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 Yorùbá wey dem quote, the proverbs, oríkì, ẹsẹ Ifá, word list headwords, Odù names and citations dey exactly as the corpus record dem, for every language.
Yoruba spoken art get different genres wey get specific names, and people wey dey speak Yoruba dey use those names correctly. Ìjálá, ẹ̀sà, rárà, ẹkún ìyàwó, ìrèmọ̀jé, ọfọ̀, ìyẹ̀rẹ̀ Ifá, àlọ́ and orin no be scholar filing system wey dem just invent after everything don happen; na categories wey the tradition itself dey use operate, and if performer wey dem ask for one go perform another one, everybody go know say na mistake. The thing wey dey surprise people, and wetin separate this system pass from European way of thinking about genre, na wetin dem take divide the categories. Dem base dem mainly on how the voice dey sound when dem dey talk the words, no be wetin the words dey talk about.
The same set of words fit move enter different genres. One part of oríkì wey dey praise family lineage fit show inside hunter ìjálá, inside masquerade ẹ̀sà, and inside bride ẹkún ìyàwó, and for each case na genuine part of that genre e be, no be say dem borrow am. Babalola establish this fact for ìjálá and ẹ̀sà, as e observe say the same poem fit appear inside different chant modes and carry different names . Akinyemi explain the result direct: the same material fit appear for one or another mode of vocalisation, and na the mode dem dey use label the performance, no be the material .
This one mean say content no be reliable classifier, and who dey perform am sef no be am. Ìjálá na hunter genre traditionally wey dem attach to Ògún, but Yoruba Christians and Muslims dey join ìjálá chanting enter their own worship, and dem still dey recognize the genre as ìjálá . Ògúndáre Fóyánmu, wey be the most popular ìjálá chanter for the recorded era, dey known for filling im chants with modern political matters including chant on the Nigerian tax war of 1969, and this one no make the performance turn to another thing wey no be ìjálá . Wetin dem dey talk about or who dey chant am no dey decide the matter.
Wetin dey decide am na the voice. Scholarly consensus dey, from Ọlátúnjí reach Ọlábíyì Yai, say the best way to distinguish and classify the genres of Yoruba oral poetry na based on vocal expression . When Christian or Islamic musician carry Yoruba oral genre enter religious worship, people wey dey listen dey identify the genre no be from the content and no be from who dey chant, but from the special voice style wey dey follow am .
One acoustic study wey dem publish for 2022 measure this thing for the first time. Akinbo, Samuel, Alaga and Akingbade make one trained chanter perform the exact same text for three ways, for ordinary speech, for ìjálá and for ẹ̀sà, and dem measure nine acoustic parameters . Wetin dem find out dey specific:
Dem dey chant Ìjálá with vibrato and ẹ̀sà no get vibrato. Babalola already make this descriptive claim for im 1963 thesis, and the measurement confirm am . The vibrato rate for ìjálá dey fall between 1.6 and 2 Hz, wey dey far below the 4 to 7 Hz wey dey common for singing vibrato. The authors see this one say e agree with vocal tremor, instead of musical vibrato, as the historical origin of the ìjálá voice . That matter dey important because two out of the four Yoruba stories about the origin of ìjálá trace the voice style to Ògún old voice and to im drinking . The acoustic profile agree with the tradition wey talk say the sound of the genre start as the shaking voice of an old man.
Dem dey mark Ẹ̀sà by vowel insertion and lengthening. Specifically, to draw vowel reach three times [ooo] for the end of the first poetic line na regular feature of ẹ̀sà no matter the subject matter , point wey Olajubu work on the genre don establish .
The two poetic modes get higher pitch and loud pass speech. Fundamental frequency high well well for both of dem, and the two show higher intensity and higher cepstral peak prominence pass speech mode, wey show say dem put more vocal effort . Dem find out say Ẹ̀sà high pass ìjálá for F0 across all the three tones.
This one bring out question wey the genres must solve. Yoruba na tone language wey pitch dey give lexical meaning, so to raise and shape pitch for poetic effect fit spoil the words. Every Yoruba chanted genre na negotiation between the melodic demands of the mode and the linguistic demand make tone contrasts survive. Na because of this reason chanting dey sit between speech and song, and dem describe Yoruba genres as semi-musical verbal arts, with the performance moving closer to speech or closer to music depending on the genre and mood . Dem treat the tonal system fully for yoruba-phonology-and-tone.
One useful published classification divide thirteen chant forms by how tightly the text tie to the occasion and how much the performer fit change am .
Context-restricted or frozen forms. Ìyẹ̀rẹ̀ Ifá, divination chant of the Ifá priest. Èṣù pípè, invocatory chant. Ọfọ̀, incantation. Ìrèmọ̀jé, hunters' funeral dirge. Okú pípè, funeral dirge. Inside these ones, the text no be wetin performer fit edit, and dem believe say the efficacy tie to the formulaic structure, so to add, subtract or rearrange go spoil am .
Transitional forms, wey be sacred before but now don mostly become secular. Ṣàngó pípè and Ọya pípè, invocatory chants of those òrìṣà. Ìjálá. Ẹ̀sà egúngún .
Originally secular forms. Oríkì orílẹ̀, lineage praise chant. Rárà. Ẹkún ìyàwó. Etíyerí, satirical chant .
The difference between frozen and malleable na the more useful line to follow. For malleable genres, na the performer dey determine the text, and the shape of wetin dem actually deliver dey depend on the audience wey dey ground and the performer own invention, so the performance text na heavily changed version of anything wey dem rehearse . For frozen genres, the words na the instrument, and any mistake for rendition go make the utterance lose im power. Ọlátúnjí describe ọfọ̀ inside exactly these terms, as restricted poetic form, cultic and mystical for im expectations, wey require making utterance of words according to formula and for set order . Na that one be the subject of file 07.
Occasion and performer, for outline:
| Genre | Performer | Occasion | How dem dey use voice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ìjálá | Hunter dem, devotees of Ògún | Ògún festival dem, hunters meeting, entertainment | Chant with vibrato |
| Ẹ̀sà / ìwì | Masquerade, members of Egúngún lineage | Egúngún festival dem, burial dem | Chant, dem go drag vowel, disguise voice |
| Rárà | Professional chanter dem, wey dey travel go different place | Palace dem, ceremony dem, to praise patron dem | Chant, dem go drag am out |
| Ẹkún ìyàwó | The bride, with her age-mate dem | The night dem before e leave go marriage | Sing and chant, with tears |
| Ìrèmọ̀jé | Hunter dem | Burial of hunter, for night | Like ìjálá |
| Ọfọ̀ | Practitioner, by imself | Private, when need dey | Recite for set order, for low voice |
| Ìyẹ̀rẹ̀ Ifá | Babaláwo | Divination and Ifá ritual dem | Chant as call-and-response |
| Àlọ́ | Anybody, especially elder to children | Evening, after the day work | Tell am as story, with song inside |
| Orin | Everybody | Work, play, ritual, nursing, mourning | Sing |
Two warning dey on this table. E squeeze regional difference wey dey real: wetin dem dey call ìwì for one town na ẹ̀sà for another town, and the boundary between rárà and oríkì chanting dey different for Ọ̀yọ́ and for Ìbàdàn. And the performer column dey state the traditional norm, no be rule about who get capacity.
The phrase dey useful and this corpus dey use am, but four things inside am no correct for the material.
"Literature" dey bring the wrong object. For written tradition the text na the artefact and the performance na the realisation of am. For here no artefact dey stand behind the performance like that. Printed ìjálá na transcript of wetin one chanter chant for one night, no be the work wey that night performance come from.
"Oral" dey show say writing no dey instead of to show say voice dey. E dey name the tradition by wetin e lack. But na how dem dey use voice be the classifying feature of the whole system, as e dey above, and to call am oral no capture anything like that. Ọlábíyì Yai don argue against this exact framing, and against how people dey carry European literary category put on top Yoruba verbal art .
The Western genre map no align. No Yoruba category dey wey match "poetry" wey go group ìjálá with ẹsẹ Ifá and leave prose narrative out. The tradition im own division dey fall for other side, based on how dem dey use voice and the occasion.
E dey cover function. Dem no do Ọfọ̀ make people just appreciate am. Oríkì dey address subject wey dey present and wey dem expect make e respond. Ẹfẹ̀ song dem dey call living people name to correct their behaviour. To call this body of practice literature na to file set of social action under aesthetics.
Even with that, the phrase no be say e totally wrong. This material na verbal art, wey dem compose with formal ambition, wey dem dey judge with serious standard, and wey dem preserve because people value am as crafted language and no be only as social machinery. Wetin Babalola write about how dem dey judge ìjálá performance na account of criticism . The sensible position na say "oral literature" dey give name to real object for bad way, and say the Yoruba genre name dem na the accurate vocabulary.
The central theoretical contribution wey Karin Barber make, wey she develop from her fieldwork for Òkukù, na the strongest answer wey dey for the question of wetin oral text really be. Her argument dey go against two position at the same time.
Against the older literary approach wey treat oral performance like degraded version of text, she hold say na the performance be where the work dey happen. Against the performance-theory reaction from the 1960s forward, wey fight successful battle against scriptocentric view of orality and as e dey do that come near to do witch-hunt against the concept of "text" itself, she hold say oral performance still dey constitute something wey be like text, and e must .
Her reason na say oral tradition no fit be pure fading thing wey go just disappear, otherwise dem no go be tradition:
"Performance dey, but na performance of something. Dem understand say something wey person fit identify don dey exist before the moment wey dem talk am."
Tradition dey shareable and dem dey pass am down because dem arrange am precisely so that e fit detach from the immediate context . The technical term wey she take from linguistic anthropology na entextualization, the process to make instance of discourse become text, wey fit detach from im local context .
The interesting move na wetin follow. People usually associate entextualization with third-person, remote-past, myth-like discourse: language wey dem strip off anything wey dey point to the here and now. But African praise poetry na the opposite of that. E dey vocative and second-person, e dey talk to subject wey physically dey present, and e dey bring the dead enter the middle of the living community . So Barber ask which entextualizing strategy this kind genre dey use, and she answer say dem dey work by rendering discourse object-like: by making am the focus of exegesis, and by presenting am as something wey person fit quote, so that people go hear the words as something wey don dey exist before this utterance and wey go continue after am .
Two mechanism dey carry this one.
Obscurity wey dey demand exegesis. The main device of Yoruba praise poetry na nominalised epithet, a whole sentence wey dem pack tight enter inside name. Barber example come from Òkukù:
Dínà-má-yà A-dóminú-kojo
Block-road-not-budge. One who fills the coward with apprehension.
Translator: Karin Barber
Dínà-má-yà na noun wey dem form from the sentence Ó dínà, kò sì yà, "im block the road and im no comot" The way dem turn am comot the pronoun and the verb tense, so event wey person do one time come turn character wey dey permanent. English no get this kind operation, so e must either put hyphen join am, as Barber do, or e go spread am into full clause wey go make am lose that short-and-sharp nature. The corpus file yoruba-etymology-and-word-formation describe this kind process of turning word to noun as normal thing for the language.
This two praise name belong to Wínyọmí, one hunter for Òkukù for the nineteenth century, and to im descendants . If na only the words you look, you no go fit know why. The story dey inside another different genre, the ìtàn: Wínyọmí hide one man wey kill person during masquerade outing; the dead man people come march go Òkukù to demand for am; Wínyọmí come out, stand for road and talk say im go close im eyes, and by the time im go open am everybody go don run, and the crowd run away .
So, the praise name dey incomplete on purpose, and wetin complete am dey outside. Wetin Barber notice about who hold which half make sense well-well: for Òkukù, na women mostly dey perform oríkì and na elderly men mostly dey tell ìtàn, so the way text take get meaning dey divided between two separate genres and two groups of people . None of the two half be the complete text on im own.
Quotation. The second mechanism na to explicitly mark words say dem don dey exist before. The example wey Barber give, from one praise performance:
"Ó gbọ́ Ifá ó yalé Ó gbọ́hìnkùlé mọ̀ye odù tó hù 'Àìgbọ́fá là á wòkè, Ifá kan ò sí párá'" Ló tọ́ Babaa Fárónkẹ.
"He hears the chink of the divining chain, he stops to come in, from out in the yard he already knows what figure has emerged. 'Not knowing Ifá, we gaze up, but there's no Ifá in the rafters.'" This is what Father of Fárónkẹ is worthy to be called.
Translator: Karin Barber
The first two lines sound like normal talk about one man. The third line na proverb, and dem use am with wetin Barber call characteristic Yoruba inversion: the proverb describe people wey no know Ifá and dey look up for nothing, and as the performer quote am, e mean say the person wey she dey praise be the opposite . Then the fourth line come pull everything wey dem just talk together, declare say na wetin the person deserve make dem call am. The whole passage come turn from ordinary description to praise attribute, and at the same time e show say na quote wey belong to repertoire wey person fit use for any babalawo wey deserve am . English fit carry the meaning but e no fit carry the grammatical way wey ló tọ́ take pack everything together inside only three syllables. Na this one be the clearest single example of how ọwe dey behave inside performance, wey dem treat for file 10.
Wetin Barber conclude na say this two process no dey oppose each other:
"Entextualization no be the opposite of emergent performance, but na im alter ego; dem dey waka hand in glove with each other and na each other dey make dem possible. Because text must be wetin people dey pay attention to, through explanation and by quoting am inside new contexts of speech, so dat e go get meaning; while performance wey just disappear sharp-sharp without leaving trace go be performance of nothing."
How dem take gather short, quotable, and partly obscure pieces together na wetin make fluid performance possible. Because each fragment stand on im own and point outside go reach im own story background, the fragments come dey free to move around each other, and performer fit pick, rearrange, expand, and join dem together anyhow e like .
This one follow directly, and na here Yoruba genres take differ pass from literary model.
oríkì performance na joining of independent fragments together wey person fit perform in any order or combination . Wetin dey hold am together no be plot or argument. Na the presence of the person wey dem dey address, wey all the praise names dey point to, plus the skill of the performer to connect the fragments temporarily based on how the sound or meaning resemble each other .
The performer dey connect directly with the person wey dem dey praise with serious eye contact, dey hail, dey pray, and dey thank am, and e go switch go another person once person wey get level pass enter the performance area . The person wey dem dey praise no be spectator. Na dem be the center of the performance, and dem expect dem to respond, even with material things: praise performance always get economic side, and the person wey dem praise dey reward the performer.
Another consequence dey wey Barber bring out specifically for oríkì. Because this na culture of competition among big men wey dey show themselves, and because as dem dey heap more oríkì on top person, na so im respect and power dey pass im rivals own, performers no dey restrict themselves to only the official words for each person. Dem dey borrow from other people their oríkì, and dem dey borrow from other genres, proverbs, riddles, and Ifá verses, to add material to wetin dem dey perform . Wetin this one dey cause na heavy intertextuality where borrowed elements still dey show clear say na borrow dem borrow am, wey come spread wetin she call haze of quotedness over the whole field of Yoruba oral art .
That haze na the reason why this section dey arranged by genre but e still dey point sideways. The genres real and dem different for their voice style and their occasions, and dem dey always exchange material with each other.
Three practical consequences.
Text wey dem print na one performance. No be the poem itself. Where source mention the person wey chant am, the place and the date, na big part of wetin make am evidence be dat, and na why dis corpus dey record those details wen dem dey, and e dey talk wen dem no dey.
To say text no complete often mean say e dey work well as e suppose work. Line wey use four words point to story wey you no know no mean say e spoil. The full story dey always dey another place, sometimes with different people for another genre, and where the ìtàn don lost, the line dey survive as real fragment. Scholarly interpretation of dis kind lines na reconstruction, and dem suppose label am like dat.
Transcription dey make person lose the classifier. If na voice expression dem mostly dey use separate genres, dat mean say the printed page dey comot that thing wey dey make text be the genre wey e be. The words for ìjálá and the words for ẹ̀sà fit be the exact same thing; the vibrato and the long [ooo] na dem make the difference, and none of dem dey survive transcription. Dis na the strongest reason for the recordings wey dem list for file 14 and inside sources-audio-visual, and na why reader wey only read dis material get something wey no complete.
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.
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.
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.
The chant a Yoruba bride performs in the days before she leaves her father's house, its three-part structure, the social situation that produces it, and what she actually says about the marriage ahead of her.
How proverbs behave when they are embedded in chanted and sung genres rather than used in conversation, and why a quoted proverb changes what a performance is doing.
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.