalition of Concerned Liberians, 10 December 2005.
  72. Lindsay Barrett, "The origin of states creation in Nigeria: Confronting the future at 50", Daily Trust, 14 May 2017.
  73. Lindsay Barrett, "Bayelsa & oil: At last, something to show after contributing trillions to nation’s coffers", Vanguard, 29 October 2017.
  74. Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, quoting Lindsay Barrett's "The Image of Nigeria's Culture", in Black African Cinema, University of California Press, 1994, p. 141.
  75. Barrett, Lindsay, "A finely tuned fantasy exposing chilling realities of African politics" – review of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow , Farafina Books, 13 August 2010.
  76. Barrett, Lindsay, "A Tale Of Youthful Passion And Liberation" (review of Zaynab Alkali, The Virtuous Woman), Rainbow Book Club, 10 February 2015.
  77. Barrett, Lindsay, "Fela Kuti: Chronicle of A Life Foretold", The Wire 169 (March 1998).
  78. Dro Ameh, "Fela: This Bitch of a Life, Authorized Biography for Late Fela Anipolapo Kuti", The Nigerian Voice, 29 September 2010.
  79. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, "Setting up More Structures", Chinua Achebe: A Biography, James Currey Publishers, 1997, p. 220.
  80. Tolu Ogunlesi, "Understanding Nigeria’s President Jonathan", Premium Times, 3 March 2014.
  81. Lindsay Barrett, "Post-electoral Fall-out", Vanguard, 3 June 2015.
  82. Lindsay Barrett, "Ecowas on the spot as summit commences", Vanguard, 17 December 2016.
  83. Barrett, Lindsay, "Adieu, Ma Mary Brownell", Daily Trust, 15 April 2017.
  84. Barrett, Lindsay, "Danjuma : When Charity Begins at Home", This Day, 7 January 2018.
  85. Barrett, Lindsay, "A historic legacy in pictures". The Guardian (Nigeria), 7 March 2018.
  86. "Guest: Lindsay Barrett", Arise News , 17 April 2018.
  87. "Beyond Borders: Bill Hutson & Friends", Mechanical Hall Gallery, 31 August – 9 December 2016.
  88. "'Beyond Borders' opens at University of Delaware's Mechanical Hall Gallery", ArtDaily, 2 September 2016.
  89. "The Sun ex-columnist receives Uniport literary award". The Sun. Nigeria. 6 May 2017. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  90. Amiri Baraka, "A BAM Roll Call", ChickenBones: A Journal, July 2004, via Black Academy Press.
  91. Edward Nawotka, "Global Trade Talk: No Winner for Nigerian Book Prize; Planeta Prize Shortly", Publishing Perspecrives, 12 October 2009.
  92. "President Buhari felicitates with Lindsay Barret at 75", Vanguard, 14 September 2016.
  93. "At 75, Buhari Felicitates With Carlton Barrett, Jamaican-Born Journalist In Nigeria For 50 Years Since 1966" Archived 18 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine , The Simon Ateba News , Lagos, 14 September 2016.
  94. "VETERAN JOURNALIST RECEIVES UNIPORT LITERARY AWARD", The NReport, April 2017.
  95. Anote Ajeluorou, "Gabriel Okara… Restoring the genius of Africa’s oldest living poet", The Guardian (Nigeria), 5 May 2017.
  96. Nathaniel Bivan, "Daily Trust Contributor Receives Literary Award", Daily Trust, 13 May 2017.
  97. Thirty-Minute Theatre, BBC Radio 4, 27 March 1974.