You are cordially invited to the launch of the FESTAC'77 publication by Chimurenga, on Friday February 29th, at 5pm.

Early in 1977, thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists and scholars from Africa and the black diaspora assembled in Lagos for FESTAC ’77, the 2nd World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. With a radically ambitious agenda underwritten by Nigeria’s newfound oil wealth, FESTAC ’77 would unfold as a complex, glorious and excessive culmination of a half-century of transatlantic and pan-Africanist cultural-political gatherings.

Chimurenga  decomposed, re-arranged and reproduced the sound-world of FESTAC ’77 to address the planetary scale of event, alongside the personal and artistic encounters it made possible. And to ask: Can a past that the present has not yet caught up with be summoned to haunt the present as an alternative? 

RAW will explore different panafrican ideologies born between the FESMAN and FESTAC festivals and the way they manifested in Senegalese society, as well as the influence of these festivals on artisitic production.

Contributors: Dr. Dialo Diop, Massamba Mbaye, Dr. Hadja Maïmouna Niang, Pr. Ousmane Sène, Dr. Ibrahima Wane, amongt others.

Followed by a DJ set with Ntone Edjabe and Dread Amala from 9pm.