Jimi Solanke to launch book for 71st birthday

[Mirror]

Veteran actor, storyteller, musician and author, Jimi Solanke, will turn 71 on July 4 and to celebrate he will be launching a children's book, **The Ancient & Modern Tales** on the day at Freedom Park, Lagos.  The Ile-Ife, Osun State-based Solanke told our correspondent in Lagos that the event will take the shape of folklore festival.  "We will welcome everybody like a folklore festival with traditional dances, drums, and masquerades from my home town singing in my home language. As the programme goes on there will be book review, book launch and folk entertainment all through", he said.  Solanke, who has always worked with children and has been a consultant for UNICEF for over 15 years, explained that the gathering is going to be a wonderful event for his friends in Lagos who were unable to be at his 70th birthday celebration in Ile-Ife.  Talking about the **The Ancient & Modern Tales** he said it is a special kind of book. "I won't call myself an author but I'm going to call it a very qualitative, innovative experience; qualitative in the sense that I want to teach some new kind of art to children in my upcoming children's programme.  I was picking up materials from daily newspapers and I started to see that there are good colours on the pages of newspapers. Once I finish with the write-ups I would now begin to collect the colours in the remaining papers that would be discarded", he said.  Solanke further stated he had the knack of putting them together to form characters. Little by little the septuagenarian created characters somewhat like the Walt Disney originated Mickey Mouse character and such other characters for children.  "I was working on creating characters that will be related to children and then I was thinking of characters that were responsible for my cultural upbringing. We had Egbere who carried a mat and if you are lucky to meet Egbere the character, take his mat and put in a room, you will be rich forever. Such are the little tales I told about these characters I innovated in collage form", he said.  Solanke, the only Nigerian musician to perform at the opening ceremony for the National Theatre in 1976, said a compilation of his songs composed specially for children "and with a song book to accompany it, is in the works".

National Mirror