Photo credit: Wikipedia
About one of the first things I grew up to know in the Yoruba culture is the egungun cult.
Near our home at Itire, there used to live a family – an extended family – if you like, who lived a true Yoruba lifestyle though tinted with some Islamic practices.
Islamic practices because they normally observed the five times a day prayers. They also did the fasting. And they did slaughter rams for sallah!
But then, all other things about them were simply Yorubaish. Theirs was the place I first got introduced to the music of the Yoruba philosophers, Yusuf Olatunji, Haruna Isola, and the one and only egun mogaji, Ayinla Omowura.
I really owe them a lot of appreciation for opening my eyes not only to the music but to the world of the egungun cult.
Growing up, we were taught to be more Catholic than the Pope. Between us and the church rats, I really don’t know who was more prominent in church.
But then, we were richer, at least, richer than the proverbial church rats!
In our own cocoon, we were taught that speaking the mother tongue was vernacular. We were also taught that smoking Indian Hemp would make one mad.
In my naivety, I thought hemp was imported from India.
But this family was my ideal African family. They had their egungun which was called Adinimodo. The full name was ‘Adinimodo to di baba won mo’le’.
That is a masquerade that has the ability to keep people indoors.
Just like Christians have Christmas and Muslims have sallah, I think the egungun festival could be described as Egungunmas!
You know, as kids, there was hardly any nook and cranny we couldn’t enter. Indeed, no place was sacred for us.
As we ate and drank with the Muslims so we did with the traditionalists.
That was how we discovered that the Egungun was not a heavenly body. It was indeed a mere person that was behind the masquerade.
I remember a friend of mine who was part of that family severally wore the mask of the revered Adinimodo!
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