A time for poetry, music, and art

My friend and colleague, RAE, is still awaiting an online response to her suggestion that in bemoaning the absence of a financially meaningful role for creatives in sustaining national development, I had omitted mention of the objective contribution of industry and the economy, from which such attributes are ostensibly absent.

I am summarising a very brief social media exchange using more elaborate language than such platforms permit.

So, to be precise, this is what I actually claimed: “In a country so heavily reliant on creativity to sustain the cause of its survival, why is it so hard to convince people that creative work is “work” for which its originators and producers need to be respected and financially rewarded?”

RAE’s question was: “We rely on creativity to sustain us?” To which I replied: “What else is there?” Then came the retort: “I mean industry and economy …”

Well, that is actually what I meant. For, it is my opinion that in the absence of innovation and creativity, and acknowledgement of our creative assets as essential to progress in all sectors, we aren’t likely to engage the future with any degree of success.

If you think about it, there isn’t much else we have. Oil and gas and resulting commercial and industrial breathing space, together with tropical weather and abundant natural bounty are not really because of us. What has set us apart has almost always been, even in the spheres of business and industry, the creative impulse to do things differently.

When I speak about space for creative enterprise, I am not hinting at arbitrary state entitlements, legislated taste, or social engineering employing literature, drama, art, and music as anodyne for destructive, anti-social behaviour.

What I am hinting at is the ability to establish “creative industries" as a discrete component of economic development while permitting more room for the employment of creative imagination in industry, commerce, and government.

This is more than mere fanciful talk. We are, in a sense, constantly on the borderline of this. The current Pan in the 21^st Century/Pan Down Memory Lane event, for example, is once again displaying the value of pan as a form of socio-cultural organisation with value applicable to economic sustainability.

True, there needs to be an accelerated move away from gratuitous state largesse and attention to the conversion of such value to genuine economic wealth, but most of the vital ingredients already appear to be evident.

Additionally, pan provides a level of social participation which is a key condition of communal wealth creation. This is even before recognising that the world’s best pan makers, tuners, arrangers, and players are located right here.

One first step in all this, as I suggested in my terse social media post, is to recognise that creative endeavour has value beyond aesthetics and can contribute substantially to wealth creation.

At the moment, there is little recognition of this as people here do not generally consider the work of creatives as “real work” with financial value.

Some of you may have picked up on the explosion of art that awaited the end of pandemic measures. It is almost everywhere – painting, sculpting, printmaking. Those of us who have chosen not to be locked away through fear have been spoilt for choice.

Then there are the writers – increasingly proving their worth on all available stages. I won’t know where to start when it comes to the numerous names, but I have become an advocate of greater employment of newspaper pages for more literary contributions so as to ferret out the less conspicuous.

Last week, I also attended the Black Box screening of short films during the Africa Film Festival and found confirmation of my view that so much is happening on that front – of which I have substantial intimate knowledge – that our longstanding desire for a viable film industry cannot be too far away, if we pay closer attention to professionalising the numerous talents around while the state keeps a healthy distance away.

Then, pan apart, there is all this music! What do we do about all this music?

At this difficult, transitional time, there is a need for more poetry and music and art not as ends in themselves but as keys to a different kind of future. They are about the only things to keep us going in what can easily become a soulless, savage desert lacking in hope. I do not think we are there yet.