How Seki dance has redefined performance rights of indigenous people (thecable.ng)
Abstract
The African indigenous creativity is being digitally enabled for entrepreneurial capacity and for the Artificial Intelligence era.The global IP community for more than 30 years now has been struggling with how to legally recognize culture, folklore, traditional cultural expressions and traditional knowledge with an intellectual property-like protection or some formal type of legal protection. However, after the signing of the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performance (BTAP) in 2012 and its accession by majority of the WIPO Treaty nations-dance, audiovisual actors, and other forms of transient creativity and creations have been recognized as performance, that attracts IP protection. The protagonists of these works are now regarded by law as performers, whose works now attract IP protection. The performance of their works on audiovisual platforms and spaces (a creation of the digital era) has also been recognized by the new jurisprudence including that of Nigeria.
In my earlier published work on the thematic perspectives in communal creativity theme in a publication of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), I began a conversation on how cultural works and heritages of the global South (Nigeria) especially the Nollywood contents can maximize the potentials of its unique cultural heritage and economically maximize its cultural creative assets for upscale and monetized models. In this piece, I am continuing that conversation, using Seki Dance, which has already adopted the audiovisual tool to maximize the deep cultural assets of the indigenous peoples of South-South Nigeria, as a tool for enhancing tourism and also enabling national economic policy of revenue diversification.
Introduction
Within the current trends among nation States of the global South to diversify their national economic revenue streams, for example the nations of the Gulf Cooperative council (GCC) of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, the BRIC-Brazil, Russia, Russia, India, China and South Africa- nation states from the extractive industrial economies to the creative-innovative streams and tourism, this article examines and analysis how Nigeria ought to empower its indigenous cultural creative industries. Africa is endowed with rich and distinguished indigenous creative assets in the artistic, literary and scientific fields. Most of these creative works and innovations are innate to African heritage. In Nigeria, most of the indigenous creativity have been elevated to global and entrepreneurial rank because of the aid of digital technology and the enablement of contemporary digital era creative jurisprudence. This short piece will further examine how Seki dance, an indigenous traditional and cultural creative works of the peoples of mostly the Okrika and other ethnic nations of Ijaw of the Niger Delta Geo-political space in present day Rivers State in Nigeria, reinforces the clarion call and postulations among IP scholars and culture scholars that folklore, traditional cultural expressions and traditional knowledge of the global South deserve global legal recognition like other forms of intellectual property that originates from the global North.
Indigenous Creativity of Traditional Societies
In a published work I authored recently, I analyzed how the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performance (BTAP) has recognized partially the need to recognize the creative rights of performers, including cinematic actors, theater artists, cultural dancers, and skit makers in the digital space or real time physical stages. These groups of creatives are performers according to current intellectual property jurisprudence. A Seki dancer may be a performer, actor, and copyright author or copyright owner based on current creative regimes. Just like any artistic creation, ownership of the copyright in Seki dance performances and works is regulated by copyright law.
In Nigeria, her law adequately has set out who may be a copyright author and or owner of Seki dance creations. The moral rights of Seki dance performers have also been recognized, although not adequately as some of us IP scholars of the global South demand. These legal rights are now legally tangible. Gladly, the BTAP has become part of the creative laws of most countries of the global South including Nigeria. The Beijing Treaty, including the Nigerian copyright law have defined and covered performers (Seki dancers) on the same legal pedestal as actors for the purposes of beneficial economic and moral rights with a global scope.
Although IP scholars are still discussing the path to consensus on accepting a legal definition for traditional cultural expressions, Seki dance is a creative performance of indigenous culture, folklore and heritage. Therefore, the dancing and displaying of the Seki cultural attributes are the performing of creative works. Seki dancers are performers, actors and artists under the current Nigerian copyright law. Section 63 of the current Nigerian copyright expressly itemizes the rights of a performer in economic, creative and social context. Therefore, a Seki dancer has exclusive legal creative rights to control acts that arise and in relation to her (his) work- performance.
Seki Dance and Creative Performance Rights
Seki dance is a creative dance indigenous to the people of the South-South region of Nigeria, particularly among the peoples of mostly the Okrika nation extraction and other ethnic nations like the Ijaw. Recently, Mr. Yibo Koko, a foremost Nigerian artist and creative director, who is also the chief executive and Director General of the Rivers State Tourism Development Agency (RSTDA) has organized this authentic African creation into a formal entrepreneurial and creative cultural asset mostly with the assistance and enablement of digital tools. In my interactions with Mr. Koko he stated that “… Seki prides itself as a celebration of the colors and clatter of the Niger Delta- this owes for most part to how the various dances-Opu Iria, Kala Iria, Pioru, Bamba-Owu, Ojongo-Owu, Ogwein, Owembe peoples of Niger Delta.” He further stated that his objectives include the preservation of the rich culture of his people from extinction and most particularly using the existing digital assets to achieve those outcomes. The partnership of the public and private sector in the indigenous cultural creative industry may be a welcome development because of the potential trigger this could endear for investment from other sectors of the global economy. It may also signify a sign of confidence that the indigenous cultural industry is part of the formal economy.
How Nigeria’s laws and policies is structured to enable Seki Dance and its likes
Seki Dance is a traditional cultural expression (TCE), a form of contemporary genre of intellectual property that has been handed down from generation to generation but kept alive and virile through transformative creativity of people like Mr Koko and his group of dancers. Intellectual property has a strong role in the monetization and sustainability of Seki dance and other forms of TCE. More particularly, as a tourism magnet, this TCE could be complemented by current IP regimes, like Trademark, copyright, Geographical indications, traditional knowledge, trade secret and patent in protecting the creative, innovative and entrepreneurial rights of the indigenous people from misappropriation and add more value in the downstream tourism value chain.
The economic opportunities that tourism combined with a properly organized indigenous cultural industry like the Seki Dance, is exponential in the digital era audiovisual spaces. The power of the digital ecosystem has the potential of globalizing a hitherto unknown creative work normally seen in stationary locations. In 2016, a European Union report cited a study that forecasted that the cultural and creative industries (CCI) in Africa will generate $4.2 billion and create 547, 500 jobs. Although, the actual confirmation and realism of this forecast is spotty, however, there has been major uptick economic upward-movements in the CCI of Nigeria since 2016. Some creative contents in the audiovisual platforms have contributed significantly into the Nigerian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in recent times. With the visibility that digital distributive and productive modes now affords Seki Dance, coupled with its innate-ingenious richness, Seki Dance as a good geographical indications is a tourism gold mine, national-brand, and a source product. The multiplier effects to the local economy of Niger Delta, Nigeria and to the national economy is encouraging for developmental growth of its people.
The path to covering the creative field
With a rich and endowed ingenuous creative depth uniquely connected to her, Nigeria and other traditional nations of the global South should take the competitive and strategic product advantage of their cultural assets to explore and monetize these creative works in an upscale fashion. Through deliberate national policies and political will, the traditional culture expressions, traditional knowledge and geographical indications attached to the creativity and innovations of indigenous people will change the economic fortunes of immediate host communities. After all Seki Dance is going mainstream and upstream.
*Professor Samuel Samiái Andrews writes from Al Yamamah University College of Law, Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia.
