David Kakuta Mulwa, one of Kenya’s most iconic creative artists, turned 80 on Thursday, April 9, this week. His host of friends, fans, former students and lovers of the arts will convene in Nairobi this weekend to fete and celebrate him. I wanted tell you a few things about this remarkable man and my very special relationship with him.But since David Mulwa joins me on the “eighth floor” amid truly dramatic events around us, I thought I should just share with you a few basic things about the performing arts, and the arts in general, most of which I picked up from David Mulwa. My remarks, I hope, will put in some perspective the stunning and disturbing goings-on around our and Mulwa’s beloved Schools and Colleges Drama Festival.My main point is that the performing arts, and all the arts in general, are not mere entertainment but a crucial service to society. We start from the premise that every society needs a culture, a systematic way of doing things, for its existence and development. In my view, culture comprises four interconnected essentials, namely, identity, regulation, production and reflection.Identity is the way we recognise and define ourselves. We derive it from such elements as ethnicity, geography and history. Regulation, on the other hand, deals with the ways in which we, as a community, organise ourselves and relate to our environment, to one another and to the supernatural. Religion, social relationships, customs, laws and politics belong to this area of regulation.Production is the material aspect of culture, the science, the technology, the industry and the economics. Here we deal with the generation or creation and distribution of our means of survival.Process of artistic reflectionMaterial culture, the anthropologists and folklorists called it.Many individuals and societies are primarily concerned with the regulative, organisational and productive, material aspects of their culture. As such, they seem to find no time to stand back and wonder about what they are doing and how and why they are doing it. Thus they become purely and pathetically materialistic and formalistic. This is where reflection needs to come in and save the situation.Reflection, in my cultural scheme, means just that, holding up a mirror to ourselves, seeing how we are doing. That mirror is the arts. We have the visual arts, like painting, sculpture and embroidery, the linguistic arts, like literature and orature, and the performing arts, like music, dance and drama.They all play on the inherent aesthetic instinct in us to make us look at our human condition and existence. Following the artistic work, we think, and feel, about its message.This process of artistic reflection has always been considered to be a necessary part of social operation and development. In the ancient world, for example, the great annual art festivals, where the great musical and dramatic compositions were performed, were national obligations. Every member of society was required to attend.Value of the creative artsSuppressive tendencies, like censorship, that would limit and circumscribe the creative arts, are antisocial and anti-development. Societies that either neglect or persecute creative artists and their works almost always degenerate and eventually disintegrate.These are some of the lessons that I scraped from various theories but which I most profitably and practically learnt through my fortunate association with now octogenarian David Mulwa and the late Francis Imbuga. Mulwa single-mindedly toiled at Kenyatta University for the better part of 40 years, teaching, mentoring, writing, directing, performing and administering creativity. This was obviously due to his unshakable faith in the value and viability of the creative arts.Respect and support of these arts, and especially drama, is, I think, the best birthday present we can give to our dear grand old man of the arts.Happy birthday, David Kakuta Mulwa!Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and literature. [email protected] Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
Syndigate.info
).