Oríkì in Performance: Occasions, Voices, and Payment

Get up, get up, put on your trousers, no one sends someone else to excrete for him.

Translated by Karin Barber 1.

What it says. The proverb-like second half asserts that certain acts of the body cannot be delegated. Applied to a king at dawn, it tells him that ruling, like relieving himself, is a personal duty no proxy can discharge on his behalf.

Significance. This is the opening formula of the daily morning awakening ritual for the Oba, which sets off the palace trumpeters' and drummers' delivery of the fuller royal oríkì, incantations and blessings that follow 1. It is a small text with a large job: it is the first thing said to the king each day, in every sense the opening line of his oríkì.

Performed. Daily, at first light, at the palace doorway, by royal palace trumpeters and court bards, in Òkukù and the wider Ọ̀yọ́ Yoruba royal courts 1.

Did your royal majesty awake in good health? Did the Timi awake well?

Translated by Ọba John Adétòyèse Laoye I, himself a Timi of Èdè and a scholar of Yoruba drumming 2.

What it says. A direct, formulaic inquiry after the ruler's health, addressed twice, once by his praise title and once by the substantive title Timi.

Significance. Played solo on the ìyáàlù mother drum before the royal ensemble commences ceremonial drumming, this is the dawn protocol that initiates the daily monarchical court routine, and it is a documented case of oríkì delivered as pure drummed tone before any human voice speaks it, a relationship this section's drum file treats fully 2.

Performed. At dawn at the palace gates in Èdè, Osun State, by palace drummers, historically under Ọba John Adétòyèse Laoye I himself, who wrote on the secular functions of Yoruba drums from direct royal and musical authority 2.

Notes. Laoye's own dual position as both the reigning Timi of Èdè and a published scholar of drumming means this text has an unusually short chain of transmission: the man who received the salute as ruler is also the man who wrote it down and translated it. That does not remove the ordinary cautions about translation choices, but it is worth naming as a case where performer, subject and scholar are one person.

When the Olubadan passes on, who will ascend the throne?

Translated by Ọba Adétòyèse Laoye I and Siyan Oyeweso 3.

What it says. On its face a question; functionally, a statement of confidence. Ìbàdàn's chieftaincy runs on a promotional line system in which the answer to the question is always already known, and asking it rhetorically celebrates the absence of succession crisis rather than expressing genuine doubt.

Significance. Composed and drummed by Ọba Adétòyèse Laoye in 1956 as the historic broadcast signature tune for the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service, this line became a standard pedagogical example of how dùndún pitch mapping tracks Yoruba tone, cited with the drummed solfa Mí Mí Dò Dò Mí Mí, Rẹ̄ Mí Mí Rẹ̄ Dò in the source 3. It shows an oríkì-adjacent formula moving in the twentieth century from palace ritual directly into national broadcasting, a route distinct from the fuji and juju route 13-oral-literature/14-continuity-into-the-present.md documents.

Performed. As a broadcast call sign and at civic occasions and Ìbàdàn royal processions, drummed by dùndún drummers 3.

Variants. The source also records the line rendered as T'o ni'badan ba ku, tani o j'oye?, an orthographic variant rather than a different text 3.

Those who are not wise, those whose mental development was arrested in childhood, say they want Ògún to drive them back on their way to the river. Whenever some people say this, I comment, drawing attention to them as foolish people... Ògún, please don't drive me from anywhere... Innovations are my stock-in-trade with my Ògún.

Translated by Adeboye Babalola, from a performance recorded from the chanter Raaji Ogundiran Alao at Eripa, Osun State, and published in an edited volume on Ògún 4.

What it says. The chanter scolds people who invoke Ògún carelessly for trivial fears, positions himself as exempt from Ògún's anger because his relationship with the òrìṣà is one of skilled craft rather than superstition, and closes by claiming innovation itself as his offering to the god.

Significance. This is a performer using an oríkì-based ìjálá not only to praise Ògún but to assert professional and moral authority over other people present, including, implicitly, less skilled chanters. 13-oral-literature/13-the-performers.md documents that ìjálá performance is submitted to the criticism of older chanters at hunters' gatherings; this text is a rare case of that competitive, evaluative dimension appearing inside the performed text itself rather than only in the surrounding social description.