The Yoruba’s Ijala

by Michelle Assaad

            As is the case with all cultures, literature in the Yoruba culture does not appear in one form and is a very complex art form, made of a “tripartite relationship between art, the artist and society” (Ogunsina, Bisi. “Gender Ideology: Portrayal of Women in Yoruba Ijala.” 1996. JSTOR). Rather, there are many categories and subcategories that define Yoruba literature and provide a vast array of information and knowledge, which is passed down generation to generation through oral traditions (Bisi, 1996, JSTOR). Some of the major categories are the epic, hunter chants, bridal chants, testimonies, witch and wizard tales, praise poetry and confessionals (Alabi, Adetayo. “’I am the hunter who kills elephants and baboons’: The Autobiographical components of the Hunters’ Chant.” 2007. Academic Search Premier). Yet within those larger subcategories there exists subcategories which are tonally based rather than subject based such as,  “esa or ewa for a falsetto voice; rara for a slow wailing, long drawn-out chanting style; ofo or ogede for a magical formula sentences rapidly spoken in a normal speech pattern; and ijala for a high pitched voice” (Joyce, Joyce Anne. Ijala. p xiii).

The focus of this paper will be on the ijala chants of the Yoruba people. These chants “belong to a genre exclusive to hunters” and are performed on occasions such as hunters festivals, coronations and weddings (Alabi, 2007, Academic Search Premier).  Before the ijala is chanted, there is a dance done by all the ijala story tellers to the beat of a drum, after which each tells their story and then introducer the next story teller, who before chanting gives the name of his family and his children (Alabi, 2007, Academic Search Premier).

To the Yoruba people to be a hunter was an ultimate honor and those who were hunters were seen as an ideal man with who showed great strength, courage and security for their community (Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR). This poetry is in honor of Ogun, the deity of hunters, war and all things related to ironwork (Mitchell, Mozella G. “Crucial Issues in Caribbean Religions” p. 19). This specific genre of storytelling “part and product of its society” as can be seen in the societal aspect of the Yoruba people (Ogunsina. 1996. JSTOR). In the culture of the Yoruba people, men are traditionally the hunters as well as the head of house hold, so therefore the ijala chants focus on the life experiences of the male population of the Yoruba people with a masculine bias and with a rare mention of women in the works, except, on the rare occasion of them being mentioned, to speak ill of them (Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR). Since hunters themselves come up with the chants, the chants usually are used for self-praise, praise of their families and of their community and are equivalent to a sort of self-portrait of the chanter (Alabi, 2007, Academic Search Premier).

While women occupy important roles in other types of African literary traditions, the ijala is one of the only ones which does not praise women for their physical beauty, ability to give life as well as the extreme ability to love all (Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR). Instead, the portrayal of women in ijala chants takes a negative attitude towards them, as they are portrayed with having characteristics such as vanity, jealousy, falseness and disloyalty (Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR). This depiction of women shows the intense patriarchal feelings in the Yoruba society and by chanting about women in a negative light, the chanter is simply “playing his role as an agent of male supremacy” and giving an “artistic presentation of his cultural milieu” (Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR). From the male perspective, nothing was to be believed if it came from a woman, even though women in the Yoruba culture play a huge role in the political, social and religious aspect of life during the pre-colonial and present times (Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR). However, in the ijala chants, any declaration of loyalty or devotion from a women is seen as a lie as can be seen from an example of an ijala chant in the lines: “’ My husband, if you die, I will die with you” / Is falsehood from a woman” and “Let not all secrets be made known to woman / Where her eyes do not reach her mouth does”(Ogunsina, 1996, JSTOR).

Ijala’s use many literary tools to get its message across. It uses personification, such as that of inanimate objects such as trees, rocks and plants, but also family lineage and ancestor spirits, which the chanter specifically uses in order to identify himself along with his lineage (Alabi, 2007, Academic Search Premier). Ijala is also a performance art since it is a chant. In order to increase the performance value repetition is used as well as songs, dancing, hyperbole, reenactments and rich figures of speech (Alabi, 2007, Academic Search Premier). Ijala’s also use lots of indigenous humor and satire alongside the “skill of native storytelling” such as “imitating with appropriate movement and gesture the action described” (Walker, Barbara K. & Walker, Warren S. Nigerian Folk Tales. p. I). Often times the audience is also given a chance to participate in the story telling, they can sing in choruses, beat the drums to give a dramatic effect and of course, cheer at the end of a great story (Walker &Walker, 5).

Though there is no longer a need for oral traditions due to modern printing capabilities and huge increases in literacy rate throughout all of Africa since its pre-colonized times, oral tradition still plays a very large role throughout all of African society (Walker & Walker, I).  Yet, there is still a lot of work to be done in order to maintain the oral traditions of the Yoruba people. For children of Yoruba culture it is still a work in progress for them to be more exposed to the art of ijala story telling and other types or oral tradition especially as the world becomes more and more globalized and the Western traditions and stories have been introduced all over the world. The Yoruba children are more exposed to Greek, Roman and Hebrew folktales than that of their own people at schools (Beier, Ulli. Yoruba Myths. p. 6)

 
http://www.culturestarved.com/2013/07/the-yorubas-ijala-an-essay-by-michelle-assaad/

AT A THRIFT-CLUB FEAST

A thrift-club, known in Yoruba asEsusu, is a voluntary society which helps its members to raise money. Every member pays a fixed sum of money regularly at a fixed time (say every fifth or ninth day). One of the subscribing members will take the total amount subscribed for his personal use. The next subscription will be taken by another member, continuing in rotation until every member has taken. As an early form of banking, it played a part in the rise of businesses owned by former slaves in the United States.
This ìjalá, or set of praises, is spoken by the chairmen to encourage and compliment the members.

All you persons of prestige here gathered together,
I greet the woodcock with its characteristic ‘mese’ cry.
I cannot help talking, Man-of-many-style, the Gaboon viper attacks with its mouth. (1)
The belly’s mark on the ground betrays the path taken by a snake along a farm-plot boundary. (2)
As all you members of the club are met here today,
Complete in number as the coins paid for tax by a citizen.
Death shall not cut your hearts across like the nodes of tuberous yams.
Numerous as you are, like brown ants,
Ogun shall not let death cut your hearts across like the nodes of tuberous yams.
We shall for very long enjoy each other’s company.
Every fifth day, kolanuts are set out for sale on raffia trays. (3)
White star-apples naturally appear on the ground in increasing numbers. (4)
We shall be coming here.
You we shall be seeing here.
Your place shall never be filled by a stranger.
The bottle-gourd warps its own fruit,(5)
not the fruit of another plant.
People who beat the drum of wickedness desire that it should sound forth. (6)
God shall prevent its sounding forth.
If an elder beats the drum of wickedness and it sounds forth
Only his children will dance to the music.
He who scoops up water from a pool pulls down the fishes’ abode, damages the fishes’ abode.
He who hoes up a weedy plot of land damages the bush fowl’s abode.
With a short club or truncheon we reduce mud walls’ broken pieces to powdery clay.
A house of his is being built on earth
And a house of his is being built in heaven.
He said ‘Let us with a sacrifice break down the house in heaven and rebuild the one on earth.’
Then the elders of heaven put their mighty heads together.
Then result was: ‘Rats are beaten with rods, birds are beaten with rods.
With a flat-faced mallet, the earth is beaten flat.’
If any man is seeking your hurt, all you people here,
His skull shall become an oval-shaped drinking vessel.
Only once does the èbùré vegetable bear fruits and then it perishes. (7)
And my mother, Osoronga, (
who kills people but gets nothing of their legacy,
Who attacks at night,
If she’s seeking your hurt, all you people here,
Her skull shall become an oval-shaped drinking-vessel.
Only once does the èbùré vegetable bear fruits and then it perishes.
Now I say, ‘ All to no purpose is the rumbling among the tree-top coconuts.
All to no purpose is the rumbling among the elephant-grass bushes.
All to no purpose, all to no purpose is the mound-making done by swarming brown ants.
The two hundred flies that have clung to a horse’s tail the horse smashes to death with his tail.’
This was the pronouncement of the Ifa oracle to Arilegbe of heaven,
We who pushed over walls of ruins to defeat his enemies.
I have pushed over the walls of ruins to defeat Orotimi,
all you my colleagues have gathered together.
Likewise, every one of you should push over walls of ruins to defeat your enemy.
This is my conclusion, you inmates here.
Let none of you complain of not knowing how I finished my chant,
I the rascally child, a die-hard like a civet-cat, (9)
a person associated with the buffalo
Which carries an òrişà’s emblem on its head. (10)

from The Content and Form of Yoruba ljala (1966)
S.A. Babalola

HYENA (YORUBA)

Another Yoruba ìjalá (hunting poem) about the hyena (see also the Sotho praise-poem about the Hyena). Hyena is regarded as the ultimate scavenger, there being nothing the animal won’t eat.

Hyena, who goes into the farm and finds that a three-year old bone is full of marrow for him,
Hyena, who is there when the mourner buries the corpse eats fat and bone, scabbard and hide.

from The Nigerian Field 18, 2 (April l953),
F.S. Collier

CASAVA

This Yoruba Ìjálá (Hunting Poem) is different, praising not an animal but a plant. Cassava, also called manioc or tapioca, is a root vegetable, rich in starch, but not so nutritious as yams or maize, and consequently grown only along the farm’s boundary. But the images in this poem – bride, friend, prince, wife, camwood – along with the musical support, all suggest how greatly it is valued.

Lafunyinrin, (1)
a stand-by cheering the despondent.(2)
As it stands along the farm-plot boundary,
its base appears beautiful like a bride’s feet.
Friend of beef, (3)
cult-colleague of green vegetables. (4)
It doesn’t struggle with anyone
save one who has come very close to the pot. (5)
On failing to get a supply of it,
the son of Akinyele would ask himself, saying, (6)
‘Has Lafunyinrin gone to the farm, or on a visit somewhere in town?’
Lalee. (7)
Sticking to the pot tenaciously.
Wife along the farm-plot boundary (
who teaches the house how to wrestle.(9)
O cassava to whom the bembe drum beats a salute
that never reaches an end, (10)
but becomes a song
which runs thus:
I alone ate it
and I was fully satisfied.
I alone ate it
and I was fully satisfied.
It is no small service the cassava renders us in this our land.
O my dear friend,
consider that we eat eba, (11)
we eat feselu, (12)
and when in a hurry we buy kasadaand eat it as a meal, (13)
the tall and slender plant which takes on the hue of camwood, (14)
along the farm-plot boundary.

Singer: O karagba! O karaba! (15)
Pounded cassava can is delicious.

Chorus: O karagba!

from The Content and Form of Yoruba ljala (1966)
S.A. Babalola

BABOON

ther Ìjálá or hunter’s poem from the Yoruba of Nigeria (see also the poems Elephant, Buffalo, Five Creatures and Hunters’ Salutes). It lists, with a great deal of humour, the baboon’s main characteristics. At the end of the Ìjálá the poet breaks into song and the audience responds.

Laare. (1)
Opomu, who teaches a dog how to hunt successfully; (2)
having mastered the technique of hunting, the dog feeds.
Opumo,
O baboon,
I greet you, possessor of hard-skinned swollen buttocks,
having a whip in each hand, (3)
whom the hunter pursues and in the process smears his tunic with earth.(4)
Animal speckled all over his body,
like a patient cured of deadly smallpox;
wearer of a cap enhancing the face, drummer in the forest. (5)
He who covers his mouth with slab-like jaws;
Animal from whose hands the hunter has no received a wife,
yet before whom he prostrates himself. (6)
Immediately I see him on the ground before him, I carefully hide.
While he was away from home,
an extra share of occiput was reserved for him; (7)
on his arrival,
he started crying for an additional share for his mouth. (
He who after raiding a farm returns to his perch,
his mouth hanging down like a Dahomean’s pocket. (9)
Possessor of eyes shy like a bride’s,
seeing the farmers’ wives on their husbands’ farms.
Bulky fellow on the igba tree, (10)
uncle to the red Patas Monkey. (11)
Gentleman on the treetop, whose fine figure intoxicates him like liquor.
Lagoodi, whose mouth is protuberant,(12)
longish like a ginning rod, (13)
whose jaws are like wooden spoons and whose chest looks as if it had a wooden bar in it,
whose eyes are deep-set as he goes raiding farms, even the farms of his relatives-in-law,
four hundred while going through the farm,
twelve hundred when returning to the bush.
He said it was a pity it was the farm of his relatives-in-law,
otherwise he would have eaten two hundred more. (14)
He whom his mother gazed and gazed upon and burst out weeping,
declaring her child’s handsomeness would be the ruin of him.
Possessed of a hair-denuded posterior.
He whose claws are mischievously sharp,
he who stares defiantly at human beings, (15)
whose female’s udders are never left in peace,
nursing mother who clings continually to the branches of trees.

Song: Stout and noisy,
I saw a baboon on my forest farm, munching away.

Chorus: Stout it was, and munching away.

from The Content and Form of Yoruba ljala (1966)
S.A. Babalola

A SALUTE TO FABUNMI

other Ìjálá or hunter’s poem from the Yoruba of Nigeria (see also the poems Elephant, Buffalo, Five Creatures and Hunters’ Salutes). This one is a salute to Fabunmi, celebrating both his skills as a hunter and his generosity towards others.

First Hunter

Oolo of Iware Forest, (1)
why is it we no longer see Fabunmi,
he who snatches a tree branch from a monkey’s grip? (2)
Husband of Layemi, a man who confidently aims and shoots
at a black colobus monkey; (3)
he who snatches a tree branch from a monkey’s grip,
father of Ajani;
he who breaks a tree branch against an old female monkey
as he shoots her dead; (4)
he who snatches a tree branch from a monkey’s grip;
a relation of Elekede;
owner of many guns,
a man who stalks an animal in the forest,
swiftly making a trail like a rainbow in the sky;
man who hangs ponderously from a tree,
like a swinging broken branch;
rainbow in the forest linked with a trail for tracking an animal;
discharged bullets landing with a thud in the animal’s abdomen;
he who kills a black colobus monkey and ceremoniously
rubs its hand against the ground; (5)
the enterprising hunter who kills a porcupine near a kolanut tree;
he who is so expert at shooting he is vainglorious about his skill;
citizen of Iware, he who snatches a tree branch from a monkey’s grip,
husband of Laweni;
we sadly miss Fabunmi,
the man who fixes his gaze long and hard at one;
he who confidently aims and shoots at a black colobus monkey.

Second Hunter

Hey! Thank you greatly! Ha!
Oolo of Iware Forest.
Why is it we no longer see Fabunmi?
He who once killed an animal and gave it,
hand and all, as a gift to Akintola, (6)
he who once killed an animal,
and gave it foetus and all, to Oniroko,(7)
he who once killed a game animal,
and gave it to them at Oyo, (
waiving his right to the animal’s skin;
the short cannon explodes repeatedly;(9)
why is it we no longer see Fabunmi,
the man who confidently shoots at a black colobus monkey;
even if someone was the youngest of a set of triplets, (10)
or the youngest of a set of quadruplets,
or a person on whose head was a cap concealing a pair of twins,
when on a visit to Fabunmi,
such a person would eat maize gruel in leaves with meat from a monkey’s head;
Oolo of Iware Forest,
why is it you no longer see Fabunmi,
the man who daily kills a chimpanzee;
the smart hunter, citizen of Alediji,
priest of the god Ogun, (11)
frequenter of the forest trails.

from The Content and Form of Yoruba ljala (1966)
S.A. Babalola

FIVE CREATURES

A funny ìjalá poem (hunters’ songs) from Nigeria, imagining improbable lines of business.

Five creatures
There were in Iresa Town, (1)
which engaged themselves in unprofitable business.
The woodpecker:
He set himself up in business as a carver of mortars. (2)
The crab set himself up in business as a producer of edible oil. (3)
The toad set himself up in business as a maker of beads. (4)
People of my age were eyewitness of these happenings.
The spider:
He set himself up in business as a maker of thread.
The awurebe: (5)
He set himself up in business as a maker of roads.
The woodpecker set himself up in business as a carver of mortars.
O citizens of lresa.
Who would use the woodpecker’s mortar for pounding yam?
I know no one who would buy the crab-made oil for cooking his stew.
I pray you, listen to the words of my mouth.
Who would buy a string of beads from the toad
And put it round the neck of her child? There’s no one I know.
Who would pay tolls to the awurebeand use his roads?
Who would pound yams in the woodpecker’s mortar,
in the town of my fathers?

from The Content and Form of Yoruba ljala (1966)
S.A. Babalola

Please, can this make front page

Cc lalasticlacla

Mr Op, sir, what's Hyena in Yoruba and what's the meaning of 'awurebe'?

Cuddlebugie:
Mr Op, sir, what's Hyena in Yoruba and what's the meaning of 'awurebe'?

I believe hyena is "Aja-Igbo" in Yoruba, I'm not really sure what awurebe means but I will find out and get back to you.

Lushore1:


I believe hyena is "Aja-Igbo" in Yoruba, I'm not really sure what awurebe means but I will find out and get back to you.

Ok。。。。。。
I think its a coinage (I may be wrong, though).
Let me know when you eventually find out its etymology and meaning.
I heard the word in one Yoruba classic apala and i've wanted to know its meaning since then.