Re:INCARNATION - the spirit of Lagos youth comes to the UK

Re:INCARNATION is a performance piece embodying the sound and energy of Nigeria’s capital city Lagos, home to the show’s creator, performer and choreographer Qudus Onikeku. This September, the show arrives at London’s Southbank Centre for the opening dates on Qudus’ QDance Company’s first ever UK tour.

The show, a melting pot of musical and dance traditions, fuses the bustling city’s youth culture – many sources state that half of the city’s population are aged 18-40 – with ancient Yoruba philosophies. “We wanted to sound like contemporary Lagos,” says Qudus. “With all its energy, vibrancy and culture.”

Creating the production’s unique sound posed a welcome challenge. “If you’ve been in Lagos before, you know its sound,” says the project’s musical director Olatunde Obajeun. “But how do you also create that sound when you are not in Lagos?” For the score, they took inspiration from Afrobeats as Qudus was interested in its recent surge in global popularity, as well as incorporating an ‘explosive cocktail’ of jazz, soul, funk and traditional African music. Qudus wanted to explore how music and dance from the past are continuously reinvented around the world. “I’m not so much keen about styles or genres or techniques,” says Qudus, “because, really, African music is there in our DNA. You move to one [part of the world] and it becomes blues or jazz or salsa, hip-hop, soul, highlife. And that is what [Re:INCARNATION] is about – how people reinvent these things. That is the spirit of [modern] Lagos too. It is open to anybody and anything.”

This is where the show’s title really comes into play, in its exploration of how the past informs contemporary music, dance and culture. As Qudus so beautifully puts it: “We’re bodies in time and our sounds, movement, dances, costumes, fashion and our poetry, are aware that the past is very much in the present.”

Like its dominating theme, the show continues to reinvent itself. Originally featuring just one musician when it was first performed in 2021, Olatunde has since added drums and trumpets, and hopes to have an orchestra at some point too. “[The show] is so open that anything can get in and that is why it keeps getting better,” he says. “One of our hopes is to influence modern music and blend it with traditional and contemporary elements. We want to change the way people think about music.”

Re:INCARNATION will be at London’s Southbank Centre on September 18-19, followed by dates in Milton Keynes (Sept 21), Canterbury (Sept 24-25), Brighton (Oct 1-2), Nottingham (Oct 5), Salford (Oct 8-9), Hull (Oct 11-12), Newcastle (Oct 15-16) and Edinburgh (Oct 18-19)

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue, read the magazine online – subscribe today: magsubscriptions.com