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Yoruba literature is the spoken and written literature of the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethno-linguistic groups in Nigeria and the rest of Africa. The Yoruba language is spoken in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, as well as in dispersed Yoruba communities throughout the world.
Prior to the nineteenth century, local West African languages, including Yoruba, had adopted a modified Arabic script (ajami script) as the most widespread form of writing. The oldest history of the Yoruba people, written in the 17th century, was in Yoruba but reportedly used Arabic script. [1]
Many contributions to Yoruba writing and formal study from the nineteenth century onwards were made by Anglican priests of Yoruba origin. A formal Yoruba grammar in the Latin-script alphabet was published in 1843 by Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther. He was of Yoruba origin himself. Thus, the formation of written Yoruba was facilitated indigenously by the Yoruba people themselves.
Yoruba religion is intertwined with history, with the various Yoruba clans claiming to descend from divinities, and some of their kings becoming deified after their deaths. Itan is the word for the sum of Yoruba religion, poetry, song, and history. Yoruba divinities are called Orishas, and make up one of the most complex pantheons in oral history.
Ifá, a complex system of divination, involves recital of Yoruba poetry containing stories and proverbs bearing on the divination. A divination recital can take a whole night. The body of this poetry is vast, and passed on between Ifa oracles.
The first novel in the Yorùbá language was Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (translated by Wole Soyinka as The Forest of A Thousand Daemons), although the literal translation is "The bravery of a hunter in the forest of deities", written in 1938 by Chief Daniel O. Fagunwa (1903–1963). It contains the picaresque tales of a Yoruba hunter encountering folklore elements, such as magic, monsters, spirits, and gods. It was one of the first novels to be written in any African language. Fagunwa wrote other works based on similar themes, and remains the most widely read Yorùbá-language author.
Amos Tutuola (1920–1997) was greatly inspired by Fagunwa, but wrote in an intentionally rambling, broken English, reflecting the oral tradition of Nigerian Pidgin English. Tutuola gained fame for The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1946, pub 1952), and other works based on Yoruba folklore.
Senator Afolabi Olabimtan (1932–1992) was a writer, university professor, and politician. He wrote Yoruba language novels about modern Nigerian life and love, such as Kekere Ekun (1967; [Lad Nicknamed] Leopard Cub), and Ayanmo (1973; Predestination).
In his pioneering study of Yoruba theatre, Joel Adedeji traced its origins to the masquerade of the Egungun (the "cult of the ancestor"). [2] The traditional rite is controlled exclusively by men and culminates in a masquerade in which ancestors return to the world of the living to visit their descendants. [3] In addition to its origin in ritual, Yoruba theatre can be "traced to the 'theatrogenic' nature of a number of the deities in the Yoruba pantheon, such as Obatala the orisha of creation, Ogun the orisha of creativeness and Sango the orisha of lightning", whose worship is imbricated "with drama and theatre and their symbolic and psychological uses." [4]
The Aláàrìnjó theatrical tradition sprang from the Egungun masquerade. The Aláàrìnjó were a troupe of traveling performers who were masked (as were the participants in the Egungun rite). They created short, satirical scenes that drew on a number of established stereotypical characters. Their performances used mime, music and acrobatics. The Aláàrìnjó tradition influenced the Yoruba traveling theatre, which was the most prevalent and highly developed form of theatre in Nigeria from the 1950s to the 1980s. In the 1990s, the Yoruba traveling theatre moved into television and film and now gives live performances only rarely. [5]
"Total theatre" also developed in Nigeria in the 1950s. It used non-Naturalistic techniques, surrealistic physical imagery, and exercised a flexibile use of language. Playwrights writing in the mid-1970s made use of some of these techniques, but articulated them with "a radical appreciation of the problems of society." [6]
Traditional performance modes have strongly influenced the major figures in contemporary Nigerian theatre. The work of Chief Hubert Ogunde (sometimes referred to as the "father of contemporary Yoruban theatre") was informed by the Aláàrìnjó tradition and Egungun masquerades. [7] He founded the first professional Nigerian theatre company in 1945 and served in many roles, including playwright, in both English and Yoruba.
Wole Soyinka is "generally recognized as Africa’s greatest living playwright" and was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature. [8] He writes in English, sometimes a Nigerian pidgin English, and his subjects (in both plays and novels) include a mixture of Western, traditional, and modern African elements. He gives the god Ogun a complex metaphysical significance in his work. [8] In his essay "The Fourth Stage" (1973), Soyinka argues that "no matter how strongly African authors call for an indigenous tragic art form, they smuggle into their dramas, through the back door of formalistic and ideological predilections, typically conventional Western notions and practices of rendering historical events into tragedy." [9] He contrasts Yoruban drama with classical Athenian drama, relating both to the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's analysis of the latter in The Birth of Tragedy (1879). Ogun, he argues, is "a totality of the Dionysian, Apollonian and Promethean virtues." [10] He develops an aesthetic of Yoruban tragedy based, in part, on the Yoruban religious pantheon (including Ogun and Obatala). [11]
Akinwunmi Isola was a popular novelist (beginning with O Le Ku, Heart-Rending Incidents, in 1974), playwright, screenwriter, film producer, and professor of the Yoruba language. His works include historical dramas and analyses of modern Yoruba novels.
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka Hon. FRSL, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Oduduwa was a Yoruba man from igbo ora, Yoruba divine king, legendary founder of the Ife Empire and a creator deity (orisha) in the Yoruba religion. According to tradition, he was the holder of the title of the Olofin of Ile-Ife, the Yoruba holy city. He ruled briefly in Ife, and also served as the progenitor of a number of independent royal dynasties in Yorubaland.
Olokun is an orisha spirit in Yoruba religion. Olokun is believed to be the parent of Aje, the orisha of great wealth and of the bottom of the ocean. Olokun is revered as the ruler of all bodies of water and for the authority over other water deities. Olokun is highly praised for their ability to give great wealth, health, and prosperity to their followers. Communities in both West Africa and the African diaspora view Olokun variously as female, male, or androgynous.
Egungun, in the broadest sense is any Yoruba masquerade or masked, costumed figure. More specifically, it is a Yoruba masquerade for ancestor reverence, or the ancestors themselves as a collective force. Eégún is the reduced form of the word egúngún and has the same meaning. There is a misconception that Egun or Eegun is the singular form, or that it represents the ancestors while egúngún is the masquerade or the plural form. This misconception is common in the Americas by Orisa devotees that do not speak Yorùbá language as a vernacular. Egungun is a visible manifestation of the spirits of departed ancestors who periodically revisit the human community for remembrance, celebration, and blessings.
The Yoruba religion, West African Orisa (Òrìṣà), or Isese (Ìṣẹ̀ṣe), comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practice of the Yoruba people. Its homeland is in present-day Southwestern Nigeria, which comprises the majority of Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kwara and Lagos States, as well as parts of Kogi state and the adjoining parts of Benin and Togo, commonly known as Yorubaland.
Ota is a town in Ogun State, Nigeria with an estimated 163,783 residents. Ota is the capital of the Ado–Odo/Ota Local Government Area. The traditional leader of Ota is the Olota of Ota, Oba Adeyemi AbdulKabir Obalanlege. Historically, Ota is the capital of the Awori Yoruba tribe.
Death and the King's Horseman is a play by Wole Soyinka based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria during the colonial era: the horseman of a Yoruba King was prevented from committing ritual suicide by the colonial authorities. In addition to the intervention of the colonial authorities, Soyinka calls the horseman's own conviction toward suicide into question, posing a problem that throws off the community's balance.
Nigerian literature may be roughly defined as the literary writing by citizens of the nation of Nigeria for Nigerian readers, addressing Nigerian issues. This encompasses writers in a number of languages, including not only English but Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, and in the northern part of the county Hausa and Nupe. More broadly, it includes British Nigerians, Nigerian Americans and other members of the African diaspora.
Chief Daniel Olorunfẹmi Fágúnwà MBE, popularly known as D. O. Fágúnwà, was a Nigerian author of Yorùbá heritage who pioneered the Yorùbá language novel.
Aláàrìnjó is a traditional dance-theatre troupe among the Yoruba.
Durodola Durosomo Duroorike Timothy Adisa Ladipo, more commonly known as Duro Ladipo, was one of the best known and critically acclaimed Yoruba dramatists who emerged from postcolonial Africa. Writing solely in the Yoruba language, he captivated the symbolic spirit of Yoruba mythologies in his plays, which were later adapted to other media such as photography, television and cinema. His most famous play, Ọba kò so, a dramatization of the traditional Yoruba story of how Ṣango became the Orisha of Thunder, received international acclaim at the first Commonwealth Arts Festival in 1965 and on a Europe an tour, where a Berlin critic, Ulli Beier, compared Ladipọ to Karajan. Ladipo usually acted in his own plays.
The Yoruba of West Africa are responsible for a distinct artistic tradition in Africa, a tradition that remains vital and influential today.
Okemesi-Ekiti is the local Government Headquarters of Okemesi/Idoile Local Government of Ekiti State, Nigeria, whose headquarters is the Ekiti town of Okemesi. Its population according to 2006 population census is 56,000 residents.
Tunde Kelani, popularly known as TK, is a Nigerian filmmaker. In a career spanning more than four decades, TK specialises in producing movies that promote Nigeria's rich cultural heritage and have a root in documentation, archiving, education, entertainment and promotion of the culture.
Chief Wale Ogunyemi, OFR was a Nigerian veteran seasoned dramatist, film actor, prolific playwright, and Yoruba language scholar.
Golden Age or Golden era are terms used in Nigerian film history to designate the motion picture industry of Nigeria from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. It captures the mode of visual and sound production, as well as the method of distribution employed during this period. This period began with the formal recognition of the Nigerian Film Unit as a sector in 1954, with the first film entirely copyrighted to this unit being Fincho (1957) by Sam Zebba.
The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite is an adaptation by Wole Soyinka of the ancient Greek tragedy The Bacchae by Euripides.
The 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence." He is the first African recipient of the prize.
