The dirge chanted through the night at a hunter's funeral, restricted to the hunters' guild, and Bade Ajuwon's argument that it is the mechanism by which the guild's tradition is transmitted.
Ìrèmọ̀jé is the funeral poetry of Yoruba hunters, chanted through the night outside the house of a dead hunter until dawn, and heard only by other hunters. It belongs to the ìsípà ọdẹ, the hunters' funeral rite, which the tradition understands as the deceased's final separation from the earthly hunters' guild . The definitive study is Bade Ajuwon's, in a 1980 article in Africa and in his 1982 bilingual anthology Funeral Dirges of Yoruba Hunters .
The genre's own account of its origin is specific. Yoruba mythology holds that Ifá coined the name ìrèmọ̀jé to denote this kind of lament, and that Ògún demands its performance by his followers as a rite of passage carrying a dead hunter from earth to heaven, Ògún himself having set the model his followers are to emulate .
The rite is nocturnal. The performance is held at night, outside the house of the deceased hunter, and continues until dawn . Because Ògún is the òrìṣà who brought metallurgy to human beings, other members of the community who use iron implements also attend .
The audience is nonetheless restricted, and this is the single most important fact about the genre. Ìrèmọ̀jé's audience is limited to the guild of hunters witnessing the funeral rites of a fellow hunter, and it is forbidden for non-initiates to eavesdrop on, overhear or spy on any part of the rites. In the classification of Yoruba chant genres by audience, ìrèmọ̀jé sits between the limited and the unlimited types, since the funeral is a public event whose chanting is not .
Two consequences follow. First, ìrèmọ̀jé is classed among the frozen or context-restricted forms, alongside ọfọ̀, ìyẹ̀rẹ̀ Ifá and okú pípè, rather than among the malleable ones . Unlike ìjálá, which can be adapted to any content and any occasion, ìrèmọ̀jé is restricted to funeral rites . Second, the published record of the genre is thinner than for ìjálá, and the reader should hold in mind that what has been published was given to scholars by hunters who chose to give it.
This is a live scholarly disagreement and the corpus does not resolve it.
Ìrèmọ̀jé shares its vocal expression with ìjálá . In a system where genres are classified primarily by vocal manner, that is a strong argument for treating ìrèmọ̀jé as ìjálá performed at a funeral. Against it, ìrèmọ̀jé is restricted to a single ritual occasion and to a closed audience, while ìjálá is adaptable to any content, which is a difference in kind rather than in degree. The debate over whether ìrèmọ̀jé is a distinct genre or a sub-genre of ìjálá runs through Babalola, Ajuwon, Olajubu and Idamoyibo without settling .
The disagreement is itself informative. It shows that the classification-by-voice principle described in yoruba-oral-genre-system is a strong tendency rather than an absolute rule, and that occasion and audience restriction can pull against it.
Ajuwon's account of the performers is that they are hunters' guild members, artists versed in Yoruba history and folklore, and professional chanters . What they perform is not undifferentiated mourning. It is an assessment.
The singers of ìrèmọ̀jé emphasise the victories and heroic deeds of the deceased and carefully gloss over his failures, praising his character, his kind heart, his professional skill and technique, commending his memorable deeds as a hunter, or at least the courage with which he faced the ordeals of his life . At the same time the ritual is understood by Ògún's devotees as an occasion for a thorough appraisal of the successes and failures of dead hunters in their professional career on earth .
Those two statements are in tension and both are Ajuwon's. The resolution is that the appraisal is real and its public expression is edited: the guild knows what the man was, the chant says what may be said. The "at least the courage with which he faced ordeals" clause is the tell, the formula available when there is nothing else to praise.
Ajuwon's larger argument is that this is how the tradition gets transmitted. The dirges work didactically by embedding traditional concepts in performance, and the lineage salutes they contain carry significant historical points about the ancestors of the deceased, so that the occasion transfers knowledge across generations about customary practice, professions, dress, dance and social norms . The rite is at once an emotional outlet at a moment of crisis for the guild, an act of worship propitiating Ògún, a means of communicating with departed hunters, and a teaching event .
Ajuwon's Funeral Dirges of Yoruba Hunters (1982) presents an anthology of ìrèmọ̀jé in parallel Yoruba and English , and it is the place to go for the corpus. This compiler could not obtain the volume, so the Yoruba originals of the texts below could not be verified and the corpus translation standard cannot be met for them. They are given in the only form available, English translation with full provenance, and labelled as such rather than dressed up.
English translation
Death does not kill alone, nor does he fight singly. He goes to war with plenty of warriors. He sends Disease first. He sends Paralysis next. He sends Loss. He sends Curses. Death finally comes to kill the hunter's father, who drinks now of heavenly water.
Chanted by Lamidi, at Akeetan, Ọ̀yọ́, in 1976, for Ògúndélé, a deceased hunter. Collected and translated by Bade Ajuwon, in "Ogun's Iremoje: A Philosophy of Living and Dying," in Sandra T. Barnes (ed), Africa's Ogun: Old World and New .
Notes. The Yoruba original is not available to this compiler and the literal-gloss layer therefore cannot be supplied. What the English preserves is the genre's central image: Death as a war leader with a battalion. The figures sent ahead, Disease, Paralysis, Loss and Curses, are the Ajogun, the malevolent forces of Yoruba cosmology treated in yoruba-time-causation-and-misfortune, and the passage is a compressed statement of the cosmology rather than a poetic personification invented for the occasion. "Drinks now of heavenly water" is the euphemism for having crossed to ọ̀run.
English translation
Ògúnjìnmí, you have caught your father's dog. A needle that falls into a pit is lost forever.
Chanted by Lamidi Abonikaba at Ọ̀yọ́ in 1975, collected and translated by Bade Ajuwon, from the same essay .
Notes. As above, English only. "You have caught your father's dog" is an idiom of succession, taking up what the father held, applied to a death. The needle lost in a pit is the figure of irrecoverable loss: a small thing that cannot be found again once it has gone into the ground, which at a burial is not a neutral image.
The most quoted image of the genre is the apó, the hunter's pouch, which carries his charms and preparations. Mourning bards lament that Death kills the hunter like one without the apó, as it kills a sick babaláwo like one whose vestry holds no curative barks and roots . The bards acknowledge in complete submission that no armour is strong enough to shield fate . And the associated Yoruba saying turns the image further: what will be the death of the hunter lurks inside his own apó .
That is the genre's philosophical position, and it is why Ajuwon titled his essay a philosophy of living and dying. These are men whose profession is protection by preparation, and the funeral chant states that the preparation does not work, that the specialist dies as though he had no specialism, and that the instrument of his death may be in the bag he trusts.
Ìrèmọ̀jé is the clearest case in this section of a genre whose published record is limited by design rather than by neglect. The material exists; hunters hold it; Ajuwon obtained and published a substantial anthology of it with the guild's cooperation; and the rite as performed excludes the people most likely to write it down. Where this corpus is thin here, that is the finding, and it is treated the same way the corpus treats initiate-held Ifá material.
For anyone wanting the texts, the route is Ajuwon 1982 for the bilingual anthology , Ajuwon 1980 for the argument about transmission , and the Barnes volume for the philosophical essay .
The hunters' chant associated with Ògún, its vocal manner, the ìjálá artist and how he is judged, the contest setting, and what the chant does as self-portrait and as praise of animals.
How Yoruba oral artists are trained, which genres are open to whom, how gender divides the field, how performers are paid, and the named artists the scholarship documents.
The chanted poetry of the Egúngún masquerade, its lengthened-vowel vocal signature, the altered voice that marks it as the speech of the dead, and its descent into the Aláàrìnjò travelling theatre.
What incantation is as a genre, the theory of language it assumes, why naming and etymology carry force in it, and the tonal and word-play devices it depends on. A description and analysis, not a manual.
How Yoruba verbal art is classified into named genres by vocal manner rather than subject, who performs each and on what occasion, and why the European category "oral literature" fits the material imperfectly.
The secular chanting genre of praise, who the rárà singer is and how the performance is shaped by the audience paying for it, and the accuracy that makes rárà more than flattery.