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By Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún
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“Il suono di pan” (2017)
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I am Yorùbá by birth and by blood, a privilege that has sat me in good stead, professionally and personally, through a wide network of associations, resources, legacies and traditions. From great award-winning novels (many in translation) to great art works curated in museums all over the world, there are many valuable responses that attend my questing glances around the world for validation and direction. In today’s world, to be Yorùbá is to embody all that is complex and dynamic in a culture and civilization that predates even the birth of Christ.
But due to centuries of colonial contact, my identity today is a complex one. I say complex, because saying “incomplete” would carry too much of a burden of judgment. My identity is complex because were we to return to early Yorùbá societies of 4th Century BC in Ifẹ̀, what I am would embody not just the language I speak, my racial composition, the clothes I wear, the scarifications on my face and my role in society, but also my religion, yet untouched by the crusading powers of Christianity that would come centuries later.
In that 4th Century BC in Ifẹ̀, I would either be a citizen, with roles and responsibilities, or a member of the priesthood – which isn’t the same as the Christian one, but which carries similar significance to the proper ordering of society, or a royal. An important group of citizens, a hybrid between genuine plebeians and important religious personas, are the sculptors. The working class men — it was a more gendered time — whose role was to continue the tradition of preserving and interpreting the culture through the moulding of bronze heads. (A similar tradition would take root decades later in Benin — 270km SE of Ifẹ̀ — with more bronze heads of different shapes and styles moulded in the same lost-wax tradition not before conceived in the capitals of Europe).
Because of the hard work of thorough artistry sustained through both civic and religious significance by the practitioners of those times, a record of who the Yorùbá were, what they did, and how long they have been around, was set. This would be helpful in 1938 when Leo Frobenius and his crew came across them at the Wunmonije Compound in Ifẹ̀, buried deep into the soil. So stunned were the European archeologists at the sophistication of the art works (they “compared them to the highest achievements of ancient Roman or Greek art” – source: Wikipedia) that they began to doubt that they could have been created by Africans. They must have been imported from Greece or Rome, they suggested, full of hubris.
In today’s Yorùbáland, I am still a citizen with roles and responsibilities. But I have embodied a new role, that of a citizen of a larger entity called Nigeria, brought into being in 1914 through colonial force, and before that by other forces of globalization, including the transatlantic slave trade and Christianity. (I’ll speak more on that in a second). The internet is a latter-day version of that movement, arriving in time to complete the cycle of connecting what is an individual culture and worldview to a supposedly larger one. In submitting myself to the forces of this expansion of our social and religious space, I also surrender to a new way of thinking. Christianity, in the intervening period, has taken over the world, through the invading forces of colonialism and slave trade. Our religious and cultural autonomy was destroyed and replaced with what is said to be superior and benign.
A friend of mine once visited Brazil and met with a number of caucasian residents of Bahia. In approaching him, because of his mode of dressing, they were curious about his origin. When he told them that he was Yorùbá, they were very excited, and they told him that they, too, were Yorùbá. Never before been exposed to this kind of unfamiliar acculturation, he became disoriented. How, his face wondered, could people of this skin tone and racial make-up be Yorùbá? Then, after recovering himself in a few seconds, he began to speak to them in the language. And to his consternation, they could neither speak nor respond. “But you said you were Yorùbá” he wondered. “Yes,” they responded. “We belong to the Yorùbá religion. We do not speak the language!” That cleared it up, and he learnt something new. Belonging to a religion is not always the same as belonging to the culture.
The Yorùbá religion, consisting of hundreds of Òrìṣà in a dynamic network, centers around Olódùmarè as the supreme being. And through Ifá divination, and its founding father of wisdom—Ọ̀rúnmìlà—the will of the divine one is made known to the people. Ifá as a symbol of divination has been the bedrock of Yorùbá belief system since its recorded history. Along with a corpus of stories, admonitions, aphorisms, songs and chants, that body of knowledge is one through which Ifá priests and priestesses predict the future and understand the past, and one with which the inidividual Yorùbá citizen understands his/her place in the cosmos. So when, in the 16th century, the transatlantic slave trade began, and citizens from inside Yorùbá country were stolen and sold off into the new world, the only valuable resource not capable of being destroyed by the invading slavers and their accomplices across the ocean was the knowledge of these old systems of religious knowledge. Though their bodies were broken down by hard labour, dehumanization, mutilation, separation and other forms of indignity, they held onto these songs and religious rituals and passed them to their children, sometimes in secret.
It is unclear why the religion did not survive in a stronger form in the United States as it did south of the Rio Grande. But we know that in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, and Jamaica, variations of the indigenous African religious practices, particularly from the Yorùbá country survived, sometimes in isolation but mostly in syncretism and other forms of mutation, so that today, there are racially and culturally different people who are nevertheless religiously Yorùbá. Their worldview may be Western, as is their racial composition and language, but their soul and heart are Yorùbá, or aspires to be. This is in a sharp contrast with the homeland where many Yorùbá citizens today are Christian or Moslem (converted through a later trans-Saharan slave trade that came through the north), but Yorùbá only in cultural and linguistic heritage, that is, possessing everything but the third leg of the tripod of identity.
It is tempting, then, to assume that the spiritual identity of the Yorùbá has undergone a weakening since the dawn of European civilization. This would have been true only without the knowledge of the depth of hold that the religion has had around the new world, and among those at home who have retained the independent cultural, spiritual, and mental identity away from what the imported religions recommended. In any case, the “suspension” of this leg in Nigeria and much of Africa, deplorable as it is, has only deepened the support for the religion among those to whom that is all that is left after centuries of plundering. And so there is the silver lining. Over the last couple of decades, practitioners of Lukumi (a religious variation of the Yorùbá Òrìṣà religion, which uses Ifá as its divinatory centre, and modified Yorùbá incantations and songs for liturgy) have made pilgrimages to Nigeria and connected the relevant dots of their religious ancestry. And through a fertile continuation of that relationship, the practice of Ifá and Òrìṣà worship has resumed around the country. A number have also started taking to learning the Yorùbá language as well, as something to add to what they already have in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. And while the Yorùbá in the home country have also shown a lukewarm attitude to the language, the diaspora comes in to save it through a warm embrace.
In 2008, Ifá became classified as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage” by UNESCO. There is a sort of delightful ending in the fact that Ifá had to travel all the way across the world in a slave ship before returning home to rescue its people at home. But maybe that was necessary, especially in its now inevitable expansion across all hitherto forbidden spaces.
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(first published, in a slightly different version, in English and Italian; in Il Suono di Pan, an anthology edited by Prof. MM Tosolini and launched at Cividale del Friuli, near Udine in Italy. November 2017)
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For Further reading
- Ifá Divination System (UNESCO) http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/RL/ifa-divination-system-00146
- Èṣù is not Satan: Interview with Ifáwẹ̀mímọ́ Omítọ̀nàdé (Brittle Paper ) http://brittlepaper.com/2016/04/kola-ifa-interview/
- Ẹ̀ṣù Isn’t the Devil, But You Knew That Already (Yorùbá Name Blog) http://blog.yorubaname.com/2016/12/16/e%E1%B9%A3u-isnt-the-devil-but-you-knew-that-already/
- Ifá on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%C3%A1
- On Lukumi Inclusion on YorùbáName.com (Yorùbá Name Blog) http://blog.yorubaname.com/2016/08/31/lukumi-presence-on-yorubaname/
To know Chris Abani is to love him. I spent about an hour today at the Lagos International Poetry Festival interrogating the affable Nigerian/British writer about his life, his work, his vocations, and a few other matters. It was our first ever sit-down conversation about anything, although I had known and admired him for a while, read his work, and exchanged pleasantries when we’ve met at other literary events (last year at the Aké Arts and Book Festival, for instance).
But this time, at a formal setting, I had looked forward to being able to learn a bit more about what motivates him as an artist, and to do it within the stipulated hour. It turned out to be a conversation that was as enjoyable as it was challenging. His reputation, drive, and breath of literary production span an impressive and sometimes intimidating stretch. He is a full-time writer in California, but also an apprentice babaláwo, publisher (and curator of a number of poetry competitions and chapbooks with Professor Kwame Dawes), and author of many award-winning books including Graceland (2004).
There were a number of questions, but one of the most enjoyable parts of the conversation for me was a detour on the true definition of literacy in an African environment. Too often, we have defined literary competence, and even a state of being culturally literate, as merely being able to understand the translation of terms from one language or culture to the other. Whereas, what is true literacy is being able to successfully occupy the full extent of being in that culture and maybe another as well. He mentioned an example of listening to a performance either of the chanting of the Odù Ifá or a poetry performance in Afikpo, where he was born and raised, and being able not just to understand what is being said, but successfully occupying the spiritual and mental state in which the work was conceived and performed. The nearest familiar example from my end would be a literate Yorùbá citizen, listening to a cultural performance with a dozen other not-as-literate people, and having a better, more enhanced experience of the same work of art just because of a capacity to understand the meaning of each talking drum pattern played under each public chant. In Yorùbá traditional art, there are sufficient depictions, as a satire on the importance of this skill, of novice or despised chiefs or kings dancing glibly to a drummer’s feverish patterns without knowing that the drummer was actually insulting them through the delightful ambiguity that the tonal patterns of the Yorùbá talking drums provide.
Chris Abani is a truly literate and competent artist in this way, which greatly helped the conversation along. One hour suddenly felt like a few good minutes. But the writer, in spite of his many achievements, also carries himself in a way that is relatable – which is what you’ll expect of someone still intent on learning the very many ways of being, and of existing as a true and competent artist.
I may have ruffled him a bit with an elephant-in-the-room question about a once controversial portion of his biography relating to his imprisonment in Nigeria in the eighties which, a few years ago, put him in the crosshairs of some Nigerian writers who accused him of not just fraud but sabotage: he was portraying Africa in a horrible light for foreigners for his own artistic advancement, and deserved censure. It was an argument that played into the big contemporary hoopla about poverty porn and the perception of Africa in world literature as a nest of ills. In Abani’s response, he gave as strong a defense as one can find for the freedom to be private about elements of one’s life story especially in the face of what he thought was an unfair and relentless attack, and anger at those who he said had tried, though unsuccessfully, to damage his name and livelihood in their blood lust for his scalp through a witch-hunt disguised as a defence of autobiographical fidelity, or the country’s honour. It made sense to me, and I was glad to have given him a chance to defend himself on the topic in a public forum.
What he is known for today, along with his impressive literary output, is his work with the African Poetry Book Fund with Professor Kwame Dawes where dozens of new African writers are discovered every year and published in chapbook and box sets which are sold all over the United States and around the world. His explanation on the breadth of work that the Fund does was thorough and detailed. How he is able to cope with that work along with every other thing he does is one of the wonders of his impressive career.
In the end, I was greatly impressed by the writer as an artist, an important and talented voice in the African writing space, as well as a bearer of important stories.
Guest post by Anne Maabjerg Mikkelsen
Adunni Oloriṣa’s handwriting on the wall in her former gallery where I slept. Written in German: “Nun sind letztendlich die Vögel doch eingeladen”, English translation: “Now, the birds are yet finally invited.”
“Why do you have to travel so far, Anne?” This was the first reaction from my beloved grandmothers as I told them I would be travelling to Nigeria with the University of Potsdam in October.
I understand their fears. Nigeria does not have a positive reputation in Denmark because of reports of kidnappings, corruption, diseases, and terror. However, I had to go not just because of my master’s thesis about the Ọ̀ṣun-Òṣogbo Sacred Grove, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005, in Ọ̀ṣun State south-western Nigeria, but because something in Nigeria had been calling my soul.
While writing my thesis about the Grove back in Europe, I struggled with the fact that I had not been there on my own. As I realized that the field trip had been organized, it seemed too good to be true. We were a group of ten people including our professor, who had gotten an invitation letter from the University of Ìbàdàn. Most of our program was scheduled on the University’s campus, and it was a relief to leave for Òṣogbo with the group during the second weekend, since I was longing to see the Grove.
Back home, I had already studied Yorùbá culture, and the playful universe of the Òrìṣàs; the deities of a traditional West African religion manifested as energies and natural forces on the earth. The work and worldview of Àdùnní Olóriṣà (1915-2009), the guardian of the Grove, also known as Susanne Wenger, an Austrian modernist artist who was resident in Nigeria and initiated into the Òrìṣà religion, had also caught my attention. I only expected my visit to the Grove to be overwhelmingly magical. And so it was.
Entering the Grove, I could feel my whole body vibrating and getting charged with the intense energy that flourishes around – the powers of Ọ̀ṣun, the Òrìṣà of fertility, beauty and wealth embodied as the Ọ̀ṣun River, who is in everything there, as she nourishes all.
As the group returned to Ìbàdàn the next day, I stayed in the house of Àdùnní Olórìṣà on Ìbòkun Road with her daughter Doyin Ọlọ́ṣun, an Ọ̀ṣun high priestess, for another three days.
Everything felt so natural, and it was more or less like meeting family. We went to the Grove every day and sat by the River listening to the water curving its way through the virgin forest, sharing dreams and beliefs as the sun made its way through the clouds and sent its warm rays to the surface of the river from where they were gently directed to us. We greeted the monkeys in the green trees around us and the fish that made their arrival as we sat down. Everything here is sacred; no fish can be caught, no animal hunted or tree cut down. No wonder that Àdùnní gave her life to protect this place and the Òrìṣà religion.
It was with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes that I had to leave Òṣogbo, Doyin and her family in the house.
Before Nigeria, I was told that, “the person that went to Nigeria is not the same one that came back.” I must agree. Knowing that I have gotten the permission from the closest people, I feel capable to write my thesis not just through my mind but also with my heart. Moreover, I had the feeling that my thesis was more than just a paper, which would allow me to finish my degree.
My trip to Nigeria reaffirmed that it is also a personal path of self-discovery, and I am certain that I will return. There is much more to tell, still so many questions to be asked, and so many people to thank, among others: Professor Hans-Georg Wolf for organizing the trip; Níke Davies-Okundaye for her open heart; Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún for his time; Dr Ọbáfẹ́mi Jẹ́gẹ́dẹ́ and the African Studies of University of Ìbàdàn; Robin Campbell from the Susanne Wenger Trust for helping me organize my stay; site manager of the Grove, Mr Olákúnlé Mákindé; and of course my deepest thanks to Doyin Ọlọ́ṣun and her family on Ìbòkun Road.
I am now back in Berlin. My beloved grandmothers are relieved and therefore, so am I. I will do my best to explain to them how magical my experience of Nigeria has been, and that not all Nigerians are bad but rather extremely welcoming and warm-hearted. Where I come from, we could learn from this place and from what the Grove represents: that spirituality is beyond race, that nature is divine and sacred, and the importance of cherishing the feminine principle.
This is exactly my answer to the question “Why do you have to travel so far, Anne?”
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Anne Maabjerg Mikkelsen, pictured here with Ọ̀ṣun priestess Doyin, is from Denmark. She lives and studies in Berlin Germany, University of Potsdam. She spent two weeks in Nigeria as part of an academic visit.
A total of 184 poetry collections were received for this year’s competition.
The seriousness with which the NLNG literary prize is received by the teeming population of writers in Nigeria is a sign that the expectations of writers swing beyond the prize itself to that of portraying their creativity. The prestige, associated with the prize saw the 184 entrants of collections of poetry in various sizes and of diverse themes setting out for the stiff competition. At the beginning, the initial weeding was carried out following one of the primary criteria; quality and validity of publication year.
A total of 101 collections were disqualified at the initial combined sitting of the Advisory Board and the panel of judges for not meeting the basic and fundamental guidelines. 83 closely screened entries were left in the competition and the judges were given a month to come up with the long list of 50 and 25 simultaneously. The next step was to synchronise the shortlist of 11 which the panel carried out in accordance with the set criteria approved by the Advisory Board.
The meeting which saw the emergence of the final list of 3 was long and the scrutiny all encompassing because the panel did not just focus on the quality of production but more on relevance to contemporary Nigerian Literature. The succinct development of Nigerian literature from the classical tradition is something the panel consider an act of brevity and enriching to contemporary Nigerian literature.
At this final phase, we examined the strengths of each of the three books on the final list namely: Ogaga Ifowodo’s A Good Mourning, Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself: Quartet and Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid.
Ogaga Ifowodo’s A Good Mourning published by Parresia Books, focusses on the tragedy, ambiguity and contradictions of human experience recreated from poetic vision and language. The work has been likened to “an itinerary that shifts from one notorious platform of human bestiality to another — from the Slave Trade to the Holocaust, the theatres of war in Palestine and the Congo, and the genocide fields of Rwanda and Darfur and so on”.
Songs of Myself: Quartet by Tanure Ojaide published by Kraft Books Limited explores paradoxes in contemporary times presented in discursive lyricism. It reflects the journey to the deepest vicissitudes of the adventurer himself. Ojaide’s volume directs a vigilant gaze toward the artist, society and the world at large. In its breadth and sweep, it undergirds and reiterates the rich linguistic resources available to the artist from indigenous sources.
Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid published by Kraft Books Ltd, employs the epic form in questioning power and freedom. It probes metaphorically the inner workings of societies and those who shape them. The volume addresses the question of freedom in all its ramifications.
In assessing and ranking the three works, the judges paid close attention to maturity and depth of vision in the execution of themes, and considered the collections holistically rather than scoring high for one or two poems. After much consideration of these criteria, the competition was narrowed down to between Tanure Ojaide’s Songs of Myself:Quartet and Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid.
Oke’s poetry collection reveals a conscious/deliberate manipulation of language and philosophy in the style that reminds us of the writings of great Greek writers of Homeric and Hellenistic periods. Ojaide’s collection refreshes in its day to day experiences of the ordinary man/writer, his travels and other cross-gender exploits. The collection explores paradoxes in contemporary times presented in discursive lyricism. Ikeogu stylistically reaches out to classicism, and Ojaide, to traditional quintessential orature. Both seem to complement each other and collectively reveal and reflect the highest level of poetic craftsmanship in Nigeria. The two authors and their works demonstrate the scope and scale of ambition which The Nigeria Prize for Literature deserves. In their respective ways they push and extend the boundaries of the practice of the art of poetry and of poetry’s engagement with society.
The judges found this seeming complementarity quite appealing and considered recommending both works as a tie for the award
However, the judges went further to apply decisively and scrupulously the Assessment Criteria for the 2017 The Nigeria Prize for Literature competition in their minutest detail thus:
Assessment Criteria for 2017 The Nigeria Prize for Literature competition
- Scope
- Themes/subjects with regard to relevance to society
- Time (historical, contemporary and topical)
- Maturity and depth of vision
- Seriousness of content
- Handling of language
- Unity and coherence of content
- Thematic engagement
- Artistic commitment
- Social commitment
- Creative use of language
- Mechanical correctness of use of language
- Diction
- Imagery and other poetic devices
- Contribution to Nigerian Literature
- Content
- Technique
- Quality of production
- Physical
-Design/presentation
– Quality of binding
-Print quality, choice and size of font, readability
After diligent considerations and critically objective application of the guidelines and criteria, the judges decided to recommend Ikeogu Oke’s The Heresaid as the 2017 winner of The Nigeria Prize for Literature. This decision is based on its apt topicality, relevance, artistic heft and the pursuit of artistic provenance. In a world of increasingly threatened by encroaching totalitarianism and even bare-faced tyranny and intolerance, the wit, wisdom and message of the The Heresaid are infinitely crucial.
It is our hope and goal that the kind of vibrancy which we have found in the collections of poetry submitted is a vital evidence that NLNG is making unprecedented difference in the intellectual development of Nigeria and Nigerian today.
The 2017 Literary Criticism Competition
The Panel of Judges for the Poetry competition was also charged with the task of assessing the entries for the 2017 Literary Criticism Prize. Compared to the 184 entries received for the Poetry competition, the Literary Criticism entries numbered a paltry five! Of these five, three were disqualified. The guidelines for submission specified that the essays to be submitted must be written not more than three years prior to the year of competition namely nothing published before 2014. The three disqualified essays were published between 2010 and 2012 contrary to the stipulation in the guidelines. The judges considered just two essays abysmally inadequate for a competition of this magnitude. Therefore, no recommendation is made for this award in 2017. The judges wish to further draw the attention of tertiary institutions in Nigeria to the paucity of the responses to this competition as a direct reflection on those tertiary institutions particularly the universities. It is our hope that responses will be a lot better in future from professors and lecturers in our more than one hundred universities in Nigeria. It is a challenge that they should be glad to embrace!
PANEL OF JUDGES
Prof Ernest Emenyonu (Chairman, Panel of Judges)
Dr Razinatu Mohammed
Tade Ipadeola
Prof Abena Busia (External Consultant)
ADVISORY BOARD
Prof Ayo Banjo (Chairman, Advisory Board)
Prof Ben Elugbe
Prof Jerry Agada