HORST Ulrich Beier, better known as Ulli Beier, and perhaps the most acknowledged non-indigenous influence on the exposition of Yoruba culture in modern times, died on April 3, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. He was 89. Born in Germany of Jewish parentage, Beiers free and irrepressible spirit kept him constantly seeking unbeaten paths to tread, and unusual courses to chart such that, in the four scores and nine years he lived, Ulli Beier acquired a working knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic, rode horses as a show jumper and, milked cows and tended a rose farm in British-ruled Palestine, studied Archaeology briefly and eventually took a qualification in Phonetics which he opted to teach to academically-challenged children in place of a better job placement. He soon applied for an advertised job in the unfamiliar territory of then University College, Ibadan, rather than Legon that, he was advised, was a much better proposition. As it turned out for Beier, a certain motivational must drew him to Ibadan.He taught Phonetics for a time. When he felt stultified, he transferred to the Extra-mural Studies department where, by the outreach nature of his work, he could, in tune with his adventurous spirit, freely work, roam, and explore the world around him. Fortuitously, it was a world of the indescribably rich and diverse Yoruba culture, and of a people accommodating and willing to teach and learn. Ulli Beier came with humility to learn and to teach and, it is a credit to both parties that, in the more than five decades of intercourse with the Yoruba people and their culture, he gave and- received as much as he humanly could. But was it fortune, or was it destinykindred spirit drawing the one to the other - that sent this explorer of unfamiliar territories among the Yoruba peopleWhichever, it was a homecoming of both physical and spiritual dimensions; Ulli Beier took to the Yoruba culture like fish to water. Indeed, he is quoted as having said: If I had been born an African, I would have been a Yoruba man He made friends with ease with the high and the low such that shortly after he arrived at Ibadan, he cultivated the Western Regional minister of education, Chief S. O. Awokoya, the traditional ruler, Timi Laoye of Ede among others, who facilitated Beiers inroad into the world of babalawos, orisas and other aspects of the Yoruba culture. Besides, his job as a roving teacher brought him in contact with the obas (the traditional and cultural heads) of the various towns to which he would pay homage as a first time visitor. Thenceforth, Beier was to become immersed in the culture into which the Yoruba spirit in him had called him. Indeed, he lived among the orisas.In 1961 he founded the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan. It was a platform on which many future great Nigerian writers and playwrights Wole Soyinka, J.P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo, D.O. Fagunwa, Demas Nwoko and many more - would hone their skills, gain exposure, and leap into global recognition. A chance meeting with Duro Ladipo led to an enduring artistic relationship that in turn gave birth to the Mbari-Mbayo Club in Oshogbo, produced the plays, The Imprisonment of Obatala written under the pen name Obotunde Ijimere, and Eda both written by Beier in English and then translated and acted in Yoruba.The Duro Ladipo Theatre Troupe would produce the internationally acclaimed play Oba Koso that, with the support of Beier, toured Europe and the Americas in 1967. His workshops, conducted -in collaboration with his second wifes Georgina School of Art in Oshogbo - for artists in different specialised areas such as mosaic, pencil and etching, oil painting and lino cut, helped to develop the creative abilities of the likes of Jimoh Buraimoh, Twins Seven Seven, Muraina Oyelami, Bisi Fabunmi, and Tijani Maiyakari. From their works developed the term Oshogbo Art Movement.Prof. Bruce Onobrakpeya has also attributed his career as a printmaker to the exposure he received at Beiers Mbari Mbayo workshop which indeed has inspired the Harmattan Workshop that he runs for artists. Beier wrote or edited, alone or in collaboration with others, a wide range of publications on Yoruba and African culture including A Year of Sacred Festivals in One Yoruba Town (1959), Odu: A Journal of Yoruba Studies (1964), Black Orpheus (1964), African Poetry: An Anthology of Traditional African Poems (1966) Yoruba Myths (1980) and Thirty Years of Oshogbo Arts (1991).Beier is, in the esteem of some, the founder of Yoruba cultural studies because of the immeasurable role he played to expose Yoruba culture in all its diverse forms, to the outside world, even to Yoruba and non-Yoruba Africans. It must be said too that he touched for the good, the life of every one he met, here and elsewhere, which explains the rain of tributes on the news of his death.Although Beier physically separated from Yoruba culture when he left Nigeria in 1967 for Papua New Guinea, he was to return in 1971 as Research Professor and Director of the Institute of African Studies of the then University of Ife in which position he served for three years only. Appointed in 1981 to establish in the University of Bayreuth a Centre for Contemporary Arts and Music from Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, Beier would name it Iwalewa Haus - not unexpected though for a man who had named his sons Tokunbo and Tunji. Iwalewa Haus under Beier has continued to promote Yoruba and Nigerian cultures of all hues through activities such as poetry reading in which Professors Niyi Osundare and Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe have featured, and providing artist-in residence opportunities for the likes of painter and musician Muraina Oyelami, art teacher and poet Prof. Obiora Udechukwu, musician Ademola Onibokuta, and musicologist and composer Prof. Akin Euba. Indeed, according to Professor of Art History and Black Studies, Rowland Abiodun, Oyelami and Udechukwu met for the first time at the centre although they had heard of each other for about two decades. Two or so years ago, Beier turned down more lucrative offers to donate for the price of next to- nothing, his huge collection of works - books, photographs, articles, exhibition materials, posters and more, to the UNESCO Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding located at Oshogbo.Ulli Beier came to Ibadan to workor so he thought. But in Yoruba land he found his body, spirit and soul, a land and a culture to which, it may now be said, he primordially belonged. Any wonder then that, no matter where he found himself, his spirit never abandoned the Yoruba and Nigerian cultural house, because, to borrow from Beier himself, fish do not abandon water. Ulli Beier, May your spirit never abandon this house.
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