Exploring Intersections of African Discourses

Celebrating Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai

Scholar Extraordinaire of African Arts and African Philosophies

Professor Olabiyi Babalola Yai

in his role as Benin Permanent Delegate to UNESCO

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
“Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge”

1
 Abstract
A brief survey of the achievement of Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai in exploring
multidisciplinary networks of African systems of thought and expression in the
humanities.
The overview is followed by selections from his work mapping central ideas he
has developed and evoking the flavour of his style of expression.

The essay is interspersed with images displaying various activities of Yai’s and
the intersection of his professional and social worlds.
This is part of my project exploring the intrinsic and universal significance of
Yoruba aesthetics, the study of beauty and of art as developed in Yoruba
thought, as represented by the work of Rowland Abiodun and Babatunde
Lawal, an investigation that has led me to Olabiyi Yai, whose work is exemplary
for studies in the interrelations of African and verbal arts and philosophies, and
directly influential to such investigations in Yoruba arts and philosophies and
to Abiodun's creativity.

2
 Contents

Abstract 2
Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai’s Creation of a Unique Ideational, Analytical and
Expressive Identity 5

Yai’s Contribution on African Epistemologies in the Context of Intercultural

Dialogue 5

From the Orality/Writing Interface in Scholarship on Dahomey to

Aesthetics in Yoruba Thought 6

On Melville and Frances Herskovits’ Dahomean Narrative 6

On Aesthetics in Yoruba Arts 7

From Orí to Oríkì to Ìtàn 7

Image and Text: Multidimensional Activities in Unity of Vision 10

The Impact of Yai’s Work as Suggested by its Relationship with

that of Rowland Abiodun on Aesthetics in Yoruba Thought 11
Image and Text: Celebrating Efflorescence 13

3
Representative Quotes from Yai Sequenced and Slightly Edited to Indicate the
Coherence they Suggest Across Various Essays, with Subheadings by Myself
14
Learning from Endogenous African Thought About How to
Understand and Discuss African Arts 14

Oríkì as Foundational Aesthetic Strategy in Yoruba Thought 15

Orí as Formative Theory of Consciousness 15

Image and Text: Intergenerational Reverberations 16

Àrè and the Ideal of Perpetual Dynamism between Possibilities 17

Ìtàn and the Multidimensional Dialectic of Expansion

and Illumination 18

Ìwà and the Quest for the Essence of Being and of Beings 20

The Gbenagbena and the Gbenugbenu: The Sculptor in Wood,

Metal and Clay and the Sculptor in Words 20

Agemo and Odo Laye: The Chameleon and the River of Life 22

Image and Text: Embodying Knowledge in All Contexts 23

4
Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai’s Creation of a Unique Ideational, Analytical and
Expressive Identity

In every field of knowledge, there exist certain creatives, engagement with

whose work is indispensable to experiencing the finest fruits, the ripest
distillations represented by that field.

That is the case with the work of Ọlabiyi Babalola Yai, scholar extraordinaire in
African oral and written literatures, African philosophy, African arts and
Yoruba Studies, who writes in English and French, the latter the official
language of his native Benin.

I have read three of his essays closely and looked through one, preparatory to
close reading. One of these is a relatively short book review of about two pages
while the other two I read closely are longer essays but not big. The last one,
which I looked through, is a longer essay.

Having had the privilege of reading the shorter ones and coming back to them
after years of first encounter with them and rereading them in relation to the
longer essay, in the light of developments in Yoruba Arts Studies across
decades, I am able to better understand the conceptual map Yai is plotting and
recognize his work as one of the most powerful in the field, in spite of the fact
that I have read only four of his publications.

Yai’s Contribution on African Epistemologies in the Context of

Intercultural Dialogue

His great scholarly contribution in what I have read of his work so far is that of
exploring the epistemic foundations, the structures constituting how
knowledge is developed, applied and referenced in classical African contexts
and the relative value of the various ways in which this knowledge may be
transmitted to other situations represented by different social circumstances,
other languages and approaches to organizing and applying knowledge.

5
These explorations are carried out in relation to the African experience in
general, on the continent and in the Diaspora, integrating African oral and
written literatures and visual arts, philosophy and the study of art, bringing
these fields into a particularly rich and influential concentration on studies in
classical Yoruba aesthetics.

The analytical power of his analyses is so high, his stylistic creativity and polish
so acute and his breadth of knowledge so deftly interwoven into these critical
strategies, that his best work is never dated, will always stand as a
demonstration of the scholar as thinker and artist, flying across landscapes of
possibility configured into a majestic image of a person embodying the very
best of classical African cultures and a richly critical integration of the Western
tradition, an ideal cognitivist, a seeker and demonstrator of knowledge in its
various intellectual and other forms, including the imagination and beyond.

From the Orality/Writing Interface in Scholarship on Dahomey to

Aesthetics in Yoruba Thought

On Melville and Frances Herskovits’ Dahomean Narrative

Foundational to his scholarly architecture in my exposure to his work so far is

his “The Path Is Open: The Legacy of Melville and Frances Herskovits in African
Oral Narrative Analysis,” published in Research in African Literatures, 1999, Vol.
30, No. 2, pp. 1-16, with a version including subheadings published in 1999 as
a foreword to Dahomean Narrative by Melville and Frances Herskovits, by
Northwestern University Press, with Yai’s essay also made available on the
university’s website.

It’s a fantastic essay in its sweep of ideas and the relaxed beauty of his powerful
analyses, situating an examination of the tension between classical African
cognitive systems and their translation into Western languages within a study
of the methods of the Herskovits, Western anthropologists studying Dahomean
oral literature, as Yai also examines the varied impacts of their work on the

6
global scholarly community and on Dahomeans whose classical literature made
the work possible.

On Aesthetics in Yoruba Arts

The questions posed and the perspectives developed on the study of classical
African cognitive systems represented by Dahomean oral literature in that
essay are projected in a manner that illuminates the study of classical Yoruba
art in Yai’s review of Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton III, Rowland Abiodun
and Allen Wardwell's Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought, 1989,
in African Arts, Vol. 25, No. 1., 1992, pp. 20+22+24+26+29.

In that review, he salutes the gargantuan achievement of the authors in their

breadth of assemblage, coherence of organization and depth of analysis of the
constellation of classical Yoruba civilization around the axis of philosophy,
spirituality and the arts.

While doing this in brief but incisive analyses covering every section of the
book, he also presents his own distinctive orientation on the subjects the book
covers.

From Orí to Oríkì to Ìtàn

Two of these are his interpretation of the Yoruba philosophical term orí and the
disciplinary designation, ìtàn.

His descriptions of these ideas are the most powerful known to me, particularly
in relation to my varied reading about the Yoruba origin theory of
consciousness, orí.

His presentation of orí is made up of about twelve lines yet it sums up an

essence of the concept represented by the dynamism of the self understood as
progressing through various terrestrial and post-terrestrial contexts.

7
Yai describes this sensitivity to the dynamism of individuals and societies as
central to conceptions of human development in its full complexity, as this
understanding achieves prominence in Yoruba thought.

He also expounds on this perception of dynamism, of open-ended progression

the potential of which cannot be fully anticipated, as dramatized by approaches
to art, to the life of the artist and the lives of various Yoruba communities.

He understands these orientations as projected through the open-ended

character of oríkì, a Yoruba expressive style in verbal and visual arts which
celebrates and invokes the origins and expression of an entity.

This summation attempts to integrate ideas Yai has introduced and developed
from various angles in the review as well as in his ''In Praise of Metonymy: The
Concepts of 'Tradition' and 'Creativity' in the Transmission of Yoruba Artistry
over Time and Space'' in Research in African Literatures , 1993, Vol. 24, No.
4, 1993, pp. 29-37 and ''Tradition and the Yoruba Artist'', in African Arts, Vol.
32, No. 1, 1999, pp. 32-35+93.

''In Praise of Metonymy,'' also published in Rowland Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal

and John Pemberton III’s edited The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives
on African Arts, 1994, 107-115, a number of chapters of which definitely reflect
or suggest the influence of his article, is perhaps his most influential
publication.

It is marked by creative exuberance, an ease of engagement with tantalizing

ideas revealed in rich analyses.

It is shaped by memorably beautiful and elevating conceptions celebrating the

scope of human cognitive ability as developed in the classical Yoruba context,
projected through a superb exploration of the ideational and imaginative range
of the Yoruba language.

8
9
 Image on Previous Page

Multidimensional Activities in Unity of Vision

Collage by myself using images from various sources, depicting Yai in different
but complementary roles.
As celebrator of African artistic cultures, centre image, as demonstrated by the
Yoruba Gelede mask in the right, background.
As then UNESCO chairperson of the executive council, as shown in the other
images, during his 2009 tour of the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple, a world
heritage site in Cambodia, examining damage at the site from a clash with
Thailand.
In the background is a magnificent work by Yoruba sculptor Olowe of Ise,
evoking Yoruba culture to which Yai is particularly profoundly dedicated.

The Olowe sculpture also suggests a vision to which Yai is committed as a

global universalist, as evident from his interviews, his work with UNESCO and
his writings, the need for the community of nations to work together in
sustaining the calabash of terrestrial existence, as the figures in the sculpture
hold up a calabash, a form evocative of cosmic totality in Yoruba iconography.
Cambodia images from CAAI News Media .

10
The combination of critical mastery demonstrated by the article within an
almost playful creativity implies the mapping of ideas in a way that invites
further exploration in terms of entire research programs.

The article builds an image of classical Yoruba cognitive cultures that is both
historically grounded and visionary, projecting an unarticulated yet eloquent
call to actualize this verbal reconstruction in contemporary experience.

The constellation of ideas Yai develops in these works have been very
influential in Yoruba Arts Studies as represented by their use by different
scholars and particularly in some of the most important books in the field,
which develop various aspects of these perspectives.

The Impact of Yai’s Work as Suggested by its Relationship with that of

Rowland Abiodun on Aesthetics in Yoruba Thought

Yai’s work is strategic for depth of appreciation, for example, of the project
represented by the landmark publication Rowland Abiodun’s 2014 Yoruba Art
and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, an effort to concretize and
extend the achievement of Abiodun and his ideological collaborators in
exploring and foregrounding the perspectives of classical African artists and art
critics on their own art.

This achievement demonstrates the indispensability of these discourses for the

study of artistic forms created in the light of these endogenous perspectives.
These ideational cultures are thus brought into dialogue in the global context
generated by written cultures as different from the oral traditions of the
classical African societies.

Underlying this struggle is the subject of the philosophical, reflective and

systemic character of classical African thought/s, its explicatory capacity in
relation to African and non-African contexts as an enterprise both local to its
cultural origins and relevant within the wider human context as part of

11
humanity’s investigations of it’s existence, a subject on which Yai presents a
trenchantly argued position in relation to various schools of African philosophy
in his “Theory and Practice in African Philosophy: The Poverty of Speculative
Philosophy,” in Second Order: An African Journal of Philosophy, Vol.VI. No2.
1977, pp.3-20 and in another essay with a similar title “Théoríe et Pratique en
Philosophie Africaine : Misère de la Philosophie Spéculative (Critique de P.
Hountondji, M. Towa et autres) in Présence Africaine , 4e Trimestre 1978,
Nouvelle série, No. 108, pp. 65-91.

Abiodun may have adapted from Yai the analytical tools with which to expand
his work of decades in demonstrating the symbiosis of classical Yoruba cultural
forms represented by the visual and performative arts, oral literatures and
aesthetics, synthesizing this in Yoruba Art and Language in terms of an
interpretation of oríkì derived from thinkers in the oral, classical tradition but
developed by Yai in his richly exploratory ''In Praise of Metonymy.''
Abiodun may be described as integrating the functionality of the unity of visual,
performative and verbal arts in oríkì which the classical thinkers introduced
him to with the structural and metaphysical possibilities evoked by Yai in
relation to oríkì structure.
Abiodun unifies these interpretive streams with his earlier explorations of
similar ideas represented by òrò, primordial, divine cognition and human
discourse, and òwe, imaginative expression in the visual and verbal arts, as
Abiodun interprets these Yoruba terms.

Trying to understand these ideational expansions in Abiodun’s work brought

me back to Yai.

12
 Celebrating Efflorescence

“Prof Olabiyi Babalola Yai received a befitting 80th Birthday Celebration

yesterday at Calavi, Benin Republic. Family, colleagues, friends and well
wishers from all over the world paid golden tribute to his immense
contributions to language, culture and knowledge at home and abroad.”
Image and text from Tunde Kelani Mainframe Productions’s Facebook post
of June 30, 2019 · Filmmaker Tunde Kelani is shown at bottom right.

13
Representative Quotes from Yai Sequenced and Slightly Edited to
Indicate the Coherence they Suggest Across Various Essays, with
Subheadings by Myself

Learning from Endogenous African Thought About How to

Understand and Discuss African Arts

For our discourses on African oral literatures [and arts] to

legitimately claim scientificity, they should be rigorously subjected to
and pass a test of reversibility.
In other words, the central question is: If our current disquisitions on
African oral literatures [and arts] were to be translated into African
languages, how would African oral poets [and their visual and
performance artists and their critics] assess them? How would our
discourses in European languages-or indeed in African languages-On
their performances be categorízed within their epistemic compass?
Would African oral artists and their critics regard a book of African
oral literature criticism as criticism? More specifically, did Fon
informants regard [ the Herskovits] as critics? Would Fon oral critics
like Yesi establish a parallel between their work and status and [ the
Herskovits’ book] Dahomean Narrative and the Herskovitses,
respectively? In a word, are we regarded as critics by the African oral
artists?

As students of Yoruba art history from citadels of Western fora of

production of knowledge on others, we cannot hope to do justice to
Yoruba art and art history unless we are prepared to re-examine,
question, and indeed abandon certain attitudes, assumptions, and
concepts of our various disciplines, however foundational they may
appear to us, and consequently take seriously indigenous discourses
on art and art history.

14
Oríkì as Foundational Aesthetic Strategy in Yoruba Thought

When approaching Yoruba art, an attitude and intellectual disposition

or orientation that would be more congenial or consonant with
Yoruba traditions of scholarship would be to consider each individual
Yoruba artwork and the entire corpus as oríkì, an unfinished and
generative art enterprise.

Making oríkì a tutelary goddess of Yoruba art history studies enjoins

us to pay more attention to the history dimension of the discipline's
title. This in turn entails that we familiarize ourselves with Yoruba
concepts of history and be conversant with the language and
metalanguage of Yoruba art history.

For a Yoruba intellectual, oríkì as a concept and a discursive practice

is inseparable from the concept and discursive practice of ìtàn. Indeed
it can be argued that both are members of a constellation of basic
Yoruba concepts without the elucidation of which it is almost
impossible to understand any aspect of Yoruba cultures.
Orí as Formative Theory of Consciousness
Another fundamental concept is orí, the spiritual essence sited in the
inner head (orí inu). Orí is essence, attribute, and quintessence; it is
the uniqueness of persons, animals, and things, their inner eye and
ear, their sharpest point and their most alert guide as they navigate
through this world and the one beyond.
In a culture where orí, the principle of individuality, is as central as to
be a deity that informs and shapes the worldview and behavior of
persons, it is simply "natural" that the privileged idiom of artistic
expression, indeed, the mode of existence of art, should be through
constant departure.

15
 Intergenerational Reverberations

Yai, left, with scholar of Yoruba language and culture Adeleke Adeeko, right.

“With Professor Olabiyi Yai. Grad school mentor. Only person I know who can move
with utmost ease from Beethoven's symphony to Fọ́ yạ́ nmu's poetry in one
sentence.”

"To me, Professor Olabiyi Yai's record has been an unparalleled exemplum in how
to be a scholar of Africa. There are just too many gems to count. And I had the
fortune of being his Grad Teaching Assistant in Yorù bà language at the University
of Florida."
Image and text from August 30, 201316 Facebook post by Adeleke Adeeko and from
his response to this essay on Facebook
Àrè and the Ideal of Perpetual Dynamism between Possibilities

The ideal artist in Yoruba tradition is an àrè. No etymology of the

word has been attempted, but the most plausible one would derive it
from the verb re, which means to depart.

Lagbayi, the Yoruba transcendental sculptor, lived as an àrè. An àrè is

an itinerant, a permanent stranger precisely because he or she can be
permanent nowhere.

Àrès are itinerant individuals, wanderers, permanent strangers …

They always seek to depart from current states of affairs. They go
about (re) and bifurcate or pass (ya) constantly in life. And when they
are unable to bifurcate in the physical and geographical sense of the
word, they will endeavor to do so from sculpture, even if only to
become a better artist. Hence the àrè will be an Osun priestess (as was
Abatan), a diviner-healer (like Ayo), or a Gelede elder (like Duga).

Artists are at their best when they are literally "not at home." This is
the deep meaning of the oriki phrase of the transcendental sculptor
Lagbayi: Okosanmijulélo (Oko san mi ju ilé lo: I am better off on the
farm than in the hometown).

Ordinary citizens and even titled people are called Ilèsanmi (I am

better off in my hometown). This personal name, which like many
Yoruba names begins a proverb, is the equivalent of the Western
saying "Charity begins at home."

But Lagbayi is no ordinary citizen, and an ordinary proverb will not

suffice to portray his personality. Hence Lagbayi, and by implication
all good artists, turn the proverb upside down: he is better off when
he departs from the walls of his hometown.

17
For these artists "charity begins abroad": "Oko san mi ju ilé lo." Here
oko, "farm," stands as a metaphor for that which is novel, not
ordinary, far from home; it is contrasted with ilé, "home," a metaphor
for the daily, the familiar, the given.

In the Yoruba world view, oko is the antonym of ilé. In terms of artistic
practice and discourse, the best way to recognize reality and engage
it is to depart from it.

Any entity or reality worth respecting is approached from this point

of view. Thus the essence of art is universal bifurcation.

Ìtàn and the Multidimensional Dialectic of Expansion and

Illumination

Being an àrè is therefore being an individual exponent of ìtàn.

Ìtàn is often translated as "history," "story," or "myth." This is a

notoríously incomplete and unsuccessful translation, for the verb tan
(from which the noun ìtàn is derived) means to irradiate, to
illuminate, to spread, to relate, to investigate.
The concept of ìtàn therefore encompasses history, geography,
sociology, philosophy, and aesthetics [ making it a ] multidirectional
and multidisciplinary concept.
Etymologically ìtàn is a noun derived from the verb tàn. Tàn means to
spread, reach, to open up, to illuminate, to shine.

The verb tàn and the derivative noun ìtàn are polysemic and
integrate at least three fundamental dimensions:

1. The chronological dimension through which human generations

and their beings, deeds, and values are related.

18
2. The territorial or geographical dimension through which history is
viewed as expansion (but not necessarily with the imperial
connotation which has nowadays become the stigma of that concept
in the English language) of individuals, lineages, races beyond their
original cradle.

In that sense it is important to observe that the Yoruba have always

conceived of their history as diaspora. The concept and reality of
diaspora, viewed and perceived in certain cultures (Greek, Jewish) as
either necessity or lamented accident is rationalized in Yorubaland as
the normal or natural order of things historical.

3. The third dimension of ìtàn has paradoxically and tragically been

neglected by most Yoruba historians. This is the discursive and
reflexive dimension of the concept. Tàn means to illuminate, to
enlighten, to discern, to disentangle. Tàn is therefore to discourse
profoundly on the two dimensions mentioned earlier.

The noun ìtàn for this dimension always requires the active verb Pa.
Pa ìtàn (pìtàn in contracted form) is often trivially and somewhat
inadequately translated into English as "to tell a story."

Pa is also used for such nouns as èkùró (kernel) obì(kola nut) = to

separate the two lobes of the kola nut; èyin, ọmọ (egg), to hatch; òwe
(proverb); àlọ (riddle, parable).

Pìtàn therefore means to produce such a discourse that could

constitute the Ariadne thread [ allusion to Greek mythological figure
representing a thread as a guide out of a complex situation] out of the
human historical labyrinth, history being equated with a maze or a
riddle.

Pa ìtàn is to "de-riddle" history, to shed light on human existence

through time and space. No wonder then if Òrúnmìlà, the Yoruba

19
deity of wisdom, knowledge, and divination, is called Opìtàn ilẹ Ifẹ.
(He who deriddles ìtàn, i.e., unravels history throughout Ifẹ territory.

Ìwà and the Quest for the Essence of Being and of Beings

Yoruba aesthetics [is] encapsulated in the celebrated phrase ìwà

l,èwá, variously translated as "Character is beauty," "Existence is
beauty," "Immortality is perfect existence," and "Essential nature is
beauty."
All these equally valid translations point to the same direction: the
role or essence (ìwà) of art in Yoruba culture is to create beauty by
activating and making sensible the noumenal solidarity of the various
facets and dimensions of the world, the individual, the society, and the
supernatural, which are and must be made to be seen/sensed/heard
as tributaries of the same big river.

The Gbenagbena and the Gbenugbenu: The Sculptor in

Wood, Metal and Clay and the Sculptor in Words

At the symposium held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last

February in association with its exhibition "Master Hand:
Individuality and Creativity among Yoruba Sculptors," I opened my
presentation with an iba, or homage, which in the Yoruba tradition is
the indispensable overture to any orally performed intellectual
discourse. To me there was no worthier iba for this occasion than the
following proverb:
Gbenagbena se tire tan
O ku ti gbenugbenu.
Here ends the work of the sculptor
Let the critic start his own.

20
This is a metacritical proverb, almost always ritually proffered by a
sculptor after the completion of a work to satisfaction.
It underscores the complementarity and the dialectic between
sculptor and art historian, between artist and critic, between first-
and second-order creativity.
The saying suggests that the work of the artist and that of his critic at
once precede and follow each other in an unending cycle. But we are
also faced with the predicament of translation.
I glossed the Yoruba word gbenugbenu as "critic," but am fully aware
that this translation does not exhaust the range and depth of meaning
of the Yoruba term.
A gbenugbenu is not a critic in the usual English sense. Literally the
term refers to "one who carves with one's mouth (voice)"-a sculptor
of words.
While in the Western tradition the function of critics is viewed as
radically different from that of artists, in the tradition of the Yoruba,
gbenugbenus by necessity are artists.
Theirs is no ordinary discourse in ordinary language. As wordsmiths,
their duty is to continue the work of the sculptors by other means.
The public expects them to orally perform a text that at once reflects
the sculpture and departs from it.
Such a work is artistically marked. It is a monument, not just a
document. In Western philosophical parlance it is first- and second-
order discourses artistically interwoven. Invariably this orally
performed text is an oríkì of both the work of art and the person who
produced it, for they are indissolubly linked.
Under normal circumstances my presentation at the "Master Hand"
symposium would have been performed as a collective oríkì of Olowe,
Bamgboye, Abatan, Adigbologe, Fagbite, Esubiyi... But I lack the ohun

21
iyo, the "sweet or salted voice," that is a sine qua non of Yoruba poetry
performance, particularly when the subjects of the oríkì are such
distinguished artists.
Agemo and Odo Laye: The Chameleon and the River of Life
Drewal's "Art and Ethos of the Ijebu" (chap. 5 of Yoruba: Nine
Centuries of African Art and Thought,) is a masterpiece in the analysis
of the art- thought interface in an African culture.
The uniqueness of Ijebuland as a crossroads is brilliantly discussed.
This situation stimulated Ijebuland to borrow creatively from Ife,
Benin, Owo, and Ijo, and to forge a distinctive artistic and
philosophical identity.
Here Drewal rightly invokes the agemo (chameleon) symbolism, so
crucial to an understanding of the Ijebu world view. Agemo's essence
(iwa) is to be able to change while being the same, to augment its own
iwa by borrowing from others.
Indeed agemo could borrow from and therefore disempower death
itself, as is indicated in the saying "Arikuyan bi agemo." To confirm
Drewal's perceptive analysis, one may add that the agemo ethos has
transcended Ijebuland and has indeed become an ideology in many
parts of Yorubaland where the secret name or strong name of agemo
is ajeegun (He who makes the medicine efficient). Agemo thus has
become an essential ingredient of the ase of spells, prayers, and
medicines.
Theirs [Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought ] is a great
book, and they rightly lay claim to no comprehensiveness, conscious
as they are that the Yoruba define life as a river: Odo laye. Who can
comprehend a river?

22
Scholar and teacher, everywhere and always, from the classroom to UNESCO.
Picture by Francois Guillot from Getty Images.

23