07/04/2024
Rest In Peace Uncle Tam🙏🏾🌱😞🫶🏿
Uncle Tam, the Nigerian writer, photographer and documentary filmmaker Tam Fiofori (1942-2024) has joined the ancestors.
Sun Ra introduced the Moog synthesizer to the jazz world. The person who introduced Sun Ra to the Moog is Tam Fiofori. Fiofori was one of the first critics to write seriously about the most famous citizen of Saturn – his essay in Downbeat Magazine “Sun Ra’s Space Odyssey” (1969) is a founding connection between Ra and the movement that would be known as Afrofuturism. Uncle Tam invited Sun Ra to Lagos for FESTAC 77and wrote about it all in Glendora Review, later expanded into his self-published book-length essay, Sun Ra: Space, Music, Myth.
Tam Fiofori wrote about art, music and culture almost as prolifically as he photographed them. He is also part of the first generation of Nigerian filmmakers, with the likes of Francis Oladele and Ola Balogun. His film "Odum and Water Masquerades" (1974) was screened at FESTAC ’77.
Rest well, elder.
