Explorar

What oríkì are, the different kinds, who performs them and why, and how they carry history that written records do not.

The concept that runs from "so be it" at the end of a prayer to the force by which anything happens at all, why both "power" and "life force" are inadequate translations, and how ase works in speech, ritual and art.

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.

Àrẹ̀ògún of Òsi, the Adúgbológun workshop of Abẹ́òkúta, Olówè of Ìṣẹ̀ and the carving lineages, and why so much of their work sits in museums labelled only "Yoruba."

The praise poetry that attaches a person to a place of origin, why Yoruba people carry a town identity they may never have lived in, and how that identity crossed the Atlantic.

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 dùndún as a literary instrument rather than a technical curiosity: oríkì and proverbs delivered on the drum, what the drummer composes from, and how drummed, sung and spoken text relate in one performance.

An analysis of how praise poetry functions as an oral historical archive, detailing what can be recovered from oríkì, methodological debates on chronology and gender, and structural historical silences.

An examination of Yoruba women's oral verbal arts, focusing on bridal laments, praise poetry custody, lullabies, and domestic work songs.

A comprehensive scholarly history of Ọ̀kìtìpupa (Òde-Ìdèpé), examining its settlement traditions, dynastic lineage, chieftaincy structures, ritual festivals, colonial transformation, and modern status.

The cosmology, ritual care, material culture, and diaspora evolution of the Yoruba divine twins who share a single soul.

The dual position of Odùduwà as primordial creator deity and ancestral progenitor of crowned Yorùbá monarchs, including historical debates, ritual offices, and Atlantic transformations.

A comprehensive scholarly study of the life, poetics, taxonomic frameworks, critical debates, and legacy of the Nigerian literary scholar and linguist Professor Ọlátúndé Ọlátúnjí.

An examination of the life, methodology, institutional leadership, and historiographical contributions of Bọ́lańlé Awẹ́, pioneer of Yoruba oral history and African gender studies.

An analysis of Rowland Abíọ́dún's scholarship, his indigenous linguistic paradigm for Yorùbá art history, and the debates surrounding his methodology.

The extended Àlọ́ Ìjàpá opening formula in Yorùbá with interlinear glossing, the praise-name run for the tortoise embedded in it, and what the collectors record about the apàlọ̀ and his drum.

A map of this section's oriki texts, how it relates to the oriki material already in 02-language and 12-towns, and what this section does and does not cover.

The complete classification of oríkì by subject, orílẹ̀ through eranko, with a worked text for each kind and the boundary cases that show the categories are not airtight.

How oríkì is built from independent units rather than narrative sequence, and the specific mechanisms, tonal, structural, and referential, that make it resist translation.

The occasions on which oríkì is actually chanted, the royal awakening and market-day forms, and how payment shapes what a performer says, illustrated with texts the genre files in this section do not carry.

Karin Barber's finding that oríkì in Okuku is held and performed mainly by women, with texts showing what that custodianship does at a wedding, at a festival, and inside a marriage.

Bolanle Awe's case for oríkì as historical evidence, worked through two towns' founding oríkì, with a plain statement of what a historian can and cannot recover from the form.

Oríkì delivered on the talking drum rather than the voice, with the patron deity of drumming's own praise text and a documented case of drummed praise used to warn a rival.

Where oríkì with reliable Yoruba originals and named translators actually lives in print, who collected it, and what is and is not digitised or open access.

Oríkì composed and performed today, for a doctor, for a masked pop musician, and for the Christian God, showing the form still generating new texts rather than only preserving old ones.

Lineage and town-of-origin oríkì for four major Yoruba groups, including two variant texts for Ọ̀fà shown side by side rather than merged.

Royal and lineage oríkì for four eastern and central Yoruba kingdoms, including a rare text naming a specific carver rather than only royalty or warriors.

Three lineage oríkì from Karin Barber's Okuku fieldwork, plus the Olúfọ́n dynasty and the Ìkòyí warrior lineage whose praise obliges the chanter to include its own dishonour.

The Owu lineage's cloth and temperament oríkì, two conflicting versions of the Iresa lineage text, and a plain account of the lineage material this corpus found and could not verify.

Six documented Ògún oríkì texts from four different scholarly sources, showing the deity's seven manifestations, his contradictions, and a chanter's personal claim on him.