(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.
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.
This
explains why that self could partake of Oro festival today, felicitate with and
share the dog meat of the Ogun worshipper tomorrow, and dine with the adherents
of Sango next week. Where this self was a devotee of Osun, it was unthinkable
that it would try to convert or kill the worshipper of Ogun.
This
accomodationist ethos, in a cultural context where difference is valued and
otherness celebrated, is what Christianity and Islam benefited from when they
arrived, only to insist that the self rooted in that worldview was pagan and
must be forgotten. When this self humanized by and into traditional spiritual
democracy is forgotten, the new self that is born into Moslem zealotry can only
see an expendable infidel in every Christian. Likewise, the new self that is
born into Christian fundamentalism can only see a hell-bound unbeliever in
every Moslem. For old things hath passeth away…
Forgetting
the old self – which African Traditional Religions insist we must remember - is
perhaps the worst damage that Christianity and Islam did to the African psyche
and we are paying the price in human lives in Nigeria today. For these two
religions repressed the humane, urbane, cosmopolitan, pluralist, and
accomodationist self in the old order and replaced it with a narrow-minded,
ignorant, egotistical, proselytizing, and modern Christian or Moslem self that
can only scream: my way or the high way!
This
partly explains the murderous political Islam that holds sway in northern
Nigeria and insists on being lubricated annually with the blood of our people;
this partly explains the murderous Christianity in the south-south that needs
the blood of children branded as witches to feel cool. Welcome to the Islam of
Boko Haram and the Christianity of Helen Ukpabio. Their motto, according to
Wole Soyinka: I am right, therefore you are dead! Boko Haram kills people in
the name of Islam, Helen Ukpabio murders “witch children” in the name of
Christianity because the accomodationist self that could see and value the
humanity of the Other in traditional religion has been forgotten. For old
things hath passeth away…
Because
Oro and other Yoruba forms of spiritual expression spring from an ethos of life
and democratic spiritualism that admits of pluralism, otherness, and
difference, they were crucial to the survival of Yoruba people in the New World
who, unlike their fundamentalist Christian and Moslem cousins in Nigeria,
understood right from the bowel of the slave ship that they could not afford to
forget the self. They got to Brazil, in Bahia de Salvador, and the white slave
master insisted they forgot themselves by converting to Catholicism.
The
same thing happened in Cuba. But the slave master did not reckon with the
accomodationist and adaptive essence of the religion of these Yoruba slaves.
The slaves took whatever they could from Catholicism, blended such with Yoruba
religion, and gave the world the religions of Candomblé in Brazil and Santéria
in Cuba. By simultaneously enacting Catholic and Yoruba rituals in Candomblé
and Santéria, the Yoruba of the New World are screaming esin kan o pe k’awa ma
s’oro! In Candomblé and Santéria, the Virgin Mary lives in peace with her
neighbor, Yemoja; Ogun does not grumble about the goings and comings of Saint
Peter; Jesus Christ does not label Obatala a pagan deity. Candomblé and Santéria
are inscriptions of the old self into new things. For old things hath passeth
away…
Harmony.
Harmony. Harmony. Do the Christian and Moslem fundamentalists of the old Yoruba
land in Nigeria know how to listen to these things from their “pagan” cousins
in the Americas? Sadly, the Yoruba who know the meaning of Hubert Ogunde’s
warning, “Yoruba Ronu”, are few in Nigeria. They are mostly in Brazil, Cuba,
and Barbados.
As
long as Nigeria is peopled mainly by selves alienated from the accomodationist
and pluralistic humanism of their own cultures; as long as these lost selves
refuse to listen to what their cultures have to say about the validity of the
multiple roads leading to the market of spirituality, Nigeria will never know
peace. I have encountered that pious Hausa Moslem who knows nothing about what
his pre-Jihad Habe culture had to say about pluralism and tolerance before
Othman Dan Fodio arrived on the scene and decided to rid those cultures of
pluralistic and accomodationist values which he demonized as mixing Islam with
impurities. This Hausa Moslem even got angry that I asked him about pre-Jihad
Habe culture, something he considers haram. For old things hath passeth away…
I
have encountered that puny Igbo noise maker on the net, whose deranged mind is
so twisted that he spends his entire life railing against every non-Moslem
Nigerian who rejects his blanket hatred of Islam. He deliberately takes the
murderous political Islam of a lunatic fringe in northern Nigeria for the whole
religion and impugns Islam in language dripping with such venom and hate as to
make Osama Bin Laden’s language sound like a nursery rhyme.
Let
us assume, for the sake of argument, that Islam is one blanket enemy that this
undiscriminating fool makes it out to be in his listserv fulminations. What
does his Bible tell him? “Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love
thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies,
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Mathew 5:43-44).
Our
friend’s convenient Christianity is blind to this inconvenient Biblical
injunction. His Christianity is so skewed by hate that he wastes his educated
mind on such brain-dead intellectual quests as trying to determine the exact
statistical percentage of Moslems a Christian society needs to accommodate for
there to be peace! In all that, our ‘Christian’ friend doesn’t realize how
close he is to Nazi Aryanism or Afrikaner puritanism and how far he is from his
Igbo culture which advises him to let the eagle and the kite perch. For old things
hath passeth away…
I
have encountered that sophisticated and westernized Yoruba who frowns in horror
at the mere mention of Oro or Ogun festival. This educated but foolish Yoruba
is the first to perorate about “the backwardness” of Yoruba “idol worship”.
Combine the lost selves of these three tragic characters in one African
nation-space and you get the combustibility of Nigeria.
The
Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese who today make Europeans and Americans
look like boy scouts in the arena of techno-rational modernity did not achieve
that feat at the expense of their cultures and selves. It is, in fact, Western
man who has had to quickly and wisely upgrade his palate and make it compatible
with Sushi, Bi Bim Bop, and General Tso’s chicken in order not to be left
behind by progress.
Recovery
of the self implies an unconditional acceptance of the fact that everything you
need for the accomodationist efflorescence of your humanity is logged in your
culture and whatever version of Christianity or Islam you embrace must accept
and respect those values, not condemn them.
The
humanism and pluralism which our forebears valued and celebrated are not
mutually exclusive with Christianity and Islam. Esin kan o pe k’awa ma s’oro
espouses an ancestral dictum of tolerance that Nigerian Moslems and Christians
need to learn from. Will they ever be sufficiently humble to admit that they
have anything to learn from spiritualities that the most obdurately ignorant
among them still label paganism? For old things hath passeth away!
Nairaland, Jul 27, 2011
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