Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part I of a two part pancocojams series about Yoruba dance.
This pancocojams post presents information about Yoruba people and presents a book excerpt about Yoruba dancers' postures and body stances.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/10/five-youtube-videos-of-traditional.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. Part II showcases five YouTube videos of traditional Yoruba dancing.
The content of this post is presented for folkloric, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Omofolabo S. Ajayi for writing the book Yoruba dance and thanks to all others who are quoted in this post.
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INFORMATION ABOUT YORUBA PEOPLE
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_people
"The Yoruba people (Yoruba: Ọmọ Káàárọ̀-oòjíire, Ọmọ
Oòduà[32][33][34]) are a native West African ethnic group that inhabit western
Africa, found mainly in the parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo that constitute
Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute around 38 million people in Africa, a few
hundred thousand outside of its continental borders, and bear some further
representation among members of the African diaspora. The vast majority of the
Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where the Yoruba make
up 15.5% of the country's population by contemporary estimations,[35] making
them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, by number. Most Yoruba people
speak the Yoruba language, which is, also, the Niger-Congo language with the
largest number of native speakers.[36]
[…]
Significant Yoruba populations in other West African
countries can also be found in Ghana,[37][38][39] Benin,[37] Ivory Coast,[40]
and Sierra Leone.[41]
Outside Africa, the Yoruba diaspora consists of two main groupings; the first being that of the Yorubas dispersed mainly to the western hemisphere between the 16th to 19th centuries, notably to Cuba and Brazil, and the second consisting of a wave of relatively recent migrants, the majority of whom began to migrate to the United Kingdom and the United States following major economic and political changes of the 1960s to 1980s in Africa.[42]
[…]
Today, most contemporary Yoruba are Muslims or
Christians.[22] Be that as it may, many of the principles of the traditional
faith of their ancestors are either knowingly or unknowingly upheld by a
significant proportion of the populations of Nigeria, Benin and Togo.[102]
[…]
The Yoruba diaspora
Yoruba people or descendants can be found all over the world
especially in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Cuba, Brazil,
Latin America, and the Caribbean.[216][217][218][219] Significant Yoruba
communities can be found in South America and Australia. The migration of
Yoruba people all over the world has led to a spread of the Yoruba culture
across the globe. Yoruba people have historically been spread around the globe
by the combined forces of the Atlantic slave trade[220][221][222][223] and
voluntary self migration.[224] Their exact population outside Africa is
unknown, but researchers have established that the majority of the African
component in the ancestry of African Americans is of Yoruba and/or Yoruba-like
extraction.[225][226][227][228][229][230] In their Atlantic world domains, the
Yorubas were known by the designations: "Nagos/Anago",
"Terranova", "Lucumi" and "Aku", or by the names
of their various clans.
The Yoruba left an important presence in Cuba and Brazil,[231] particularly in Havana and Bahia.[232] According to a 19th-century report, "the Yoruba are, still today, the most numerous and influential in this state of Bahia.[233][234][235][236] … In the documents dating from 1816 to 1850, Yorubas constituted 69.1% of all slaves whose ethnic origins were known, constituting 82.3% of all slaves from the Bight of Benin. The proportion of slaves from West-Central Africa (Angola – Congo) dropped drastically to just 14.7%.[239]
Ancestry estimates for African Americans using discrete African populations as index show that African Americans have a majority African component most similar to that of the Yorubas of the Lower Guinea general region.
Between 1831 and 1852 the African-born slave and free
population of Salvador, Bahia surpassed that of free Brazil born Creoles.
Meanwhile, between 1808 and 1842 an average of 31.3% of African-born freed
persons had been Nagos (Yoruba). Between 1851 and 1884, the number had risen to
a dramatic 73.9%.
Other areas that received a significant number of Yoruba people and are sites of Yoruba influence are: Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Santa Margarita and Belize, British Guyana, Saint-Domingue (Now Haiti), Jamaica[240]… Barbados, Dominican republic, Montserrat, etc.”…
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BOOK EXCERPT:
YORUBA DANCE: The Semiotics of Movement And Body Attitude In A Nigerian Culture
by Omofolabo S. Ajayi (Africa World Press,1998)
from Chapter #1 [Section entitled "Yoruba Body Attitude In Communication"]
"p. 35
Standard Dance Form
Even though there are numerous styles and forms of Yoruba dances, they are
derived basically from a commonwealth of cultural body semantics. There is
therefore what can generally be described as a standard Yoruba dance form. An
essential component of the form is the standard posture of Yoruba dances. The
upper torso is held forward at an angle of about 120 degrees to the rest of the
body while the lower torso is flexed forward at the knees. Getting the proper
posture is an important step towards the dance, since it is from this posture
that the relevant various body parts start moving in rhythmical sequence to the
music. The dancers in Figures 1 and 2 assume the standard posture, even though
performing different dance styles and to different types of music.
Unless there is a specific message to communicate with the eyes, there is
seldom any direct eye contact between the dancer or any other person or
object. Female dances usually have their
gaze fixed on the floor or at the lower edges of their dresses, while male
dancers look straight ahead into space. Even if the eyes appear to be staring
at an object or a person, it is with ‘unseeing eyes’. Although this lack of eye
contact is in line with the social ethics (to establish eye contact is rude or
a sign of aggression), It primarily helps to focus the dancer’s mind on the
dance idea in order to better convey the message. It also discourages distraction, and aids in
energy conservation. A smile on the dancer’s face is always welcome; it shows
confidence and enjoyment.
Yoruba dances are generally not based on rigid uniformity of body
movements. Each person is an important
individual, with a distinctive personality to convey to the audience, even in
Page 36
Group dances, movements are largely individualized…There is
amble room for spontaneous and personal improvised movements, as long as the
improvisations are in rhythm with the music and in consonance with the overall
content of the dance. In fact, the
dancer displays his or her virtuosity in the richness of improvised movements
and the smooth subtlety with which they are blended into the main form of the
dance. Except in a few dances where
group uniformity is mandatory, it is rare to find two traditional Yoruba
dancers dancing in choreographed unison to the same piece of music or dance
content.
The concept of symmetrical balance is a crucial factor in the overall perception of the dance. Despite the fact that the body is psychically in a state of perpetual strenuous or energetic movements, the dancer must always maintain a balanced state of calm serenity. The dignified calmness of the stance is highly instrumental in attaining this state; it strikes an aesthetic balance between the two seemingly opposed elements-motion and stillness. It is the height of virtuosity for the dancer, even after a long spell of exhaustive dancing, to emerge immediately after totally composed yet exuding intense vitality and alertness, the sweat and panting breathes the only tell-tall sing of the physical exertion recently experienced. This emphasis on “the inner calm” balanced against the ‘external agitation’ prompts Farris Thompson to refer to Yoruba dances along with other dances on the west coast of Africa as the “aesthetic of the cool”. 2
The standard dance form demonstrates the close
relationship between Yoruba body behavior and their dances. Their body bodes
have been transposed into the full rhythmical kinesic symbolism of dance, where
they form primary but essential components of the dance’s structural
composition. Already richly endowed with their own cultural semantics, body
signs in motional continuum multiply further the signification of the aesthetic
and communicative value of the dance form. It becomes clear why in Yoruba
society dance is fully integrated into the form of oral literature. The high
communication value of dance becomes a ready medium to powerfully signify and
express salient aspects of their culture.”…
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This concludes Part I of this pancocojams series.
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