He wrote his first arts criticism when I had been more than five years doing that job. So I knew,10 paragraphs into that maiden piece,that a new kid had arrived on the block. Don’t ask me how I felt. Prior to his entry, I had been known as the only newspaper arts critic who dared to dispute the word and work of the high and mighty; the only one who interrogated policy and dared public servants in the cultural sphere to get mad.
Nanabanyin’s first article published in The Mirror changed the very contour and temperature of the landscape: Suddenly, the very ground on which my throne stood moved, ever so slightly.
My good fortune, however, was that unlike Shakespeare’s Macbeth, his arrival on the scene did not rebuke my genius. I did not feel threatened: There was something in his style and the knowledge he exuded that told me that a colleague, not a rival, had arrived. I was right.
Today, I can say with the confidence of self-knowledge that if any three journalists have affected the way I write, Nanabanyin Dadson is one – the two others being Ajoa Yeboa Afari and Elizabeth Ohene. As I wrote in a tribute to a departed colleague in 2013, these three are in my personal Hall of Fame in the inky fraternity who are both journalists and writers. Nanabanyin is a writer. As I had done to every article written by Ms Yeboa Afari and Ms Ohene, since I came to know them, I began to keep a file of Nanabanyin’s articles. That is how much I respected him, and still do.
Yet, the third time we met physically (to do a post-mortem of an ???ECRAG??? Awards show), in 1985, we quarrelled. Who was this upstart who dared to point out technical flaws in our Awards Night held at the Star Hotel the previous weekend?! On closer self-examination later, however, I confessed to myself, Carl Bannerman (RIP) and Godwin Avenorgbor that the young man knew his stuff. His knowledge of the stage, in particular, and show business, generally, was technically superior.
I had become an arts critic because God had gifted me with a pair of critical eyes and ears, plus a generous sprinkling of literary capabilities. God had also divinely appointed Kwaw Ansah (Film), Nii Yartey (Dance), Dinah Reindorf (Music) and Efo Kodwo Mawugbe (Drama) as my teachers, and my tutorials were on the field (call it on-the-job training) over a long period of time.
Nanabanyin Dadson burst upon the scene already made. He was, and perhaps still is, the only arts critic in Ghana with academic and practical knowledge of the art forms, in general, and Literary Appreciation as a specialisation. In addition to his academic acquirement was his talent as an event director. But over and above all these qualities was his passion. To arts and culture, he is to a native born.
This passion manifested in the language he employed. It brimmed with knowledge, both of the dynamics of the various artistic manifestations about which he wrote, and the nuances of the English language, his medium of journalistic expression.
One tribute dropped from my lips the day he disclosed to me that he was about to retire from the Graphic Group. In that instant in time, a panorama spanning his 30-year contribution as an arts writer played before my mind’s eye, and out came the words, “It’s the end of an era”. That era is not limited to cultural journalism. Nanabanyin’s influence has affected the cultural industry as a whole. What has driven him has been his stated desire to move up the arts “from the days it was treated as a bastard, unserious and a frivolous endeavour in Ghana not deserving of a prominent place in the scheme of media subject categories.” In this, he has achieved a large measure of success.
The difference between Nanabanyin Dadson, on the one side, and all other arts critics and reviewers in Ghana, has been this: For him, this is a career not a pastime. Nab is the critic who brought his knowledge and passion into journalism. Not that he has loved and practiced journalism less; he loved arts and culture more. It is in his blood. It drives him.
Saturday after Saturday in The Mirror, Thursday after Thursday in the Graphic Showbiz, Nab, in the last 30 years, has written about probably every artist worth reading about in Ghana. Year after year, in all the days of ‘Double Do’, Nanabanyin unleashed his talent in event directing.
Of course, the hot exchanges between the two of us 30 years ago in the office of Dan Moffat, then the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Arts Council, were only the first of many such bouts. A man with a biting pen, he was wont to sink his teeth into every artistic event. In this, he did not spare even his colleagues as he bit the ???ACRAG???, both from within (as a member) and without, after he quit. I disagreed with him not because he dared to name names (including mine) but because I thought in his measurement of two artistic standards, he had used two different yardsticks; one for measuring Double Do, with which he was associated, and one for ACRAG, from which he had walked out because he had not had his way all the time.
Critics do not often respond to criticism. How I itched to point out to him a fact or two! I itched to point out that the flaws he was criticising so openly in ACRAG were not entirely absent when he was in charge as the unofficial event director of this now defunct club of arts critics and reviewers.
I am sure that in looking on his life as a journalist, Nana B will battle with a conscience that is returning a verdict of guilty in the area of theatre promotion. I am one of those in the jury whose vote will send him to the journalistic gallows – if there was any such thing. His passion for the arts did not drive him to do as much for Theatre (Drama) as he should have.
But he is only human. In rephrasing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I will remove the element of gender from the quote and conclude thus: “Frailty, thy name is human”. For the sake of conscience, I am glad that I have written this tribute not to the dead but to the living – one who, to most arts critics and artists, ascended the heights where legends belong.
As Nanabanyin Dadson walks out of the gates of Graphic Communications Group Limited, it is the end of an era - the era of “educated criticism”. As Adwoa Serwaa Bonsu, Jane Buckman Owoo and Nii Korley shut the gates, they do so on the life of their mentor, a man who, to them, to many other arts critics and to hundreds of artists, ascended the heights where legends belong.
The writer is an artswriter.
Written by Enimil Ashon | Graphiconline
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