Of English Language, Nigerian English, and Nigerianisms

(By Farooq Kperogi) – Divided by a Common Language: Comparing Nigerian, American and British English

It is important to stress that Nigerian English is not bad or substandard English. It is a legitimate national variety that has evolved, over several decades, out of our unique experiences as a post-colonial, polyglot nation.

However hard we might try, we can't help writing and speaking English in ways that reflect our socio-linguistic singularities. Even our own Wole Soyinka who thinks he speaks and writes better English than the Queen of England habitually betrays "Nigerianisms" in his writings. Or at least that's what the native speakers of the language think. For instance, when he was admitted into the Royal Society of Arts, the citation on his award read something like: "Mr. Soyinka is a prolific writer in the vernacular English of his own country."

I learned that Soyinka's pride was badly hurt when he read the citation. But it needn't be. It was Chinua Achebe who once said, in defense of his creative semantic and lexical contortions of the English language to express uniquely Nigerian thoughts that have no equivalents in English, that any language that has the cheek to leave its primordial shores and encroach on the territory of other people should learn to come to terms with the inevitable reality that it would be domesticated. …

Of "Gay Jesus" and Offended Christians

(By Abimbola Adelakun) – On ‘gay Jesus’ and offended Christians 

So far this week, more than two million Christians worldwide have signed a petition demanding streaming services provider, Netflix, to pull a comedy special that portrays Jesus Christ as gay. The film, “The First Temptation of Christ,” was created by a Brazilian comedy group called Porta dos Fundos and it is as goofy as it can be. At the Nigerian end, the Pastor of Omega Fire Ministries, Apostle Johnson Suleman, also started a campaign urging Christians to “cancel” Netflix.

Whether they can build up enough momentum for Netflix to yield to their demands remains to be seen. Capitalist behemoths like Netflix are not moved by morality or liberal arguments of mutual tolerance. They only respond to what threatens the balance of their company’s balance sheets. The recent case of Hallmark films and their flip flop over two lesbians kissing in an ad demonstrates this to a hilt. In this case, Netflix might just point at the gazillion Christian shows on their stables as proof of their all-round neutrality. And they will be sincere if they say they are not for or against any side. Those that imagine we are witnessing an ideological battle between conservative and liberal values, and that Christianity is being offered up in this contest simply do not have the full picture. There is only one god we are all called to serve these days, and its name is capitalism. Or, dollars for short.

Kpali: Eloquent Commentary on Millennial Angst

(By Toni Kan) - Kpali Is An Eloquent Commentary On Millennial Angst

Forget the story.

Forget the acting.

Forget the hype.

Go see Kpali the movie for the aerial shots that make Lagos look nothing like the chaotic urban conurbation we all love to hate.

Ladi Johnson and his DoP get full marks for producing a crisp, visually stunning film.

But movies are much more than cinematography and visual clarity. Movies have to be visceral and relatable and realistic in a way that approaches verisimilitude.

Kpali ticks all those boxes as a movie revolving around a 20 something year old Amaka Kalayo whose sedate London life is set on a roller coaster when her bosses inform her that she has 30 days to close a big deal or lose not just her job but her Kpali; her visa, work permit and right to live and work in the UK.

Thrust into this career maelstrom, Amaka departs for Nigeria with her oyibo male colleague in tow. They arrive Lagos and for some curious reason head together to Amaka’s family home and thus ensues the comedy of errors that is almost always at the heart of a true rom-com.

The Kings: From Africa to the World

L-R: Kamaru Usman (UFC Welterweight Champion), Anthony Joshua (unified WBA, IBF, WBO, IBO Heavyweight Champion), Israel Adesanya (UFC Middleweight Champion)

The Queens: From Africa to the World

Of Africa, Colonialism, and a Granny's Memory

"How I mumbled adoring, reverent prayers to my grandmother in those early days of my market gardening. My grandmother, who had been an inexorable cultivator of land, sower of seeds and reaper of rich harvests until, literally until, her very last moment. When I was too small to be anything more than a hindrance in the family fields, I used to spend many productive hours working with my grandmother on the plot of land she called her garden. We hoed side by side strips of land defined by the row of maize plants each carried, I obstinately insisting I could keep pace with her, she weeding three strips to my one so that I could. Praising my predisposition towards working, she consolidated it in me as a desirable habit.
          She gave me history lessons as well. History that could not be found in the textbooks; a stint in the field and a rest, the beginning of the story, a pause. 'What happened after, Mbuya, what happened?' 'More work, my child, before you hear more story.' Slowly, methodically, throughout the day the field would be cultivated, the episodes of my grandmother's own portion of history strung together from beginning to end.
          'Your family did not always live here, did not move to this place until after the time that I was married to your grandfather. We lived up in Chipinge, where the soil is ripe and your great-grandfather was a rich man in the currency of those days, having many fat heard of cattle, large fields and four wives who worked hard to produce bountiful harvests. All this he could exchange for cloth and beads and axes and a gun, even a gun, from the traders. They did not come to stay in those days; they passed through and left. Your great-grandfather had sons enough to fill a kraal, as big, strong, hardworking men. And me, I was beautiful in those days,'

1980s Nigeria: The More Things Change...

"Nigeria: A squandering of Riches," a World About Us Documentary by Onyeka Onwenu

Of Nollywood and Endless Women Sacrificial Victims

(By BellaNaija Features) - Hey Nollywood, Why Do Women Have to Be the Victims When It’s Time for Sacrifice & Ritual Killings?

From the fear of Ayamatanga to witchcraft, Nollywood movies have impacted us in many ways we cannot explain. Thanks to Nollywood, the fear of ‘old women’ is the beginning of wisdom for some youngies. Many people thought most elderly women were witches who flew at night, sometimes missed their timing and got stuck as birds. Sometimes, they would have started turning back into humans before getting stuck as half-human and half-bird.

Many of these witches would be found in villages (because witches never exist in the cities). In fact, these witches will be so nice and close to you. It won’t be a lie to say that the term ‘village people’ originated from Nollywood movies. There was a widespread fear that once you are an Americanah who just landed in the village, your legs will swell, your eyes will go blind or at worse, you will run mad until ‘village people’ decide to set you free. If they want to do you patapata, na die be that.

It is also in Nollywood that we have seen ghosts in white robes, looking left and right before crossing the road or an actor using a phone in a flashback of 20 years. Honestly, Nollywood has done a number on us, but we move sha. We move!

Of Nigerian Christians and Resilient Witches

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - In Defense of Witches 

Witches have lost again. In prayer houses, Nollywood and, finally, on campus, they always lose to Christian Talibanism. But be sure they will be back. The war on witches never ends, nor do those urchins stay vanquished long on the ground. The University of Nigeria has said the “witch conference” should choose another venue—and that is an unfair phrase, witch conference, as headlines call it. Witches have always had bad reportage, yet they rise. 

Never mind having a Supreme Father, never mind all the assurances of safety in the Bible by that Father, the Nigerian Christian is the most afraid creature on earth. Sleepless in his fear of something he declares has no power, suspicious of every noise within range. “Killing”, casting and binding in a tautology of chants against an agency whose apparent immortality never compels a rethink. 

What if there are no witches? Maybe witches, alongside the devil in that binary of good and evil, were invented to keep spirituality perpetually on course? Or perhaps they exist, but not in the touted sense.

Of Oro, Yoruba Religions, and "Live and Let Live"

(By Pius Adesanmi) - Live And Let Live

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.

Kenneth Okonkwo, Andy Okeke, Living in Bondage, and the Sequel

Accelerate TV: The Whole Truth

Celebrating Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

CxPStudio

Of Nollywood, Actors, and Paucity of Acting

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Every man has his own vanity. … If I were to choose between the story and the prose of a good book, I’d choose the latter—the juice. With movies, I’d choose the acting over the story. Good acting is when you cannot tell the actor apart from the character; when acting is so real as if a secret camera were hidden to catch regular people leading their normal lives—like when you watch “24” and wonder if those guys were actors, or real CTU agents doing their thing and getting filmed.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind—a memoir, now a film. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Trywell Kamkwamba, the Malawian father whose teenage son, William Kamkwamba, exploited the wind and generated electricity, solving drought and famine. A father who, though initially, even fiercely reluctant, finally gave his only bicycle to be cannibalized for a schoolboy’s dream.

             Ejiofor is a poor farmer and there’s no single doubt about it: his energy, looks, emotions. So dissolved into his character is he that, at first, I fail to recognize him. His home, the village, the people—nothing seems like it’s a movie. His wife, Agnes—played by the popular Senegalese actress, Aïssa Maïga—looks, in every detail, the image you know about that kind of woman in your village.

Of Lionheart, Oscars Disqualification, and National Identity Crisis

(By Daniel Chukwuemeka) – The disqualification of Genevieve Nnaji's Lion Heart from Oscar's Best International Film Award category is a very controversial topic. It'll certainly attract the usual discourse about colonialism and debate around nationalism and identity. In all, however, I think that Americans are indirectly telling us, "go home, Nigerians, and resolve your identity crisis. Go home and think, and act."

English is our official language, but if you watched Lion Heart, did you see the part where Pete Edochie is fuming before his prospective Hausa in-law? The Hausa man mutters some words in Hausa without knowing that Pete Edochie understands the language. Pete joins him in Hausa and speaks it away at the amazement and excitement of the Hausa man. That alone seals both their business and family connections.

             I said it in a post yesterday. We had work to do, but failed to do it. Noah Webster jnr. woke up one morning and said that God came to him in a dream and ordered him to write a dictionary of American English.

Of Harriet, Black Women, and Sexism

(By Kellie Carter-Jackson) – So I feel compelled to say a few things about these “Harriet” naysayers...many of whom have not seen the film. First, there was the controversy about Cynthia Erivo. She's black y'all! They didn't ask Scarlet Johansen to play her! Second, her comments about black Americans...c’mon. Don't act y'all don't hear the same ish from black Americans… ever have a meaningful conversation with a black conservative? Same thing. Third, this whole thing about a black slave catcher being the villain... Yes, historically, there were black slave catchers. They were used to win fugitives trust and then betray them for coin. There will ALWAYS be hired hands and mercenaries. Period. Fourth, clearly the greatest villain is slavery. Harriet was combating SLAVERY!!! Perhaps, the film assumes you know this. 

          If you're first impulse in a film about Harriet is to complain about how black men are portrayed, that's a problem. It’s like black women can’t shine without making sure that first no harm was caused to a black man. Folks, complained the black bounty hunter was too violent…really?? MORE VIOLENT than slavery????

Faux Historians and Nigeria's Need for Humanities

Adelakun

(By Abimbola Adelakun) - Fani-Kayode And His History Teachers 

If by now, faux historian and professional agitator, Femi Fani-Kayode, has not responded to the rejoinders of Professors Banji Akintoye and Farooq Kperogi on his Yoruba identity flippancy, we can conclude he has nothing further to say and move on to drawing some lessons from the brouhaha of “Yoruba” and its etymology. In some ways, Fani-Kayode’s attention-seeking ways represent the flawed ethics of the present milieu. We live in a post-truth world; the traditional structures that regulated popular inanities have broken down and given way to the reign of alternative facts.

There are two lessons that I took away from the Yoruba/Yariba episode. First is the role that the media played in helping Fani-Kayode brew his pot of mischief. There was no other apparent motive about his claim that the Fulani bequeathed the Yoruba their name other than troublemaking, and it fits into a larger pattern of his anti-Fulani sentiments. He did not cite any source for his discovery, and the way the more astute scholars dislodged his argument shows that there was no rigour invested in his ideas before he hit the streets. He just wanted to arouse the ethnic chauvinists permanently resident on social media as he is wont to do. Judging by how tribal irredentists crawled out of the woodwork to feast on his historical dabble, he pretty much succeeded.

Of Grandmothers, Culinary Magic, and Nostalgia

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) – Grandmother hated maggi, no, “mmagi”, her term for all English condiments, which she said were invented to rig the cooking process. Yet she had her own cooking secrets: ogbamkpo and nwaurubiri, two types of dry fish without which she made no soup. Only the bones were laid to waste. The heads and skin, she would pound; and send the grain into the boiling pot to literally fish out incredible taste. 

The main fish, now rid of all bottlenecks, then plunges into the soup, filling it with true blessing. No meat or fresh fish approximates to the supremacy of nwaurubiri, Grandmother’s wise culinary vote. 

I once searched in Lagos for the pair—nwaurubiri and ogbamkpo—in my bid to restore the dignity of oha. Only twice did I find them. Ruined by urban touch, the Lagos ogbamkpo tastes like the bark of a tree. I eat the authentic one only when I visit the village. 

          Two more items sometimes helped work Grandmother’s culinary magic: otukwuru and onyenenkete, in my view the tastiest mushrooms on earth. I do not know the English names of these species, nor do I particularly care. 

Of Women, Change, and the Industrial Revolution

"The domestic function of the preindustrial woman had not needed ideological justification; it was implicit in the biological and political economy of her world. Someone had to keep the spinning wheel turning and the open-hearth fire constantly tended, and the nursing mother who could not leave her infant was the obvious candidate. In the domesticity of the preindustrial woman there was no sharp disjunction between ideology and practice. But the Revolution was a watershed. It created a public ideology of individual responsibility and virtue just before the industrial machinery began to free middle-class women from some of their unremitting toil and to propel lower-class women more fully into the public economy. The terms of domesticity were changed, and the pundits would not bring back the past."

Linda Kerber, 1980, 231

Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America

Adichie: Race, Identity, and Feminism

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Identity, Feminism and Honest Conversations

The Economist

Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

(By Will McBain) – Canal+ and Netflix Eye Nollywood Opportunities

Increased foreign investment in the wake of the purchase of a Nollywood studio by Canal+ could be a game-changer for Nigeria’s already thriving film industry. Will McBain looks at the prospects for a sector targeted to make $1bn in export revenue by 2020.

Nollywood has begun the biggest financial makeover in its history with this summer’s acquisition of Lagos-based production house ROK film studios by French media giant Canal+.

The studio was bought from Africa’s largest subscription-based video-on-demand company IROKOtv, whose founder Jason Njoku called the sale the “largest media deal in West African history”. Actress and producer Mary Njoku – Jason Njoku’s wife – founded ROK studios and will stay on as director general under the Canal+ acquisition.

Chris Abani: Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani - TedTalk Global 2007

Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani: Of Chukwu, Priests, and Slavers

"Have you heard of the oracle of the Igbo?
The one called Chukwu? Just one word: God.
The oracle of God.
The voice of God.
The final arbitration.
Kpom kwem.
Deep in a grove of trees, the sacred lake,
and rising in the gloom and heat,
mist, the very breath of divinity.
The unbearable trepidation,
the worship, the sheer terror and earnestness
trembling the supplicants. And the priests
sitting on rocks and in trees on haunches,
silent like vultures or Rilke's unspeakable angels.
And then a pilgrim wades cautiously into the lake.
On the shore, the line of unannointed
shivers in a shared awe.
And if the petitioner is beautiful or strong,
the priests hold her under, then shackled,
for slavers. In the lake, red dye bubbles up
as God smacks his lips.
And that endless line of believers near faint
with the fearsome beauty of the thought:
Please consume me, God.
Consume me and find me worthy.
But don't let me die."

Chris Abani, 2010, 15

"Sacrement, 1," Sanctificum

In Need of Artistes and Intellectuals like Sofola

(By Sylvester Asoya) - “The Artist and the Tragedy of a Nation”

          On March 28, 1991, the late Professor ‘Zulu Sofola, Africa’s first female professor of Theatre Arts delivered one of the most reflective and scholarly inaugural lectures in Nigeria. Sofola, prolific playwright, astute administrator and scholar par excellence was at the time, head of the Department of Performing Arts, University of Ilorin. For those in the audience, the playwright’s superlative performance was not only outstanding, it was also record-breaking. 

          An inaugural lecture is an event of great importance in the life of every academic. It provides a rare opportunity for the newly elevated professor to inform his or her colleagues, the university community and the public of his or her research outcomes and plans for the future. Sofola, who had returned from her sabbatical leave in the United States two years earlier, used the occasion to speak, and eloquently too, on the artiste and a nation on the edge. 

          In 1991, Nigeria’s tragedy was not close to home. For instance, the chaos in public universities today was only incubating and hope was not a scarce commodity. Apart from the fact that there were a good number of Nigerians with discretionary incomes in the middle class, prices of goods and services had not hit the roof, despite Ibrahim Babangida’s voodoo economics. Today, ignorance, hopelessness, ineptitude and disillusionment reign supreme and nothing is being done to reduce poverty, promote inclusive growth or engender hope.

Reinventing Enterprise in Igbo Land

NKATA UMU IBE | MARCH 2019

Centre for Memories: Ncheta Ndigbo
Topic: 'Mkpuru Onye Kuru'
Reinventing Enterprise n' Ala Igbo. Speaker: Ike Chioke (Group Managing Director, AFRINVEST)

In Memoriam: John Samuel Mbiti

John Samuel Mbiti (1931 - 2019)
-Theologian, Philosopher, Priest,
-Professor of African Religions
-Author of (among many others) African Religions and Philosophy (1969)

Nigerian-Americans Celebrate Dual Heritage with Family Photos

(By Tolu Oye as told to Claudia Owusu and Kanyinsola Oye) - The Nigerian-American Siblings Using Traditional Family Portraiture to Celebrate Their Heritage

Photographs have always been a way for my family to hold on to our past—no matter how far we moved, or how complicated the idea of “home” became for us. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, I keenly remember my mother dragging me and my siblings every year to the JCPenney Portraits studio for our family picture. What made the ritual so uncomfortable was that we were not dressed like other Midwestern families at the mall. My mother had us all in matching golden-brown-and-beige traditional ankara, an African wax-print fabric with vibrant patterns.

Nollywood Goes to Oscars with Lionheart

Religion, Nigerian Politicians, & Ruinous Duplicity

(By SegunAdeniyi) - By imposing a theocratic order that pushes the responsibility for ‘blessing the people of the state’ to God … [Nigerian politicians] are assured of support in a society where majority of the people are ever ready to die for the faith they proclaim, even if it does not reflect in their character and lifestyles. The interesting thing is that the same people who order the destruction of vehicles carrying alcohol in Kano may be sharing such drinks with friends in the privacy of their homes. It is the same with Christian governors who build expensive cathedrals in their government houses, to reinforce the unholy wedlock between the pulpit and the political podium. …

We should all be worried about the growing importance of religion as a marker of identity and a tool for political exploitation in our country. While religion can indeed help to restore moral order, the experience of Nigeria has shown that it is actually being deployed in promotion of private interest. By invoking religious sentiments, the people are easily triggered to action in support of whatever cause the political leader seems to be pursuing. In a predominantly illiterate society, nothing can be more appealing than to be seen as ‘one of us’ by the masses.

          The story of the drunkard and his bottles of beer [see below] … is very instructive. The man could pick and choose which bottle to destroy and which one to keep because it was all part of an elaborate scam to keep on deceiving himself that he was making the right choice.

Of the Supernatural and Modern Half-Believers

"...Student of folklore Christina Hole describes the half-belief when she notes that while '... most people would hotly deny that they believe in magic, many frequently resort to it in luck-bringing rites, precautionary words or actions against misfortune.' Most of us may know a person (or may be a person) who, after asserting that a certain rather unpleasant occurrence has never happened, will then 'knock on wood' ... --probably a relic of the ancient belief that woods such as elder and oak have magical, protective powers.
          The modern knocker-on-wood may do so with a mocking laugh, or some other outward disclaimer, in case his associates (or employer or wife) suspect his maturity and sanity. Nevertheless, he performs the ritual. He may also carry a rabbit's foot, or similar 'lucky charm, ; though he may deny that he believes that it contains any magical power to bring him good luck. But he makes sure, when he goes lout, that he has it with him. He is a half-believer; he is trying to hedge his bets.
          Incidentally, some of the superstitious magical practices we still indulge in are often not recognized as such. We know it is 'foolish' to believe that a broken mirror will bring bad luck (one's mirror image supposedly contains one's soul, and breaking the mirror prevents the soul's return to the body). We may not know that the enjoyable modern ceremony of throwing rice (or its up-to-date substitute, confetti) over a newly married couple is in fact an ancient fertility ritual--the scattering of products of plentiful nature being a symbolic and magical act intended to make the marriage equally fertile and productive."

Douglas Hill and Pat Williams, 1965, 20-21

The Supernatural

In Memoriam: Robert Gabriel Mugabe

Of Fela, His Music, and Social Change

(By Sylvester Asoya) - “Arrest the Music!” 

I met Professor Tejumola Olaniyan a couple of times just before his exciting work: “Arrest the Music: Fela and His Rebel Art and Politics” was released.

The amiable scholar who teaches African Cultural Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told me some interesting stories about Fela during the course of our conversation. The most fascinating for me, is the growing popularity of the Afrobeat king at leading centres of learning in the United States and other parts of the free world. According to him, Fela is currently a subject of great interrogation and extensive study, especially on issues of popular culture and mass mobilization. 

Olaniyan also revealed the origin of his bizarre title, “Arrest the Music!” “Arrest the Music!” was actually a military order by an unlettered soldier on sighting Fela on the performing arena during one of those government sponsored raids on Kalakuta, Fela’s former residence around Ojuelegba area of Lagos in 1977. 

But Fela was indeed, the music! On this score, I think the untutored soldier voiced unusual philosophy.

Of Yoruba Cosmology, Mythology, and Terra Incognita

“The central Yoruba tradition—that of the sacred myth describing the creation, evolution, and jurisdiction of the deities and historical heroes—represents a remarkably rigorous cosmology of intellectual coherence and elegance. It is a universe of elemental forces natural and social with finds metaphoric expression in a pantheon of deities, whose complicated interrelationships, jurisdictions, and necessities are rationalized into an architectonic system of knowledge. The sophisticated worldview embodied in this myth has as its central value the balancing and harmonizing of powerful forces—natural, numinous, and social.

Out of the interplay of deities, ancestors, and humanity, through a process of mutual obligation expressed in language, ritual, and protocol as handed down by tradition, society became possible. A universe of history, stability, morality, and order was achieved.            

But bordering on this system of stability was terra incognita: the evil forest, the bad bush. Here was the home of chaos, where random spirits without name or history, of bizarre forms and malignant intent were to be found. This was the domain of the deformed, the unnatural, and the abominable. The Sunufo, distant cousins of the Yoruba, have a mask that expresses this. It has the snout of an alligator, the tusks of a boar, the horn of a rhinoceros, and the ears of a zebra. It represents an animal that existed before order was imposed on the world.

Yoruba World: A Rich Tapestry of Culture, Religion, and Orature

“But the youthful imagination was fed not only by the awesome images looming in the dim, sacred, ile-ere. Ritual, spectacle, song, dance, drumbeats, mystery, and power surrounded him. Poetry, pageantry, and history combined in the luminous presence of the egungun as the ancestor became flesh and danced among his children. The boy was attracted to the art of the storyteller, a tradition of oral literature that has reached a very high level of complexity and diversity among the Yoruba. But to call these expressions of the culture ‘stories’ is reductive. As developed in this culture, their elaborate narrative line incorporated elements of theater, music, mime, ritual, magic, dance, and the linguistic elements of proverb, poetry, riddle, parable, and song. They were not told so much as performed, dramatically reenacted, so that the accomplished taleteller had to be master of a range of skills. He was at once actor, mime, impressionist, singer, dancer, composer, and conductor, using his range of artistic skills and even the audience and environment to create a multidimensional experience that has no obvious equivalent in Western culture. A more elaborate expression of this form—most often with a strictly religious reference, being ritual recreations of sacred myths—was performed by costumed dancers to the accompaniment of religious music, and became known to Western observers as ‘folk operas.’”

Michael Thelwell, 1984, 182-83

“Introduction,” The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by Amos Tutuola