In Yorubaland, I have lived at various times in Ibadan, Eko, Ikorodu, Ondo town, Ile-Ife and Ilorin and I can say that our ways as Yoruba people are basically the same. Actually, the impetus for this piece is an incident that happened four years ago. I had taken my youngest children to a hospital in Ibadan for immunization when I heard a teacher teaching what must have been a group of nursery/primary school children “four letter words” at a building opposite the hospital. The voice bellowed certain four-letter words and the excited learners chorused her performance. Then suddenly I heard: “B-A-B-A Baba!” and as the innocent children chorused this charade I was aghast, momentarily rooted to a spot as I held open the car door for my wife and an acquaintance to get out. Just how could “B-A-B-A” in English possibly be Baba in Yoruba?
When I was a child, it was normal to speak Yoruba with facility and confidence. Today, I’ve seen children born in Yorubaland who are struggling to speak “Oruba”! Children born in Yorubaland calling Yoruba “Oruba.”!! Besides, in those days, the programmes we heard on radio had strong moral and ethical content. Take, for example, this jingle warning trade-by-barter merchants who combined stealing with their trade to note their proximity to jail: “A n ra goolu a n ra kupa o. A n re kootu, a n dari ewon o. A n kaso aloku lori waya o.” (We buy gold, we buy copper. We go to court and retire to prison. We pack used clothes left to dry on the wire.”) In those days, radio jingles warned men spending office hours on romantic pursuits to desist from their pernicious ways: O fise e sile o n le sisi ka. Ah mo roye, iwa ibaje o da o! Gloss: You left your work, you are pursuing young ladies…corrupt behavior is bad! What do our children listen to on radio today, if they listen at all?
As children, our songs and games taught morals, deploring gossip and theft, as in this one: “E ma weyin o, wenwe, E ma s’ofofo, ofofo o da, E ma jale mo, ole.” And like our street play, our books were great. Who can forget J.F Odunjo’s Alawiye ? Who can forget the folk song Ki ni ng o f’ole se laye ti mo wa? It says: “In this world of mine, rather than steal, I would rather become a slave!” At Saviour Apostolic Primary School, Ibadan, we sang, at the start of examinations, that it was only the child who did not pay heed to his/her studies that would fail. We sang, we danced, we learnt.
As a youngster I read Yoruba literature widely. Today, millions of Yoruba children and teenagers have never heard of literary works such as Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale, Igbo Olodumare, Agbako Nile Tete, Koseegbe, Ekun Abijawara, Eruobodo, Agbalagba Akan, Aja Lo Leru, Oleku, or Owo Eje. They know nothing about writers such as D.O Fagunwa, Adebayo Faleti, Akinwumi Ishola, Oladejo Okediji and Afolabi Olabimtan, etc. As I write, I remember the gripping picture that Okedidi paints of the criminal underworld in Atoto Arere. As for Fagunwa, he was simply in a class of his own, unmatched. My love of Yoruba literature helped later on when I took elective courses at the Department of African Languages, OAU, where I was taught by phenomenal teachers such as Dr. Sola Ajibade and Dr. Bode Agbaje. An aside: while he was governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko made Fagunwa’s works compulsory reading in Ondo secondary schools. We need such great policies today.
Yoruba oral literature is remarkable; it is inherent in the Yoruba being and acquired and learnt from childhood. We ought to place it at the centre of our children’s training today. In Ikorodu, merely by watching omele and sakara drummers, I learnt how to use these drums. On my street these days, I see drum makers teaching young people how to beat talking drums like gangan. However, a key part of what they actually need–training in the Yoruba tonal marking do re mi— is lacking. I would advise anyone intending to learn how to beat sakara to first learn do re mi, what the Yoruba call ami ori oro. To say something like baba (father) via gangan or sakara, you beat the drum without pressing it for the sound “do”, then you press it to yield mi. Baba is do mi, while ‘amala’ is “do do do.” How I wish I can demonstrate this live or in a video.
Yoruba drums are actually Yoruba speech using hides. If you have listened to the musician K1 singing this dirge: “A lo di fere, iku de, padi o ri padi e mo o…’ (Death has come suddenly, a buddy no longer sees his buddy), then you would have noticed that the sakara drummer said something proverbial to back up the song. Here is it: “Latorun lo ti wa, efufulele to y’ewe agbagba, orun lo ti wa.” (It’s from heaven, the wind that uprooted the plantain leaf, it’s from heaven). The implication is that the deceased person about whom the singer sang died a natural death; that is, according to divine will. For the record, I do not listen to Fuji. However, I am interested in Yoruba drumming. Years later when I heard the same musician singing the folk Yoruba (Ijesa) song: “Ma l’owo o, bi me lowo l’omode o, ma ni l’agba”, I needed no one to interpret to me what the lead sakara drummer said: “Ma f’oro keyin mi, Olorun Oba, Olorun Oba, ma f’oro keyin mi.” (Do not deprive me of wealth, O God the King (2ce), Do not deprive me of wealth). In Yoruba, song and drum go together, and we should begin teaching our children these things.
I shall end this piece by talking about food. Contrary to the hogwash that one Yoruba hater said on social media, the Yoruba do not suffer from a limited soup choice. Yoruba soups are not limited to the egusi you eat at parties, which is even different from the Ijebu egusi. There is apon, orunla, efo didin, efo riro, bokonisa, ila oloboro, ila asepo, abula, Marugbo, Isapa, etc.
If you love ewa aganyin, here’s how to cook the stew: get bawa and tatase, take out the seeds in both and place those seeds on a plate. Grind the pepper with alubosa, then boil the ground pepper to remove all traces of water. With palm oil well heated, add sliced alubosa, then the ground pepper. As you fry the pepper, add the seeds you had previously removed. Fry until it turns brown. See you next week!
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