The Nigerian gospel singer, Tope Alabi, sang a Yoruba song in a church setting and it was reported online that she used “Ifa slangs.” Ifa refers to the oracle among the Yoruba and the priest of Ifa is known as Babalawo. The one minute video available online was all I saw, so I don’t know if Alabi gave any explanation regarding her song. However, I understand that the news report and video generated comments online. I made a few comments too, but here I address the issue at some length.
What I do here is offer my perspective based on the video and my understanding of Yoruba culture, its traditional religions, and how these influence use of words by Yoruba Christian worshipers and gospel singers such as Alabi. It happens that similarities in the use of words in Yoruba culture and modern religions is a phenomenon I’ve been thinking about in the past few years. I conclude that some sayings, proverbs, and items commonly used in Yoruba culture can’t be the exclusive property of any religion. For some of such sayings or proverbs are factual, reflective of the work of creation, universally true, and are equally true when said either by traditional religionists or Christian worshipers. Only the context and purpose of the use are different.
We know that traditional religious practices predated the imported religions. The tradition or cultural practices of a people have therefore been informed by their traditional beliefs and worship systems. One reason was that priests of traditional religions were part of the elite in ancient times, they were initiators and keepers of a society’s social and religious values, and what they declared as the wish of the deities was what the political and administrative leader i.e. the king or Oba, would make the people do. Over time, the culture including the sayings of the people would largely reflect many of the declarations the priests made regarding the wishes of the deities of the land. What priests said and the words they stringed together to express them would become part of the oral tradition carried from one generation to the next.
There is no doubt that the earliest converts to modern religions brought some of their beliefs and cultural expressions into modern religions. The earliest foreign missionaries must have had to work hard to rid new converts of their traditional conception of religious worship. Even their verbal expressions would have to be deliberately changed. For instance, Christian missionaries wouldn’t permit converts to see what made them afraid and then shout, as they used to, the names of the gods they once worshipped. However, it’s difficult to imagine that indigenous interpreters for the earliest Christian missionaries used any other name to refer to the Christian God other than the local names they used in traditional worship. The interpreters would have translated using the common expressions and sayings that people were used to when they were traditional worshipers. It was the only way people would understand them.
Till today, names such as Chukwu, Chineke, Osanobua, Ubangiji, or Olorun and Olodumare among the Yoruba are still used in Christian worships. The word Olorun, owner of the heavens, must be easy to understand for Yoruba-speaking Christians who don’t speak English. The word Olodumare is even more so. I imagine Olorun or Olodumare was how interpreters for the early Christian missionaries referred to the Christian God when they first arrived. It seems logical because this name most distinguishes the Supreme Being from other gods that the Yoruba converts knew in traditional religion.
Instructively though, the name Olodumare is commonly used by Ifa worshipers till today just as it’s used in daily conversations. But it was this name the early Christian missionaries used when they translated the bible “Mimo, mimo, mimo, Oluwa, Olorun, Olodumare,” Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God Almighty.” Take note that in the name Olodumare is the word “Odu.” Odu is a word used by Ifa priests, and it means chapter or verse in Ifa panegyric, much like one poem in a book with a collection of poems. I’m not sure any Yoruba person who is a Christian has any problem using the word Olodumare when referring to the Christian God, which is arguably the deepest or the highest name the Yoruba could call the Supreme Being. But it was used by Ifa priests at the outset. I explain this to show the closeness of people’s culture and how it still influences modern religious worship no matter how much imported religions now try to separate them.
I stated that the word Olodumare was traditionally used and is still used by the Ifa priests and worshipers. Now, of all the traditional forms of worship in Yorubaland, Ifa was most common as it was regarded as the revealer of the wishes and plans of the other divinities. If I don’t forget my history, Ifa was the state religion in ancient Ile-Ife, and was common in Oyo and many other Yoruba towns. The priests of traditional religions gain some insights from different sources, including the human experience and the work of creation, and these are often found in the words they utter, in the panegyric they use in their religious practices. To me, that these words are used by Ifa worshipers doesn’t make them less true for the Christian worshiper. All that Christian worshippers need to do and have been doing is to adjust them for use when they focus worship on the Christian God; plenty of such adjustments have been done to some words and songs used in Christian worships.
Now, many words traceable to the traditional religion of the Yoruba have crept into everyday use and they become common among the people in their communities. So the average person in a Yoruba community may be heard saying to a priest, especially during annual traditional festivals, “Abore, ebo a ru, ebo a da o; odun a yabo o” which roughly means, “Priest, may the sacrifice be acceptable, may it bring results, and may it be beneficial.” To this the priest would invariably respond, “Ase” or Amen. But such words were initially uttered by the priests themselves during religious ceremonies and people picked them up. These were words people understood well regarding the worship of the divinities. So, when modern day religions arrived, interpreters for Christian missionaries must have used such words that people understood to preach messages, particularly the message about divine sacrifice for the remission of sin.
I suppose as people became more educated, and some of the Christian preachers had less control of the use of the local language, the gulf between the use of Yoruba words known traditionally and English during Christian worship became deeper. Today special Yoruba speaking churches have to be set up because many churches hold their worships in English. It takes core Yoruba speakers like Alabi to use the kind of words she used in her song and it would take core Yoruba listeners in the congregation to understand her in context. To the person who wasn’t steeped in core Yoruba sayings she used, Alabi was speaking “Ifa slangs.”
As I’ve stated before I focus more on some sayings and items that are found in cultural and traditional religious practices which are also found in Christian worship. Such sayings and items are reflective of the reality of work of creation, the universe, so they are applicable to every human being irrespective of their religion. This is the situation regarding some sayings and items that some may categorise as the exclusive preserve of traditional religions. The Yoruba Bata drum, for instance, was initially regarded and used as the drum for the Yoruba deity, Sango. But we know it is used in gospel music in Christian religious worship these days. There are as well items that are universally symbolic, used by all in daily living, and by members of different religions.
In traditional worships, items such as water, palm oil, kolanut, sand, salt, honey, oil, white cloth etc. are important. In fact, a traditional christening, marriage, or ritual is not complete without these items being used. While these items don’t generally feature in christenings and weddings in the Christian faith, they are symbolically used during prayer sessions in most Pentecostal churches. There’re Christian preachers who pray into honey, water, oil, white handkerchiefs, and other items for their congregants to use.
