Month: November 2020

Book by Babatunde Lawal

I was in a dilemma when I started this degree…

I have always designed garments, experiences and concepts based on elements from my Yorùbá culture and this helps me to see the world differently. But ever since I started this degree, as I have questioned myself more about my design practice, I’ve found that I’ve been conflicted.

How can I share my work without putting my culture on display as though it were some freak show?

I started reading more into Yorùbá culture, specifically The Gẹlẹdẹ festival and I realised that my people do not shy away from performance…’the performative’. They embrace and embody it when it comes to the Gẹlẹdẹ festival.

From ese Ifá- Odù Iwori Meji [credit: Babatunde Lawal, 1996]

The story goes…

Yewajobi [Yemoja] was unable to have children after marrying Oluweri. This was bothering her because she had many children from her previous marriage so, she consulted the Ifá oracle. Ifá told her to give sacrifices- she was to offer mashed corn, clay dishes and to dance with wooden images placed on her head and metal anklets. After doing this, Yewajobi became fertile and gave birth to her first son, who will grow up to be nicknamed Efe- meaning the humorist. The Efe mask in the festival signifies the joker.

Yewajobi’s second child was a girl. She grew up to be nicknamed Gẹlẹdẹ because of her obese stature. She loved dancing just like her mother and as a result, most female masks are tailored to her characteristics.

The story goes on that both Efe and Gẹlẹdẹ couldn’t have children with their respective partners when they got married and so were advised by Ifá to do the same thing their mother was advised to. They both performed the ritual and were able to have children of their own.

These rituals, because of how effective they proved to be, progressed gradually into the “Gẹlẹdẹ masked dance”. The dance is used to appease the “powerful mothers” citing Yewajobi as the matriarch. [Babatunde Lawal, 1996, p.39]

While the festival seeks to appease Yewajobi so that human living can be pleasant, another way Gẹlẹdẹ festival diffuse conflict in the community is by “staging theatrical performances to entertain and educate the public,” while simultaneously reforming antisocial behaviours [p.79].

This really caught my attention!

Is there a way I can use this framework in my current diasporic context? How can I create narratives that teach and entertain at the same time about issues in my environment?

Will the entertainment side of things allow for people to be more accepting of the existing issues about anti-black racism in Vancouver- their environment?

I had summer classes this year.

In one of the sessions, we got into conversation about defining the words we use so as to avoid our audience misinterpreting our work- because words can mean different things to different people.

While we spoke on this subject, I got really uncomfortable for some weird reason…I was fed up with defining everything with words-which can be limiting. And so I began to question the role of language in my work and I began to think through what kinds of languages I would want to use in my work.

Then I had an idea [some might say crazy]…

What will it look like to define words through dance?

There’s something fascinating about fusing fabric/garment with movement to illustrate a point or to paint a visual imagery of my understanding of a word and what is even more fascinating, is leaving people with that interpretation so that they might experience the word without speech or words.

So what does ‘Freedom’ mean?

[an iteration]

July 4, 2020 [9:46pm]

Every time a black person dies to racism in America,
It is plastered all over my social media
And I am reminded that the world is messed up.

These reminders without my knowledge,
Take me to digital burial grounds and obtuaries of people like me
I do not have a choice
As my eyes see bodies laid to rest in hashtags
Wake keeps in shouts of ‘say her/his name’
Reposts as cries for justice…for freedom

I am dragged to burial grounds I didn’t consent to visit
Burial grounds of people I didn’t know existed but valued as human beings
As brother, sister, aunty, uncle, mother, father, friend
And I run because processing the occurrences will mean processing the pain
The pain that comes with the hurt
“That could’ve been me”

“That could’ve been me” is the song of every black person
Bound or free
That could have been my
cousins, my sisters, my friends, me
Black life has become so cheap

As complex but futile as the human body is
The black body is disrespected
And every time the black body is killed,
by hands that are none next to God’s
It is being said to black people ‘that we are cheap’

What is in the atmosphere?
What is so strong in the air that once it is inhaled, it thirsts for black blood?
Black blood on white hands
Why is it so normal?
Why does it seem like black has always equated to victim?
Why?
What song will I sing to soothe their children to sleep
When those young minds are aware that white officer hands took their own
What songs will I sing to soothe their pain, to tell them do not be afraid
What will I say when they grow up and realise that the odds are against them too because of melanin?

For the young child that has to become an adult ever so quickly
For the young eyes that have seen things that the mind is not developed enough to process
I cry, I cry
I weep, I lament
As the earth cries to as she soaks in the blood of a man because he was black
As she soaks in the blood of a woman because she was black
As she feels that man gasp for air because he is being suffocated by a police officer
And she can’t revive him.

Hands that are no where next to God’s taking life as though he were not as fragile as the man he is killing.

//

So summer wasn’t actually what I expected. When I say summer I’m referring to the period between Mid-March to August

*follow that timeline for the sake of this blog ;)*

I had a lot of conversations over the summer about the deaths of Ahmuad Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and about the protests that occured as a result. Some of them were great, empathetic, humbling and others were quite frankly not pleasant. I also encountered a lot of comments on social media that made me question a lot of people and their beliefs.

I hit a wall guys… this wall that left me so exhausted…so exhausted that I avoided doing thesis work because I would have to confront these issues, friendships, schools of thought.

So it was a rollercoaster but that really pushed me to write a lot of poetry…I mean A LOT! I haven’t written so much in such a short amount of time.

So here is a poem…for all the black souls lost as a result of police brutality, racism and ill-treatment, this is for you.

“a moment of silence for all the black bodies we’ve laid to rest in hashtags and buried in the cycle of trends.”

‘Silence please [10:07pm]’ by Sola Olowo-Ake

Alarina- The Intermediary

A huge part of my practice is centred around embracing oratory practice and oral history as a form of reference in my research as, I noticed while reading more into Yorùbá culture that a lot of our history has been recorded in poetry or stories that are often repeated to generations.

I got into conversation with my dad about different ways we communicate as a people and mainly inquired about forms of communication that are particular to us. He then proceeded to tell me about the role of the Alarina. He explained that it was a cultural practice back in the day for families preparing to marry their children to have an Alarina. If Family A was preparing for marriage to Family D, Family A would hire an Alarina and this individual was responsible for finding out about Family D in order to report it back to Family A.

They did this in case there were any inconsistencies that could affect the child from Family A if they married into Family D. For example, are there health conditions they need to be aware about that could affect their children if they were to start a family? Does anyone in their family have any kind of prejudice towards something that the other family possessed and will it affect relationship development? -and other concerns as such.

If the Alarina ever found any red flags , it was the individual’s responsibility to report back to the family that sent him or her. Family A will then decide if they wanted to go forward with the marriage or betrothal, if they didn’t, they would decline or stop the engagement without giving reason to the children to preserve the other family’s honour.

After our conversation, I started thinking through what it would look like for Gele to be a messenger. What if it’s form when tied specifically spoke to certain issues in the diasporic environment? What will it look like for Gele to play the role of the Alarina.

My thesis exploration question morphed into this: How can the expression of my cultural identity be used as a tool for understanding how to relate better to stories on the black experience and the role of the diasporic environment in conversations about it?

And so what would it look like for Gele [as an expression of my cultural identity] to tell y diasporic environment issues that I have observed that it possesses with regards to black community development?

This is what I hoped to explore this summer.