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Dr. Udu Yakubu engages renowned pioneer African drama scholar, Oyin Ogunba, in a discussion of issues around African festivals and traditional cultures, with focus on traditional and contemporary Yoruba experience. Ogunba, who has been a Professor of Literature-in-English since July 1976, has researched on and taught the subject in several universities in Nigeria and abroad for over 40 years. He provides critical insights into the dynamics and changing conditions of traditional cultures in various African communities.
Yakubu: I suppose an appropriate way of starting this discussion is to have you look at the phenomena of continuity and change in African cultures in the last 40, 50 years, with emphasis on festivals.
Ogunba: I think one should say that there has been substantial continuity in the sense that the festivals are still there, some of them. The average Yoruba boy, for example, still prostrates for his father. There are still many of the taboos not yet broken. One of this is that one is not allowed to call his/her father by his first name. A lot of that is still there. But beyond all these, of course, a great deal has changed. The story of continuity and change is still almost the same. Let us take them one by one. I have always argued that the festival, the traditional festival, is the cornerstone of traditional African culture.
40, 50 years ago, many of the festivals were still very much alive. In most cases now, they are either dead, moribund or some people have come around to re-order the festivals to suit current times, not always to the advantage of the festivals. Let me use Ijebu as an example. 40, 45 years ago, we could still talk of about 15 to 20 festivals a year in a place like Ijebu Ode. Of course, the grand example I have always talked about are festivals in Ile-Ife, where it is said that there is a festival every day of the year except one, which is of course a typical hyperbolic Yoruba way of saying things.
In reality, there were probably just about 50 festivals of various dimensions and various clienteles. The very popular ones were probably never more than between 5 and 10, even at the best of times....