Arts and Material Culture: Index

This section covers what the Yoruba made and how they judged it: sculpture in wood, terracotta and copper alloy, cloth, beads, pots, calabashes, buildings, hair, drums, dances and plays. It is organised around one argument, which the first file sets out and the rest apply: Yoruba art has its own criticism in its own vocabulary, and applying European art-historical categories to it produces predictable and specific distortions.

Read the first file before the others if you read nothing else in order. Everything downstream depends on knowing that jíjọra, moderate resemblance, is the standard, because without it the whole corpus reads as a series of failures to be naturalistic.

The files

01. The Yoruba Aesthetic Framework arts-aesthetic-framework Thompson's fieldwork on Yoruba art criticism and the criteria it found: jíjọra, ìfarahàn, dídón, gígùn, ọ̀dọ́, tútù. Abiodun's argument that the Yoruba language and oríkì are the method rather than the background, ìwà as an aesthetic term, the critique of Abiodun's position, and the specific ways European categories distort this material. Start here.

02. Ifẹ̀ Sculpture and Its Reception arts-ife-sculpture The copper-alloy and terracotta corpus, the accidental finds at Wunmonije and Ita Yemòó, lost-wax technique and imported copper, the holes that show the heads were veiled and crowned, the second-burial function argument, the Blier and Willett disagreement over dating and attribution, Frobenius and the Atlantis claim, and where the objects are now.

03. Wood Sculpture and the Named-Carver Tradition arts-wood-sculpture-and-named-carvers The genres: ọpọ́n Ifá, agere Ifá, ọ̀ṣé Ṣàngó, arugbá, epa, Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́, doors and veranda posts. The masters: Olówè of Ìṣẹ̀, Àrẹ̀ògún of Òsi-Ilọrin, Bámgbóyè of Odò-Owà, Agbọnbíọ̀fẹ́ Adéṣínà, the Adúgbólógè workshop, Lamidi Fakeye. Includes an oríkì composed for Olówè in his lifetime and the argument that anonymity was a collecting practice rather than a fact about the tradition.

04. Ẹrẹ̀ Ìbejì: The Twin Figures arts-ibeji The demography behind the practice, with the Ìgbó-Òra rate of about 45 dizygotic twins per thousand against a world range of 8 to 16. Táíwò and Kẹ́hìndé and why the second-born is senior. The oríkì of twins. What is done with the figure: washing, feeding, dressing, carrying. Why the figures are carved as adults. And how so many of them left Nigeria.

05. Textiles: Aṣọ Òkè, Adìrẹ and Aṣọ Ẹbí arts-textiles The men's narrow-strip treadle loom and the women's upright broadloom. Sányán, alááàrì and ẹtù. The three adìrẹ resist techniques and the tin tea-chest stencil. Indigo chemistry and the sunken dye pot. Abẹ́òkúta, Byfield's dyers, and the collapse of 1937 to 1939 caused by caustic soda. The revival through Nike Davies-Okundaye. Aṣọ ẹbí as a twentieth-century institution and how its economics actually work.

06. Beadwork and Regalia arts-beadwork-and-regalia The adé and what it does constitutionally, the ọba aládé and baálẹ̀ distinction, the Odùduwà descent claim and its nineteenth-century consolidation, Thompson on the veil turning a king into a dynasty, the birds and the two readings of them, coral and ṣẹ̀gi and lágídígba, and the men's bead workshops at Èfọ̀n-Aláàyè.

07. Metal, Pottery, Calabash and Leather arts-metal-pottery-calabash-leather Ògún and the alágbẹ̀dẹ, the Modakẹ́kẹ́ smelting evidence and a warning about misapplied Igbo dates. The ẹdan Ògbóni as an argument made in two metals. Women potters, hand-building without a wheel, and the ritual pots the dye industry depended on. Calabash carving at Ọ̀yọ́. Leather at Ìlọrin. And court patronage as the frame holding all of them together.

08. Architecture and the Built Town arts-architecture The àgbo ilé and its rain-catching impluvium, and how corrugated iron destroyed it. The àáfin as the same building at maximum scale, with its carved ọ̀pó. The town around palace and market, its wards and its earthworks including Sungbo's Eredo. Afro-Brazilian Lagos, its named Àgùdà builders, and the 2016 demolition of a listed national monument. Osun-Osogbo and the question Susanne Wenger's work raises.

09. Body Arts: Marking, Hair and Cosmetics arts-body-arts Ìlà, the facial marks, the olóolà who cut them, the named patterns and their towns, and the near-complete end of the practice within two generations. Ìrun dídì and ìrun kíkọ́ and the named styles. Camwood, chalk, antimony and indigo on the body.

10. Instruments and the Drum Language arts-music-instruments-and-drum-language How the dùndún is built and why the cords bypass the wood. The bàtá and why its fixed heads change everything. Àyàn and why lineage transmission preserves encoding capacity rather than only etiquette. Then the mechanism, with Akinbo's measured frequencies, four worked examples including a sentence the drummers had never heard, and the Villepastour and Euba dispute over whether bàtá speaks the same way. The longest and most technical file in the section.

11. The Popular Music Lineage: Sákárà to Afrobeats arts-popular-music-lineage Sákárà, àpàlà, wéré into fújì, wàkà, jùjú from Tunde King through I. K. Dairo and Obey to Sunny Adé, highlife, and Fela's construction of Afrobeat including his own account of where the beat came from and Steve Rhodes on the Orò-derived bass drum. Ends with an honest statement of what can and cannot be claimed about contemporary Afrobeats.

12. Dance and Theatre arts-dance-and-theatre Why a dancer must understand drum language, the drummer-dancer contest, polycentric body use, and dancing hot with a cool face. Then the theatre line: Aláàrìnjó out of Egúngún, Ogunde and the banning of Yoruba Ronu, Duro Ladipo and Ọba Kò So, Ogunmola's Palmwine Drinkard, and the route to Tunde Kelani and the current Yoruba-language epics.

13. Where to See It arts-where-to-see-it Practical guide. The Nigerian collections, the major museums abroad and what each holds, how to search museum databases productively, what is open access, and a factual statement of the restitution position that keeps the Benin, Ifẹ̀ and purchased-object cases distinct.

Reading paths

If you want the argument. Files 1, 2, 3. The aesthetic framework, then the sculpture that Europeans refused to credit, then the carvers whose names they did not write down.

If you want the living tradition. Files 5, 9, 10, 11. Cloth, body, drums, and the music that is playing now.

If you want to understand a specific object you have seen. File 3 for wood, 4 for twin figures, 6 for crowns and beads, 7 for metal and pots, then 13 to find where it is and what its label leaves out.

If you are going to Nigeria. Files 13, 8 and 5, in that order.

What is contested, in one place

The corpus marks disagreement in each file. The main open questions are:

Whether individual Ifẹ̀ heads can be attributed to named Ọ̀ọ̀ni. Blier says yes on combined thermoluminescence and king-list evidence; the conservative position, closer to Willett, says the king lists cannot bear that weight. File 2.

What the facial striations on the Ifẹ̀ heads mean. Willett offers two possibilities and nothing decides between them. File 2.

Whether language competence is sufficient as well as necessary for interpreting Yoruba art. Abiodun's strong formulation is challenged on the ground that everyone is outside a fourteenth-century object. File 1.

Whether the beaded crown's birds refer to royal access to the sacred, to the power of the mothers, or to both. File 6.

Whether bàtá encodes speech through ẹ̀ná as a necessary linguistic interface, as Villepastour argues, or whether ẹ̀ná is a teaching and in-group device, as Euba and as González and Oludare hold. This is the liveliest current dispute in the section. File 10.

The membership of the ìgbìn ensemble, on which two published sources disagree and no third was found. File 10.

When the dùndún entered jùjú, on which three datings circulate. File 11.

Whether continuity between fújì and contemporary Afrobeats has been demonstrated or only asserted. File 11.

What the sources could not settle

Several terms and figures were sought and not verified, and are recorded as absent rather than filled in: petuje as a cloth type, ààwẹ̀ as a pottery form, ọtútù ọ̀pọ̀n as a bead type, the Yoruba technical term for the crown's veil, the Yoruba originals of the Olówè and Adúgbólógè oríkì, and the full list of Thompson's canons of fine form in quotable form. Wàkà as a genre could not be documented from scholarship at all. These gaps are named in the relevant files.

What this section does not cover

The òrìṣà themselves, their theology, their priesthoods and their festivals as religious events are in 06-orisa. This section treats Ṣàngó's bàtá, Ọbàtálá's ìgbìn, Ọ̀ṣun's grove and Egúngún's costume as artistic and material practices and refers the religion to that section.

Literature, oríkì as a verbal genre, and the linguistics of Yoruba tone are in 02-language. File 10 assumes the tone system rather than explaining it, and files 1, 3 and 4 use oríkì without re-teaching what it is.

The history of Ifẹ̀ as a city and a polity, its glass industry, its trade and its relations with Benin are in 03-history, specifically in the file on the Ifẹ̀ classical age. File 2 covers the sculpture and its reception only.

The diaspora forms of these arts, in Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad and the United States, are in 08-diaspora.