Sunday, March 31, 2024
Monday, March 18, 2024
Olden Tradition of giving your child to the river to bless
Monday, March 11, 2024
The perfect IFA way of dressing: Pakaja
All forms of Yoruba greetings and the interpretation you need to know
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Yoruba Tales by Moonlight, purpose and format
Yoruba Tales by Moonlight, purpose and format.
These are folk tales told by anyone with a story to share, from elders to people in position of great respect and even young children. At night, outside on the porch, the story teller sits in front or in the middle and the audience surrounds the story teller. The stories are told in the gloom of twilight and are thus “Tales by moonlight”.
The format in which the stories are told is also important. In African cultures, call and response is an integral part of civic participation. From religious rituals to music, children’s rhymes and everything in between.
In the modern world, the most well-known examples of call and response is in the diaspora, where enslaved Africans sang work songs to help them cope with the inhumanity and desperate suffering they went through in their daily lives (Songs, n.d.). These have now been adapted into modern African American religious music and church traditions. (Water, n.d.)
An example of call and response which everyone probably has heard before is “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King. The beginning of the song in which a male voice chants and several backing vocals respond is a call and response (Life, 1994)
For Yoruba tales by moonlight, the person telling the story starts with a call, and the audience responds. This is repeated a few times, possibly to get the full attention of the listeners.
The traditional start of the story is marked by the chant below.
Story teller: Àlọ́ ọ́
Listeners: Àlọ́
The word “Àlọ́” means “story” and the chant can be loosely translated as the Yoruba version of “Once Upon a Time” in western folk tales
These tales usually feature anthropomorphic animals involved in human situations. The animal takes the roles of a human and are creatures familiar to the audience in their day to day lives.
They also feature supernatural beings, spirits and the nether realms as yoruba religion practics ancestral worship as well as a diverse pantheon of deities (See my previous pinned post on the yoruba mythological pantheon)
The aim of these stories is to teach the listeners life skills, cultural ideals and the philosophies of the culture.
As stated in the open journal of Modern Linguistics by Timothy Adeyemi Akanbi: (Akanbi, , 2014)
“All were entitled to tell a tale if they wished, even the youngest; and all were expected to support the others’ performances by supplying a chorus to the songs. The moral values which are the issue in these stories are correspondingly those which make for harmonious communal living. Good neighbours, loyal friends and faithful wives are contrasted with tricksters, betrayers and deceivers. The important point is not so much that the Àlọ́ are didactic, imparting values to the young… but that the ground and framework of every story are the values of everyday, ordinary human world”
Stories like how the tortoise lost its hair teach the listeners about the dangers of stealing and gluttony whilst sstories of how the tortoise got the cracks on its shell teach listeners about the dangers of greed.
As you can probably guess, tortoise stories are very common in Yoruba folk tales. There are other animals used, but tortoises hold a special distinction and are the fall guys in the animal kingdom, exhibiting vices the Yoruba culture frowns upon.
Through the misfortunes that plague the tortoise in these stories, we begin to understand what values and traits Yoruba culture deems acceptable and which it doesn’t.
The animals are always singular entities too, so in all the stories, there is dog, tortoise, lion, leopard, hyena etc. Them and immediate families are the only ones of their species present in the stories, however the misfortunes that befall them apply automatically to the rest of their kind.
With this background in place, I will be publishing my first tale, a very simple one most Yoruba children know; “How the Tortoise got his shell” tomorrow.
Bibliography
Akanbi, T. A., , 2014. The Moral Value of Yorùbá Moonlight Tales. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, Volume 4, pp. 481-486.
Life, D. T. C. o., 1994. Youtube. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GibiNy4d4gc
Songs, W., n.d. [Online]
Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Women_Work_Songs
Water, W. i. t., n.d. Wikipedia. [Online]
Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade_in_the_Water
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
6 Important Yoruba questions to learn Yoruba
Monday, March 4, 2024
All about Igogo Festival in Owo
Six hundred years ago, Olowo, the King, fell in love with Orensen, a very beautiful woman.
Unfortunately for the King, she was a goddess who could not live with a human. She was forbidden to see women pounding spices, draw water, or throw a bundle of wood to the ground.
Because of his love for the goddess, and in order to marry her, the King promised her that his other wives, in front of her would follow these same restrictions.
After several years, the King’s wives became jealous and revolted. They did everything they were not supposed to do in front of the goddess, who then cast a spell upon the entire kingdom.
The goddess promised that people of Owo, would die of famine or sickness if the King and his chiefs did not celebrate every year a ceremony in her honor. The drums should beg her pardon and sing her praises. One also had to offer her a sacrifice of a man and a woman.
This ceremony, IGOGO,[IGOGO FESTIVAL] still exists, but the human beings have been replaced by a sheep and a goat.
This is an annual festival in Owo which lasts a total of 17 days featuring a number of ceremonies including the blessing and release of new yams.
The festival is in commemoration of the king’s wife who turned into a tree while being pursued by the king’s slave to return to the palace after her rival violated her taboos in her presence.
The Olowo, usually during this festival dresses in Coral Beaded Crown and in addition plaits his hair like a woman. It could be seen here that Owo has some traditional linkage with Benin.
The Olowo leads his people including the Chief Priest and the male youths from Iloro quarters to dance round the whole town. During this 17 days period of celebration, drumming is banned in Owo and instead, metal gongs (Agogo) are used. This was where the name ‘IGOGO’ was coined.
The Igogo festival which comes up in September annually is a cultural display of the culture of the people with its main aim as to align youths with the cultural norm of the land.
The importance of Yoruba carved mask
Yoruba Tribal Art has a significant and mystical history. The masks form an important part of ceremonies, rituals, initiations, celebrations and secret communities.
The use of African masks typically includes song, prayer, and dance. It is for this reason that the mask can be viewed as an obvious work of sculpture art, but because of its function, it is also considered a performance art form. Yoruba masks are mainly crafted from wood.
They are often decorated with paints, cowrie shells, colored glass, nails, plant fibers, horns and metal pieces.
The actual carving of these masks and figures is a very deliberated act, which begins with the artist ceremonially purifying himself, than offering a prayer to the ancestors and asking for proper guidance from the divine forces.
The object will then be inhabited by the divine force. The spirit of the tree used to create it, will be sacrificed, cut down and left for a couple days, so that the spirit of the tree can leave to find a new home.
After this period is over, the artist will take the tree home and begin to carve it into a mask or a figure. If the tree cracks during this time, it can not be used .
Yoruba masks are generally representative of some sort of spirit, and this spirit is believed to possess the dancer as they wear the mask.
This dancer is chosen either because they have been trained specifically for this purpose or because they have demonstrated abilities to extraordinarily communicate with the deceased ancestors.
Masking ceremonies involves the chosen dancer speaking and hearing from the ancestors.
This happens as the dancer goes into a trance like state. The purpose is often to receive the guidance and wisdom from the ancestors, or to tell a story or play out a message of the peoples history.
The messages received, comes out of the dancer as utterances and moans. The translation is provided by a wise man, who accompanies the dancer and deciphers the grunts and utterances.
The love of music, song and dance always plays a central theme in the ceremonies and rituals.
These rituals and ceremonies may depict obviously the ancestors, but also the dead, the spirit of animals and other supernatural beings.
During initiation ceremonies, the masks worn, depict an ancestor. The purpose would be to gain favor and to be received into the tribe as a vital member.
Yoruba masks, ceremonies and rituals where once a very important and central part of African culture and life and it is in some villages still nowadays.
As time has passed, modernization, colonization, heavy migration into the cities and out of the countryside and small villages have made these rituals and ceremonies rarer occurances.
However, Yoruba masks still live on through use, new artists, museums and art collectors. They remain symbols of a time past, a rich history, and the religious and the cultural holdings of a people.