Only few of you know me – I know
I blame you not, much have been stolen from me
Even the panegyrics given to my husband belonged to me
Yes, I am Olójòǹgbòdú, wife of Ikú
Death; the black borg with thorny cudgel
They who have met me, know me not
And he who knows me, have not met me.

I am guilty of the crime, my hands are red;
Red in crimson blood of my bosom lover
I killed him, I fed him his poisons
And if given the chance I will do it again
I killed Death, hahahahaha
Never mind the absurdity of the charge

I seek not your pity or your justice
I knew whom I was dealing with
Before I agreed to terms with them;
Humans; those guileful and sneaky humans
Death had told me who they are
And justified his action on them based on that;
“These sort of beings do not deserve being alive”
Yet I connived with humans to kill Ikú

My rant here is not to pervert justice
And I hold no one explanation for my choice
But for two reasons I speak:
To keep the record straight
And to keep logic straight

I fed Ikú with dead rat
I fed Ikú with duck’s egg
Yes, I fed Ikú with ẹlẹ́bútẹ
To prove a point, I did.
If Ikú kills humans because of their mischiefs
What crimes have these committed:
All that is living, besides human?
The rat and the egg.

Ikú my husband
If you can hear me wherever you are
You died of lack of reason to kill
That was why your hands were shaking
Iróró iróró
You knew I got you
So your heart jumped out of your mouth

Death my husband
If you can hear me wherever you are
You died fearing I was right
That was why your legs were shaking
Irìrì irìrì
You knew I was right
So your chauvinistic ego failed you

Now to you, oh Judges divine
You have sentenced me to death
For killing my husband
But wait, now that Death is dead
Who shall kill his wife?
Let us put the logic straight.

(20th December, 2019)

Image: Cleopsis, eater of the dead

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/12/23/allocutus-of-olojo%c7%b9gbodu-by-oje-ayanbode-o/

By, Bode Oje

It was Aristotle who started logic as a discipline, but Mr Aristotle ‘s reliance on logical inference as source of pure knowledge showcases some scandalous ways our inferences can lead us astray.

One of the many errors of Aristotle is about horse’s dentition. He believed stallions (male horses) have more teeth than mares (female horses). Aristotle also believed men have more teeth that women and that women are malformed men in the womb. All these conjectures made without any attempt to count Mrs Aristotle ‘s teeth, neither a dissection of a dead pregnant woman.

For hundreds of years before and after Christ, people actually took the words of Aristotle as truth that needs no verification. Logical truths are obviously true. Why should they doubt the master logician? This attitude of scholars in this period is called Aristotelianism. It marked the time early fathers of the church who doubled as scholars took words of Aristotle hook, line and sinker.

It was in this mileu that the parable of Aristotle ‘s error was situated, though nobody knows the originator of the parable. It was attributed to either Francis Bacon or Roger Bacon.

It so happened that some fathers of the church had gone to a meeting of scholars where intellectual and scientific issues were discussed. There were two principal authorities to settle every matter at this time: Bible and Aristotle. In fact, the church fathers believed and saw similarity in what Aristotle said and what the Bible says. To them, what the Bible says in parables and metaphors, Aristotle says it in explicit language.

So, an issue came up in the meeting where someone wondered which horse has the most teeth between a female and a male horse. The fathers of the church did not struggle to answer this, they simply went and retrieved the book where Aristotle settled this and read out the decree of master logician: “male horses have more teeth than female horses,” case closed.

It was a young man that caused wàhálà of volcanic eruption that day when he said:

“why can’t we confirm what Aristotle said since almost all of us rode horses to this meeting and our horses are there outside?”

Come and see wàhálà. The elders almost killed the young man. “How can you question or doubt Aristotle?” They opposed him. “Aristotle the master logician whom our forefathers believed the superiority of his logical formulas as ways to apodictic truth. Aristotle of impeccable rational faculty. How dare you challenge Aristotle?” (Please, who do you take as your Aristotle today? Some religious leaders? Some prophets? Some scholars? Some forebears? Some books?)

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/12/14/the-parable-about-aristotles-error-and-what-it-can-teach-us-today-by-bode-oje/

He was very pure and tolerant. Pius Adesanmi based this piece on Orunmila’s ethos. ENJOY people.

Live And Let Live, by the Late Pius Adesanmi was published on the 27th of Jul, 2011

If you are Yoruba and you are older than the Facebook or Twitter generation of Nigerians, if you are struggling to cope with expressions such as LOL (laugh out loud) , LMAO (laugh my ass off) OMG (Oh my God), and 9ja (Naija) in emails and texts you receive daily from Nigerians in their teens and twenties, chances are you grew up in a village in Yoruba land where life is suffused in culture, tradition, and a panoply of ancestral rituals and spiritual observances, all instances of man shaping order out of primordial chaos.

Chances are, growing up, you partook – as audience or celebrant– in a very colourful tapestry of ancestral liturgies: Ogun festival, Sango festival, Imole festival, Egungun festival, and, of course, Oro festival, the fear of which is the beginning of wisdom for Yoruba women.

Chances are you enjoyed the atmospherics of these observances, partook of propitiatory offal, sang, and danced to a host of inspirational choruses and processionals welcoming the ancestors and the orishas into the realm of unworthy mortals at each spiritual enactment.

Chances are you remember the sombre baritone of the officiating Ifa priest chanting: “Orisha Yoruba o, e ma ku abo o”; you remember him chanting: “Aji gini, arin gini, l’oruko Orunmila, Orunmila Baba Ifa, Ifa la o pe, Orunmila la o bo”; chances are you remember the solemn chimes of his bell as he intones: kango kango, mo ma gb’ohun agogo, kange kange mo ma gb’ohun orisha o;chances are you remember one of the most famous of these inspirational choruses: the processional canticle of Oro:

Oro ile wa la wa nse o (2x)

Esin kan o pe (oh eh)

Esin kan o pe ka wa ma s’oro

Oro ile wa la wa nse o

It’s been years now and memories flood through the grey mist of time as you remember these hymns. You know that you dare not insult any of the hymns with a translation into English. No European language is deep enough to bear the full weight of these songs without doing irreparable damage to them. After all, the poverty of the English language is what made Wole Soyinka abandon his dream of translating all of D.O Fagunwa’s novels.

The poor Soyinka held a rapid dialogue with his legs after translating only one of them! But you know that the Oro canticle is too crucial to the lesson that the belief system of the Yoruba has to teach contemporary Nigeria to be left untranslated. You know you must attempt to capture the soul and spirit of the hymn, while hoping that the ancestors will not fine you twenty-five cows for this miserable result in English:

Behold Oro! The ritual of our forebears!

Oro hampers no faith

Let no faith hamper Oro

Behold Oro! The ritual of our forebears!

You probably sang this song throughout your childhood and early adulthood; you got acquainted with new versions of it that were mainstreamed into Yoruba popular culture by the likes of Alhaji Chief Professor-Master General Kollington Ayinla, Alhaji Agba Chief Dr. Sikiru Ayinde Barrister, Ambassador Oodua Abass Akande omo Rapala, and so many other fuji musicians; you sang versions of it that were funkified by your kegite “Il y a” while you were a “wokedly carried” undergraduate savouring “holy water” on campus without the knowledge of your parents.

But through all these renderings, not once did you ever pause to examine the song for its philosophical ramifications. Not once did you really listen to what it tells you about the cultural fount from which it sprang. You never analyzed the hymn because you are probably not used to doing a close reading of your culture. You probably never even thought of it as a hymn. Right now, if you are a Christian, you are probably wincing in horror at the “blasphemy” of my calling a “pagan” Oro song a hymn or an inspirational chorus.

If your ecumenical anger allows you to continue reading, consider this powerful line in the hymn: Esin kan o pe k’awa ma s’oro. I have translated what it says and what it leaves unsaid but implied: Oro hampers no faith. Let no faith hamper Oro. Here, we encounter the first indication of the intrinsic humanism of Yoruba spirituality: the valuation of pluralism. We encounter consciousness and validation of the spiritual essence of the Other. Indeed, we are in the presence of the accomodationist ethos of the Yoruba worldview.

For what this Oro canticle hints at and acknowledges is the presence of other faiths in its own spiritual space of actuation. Oro is demonstrating its awareness of the politics of otherness unleashed by the intrusion of two foreign faiths into the Yoruba world. Oro is acknowledging the presence of Christianity and Islam. These two newcomers are the “esin kan” that are being subtly referenced and advised to live and let live and not hamper older forms of spiritual expression. Oro will not bother you for there is room enough in the sky for birds to fly without colliding. Oro is extending an olive branch to one religion that claims to be a religion of peace and another that claims to have been founded by the prince of peace himself.

From their history – or, rather, the history of how their pacific essence has been twisted and bloodied across centuries by ignorant and intolerant adherents – we know that Christianity and Islam are strangers to the cosmopolitan and accomodationist graciousness of this Oro processional. For no sooner had the two religions been “let in” – a la Stanley Meets Mutesa – than they began to invest in a sanguinary politics of otherness in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

One began to manufacture infidels who must be put to the sword via purificatory jihad and the other, tolerating no alternative paths to spirituality, decreed itself the way, the truth, and the light. The draconian take-no-prisoners philosophy of these two religions could, of course, only eventuate in their total blindness to the accomodationist humanism of Oro.

Because Christianity and Islam insist on spiritual rebirth as the only path to God and Allah, forgetting is a fundamental element of their creed. Forgetting is, in fact, the most significant aspect of their faiths that haughty European and Arab invaders sold to Africans as they scrambled to win “pagan” souls all over the continent.

That newly-minted born again Christian or Moslem must forget his or her former “pagan” and “fetish” self. Where the Christian forgets to forget the old self, Enoch Adeboye and Chris Oyakhilome are on hand to remind him of the importance of forgetting: “for old things have passed away and all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Only this new self, born in Christ or Mohammed and approved by Europe or Saudi Arabia, is worth remembering. Nigerian Christians go a step further. This new creature must be as white as snow in the burning tropical heat of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway where he constitutes a nuisance to public order.

What kind of self did the born again Yoruba Christian or Moslem have to forget in order not to come short of the glory of God or Allah? The cosmopolitan, pacifist, and accomodationist self in that Oro processional hymn is what is forgotten and sacrificed. Centuries of pluralism and communalism went into the cultural construction of that self. That self was raised by a culture that taught it to always see the humanism of the other as an extension of its own humanism. That self was socialized by ancestral sayings and adages that always celebrated difference and privileged pluralism. That self was taught that several roads lead to the market. As that self was being socialized into adulthood, no elder in the village ever told it that there is only one way, truth, and light leading to the market of spiritual efflorescence.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/12/01/the-philosophy-of-orunmila-is-always-live-and-let-live-by-pius-adesanmi/

When I and my siblings were growing up in the sixties, music set the tone and the mood around which the daily routine of our lives and family events revolved. The commercialization of Yoruba traditional music started in our own time. People now actually made music full time. And they made enough money from it to feed their family, pay their rent, put clothes on their backs, and send their children to school. Commercial music had made its entry into Yorubaland over the previous decade before the early 1960’s, especially in the two biggest cities, Ibadan and Lagos. ‘Highlife’ music was the most profitable commercial music of that time. And who better to introduce us to the Lagos highlife scene of the early 1960’s than the famous bandleader who everyone called Roy Chicago. Born John Akintola, he was the musician who introduced the traditional Yoruba gangan talking drum into the set of a modern highlife band. He always sang in Yoruba. And his virtuoso drumming was in the great musical tradition of our people.

It was to meet members of Roy Chicago’s band at their base at Abalabi Hotel, Mushin that our mother’s driver and handiman, a man from Owo we called Oyoyo, took me and my brother Tope one evening in 1963 to further our musical education. We were excited. Abalabi Hotel was within walking distance from our house on Cash Street. We were on vacation. As we walked with Oyoyo along Agege Motor Road, we sang out the lines from a song Roy Chicago had just released. It was about the thief who had stolen his trumpet when it was left in a van after a performance at the Abalabi Hotel.

Ole to ji kakaki wa,
Nibo ni o ti fun

The thief who stole our trumpet,
Where will he play it?

On this late evening, Oyoyo shepherded us past the gateman at the Abalabi Hotel to the back of the performance hall to meet his friend Alaba Pedro. Pedro was the rhythm guitarist in Roy Chicago’s band. Pedro took us to the stage where the instruments and sound systems were being set up for the night’s performance. We stood back, too awed to touch anything. There was a gangan, a set of akuba drums, and two shekeres. We also saw many modern instruments – shiny appliances in brass and steel which included several guitars, a saxophone, a trumpet, and a set of modern jazz drums that stood gleaming to one side near the free-standing microphone pole.

Pedro introduced us to other musicians who played in Roy Chicago’s band. There was Peter King, the tenor saxophonist. We also met the male back-up singer, Tunde Osofisan. We were told that this young man sometimes stood in for Roy Chicago when the bandleader’s voice was hoarse and raw from blowing too much into his trumpet. Apart from being a singer, he told us he was an actor. The older musicians had been comrades with Oyoyo when they all played together at the Central Hotel, Adamasingba in Ibadan. As we listened, we heard other names mentioned. Among these were Etim Udo, Marco Bazz and Jim Lawson, non-Yorubas who at one time or the other, had also been members of Roy Chicago’s Abalabi Rhythm Dandies. We prostrated for each of these men as we greeted them. ‘E pele, sir,’ we said to each in turn. They were our heroes. And besides, they were our elders. Some of them were as old as our father, the Black Prince, who was then forty-three years old. Then Pedro presented us to the great man himself.

Roy Chicago beamed at us and acted as if we were important grown up fans of his. He was a handsome, charismatic man of above average height. He was smooth skinned, smooth faced, and smooth limbed. At that time, he was in his mid-thirties. He was at the height of his fame and in the prime of life. Everything about him was smooth, including the suave way he put the two of us at ease, young teenagers who should be at our ‘lesson,’ instead of sneaking into a hotel that had young ladies of questionable virtue loitering around its entrance and foyer. Oyoyo asked Roy Chicago to tell us about his music. And this is how we came to hear the story of the origin of highlife music from the mouth of one of its greatest practitioners, Roy Chicago himself.

‘To me,’ he began in that mellifluous voice that sounded to us no different from the way he sang, ‘the song that started modern music in Lagos was Fatai Rolling Dollar’s “Easy motion tourist.” Of course, we must admit that Fatai learnt from others who came before him. These were the unsung heroes who no one paid attention to. Those musicians in the 1930’s and 40’s were not popular. They made very little money. There were no paying clients or sponsors in those days. They did not have the adoring, paying fans we have today. Let me say again that I have come to realize that that record “Easy Motion Tourist” released about ten years ago, was the grandfather, babanla, of all our current popular music. It was the last important bus stop on a route that took two different directions. One road led to highlife, the other to juju music.

And indeed, Fatai Rolling Dollar’s ‘Easy Motion Tourist’ had all the elements of a modern rock song that could have been composed by our musical heroes at that time, who were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones from England. The subject matter of the song was contemporary. It concerned an incident in the life of one of the band members, who had been locked out of the rented house where he had a room when he returned late one night after an engagement with the band.

READ MORE: https://thebelltimesng.com/2019/12/01/roy-chicago-and-the-roots-of-highlife-by-oladele-olusanya/