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Pop Tradition in Nigeria
Transforming Traditional Yoruba Bata Performance
into
a
Worldly Fusion
Debra Klein
Introduction
T
his paper illustrates the generational shift in the culture of
bata
performance—from the
performance of tradition to what I call "pop tradition"—an innovative, popular, worldly,
gendered, Yoruba style and identity. In order to keep bata culture alive, the generation of
Erin-Osun artists in their twenties fuses traditional bata with popular musical genres such
zsfuji. I argue that pop tradition invokes an "it's always been this way" sense of traditional
culture as well as a pan-Yoruba identity—represented in fuji music—which emerged from
the struggles of the nineteenth century. By identifying with both bata and fuji, the genera-
tion of drummers and dancers in their late teens and twenties invokes their lineage-rooted
skills in order to participate in
a
Yoruba-wide and worldly music movement.
Trie
"pop"
part
of "pop tradition" signifies the
boys'
desires to identify with a pan-Yoruba culture, fueling a
particular worldliness rooted in the Ayan tradition as well as a modern Yoruba
identity.
The
younger generation's decision to fuse their inherited music tradition with popular music
continues to challenge their fathers' aesthetic and cultural sensibilities and stakes.
Lead
vocal:
Emi
laiye!
It's me, alive in the world!
Second
vocal:
Emi! Emi! It's
me!
It's me!
Lead: Emi
laiye!
It's me alive in the world!
Emi laiye
mi!
It's all about me!
Second: Emi! Emi! Me! Me!
Lead: Emi laiye. It's always me.
Emi laiye
mi!
Me, alive in the world!
(Wasiu Alabi, famous Fuji band leader)
Wasiu Alabi's catchy melody and lyrics—consisting of every possible combination of the
words emi (me),
laiye
(alive in the world), and mi (me)—became a popular choral refrain
with the cohort of fuji-loving bata artists in the rural town of Erin-Osun, Nigeria, during
the late
1990s.
Whenever I joked with these artists about their potential stardom as globally
renowned fuji front men, they would try to out-perform each other by singing and danc-
ing some version of the tune, "Emi laiye mi." Not only are the words and melody easy to
remember; they also represent a significant shift in the style and content of performance
for extended families of drummers and dancers who specialize in traditional Yoruba bata.
"It's all about
me"
gave the young artists the creative license to transform their traditional
artist identities into pop culture personae. However, these young artists' fathers criticized
their children's "all about
me"
culture for its diversion from tradition,
asa
ibile.
What can we
learn from this generation gap in a rural Nigerian town during the late 1990s? By examining
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the emergence of
a
bata fusion out of traditional bata, we will see how two generations of
artists crafted particular cultural identities and performance styles in order to successfully
participate in waning Nigerian markets for bata as well as in growing international markets
for traditional African culture. We will also see how these two generations collaboratively
perform Yoruba bata to ensure its sustainability and relevance in the 1990s.
Passed down from generation to generation, Yoruba bata is a centuries-old drumming,
singing, and masquerade tradition from southwestern Nigeria. My long-term ethnograph-
ic research1 with Yoruba bata artists has revolved around the extended family of Lamidi
Ayankunle in Erin-Osun. One of the few compounds that continues to school its children
in the art of traditional drumming, Ayankunle's family consists of about two hundred mem-
bers,
spanning five generations and five different towns in Osun and Kwara states. While
the bata tradition has been reinvented from generation to generation, evidence suggests an
ongoing reinvention of bata to the chagrin of the elders in the Ayankunle family who dif-
fer with the younger generation on this change. In order to understand and articulate this
dynamism, especially young artists' early attempts to merge bata with the popular musical
genre of
fuji,
I differentiate between the following two generations of artists. The traditional
"Yoruba Bata" generation , whose members are in their fifties and
sixties,
came of age during
a newly independent and hopeful Nigeria. They have traveled the world as representatives
of traditional culture since the
1960s,
witnessed their tradition lose substance and meaning
with the passing of eac h generation, and come to see bata as an endangered culture form. The
"Bata Fuji" generation, whose members are in their twenties and
thirties,
came of age during
two military dictatorships in which Nigeria's political economy plummeted into turmoil.
They have traveled minimally with their fathers, inherited the bata tradition and networks,
invented bata and pop music fusions in order to keep their tradition relevant, and relate to
bata as an evolving popular culture form.
While the late
1990s was
economically challenging for most Nigerians (see
Guyer,
Denzer,
and Agbaje
2002),
the Yoruba Bata generation sought refuge in overseas networks they had
built around the celebration and perpetuation of Yoruba
bata:
they continued to successfully
recast themselves as traditional performers in a global market. Meanwhile, the Bata Fuji
generation invented a new performance genre through which they revitalized their profession
as purveyors of traditional culture during times of economic stress and cultural globalization.
The market for bata performance has slowly changed throughout the past fifty
years,
largely
due to cultural, religious, and economic factors. These factors include the social pressure to
identify with Islam or Christianity, which has resulted in the dwindling support for bata
since bata
is
still associated with
brisa,2
the pantheon of Yorub a spirits/gods/goddesses, even
though bata is also a secular entertainment tradition. In addition, increasing migration from
the countryside to urban centers has meant that ceremonies mostly occur on weekends when
families and friends have time to travel back to their country homes to celebrate funerals,
marriages, or naming ceremonies, thus confining the artists'venues to weekends. It
is
within
this changing political, economic, and cultural context that both generations of bata artists
are reinventing their roles as traditional performers.
As an anthropologist trained in the United States during the
1990s,
my primary method-
ologies include language
study,
long-term participant-observation, semi-structured interviews,
conversations, and life
histories.
Building on feminist (see Abu-Lughod
1993;
Behar and Gor-
don
1995;
Mohanty,
Russo,
andToress i99o;Tsing
1993;
Visweswaran
1994)
and contemporary
anthropological theory (see Clifford 1988,1997; Rosaldo
1989;
Tsing 2005), I incorporate my
subject position into my descriptions to clarify
my
epistemology. Throug h analyses of interviews
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with bata artists,
a
bata fuji performance,
and a
traditional masquerade skit, this paper illus-
trates
(i)
tensions between the Yoruba Bata
and
Bata Fuji generations; (2) how the Bata Fuji
generation incorporates Yoruba popular music and their overseas sensibilities into their worldly
fusion;
and
(3) how the generations collaborate
to
produce social and political critique from
a
Yoruba perspective. While the Yoruba Bata generation identifies strongly with
a
precolonial,
pre-Islamic Yoruba culture, the Bata Fuji generation
has
crafted
an
identity that comfortably
fuses Yoruba,
Islamic,
and global
cultures.
I
will argue that the roots of traditional culture that
ground both generations unite these artists
in
their common goal of keeping Yoruba culture
alive
and
relevant
in
today's globalizing world.
Background: Ayan
and Qje
Performance
In training their children
in
the
art
and profession of bat a and/or dundiin drumming, Yoruba
drumming families celebrate
and
honor brisa
Ayanagalu.
Children born into an Ayan lineage
are thus given names beginning with
the
Ayan prefix, such as
Aydnkunle,
meaning "drum
spirit
fills
the house."Oje families, or
eleegunqje,
are
entertainment masqueraders—also known
as
agbegijo,
aldrinjo,
and
apiddn (Barber
1991,
337).
Children born into
an Oje
lineage
are
thus given names starting with
the
Oje prefix. Oje families work closely with Ayan families:
Oje dancers dance, praise sing,
and
perform acrobatic
and
masquerade
displays,
while Ayan
drummers provide
the
accompanying drum rhythms
and
texts.
I
refer
to the
Erin-Osun
Ayan
and Oje
group (with whom
I
performed
and
lived)
as the
"Ojetunde
group."
During
the duration
of
my fieldwork, Ojetunde
was the
group's senior-most masquerade dancer,
whose primary occupation was
to
sustain
and
travel with
his
alarinjo group.
Having spent days
on end for
several years with Ayan
and Oje
artists
in
Erin-Osun
and
on the
road,
I
came
to
experience
and
understand their version of bata drumming
and
masquerade dancing
as a
fusion of popular
and
traditional performance styles. Somewhere
in between bata
and
fuji
lay the
Ojetunde group's self-styled genre they called "Bata Fuji."
I call this fusion "pop tradition"—a worldly, innovative, gendered,
and
uniquely Yoruba
fu-
sion. The Ayan drummers
in
their teens
and
twenties have formed and performed with their
own fuji bands since
the
rise
of
fuji's popularity
in the
1980s.
Within Iyaloja's compound,
the name of Ayankunle's extended family home, the boys'dedication
to
fuji created tension
between
the
older
and
younger generations
of
drummers. The older drummers worried
that their boys were wasting their time playing music that was
not
rigorous
or
meaningful.
Additionally, Lamidi, head
of
the Bata generation,
in
particular, views fuji
as a
"Muslim"
versus
"Yoruba"
style
and
is thus quite critical of its popularity as
a
Yoruba
genre.
As Barber
and Waterman (1995, 258) illustrate, however, fuji—like orikf (praise singing)
and
bata—is
eclectic
and
incorporative
and
thus distinctly Yoruba;
it
emerged from
the
struggles (against
Muslim jihadists, Christian missionaries,
and
each other)
of
the nineteenth century. With
roots in Yoruba praise singing
and
Muslim music (particularly vocal
style),
fuji emerged
out
of
the
pivotal turbulence
of
the nineteenth century, which necessitated
for the
first time
formation of
a
Yoruba "ethnic" consciousnes s
or
pan-Yoruba identity. Barber and Waterman
thus argue that fuji music's evocation of a
"Yoruba"
identity is quite distinct from oriki's
(or
bata's) evocations of various Yoruba subgroups such as "Ijesa" or "Egba" (Barber and Water-
man
1995,
259).
Through
my
analysis of a bata fuji performance,
I
build upon this argument
to show
how the
Bata Fuji generation embraces
the
ideologies of bata
and
fuji
at
once.
On
the
one
hand,
the
boys identify as Ayan performers from Erin-Osun, tracing their roots
to
Ayanagalu.
On the
other hand, they identify with
a
pan-Yoruba popular music genre with
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strong ties to Muslim
music.
The
fusion of these modes of identification with their sense of
global citizenship is pop tradition.
On the other hand, Lamidi Ayankunle has strategically reinvented
asa
ibile—traditional
culture. Through his collaborations with Europeans and Americans, Ayankunle began to
promote himself as "teacher ofYoruba traditional
culture,"
defining his version of asa against
the cultures of Islam and Christianity. It is no accident that Lamidi earned his nickname,
"Father of Foreign
Lands,"
in conjunction with his self-fashioned identity as a traditional-
ist. Willing to represent Africa, Ayankunle has strategically wielded his status as a tradi-
tionalist to play the postcolonial market. As pop traditionalists, the Bata Fuji generation
continues to build upon Ayankunle's momentum by figuring out ways to transform their
art and identities in the world. Pop tradition combines both a bata and fuji sense of
aye,
worldliness. Emerging from their alarinjo heritage, Ojetunde's group identified as indi-
vidual performers from Erin-Osun. Identifying as individuals who are part of
a
traveling
ancestral lineage is resonant with a bata tradition of
worldliness.
The fuji sense of worldli-
ness allows Erin-Osun artists to identify with and spread a larger movement based on a
pan-Yoruba identity. By calling themselves "Bata Fuji," the Ojetunde group becomes part
of the world as representatives of "The Yoruba." This pan-Yoruba identity—incorporating
Islam, Christianity, and Western cultures—exists in tension with Ayankunle's self-made
identity as master of traditional culture.
Even before the fuji craze hit Erin-Osun, the Yoruba popular theater movement of the
1940s and its various expatriate participants in Osogbo swiftly incorporated Erin-Osun
artists. This was a moment during which artists called upon and continued to fashion a pan-
Yoruba identity in resistance to the British
colonials.
"Popular"artists sought out Erin-Osun
bata players as representatives of traditional culture;
a
young Ayankunle was heavily scouted
for his talents. In his early years as a professional bata artist, Ayankunle began to identify
with a type of Yoruba tradition that countered a colonized identity. Ayankunle's family's
long-term relationships with Yoruba and international collaborators—who have looked to
them as representatives ofYoruba tradition—have altered and shaped Erin-Osun artists'
status within Nigeria and their identities as citizens of the world.
A Yoruba Bata Generational Perspective
The tension between fathers and their sons over what constitutes
a
worthwhile Yoruba per-
formance
was
rife throughout my
fieldwork.
It played itself out within everyday discourse and
artistic
practice.
Ayankunle's generation of drummers would often joke with each other about
the vapid lyrics of fuji
music.
Ayankunle's junior brother, Simiyu Ayan—a well-respected and
well-traveled bata drummer active throughout the 1980s in various Lagos-based fuji bands—
is quite concerned that fuji music could distract the Bata Fuji generation from becoming
well-versed in their bata drumming heritage. In one of our interviews, Ayan thoughtfully
situated fuji in the context ofYoruba music history, all the while comparing the popularity
of fuji to traditional bata:
It has no meaning to
me.
Fuji is not traditional
music.
It started from
sakara
music.
There
were some musicians in the past—we call them sakara musicians—like Yusuf Olatunji.
Yes,
that's where fuji music took its source from. But they changed its tempo into a fast
one.
Later, they introduced
gangan
drums into
it.
Then
they brought
jazz
drums into it
from
juju.
You
see ... the vocal style is from
sakara,
but they quickened the
tempo.
They
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even brought some slang
and jokes
into
it.
Then
they took the sound and invented differ-
ent
styles...
What I am saying in essence is that if we work at making bata popular and
respected, it will become like fuji. But if we don't work bata—if we depend on playing at
funeral ceremonies without invitations—bata won't compete with fuji.4
While Ayan may be critical of fuji as a meaningful genre, he recognizes its overall ac-
ceptance and popularity—especially
as
evidenced by the community support for fuji venues.
Preferring bata drumming and masquerade singing and dancing to the "nonsense" of fuji
lyrics and
posing,
Ayan dreams about changing the shape of traditional bata performance as
it has been passed down for
centuries.
Why not imagine a staged venue for bata performers
in which they were invited, compensated, and appreciated for their expertise and enter-
tainment? Ayan's generation of performer—some of whom have traveled and performed
overseas—has no more patience for the types of local gigs that require lots of (often unin-
vited) effort in exchange for little financial support. The co-existence of bata and fuji and the
cross-participation of young artists in both genres provide grounds for rich debates around
the meaning of tradition within local and global contexts. In order to keep bata culture
alive, members of the Bata Fuji generation fused traditional bata with the popular musical
genre of
fuji,
invoking their lineage-rooted skills as a means through which to participate in
a Yoruba-wide music movement. The
"pop"
part of
pop
tradition signifies this generation's
desires to identify with a pan-Yoruba culture, fueling a particular worldliness rooted in the
Ayan tradition as well as a modern Yoruba identity.5
While Ayankunle and Ayan are critical of their
sons'
inventions of
pop
tradition, almost
seeing this shift as a sell-out, they also admit that local performance venues are depressingly
different in the 1990s than in their apprenticeship days. Both Ayankunle and Ayan came of
age playing for frequent orisa ceremonies. And as these ceremonies became less frequent, the
nation-state made an effort to support the art and identities of traditional artists through the
sponsorship of
state,
regional,
and national culture competitions and festivals, such
as
NAFEST,
as
well as through the funding of cultural centers (see Klein
2007).
In Ayankunle's rendition of
the
past,
bata drummers were respectfully invited by town royalty and families for celebrations,
during which they
were
treated as guests.6 Nowadays, the Ojetunde group often shows up to
events without a personal invitation. Since radio advertisements have become the prevalent
mode of advertising local events, the dissemination of invitations to any event has become
relatively impersonal. Whenever Ayankunle questioned my decision to follow the Ojetunde
group from town to town without an explicit personal invitation, he would simply
ask:
"Who
will give
you
food?"
Frustrated
by
their dwindling
patronage,
loss
of their customary preeminent
position, and altogether lack of community respect for bata
artists,
Ayankunle himself refuses
to perform at just any event if it means buying his own food, paying for his own transport, and
returning home with little
gain.
Instead, Ayankunle chooses to survive by workin g
his
overseas
networks. Yet the Ojetunde group has no other option: they still eke out their existences by
going out and working the streets for a
living.
Despite his frustration, Ayankunle still encour-
ages his boys to train and practice by playing with the Ojetunde group.
Performing Pop Tradition
In this section I analyze a Bata Fuji song text excerpt from a local performance outing; the
story of Bata Fuji's identity frames the excerpt. Lead vocalist Saidi Ojetunde's song tells
the story of Ojetunde's group taking the world by
storm,
joining the popular genre of fuji
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music with its traditional bata roots, and, finally, merging the two performing art forms and
life styles into one—"Bata Fuji." Through the use of traditional iwi text, Ojetunde fills in
the frame with references to his own stamina as a traditional artist and to my dancing and
presence. In this performance moment, Ojetunde and I both form integral parts of Bata
Fuji. Ojetunde's narrative conjures dialogue between the broader "world" and the specifics
of "Bata Fuji,"between the nonhuman realm of
trees,
water, and goats and the human realm
of dance and
music.
Inherent in the praise narrative genre is the invocation and presence of
God,
Olorun,
and/or orisa. Spiritual forces and forces of nature are the initial addressees in
the opening section and thus remain present as objects of praise and subjects of inspiration
throughout the performance.
Ojetunde and his chorus improvised the iwi that appears below in order to introduce his
group, including me, to his father's friends:
Song: Katigori o, soun nile-aye Category, oh it's the world.
Katigori o, soun nile-ayee Category, oh it's the world
Araba ti tunra muu Araba tree get well-prepared
Odo n gbanene lo oo River is carrying away anene tree
A tun ti yi fuuji paada oo We've changed fuji back again
Si Bataa Fuuji o To Bataa Fuuji
Okun ree, oosa reee This is the sea, the ocean here
Eni ba le we He who can take a bath
O ya kan lumi Now go inside the water
Katigori
o,
bai katigori o Category, oh by category
Soun nile-ayeee, bai katigori oo It's of the world, by category
Soiin nile-ayeee It's of the world
Araba ti tunra muu Araba tree get well-prepared
Odo n gbarere lasoo River is carrying away anene tree
A tun ti yi fuuji paada o We've brought fuji back again
Sf Baata Fuuji o To Baata Fuuji
Okun
ree,
oosa reee This is the sea, this is the ocean
Eni ba le we He who can take a bath
O ya kan lumi Now go inside the water
Bolorun 6 ba ritaya mi o If God does not retire me
Debi, mi o ni ritaya aara mii Debbie, I will not retire myself
Emi lAmao Oololadee I am Amao Oasloladee7
As singer and speaker of the above text, Ojetunde
was
backed up by the Ayan drumming
ensemble and two dancers, me and Wasiu. The excerpt above was part of Ojetunde's
self-
introduction section, in which he poetically situated himself and his group in the nonhuman
and human world. Easily broken down into four distinct sections, following Davis (1976),
traditional iwi Egungun always begins with
iba,
a section in which the singer addresses and
honors her/his ancestors and the nonhuman spirit world for making her/his life and song
possible. The second section is a self-introduction, in which the artist introduces her/himself
to the audience by singing her/his own praise names, accomplishments, and other relevant
material about
her/himself.
The third section is the body of the song/chant addressing the
audience. This section includes a combination of the following: personal oriki
{oriki
orile);
prayers and incantations;
proverbs,
jokes,
or anecdotes; and comments on local or overseas
culture.
The final section is a series of songs that refers back to the content of the previous
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sections (Davis 1976,192).The above text served to tell the audience about the groups unique
style and contributions to the world, all the while preparing the audience to receive praises
and offer appropriate gifts of
naira.
The emergent theme is that Ojetunde and his family have been blessed to have made
their mark on the world as performers of Bata Fuji—a unique blend of the traditional and
the popular that I call "pop tradition." The pop tradition of Bata Fuji is thus a fusion of "it's
always been this way" tradition and a pan-Yoruba popularity, beginning and ending with Oje
tunde's ancestors and his
group.
As I elaborate the meaning of Ojetundes
iwi,
I will outline
three emergent analytical points characterizing pop tradition:
(1)
worldliness; (2) innovation
within local and regional settings; and (3) the use of traditional song structures and dances
to tell new stories.
Beginning his introduction with the phrase, "Category, oh it's the world," Ojetunde
literally situates himself and the Ojetunde group within the world—extending beyond Erin-
Osun to include places overseas
as
well as the seas themselves. Aye, or "world,"in the Yoruba
sense also evokes the idea of having a
"chance"
in the world to fulfill your life's
destiny.
The
first, yet rather out-of-place, word in the whole text, katigori, represents Ojetunde's at-
tempt to play with the English "category" by incorporating it into traditionally structured
Yoruba
verse.
The
sound
oi the word "category"
is
meant to point to Ojetunde's knowledge
of and ease with the English language.8 From the opening of his introduction, Ojetunde
marks himself and his group as "worldly"—in the three senses mentioned above: (1) having
participated and performed in various geographical settings, from Erin-Osun to overseas;
(2) fulfilling their destiny to inhabit the "house of the world"
{ile-aye)
in the form of Bata
Fuji; and (3) being versed in English as well as traditional Yoruba, combining both in the
framing phrase. Additionally , the invention of the style "Bata Fuji" invokes the Erin-Osun
artists' association and identification with fuji music—a music genre that emerged out of
the nineteenth-century history of cultural mixing and eventual creation of a pan-Yoruba
identity.
The Ojetunde group's worldliness is thus linked with a popular Yoruba identity.
In their discussions of Yoruba traditional performance, Waterma n
(1990a),
Barber (1991),
Barber and Waterman (1995), Drewel (1992), and Apter (1992) have argued effectively for
the malleability, adaptability, and flexibility built into Yoruba tradition. Following the iwi
tradition, Ojetunde weaves the story of Bata Fuji into generations-old song structure and
verse.
Understanding that Yoruba oral traditions require innovation to maintain their social
relevance, I investigate what is unique about Bata Fuji as a particular innovation within
alarinjo performance. What makes the Ojetunde group's rendition of bata a popular tradi-
tion as opposed to a thriving "traditional" tradition?
As in my discussion above of Yoruba popular
music,
I draw
my usage
of the term "popular"
from the post-nineteenth-century emergence of
a
pan-Yoruba identity. Whereas bata was
rooted in specific Yoruba ancestral lineages, fuji emerged out of
a
nineteenth-century his-
tory of Islamic colonization during which Yoruba and Islamic musical styles
merged.
Thus,
fuji is popular because it cuts across distinct Yoruba subgroups. Different groups of Yoruba
people could collectively identify with a common musical genre. By combining bata with
fuji,
the Ojetunde group chooses to identify as "Yoruba"—bringing bata into the realm of
the popular.
The Ojetunde group's "tradition"is the alarinjo tradition. Ayan and Oje lineage members
have performed as traveling theater groups to entertain diverse audiences for at least two hun-
dred
years.
My ongoing genealogy—gathered through extensive life history interviews with
over twenty members of Iyaloja's compound—traces the art and occupation of alarinjo back
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to the 1790s, just before the Fulani swept through southern Nigeria and forced the migration
of countless Yoruba people to previously unsettled southern regions, including Erin-Osun.
Oral historical sources (see Obayemi 1976; Euba 1990) date the origins of bata drumming
back to the fifteenth century, when Sango, probably the fourth king of Oyo(Atanda 1980)
hanged himself and
was
subsequently deified. Sango's favorite drum ensemble, bata,
is
storied
to have been institutionalized as
a
lineage-based tradition from the near beginning of Yoruba
civilization.9 In contrast to the emergence of the recent (1920S-1940S) syncretic musics of
juju and fuji, the emergence of bata is indefinitely traced back to the beginning of Yoruba
historical time.
The Ojetunde group uses traditional songs and dances to tell new stories about the per-
sistence of the alarinjo performance tradition in the nonhuman and human world of the late
1990s. Originating within the context of
a
Yoruba cosmological framework, iwi text evokes
structures of the cosmos in order to best situate Bata Fuji. In the threefold structure of the
cosmos,
ile-aye
is the middle domain in which humans live.10 While Ojetunde begins his
introduction by professing that "it's the world" in which his group exists, he also invokes
the other two domains of the cosmos: the earth below the world, which usually includes
nonhuman forces such as forest spirits; and the sky, including the spirits of the ocean and
the sea. Praise songs remind the participants that they are part of a larger universe that
extends above and below the
world.
This
is an old story that most audience members know
and believe to some extent, even if they have committed to forgetting Yoruba cosmology in
light of their faith in Islamic and Christian cosmologies. Ojetunde thus weaves the story of
Bata Fuji into this taken-for-granted story of the cosmos.
Bata and fuji are related traditions grounded in a shared cosmological order that empha-
sizes interconnections among the house of the
sky,
house of the world, and earth. Performing
reverence for the
sky,
world, and earth, Ojetunde prays for the continuation of bata in the
form of Bata Fuji. Ojetunde's prayer
is
also
a
praise song for his
ancestors,
especially
his
father
who trained him. In Erin-Osun of the 1990s, singing and chanting iwi was a transgressive
art because it presents Yoruba traditional thought and practice as alternatives to dominant
Christian, Muslim, and capitalist thought and
practice.
By moving bata into the pop culture
arena,
young Oje and Ayan artists update and refashion their inherited tradition's relevance
in the world. My membership in the Ojetunde group was striking evidence of Bata Fuji's
sustained stint on the pop charts. As a pop tradition, Bata Fuji becomes a political project
that redefines ways of being Yoruba in the world during the 1990s.
Oytnbo Skit: Yoruba Bata and Bata Fuji Collaborations
This section features an analysis of a classical Yoruba bata masquerade skit in which two
masqueraders, through their dance, tell a humorous and entertaining story about white
people while wearing masks and costumes. Bata ensembles have been performing versions
of this skit since they first encountered white people as missionaries in the early 1800s. In
this particular performance, members of both the Yoruba Bata and Bata Fuji generations
collaborate to perform for
a
diverse audience of national and international tourists and festival
celebrants.
In this context, the Ojetunde group changed performance modes from their pop
traditional to traditional repertoire. Events such as these remind both generations that Yoruba
bata classics continue to translate across generation and culture, offering entertainment and
social critique from a Yoruba perspective. Adding a theatrical element to the music, sing-
ing, and dancing of Bata Fuji, Yoruba Bata masquerade performances allow the artists the
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freedom to express themselves as masked characters. Since the masks personify archetypal
characters from Yoruba and Nigerian history and culture—the colonial, the drunk, the goat,
the prostitute, the Fulani herder, the wife, the mother, etc.—the Bata Fuji generation has
begun to tell new stories, with new spins, through these archetypal masks.
Though performances like the
byinbo11
couple skit—in which Yoruba performers portray
European colonials with some sort of mocking or critical intent—have been the subject of
scholarly treatment (see Drewal 1992; Clifford
1988;
Taussig 1993), it is useful to interpret
the Ojetiinde group's version of the skit within the context in which it was performed in
August of
1995.
Both Yoruba Bata and Bata Fuji artists were invited to perform a series
of masquerade skits for three hours, from late afternoon to early evening, at the Cultural
Heritage hotel during the renowned Osun Osogbo festival. An inspirited performance that
provoked a continuous stream of audience response, the skit portrayed the body habits of
a
typical white man and woman. The scene quickly revealed the man's attraction for the woman
and then developed into a dance in which the characters expressed and negotiated their
mutual attraction. Upon review, one of the only moments of audience-performer contact
was a momentary flash: when the only real white man in the audience snapped a flash photo
of the masked white man and then shook and kissed his gloved hand. I look to Taussig's
(1993) discussion of mimesis and alterity to examine the story of the copied white man and
woman. Interpreting the dancers' movements and dramatizations, I analyze this skit with
respect to the production of
race,
gender, and sexuality throughout the staged portrayal of
white desire (Young
1995;
Martin Shaw
1995;
Ebron 2002,1997).
Building on Drewal's description of the oyinbo couple skit as "a parody of the European
propensity to display affections publicly"
(1992,4),
I interpret the portrayal as a multi layered
commentary on the habitus of oyinbo-ness and Yoruba-ness. While the skit asks its audi-
ence to ponder the kinds of embodied structures white people reproduce below the level of
discourse (Bourdieu
1990),
it implies a comparison with
a
Yoruba norm. In this
skit,
the white
couple represents the antithesis of the Yoruba aesthetic of iwa
l'eiua,n
beautiful character
emanating from the inside out. The white couples' overt displays of attraction and sloppy
swaggers are particularly notable in contrast to the Yoruba aesthetic of iwa 1 ewa. During
British colonialism, this skit provided
a
ritualized context through which Yoruba people could
mock and mimic British bodily aesthetics. By suggesting that white people did not possess
iwa
l'ewa,
the performers maintained their sense of cultural pride and created a context for
resistance. During the neocolonial 1990s in Nigeria, whiteness continued to represent op-
pression, appropriation, and imperialism; however, Erin-Osun artists' collaborations with
white artists, scholars, and fans since the 1960s had introduced them to white people who
were fighting for equality, decolonization, and freedom for all people. During the 1990s
in Osun state, I would say that Yoruba people were ambivalent about oyinbo people and
culture. Performing the oyinbo couple skit became a means through which Yoruba artists
could express their critical interpretations of white people's bodies, habits, and sexualities.
As Drewal (1992) and countless Yoruba performers have already taught, Yoruba
elegun
ojen
performances provide
rich,
multivalenced instances in which histories are constantly revisited
and revised in hyper-sensorial modes, including improvisation, parody, and play. Though
elegun oje performances are hardly everyday events in Nigeria, they provide reflexive contexts
during which performers and audiences alike negotiate and critique everyday discourses and
practices. The ensuing analysis examines Yoruba performances of
race,
gender, and sexuality
within the landscape of neocolonial relationships forged between Yoruba artists and their
white friends, fans, sponsors, and researchers. Bhabha's discussion of the ambivalences pro-
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duced in between stereotypes of white and Yoruba subjects combined with an analysis of
power open up more contextualized readings of the white couple skit.14
The finale of the dyinbo couple skit elucidates the power of
its
mimicry by opening up
and closing spaces of
ambivalence.
While the white couple's displays of affection and sexual
desire are
excessive,
they also elicit genuine audience approval. Despite some initial doubt, the
white woman seems quite content with her newly formed romantic alliance with the proud
white man. The differences between the white man and his Yoruba counterpart beneath the
mask are ambivalent. On the one hand, Yoruba men and women engage in negotiations of
desire similar to those of the masked white couple. On the other hand, the excess and public
spectacle of the sexual alliance
are
Yoruba interpretations of white practices. While a critique
of white gender and sexuality
is
clear,
the mimicry opens a space for self-reflection. The skit
allows for a critique of Yoruba as well as white masculinity: the man always assumes center
stage,
gets all the laughs, and comfortably inhabits the body of the ambitious seducer. In the
end, the portrayal of the white woman is ambivalent. After performing her coy, suspicious ,
and seducible
self,
the woman takes charge: she shakes the man's hand, which is a more
business-like gesture than the kiss, perhaps signifying the equality of their union. I read
the ambivalence as both a critique of oyinbo women's looseness and a celebration of their
strength. The portrayal thus opens a reflection on the complexity and variability of Yoruba
and white women's gender and sexuality. The oyinbo couple skit parodies the mimesis and
alterity of white and Yoruba performances of
race,
gender,
and sexuality. The Ojetunde's bod-
ies,
beneath the masks, play the extremes and in-betweens of whiteness and Yorubaness.
Those Who Don't Dance Our Ancestors' Dance Will Not Dance Bata Fuji
While Simiyu Ayan and Lamidi Ayankunle do not easily recognize themselves in the new
clothes of Bata Fuji, their children have successfully invented an Islamic-Yoruba world
music fusion. Although the Yoruba Bata generation has been frustrated by what it sees as
the frivolity of
fuji,
a close look at Bata Fuji song texts proves that the Bata Fuji generation
has preserved the structure and other-worldly content of bata praise poetry. The Bata Fuji
generation embeds the teachings of its ancestors in its own story: it derives its strength from
Olorun and/or the orisa, reveres the forces of
nature,
identifies with fast-paced and playful
fuji music, collaborates with foreigners, and is placing its tradition on the world map.
With consciousness, the Bata Fuji generation has taken its inherited tradition to the next
level. As Ojetiinde sang, "He who doesn't dance Atanda's dance will not dance Bata Fuji."
In other words, a rootedness in the ancestral tradition is necessary for participation in Bata
Fuji's pop tradition.The Bata Fuji generation did not experience Islamic or British coloniza-
tion firsthand and has grown up in an age of globalization; its artistic fusion represents its
eclectic identity as a generation of Yoruba-rooted global citizens.
For the Yoruba Bata generation, however, bata represents the cultural authenticity and
power of an ancestral tradition that preceded the advent of Islam and colonialism. When
both generations performed for a mixed audience of
locals,
foreign tourists, and visiting
festival celebrants, both generations choreographed a three-hour performance featuring a
repertoire of traditional masquerade skits and bata rhythms. A close interpretation of the
white couple skit performance illustrates the capacity of masquerade performers to tell
stories to and improvise with diverse audiences. Collaborative performances thus become
vital training grounds upon which the Yoruba Bata generation passes the torch to their
children who are generating new stories through praise poetry, bata rhythms, and ancestral
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masks. Despite the waning popularity of bata in the local market during the 1990s, both
generations—in conflict and collaboration—reinvigorated their shared tradition by honing
the tools of their trade: negotiating and critiquing the changing world through traditional
mechanisms of innovation and reflexivity.
Notes
1.1 met and lived with the Ayankunle family for three months in
1990
while I was an exchange student
at the University of Ibadan. I conducted my dissertation fieldwork in Erin-Osun from 1996 to 1998.1
also conducted research for two two-month periods in 1995 and
2005.
This
article relies on interviews
I conducted with Lamidi Ayankunle on August
18,1995;
October
1996;
January
2,1997;
February
1997;
and June 6,
2005;
as well as an interview with Simiyu Ayan on November 27,1997.
2.
On the other hand, plenty of Muslim and Christian celebrants welcome the drummers and danc-
ers because they are proud of the talents and skills of the artists who are conversant with historical and
cultural
texts,
dances,
and
music.
More and
more,
the fact that these artists have also performed overseas
heightens their marketability within local ceremonies.
3.
Oriki
are praise songs that name and historicize particular
people,
lineages,
or
towns.
For
a
thorough
and detailed treatment of
the
history, meaning, and performance of Yoruba oriki, see Barber (1991).
4.
Interview with Simiyu Ayan, November 27,1997.
5.
This
paper builds on Waterman's insights in his article, "Our Tradition Is a Very Modern Tradi-
tion: Popular Music and the Construction of Pan-Yoruba Identity" (1990b). Waterman argues that
Yoruba artists are fully aware that their traditions change with the times and that they self-consciously
incorporate these traditions into popular music genres that cut across town and ethnic divides.
6. "Invitation"—an incredibly meaning-laden concept for both Ayankunle and Ayan—is the social
practice of creating a guest. Hosting guests is a very scripted and valued Yoruba practice. In the days
before the British, the story goes, talking drummers and their masquerade troupes were indeed itiner-
ant, always on the move, yet they were respected as guests rather than beggars: endless quantities of
well-prepared food, alcohol, water, and lodging were the minimum offerings in exchange for skillful
and inspirited performance.
7.
Text by Saidi Ojetunde, May
1997;
transcription by Rasheed Ayandele.
8.
The
Ojetunde group's sporadic use of English is effective in this context because their
audience,
for
the most part, does not speak English. So any non-Yoruba word is an exotic signifier of their worldli-
ness.
While the Ojetunde performers do not speak English, they have been around it enough to have
picked up certain words and phrases.
9.
The fifteenth-century reign of Sango marks the earliest documented use of bata drum ensembles
in royal contexts (Euba 1990).
10.
Based upon oral history,
songs,
and other symbolic
language,
Morton-Williams (1972) delineated
a model to help explain Yoruba cosmology and cult organization. His model divides the cosmos into
three parts:
He'
orun
(house of the sky),
He aye
(house of
the
world), and
He
(earth). In ile orun,
Olorun
(owner of the sky) or
Olodiimare is
the one who guides the
drisa,
the numerous gods and goddesses who
dwell in that
domain.
Am
orun
(sky people) also exist in the sky as the spirit doubles of
the
living and
the souls awaiting rebirth. He aye is the domain of
humans,
where good relations must be maintained
with those of the sky and earth
realms.
He
is the domain of
Onile
(earth
owner),
who receives the souls
of the dead who become earth-dwelling spirits. Ancestors and other dead people pass through the
earth on their way to the sky, where they are reincarnated. Forest and tree spirits also live in Onile's
domain.
11.
Literally meaning "peeled back
honey,"
oyinbo is
the term used by Yoruba speakers to mark foreign-
ers.
While dyinbo literally refers to skin color, it is inextricable from nationality: for example, all U.S.
citizens—white, African American, Asian American, Latin American, etc.—are considered
oyinbo.
In
its most generalized meaning, oyinbo comes to stand for a privileged status.
12.
Iwa
I'ewa
means "character
is
beauty"
and can
be
translated to mean "presence
is
beauty"
or
"beauti-
ful character." A valued and recognizable Yoruba aesthetic, iwa I'ewa is an outwardly expressed internal
quality that Ajayi terms
"stance"
(Ajayi 1998).
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13.
Elegiin qjeare
ancestral masquerades for entertainment,
also
known
as
agbegijo,
aldrinjo,
and
apiddn.
The dyinbo couple skit is one example of
a
vast repertoire of
elegiin qje
skits.
14.
Bhabha's (1994) approach to "performativity" asks how subjects negotiate spaces between stereo-
types of Self and Other. When people perform their identities, they inhabit interstitial spaces between
the fixity of a stereotyped Self and its implied Other.
Thus,
performed narratives interrupt the time and
space logics of
"pedagogical"
(chronological,
official) narratives and indicate the multiplicity of identities
within a given situation or discourse. Yoruba performativity and play resonate loudly with Bhabha's
notion of making cultural meaning in
between
stereotypes. I attempt to read the oyinbo couple skit
between the stereotypes.
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© 2007, Debra L. Klein
DEBRA L. KLEIN is an professor of anthropology at Gavilan College in California. Her ethnography,
Yoriibd Batd Goes
Global,
is based on two years of fieldwork in Nigeria
as
well as ongoing collaborations
with the artists. Klein is working on a bata video documentary and an ethnography of human rights
debates.
136 2007 CORD PROCEEDINGS • KLEIN
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