By Ayo Onikoyi

With the 2024 edition of the annual Lagos Fringe Festival around the corner, award-winning folk singer, chanter, singer and actor Debbie Ohiri is set to continue preaching the gospel of folk music by facilitating a workshop.

Scheduled to take place from November 19 through 24, Ohiri said that the workshop, which is designed for young people from 18 and above, primarily aims to preserve our culture through folk songs, drums, costumes, and storytelling at large.

According to her, African cultures are known for oral storytelling, unlike the Americans and Europeans, where they have documentation of history.

To this end, she said, folk music ensures that history is properly documented and passed down with the proper nuances.

“What I’m trying to do in this time and age is to be able to have a medium where people come to experience this tradition and also for research purposes. Times have changed people, we need to reinvent, to evolve for the next generation to come.

“Also, it is time to put our culture on a global stage. Not everything about Africa is fetish. Everything about Africa doesn’t have to be religious. We are a people and have a culture and heritage to protect, people don’t understand that there’s a difference between culture and tradition,” she said.

Launched in 2017, the Lagos Fringe Festival is rated as one of the largest outdoor open access multidisciplinary festivals in West Africa held annually in November.