‘Lagos is Nigeria’s creative sector hub’ says Minister
NIGERIAN Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has lauded Lagos State as the hub of the creative sector in Nigeria, saying it had a key role to play in the Federal Government’s economic diversification policy.
A recent study shows that creative businesses contributed the equivalent of R112-million to state coffers, with 61 per cent of the total Gross Value Added (GVA) derived from the film industry alone, while fashion and music contributed 26 and 13 per cent respectively.
“We need to create jobs, both skilled and semi-skilled, formalise all aspects of these industries, make them export products and help promote and participate in infrastructure development that will enhance the sector and people’s lives. We cannot achieve this without Lagos State. With its over 20 million people, Lagos is the home of the Creative Sector,” the minister said.
“When we consider the work being done to bolster the industries…. the creative industry will be given the much-needed wings to finally fly and take their rightful place globally,” the minister said. READ MORE.
Korean government apologises for culture blacklist
By Victoria Stapley-Brown
SOUTH KOREA’s ministry of culture, sports and tourism this month issued a formal apology after it drew up a blacklist of cultural figures to be excluded from government support and subsidies. According to report, there are close to 10,000 names on the list, including the author Han Kang, winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.
The list saga led Korea’s minister of culture Cho Yoon-Sun to resign on Saturday 21 January, 2017, after being arrested for perjury and abuse of power in connection with the blacklist. The list allegedly targets individuals from a variety of media who are considered critical of Park Geun-hye, the country’s president. Park is currently suspended from office amid impeachment proceedings begun by parliament in December. READ MORE.
What if Trump Really Does End Money for the Arts?
By Graham Bowley
ANXIETY is mounting amid rumours that U.S. President Donal Trump is looking to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Graham Bowley considers what would happen Trump really eliminates the full range of programs — from grants that have drawn criticism to those that have been more widely embraced? This month The Hill newspaper reported that the Trump administration was considering eliminating the art and humanities agencies and defunding the non-profit public broadcasting corporation as part of a wider program of federal budget cuts. Annual funding for the two endowments only account for only $741 million, or much less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the United States’ annual federal spending, an amount supporters say is too small to make a difference. Conservatives suggest it will take many small cuts to roll back uncontrolled federal spending. READ MORE.
Listen to the oldest surviving melody
THE Hurrian songs are a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient Amorite Canaanite city of Ugarit which date to approximately 1400 BC. One of these tablets, H6, which is nearly complete, contains the Hurrian hymn to Nikkal – a Semitic goddess of orchards – making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world.
While the composers’ names of some of the fragmentary pieces are known, h.6 is an anonymous work. The complete song is one of about 36 such hymns in cuneiform writing, found on fragments of clay tablets excavated in the 1950s from the Royal Palace at Ugarit (present day Ras Shamra, Syria), in a stratum dating from the fourteenth century BC, but is the only one surviving in substantially complete form. The tablet is in the collection of the National Museum of Damascus. READ MORE.
Listen to the melody below, performed by the Michael Levy on the Lyre.