Summer Fiesta ’17: LagosPunk in full force
“I think anything that excels against expectations is punk rock (punk)” — Hannif Abdurraqib, Poet.

I wondered why the sun had to be exceedingly hot,
Especially during the rainy season,
ESPECIALLY today of all days, when I had to leave the house.
My sunglasses lay cracked at home, and I had somehow lost every face cap I owned in the space of a year. I normally don’t think about these lost artifacts, but the glare from our very own star had me regretting some of my past behaviors.
To make matters more annoying, only a few members of the Lagoslife crew had arrived, the rest were stuck in a traffic jam, leaving me to wonder whether bad luck comes pre-packaged.
I decided after a lot of rationalizing and self talk, to let go and live in the moment, after all the sun wasn’t going to kill me, heck, it’s the source of life in our solar system, might as well receive some of that solar energy.
With my mind being fully settled, I found a way to make the most of my chilling spot by the fence, and proceeded to observe the festivity that was Summer Fiesta ’17 as it took place around me.
The first thing that struck me was the general age range of the people in attendance, majority of them were teenagers, with the random young adult (yours truly), here and there. The second thing that struck me was the general sense of style.
There were dreadlocks, piercings, sneakers, tatts, ripped jeans, random everyday clothing items that had been altered in some form, and cameras, lots of cameras.
Throughout my life, from childhood till present, I’ve never had the best relationship with society. I’ve boiled it down to my upbringing, my lack of social skills, my tendency to stay stuck in my head for hours, the shows I watched when I was younger and being an avid reader. These factors somehow made me seek the unconventional and the chaotic, the things that deviate from the average.
I like weird people, I don’t mind gay people, I’m not religious, my friends aren’t your usual members of society, I hate going to Cultural Institutions like banks and churches, I like piercings and tattoos, I like ripped jeans, I like psychedelics, and so on.
I’m not a typical Nigerian. I do not relate to the general public; I don’t want the same thing the average Nigerian wants. And as I looked at the mass of people present, I could tell that, these people thought and felt the same way even though they were quite extreme in their personal demonstrations of these thoughts.
A week later, I came across an article on True Africa by Sope Soetan (basically the inspiration for this article), and it talked about this subculture that originated in America among the black people who weren’t your typical black Americans. They had different values and thought differently, but they were seen as wannabes; black people trying to be white, when all they were trying to do was live their lives.
This subculture, known today as Afropunk, a culture originating from black people in the predominantly white scene of Punk typifies people who exhibit different ideologies, fashions and forms of expression, including visual art, dance, literature and film.

Nigerians are generally conservative, right winged, religious people. They are about the community and tradition, they are about order and bureaucracy, they are about going to school and getting a good job, they are about being a good member of society and fitting into the system.
I don’t follow that logic, and apparently there’s a whole bunch of people here in Lagos, who feel the same way and are looking for a community, people who they can really connect and express their weird selves to.
And today this culture appears to be growing much faster than previous years, propelled by the internet and social media. Connection is much easier than it was 10 years ago, today you can use an app called Meetly to organize a hangout with people who are interested in the same things you’re into, you can create a Whats App group for your favorite topic in an instant, which is awesome because in a society that doesn’t understand you yet, you need all the support you can get.
People are seeing that now, you have young Nigerians doing their thing and killing it all over the world and even here in Nigeria, you have more and more young people chasing the arts, coming out with their own ideas, starting their own businesses and so on.
I’m calling this movement, this culture that has been low-key but is now coming to the forefront of public awareness, LagosPunk because in Sope Soetan’s words:
“Punk (Afropunk) is for black people who like more than typically ‘black, things. It is a cosmopolitan universe for ‘woke’ individuals to commune and discuss the dismantling of confining barriers and structures in their lives. It is a vanguard for alternative black culture where differences are encouraged.”
All you need to do is change the black to Nigerian and you’ll get my message.
