Arts

The criteria Yoruba critics actually use to judge a carving, why the language and its praise poetry are the entry point rather than the ornament, and what goes wrong when European art-historical categories are applied to this material.

The copper-alloy and terracotta sculpture of medieval Ilé-Ifẹ̀, how it was made, what it was probably for, the century of European refusal to credit Africans with making it, and where the objects are now.

The genres of Yoruba wood carving, from Ifá trays to palace doors to epa masks, the master carvers and family workshops who made them, and the reason so much of this work sits in museums without an artist's name attached.

The carved figures made when a Yoruba twin dies, what the family does with them, the genuinely exceptional twinning rate that produced them, and how tens of thousands of them ended up in Western collections.

The two Yoruba loom traditions and who works them, the named prestige cloths, the full range of adire resist-dyeing and the indigo behind it, the industry's collapse in the 1930s and its revival, and why everyone at a Nigerian wedding is dressed alike.

The beaded crown and what it does constitutionally, why the king's face is veiled, the birds at its apex, the beads themselves and their trade history, and the men's workshops that made them.

The smith and his god, the paired brass figures that carried the authority of the Ogboni society, the women who built pots without a wheel, the carved and burnt calabash, and the leather trades of Ilorin and Oyo.

The courtyard compound and its rain-catching impluvium, the palace as the same building at maximum scale, the town laid out around palace and market, the Afro-Brazilian houses of Lagos, and how little of it is still standing.

The facial marks that told a stranger which lineage and which town you belonged to and which have now almost vanished, the threaded and plaited hairstyles and what they signified, and the everyday cosmetics of camwood, indigo and antimony.

How the hourglass pressure drum is built and why it can speak, how bàtá encodes speech differently and why scholars disagree about it, the Àyàn drumming lineages, and worked examples of drummed Yoruba with the acoustic measurements behind them.

How Yoruba traditional music fed sakara, apala, waka, juju, fuji, highlife, Afrobeat and contemporary Afrobeats, traced through named musicians and specific musical mechanisms rather than gestures at influence.

Why a Yoruba dancer has to understand drum language, the aesthetic of dancing hot with a cool face, and the line from the Alarinjo masque theatre through Ogunde, Ladipo and Ogunmola to Nollywood.

A practical guide to the museums holding Yoruba art in Nigeria and abroad, what can be searched online and where, and a factual account of the restitution and provenance position as it stands.

The foundational tripartite colour system of the Yoruba world, organizing visual, thermal, and spiritual realities into chromatic temperaments rather than narrow spectral wavelengths.