How Olamide subverts and resubverts African oral techniques

Some of these aestheticising codes are elements of African oral-based thoughts which vary from folk narratives, myths and mythography, proverbs, riddles and African cosmic realities like witcraft, sorcery among others.

These "aesthetics" come up in two ways: the oral texts and the texture of the texts.Yoruba, and African oral texts are primarily sourced from within the native tradition, a tradition of knowledge production passing down across generation.

On the other hand, the pattern of story telling or narrative pattern is another intriguing aesthetic of African literary tradition and this has forced scholars to enquire into a unique pattern of African literary theory, just like what Vladmir Prop did to the Russian tales. There is prologue,digression, figurative aesthetical uses of language, epilogue, homophonic dictions, audience participation techniques. All these form a theory for the indigenous aesthetics of African literary theories.

The songs of Olamide serve as evidence of the transference of these indigenous African literary techniques to contemporary Nigerian pop. Apart from Olamide's creativity in using metaphor, irony, simile, alliteration, assonance and so on, there is critical sensibility in his music.

Let's take "epilogue". Normally, this technigue introduces the subject matter of a text in a traditional African narrative. Olamide uses this to introduce the producer on the track 'Owo Blow'. The track starts with this words "Major Bangs", and in another track labelled " Bobo", it goes as " Its Young John, The wicked Producer". "Its Shizzi, Magic Fingers" surfaces in "Who You Epp". The famous titled track "Eyan Mayweather" favours "Pheelz, Mr. Producer".

The implication of this, for instance, is identity. In contemporary Nigerian urban setting, everybody wants to be identified. The voice, skills and technical musical prowess of the music producers are made known since the fans of the artiste could also judge who makes good or bad beats for the final music production of the artist. It looks as if this also covers certain aspect of the contractual capacities of Olamide and his music producers because mentioning their names forms or gives a unique identity and respect for them, considering the facts that Olamide has built a place for himself in Nigerian Afrobeats Arena.

Olamide's 'Wo' appears to be the most philosophical "song-text" for the second half of year 2017. Its intricacies enjoy mimetic codes. "Wo" is a Yoruba lexicon which translates to English word "Look". Therefore, two things are philosophical in the texture of the song: "Wo" (look) and "Jo" (Dance).

Without a grand knowledge in the areas of "Performance Aesthetics of Dance" and "Stage Direction in theatrical arts" one would not understand the literary implications of the syntagmatic and paradigmatic discourses of the alternating set ("Look" and "Dance") of the music and its implications for "State of Nigeria as a nation".

Juslin's "Dance narration and The Feminine Mimesis" (2007), Sellers-Young's "Dance, Mimesis, Consciousness and Imagination"(2008) and Cole's "Dance with Myth, Mimesis and Memory" are semiotic explications of cultural artefacts spanning across age, sex and psychosomatic dynamism of human and traditional coutures; and all these are what the authors cited above have used to formulate the intricacies of national identities for their respective regional studies. However, summarily, "Dance", in itself, is a formulaic reception mirroring cultural coutures, whereas, its choreographic ornamentation is transformative, and adequately infinitive, often creating a conflict of interest among the intended objects when it is definitely modern in style, and scholarly in appraisal. The later has a detailing efforts in the process of creating how Olamide Adedeji has created psychocultural affinity with the wider audience through the mimetic codes of "Dancing" in "Wo".

Now, "Dance" (The word for Yoruba lexicon "Jo" and the verbal variant of "Ijo") is a mimetic codes within every context of indigenous Nigerian communities; and apart from the recent commercialization from many of such dancing context like "Maltina Dance Hall", among others, we can say "Dance" has now developed into a postmodern phase or some kind of show-facing and phasing "Orality in Modernity". The body is a "para-symbolic atmosphere" where the outer (smile, cries, pains etc) surfaces through the eyes, and at the same time, the "eyes" again is a symbolic "Creative Energy" (See Zulu Sofola's "The Artist and The Tragedy of a Nation") that every external source can decode so many thing from and can be used to pass countless of message. On the inner, the creative sobriquet, here the "The Provisional Order" exists within this region, or psychoanalytically, every action eventually decoded throught the eye has suffered depression, or being blocked from eruption. Here, also the characterological codes of the inner texts feature our kidneys, Liver, Pancrea, Urethra, vocal track, among others; and normally, the erupted actions decoded throught the eyes must have been in constant rift with these organs. Here, the theory of "body" as a "para-symbolic atmosphere" emanated.

On the outer region, "Dance" is an agent of society and faithful friend of "Body", often than not, the one detailing the very essence of some inner activities. "Dance" is not gender restricted, or the "muse" plies all gender in Africa. This is seen in the cases of "Enuani" people of Bendel, the "Arugba" among the Yoruba people of Osun State and "Yeye Osun" (River mother) and "Iya Osun" all over the Yorubaland in Nigeria and other Nigerian indigenous settings. However, this is against the Greeco-Roman precept where the female artistes have been systematically sidelined from "Creative Force". The ideology beneath this is that the "muse" is the female that "impregnates" the male artiste. So "she" is the "muse"!

So when Olamide says "Wo", three things are at intertext: tradition, the para-symbolic, and the final mimetic codes( what is expected to look at, or what is being expected to imitate). "Look" is the English variant of the Yoruba word "Wo" which means "look" , or "Look at it". Within African, and specifically, Yoruba people of South Western Nigeria, there is a system "Wo" (Look). Some traditional proverbs can be used to relay this:

"Aditi oni ran wo" (The deaf does not look)
"Oju 'lalakan fi sori" (The crab uses eyes to watch its head)

These two proverbs exemplify the place of "Look or act of looking" within Yoruba cosmos. The first proverb becomes the praxis for understanding that human body system, in Yoruba cosmos, is a media unit; an organic system where each entry does not act separately but works in unisom with other. It means to "see very well" the "ear" must function, ditto.

The second proverb which Olamide is probably acting upon is based on the fact that the "eye" which is the primary character playing the role of "Wo" is consequently a security outreach for the whole body.

Now, the concern of "Wo" which has three intertexts comes up this way. The position of the Yoruba tradition has been reached through the two proverbs supplicated above. And also the "para-symbolic" is also verified when the "eyes" now becomes a media unit, and a security outfit. The concept of "Dance" (Ijo) within the cultural purview of the artiste's cosmos has a functional texture. It coordinates three intertext: the tradition, dance and the para-symbolic atmosphere. Again, "Dance" is a mimetic code within the oral resources of the indigenous African tradition. One might be poised to dance in the following origins:

i.a woman who is careless and her baby fell off from her back will be asked to "Dance" nakedly in the market: mysticism and punishment come up since body, by virtues of this, is a mystic tendency where punishment can be coded and decoded.

ii. troublesome twins forced their mother to "dance" in the market as a marker of propitation for seeking their peaceful upbringing. Here, "body" is a propitating agent and materially inclusive culturally.

iii. in the case of "Oro Ibeji" (Twins festival), all the twins within the festival "Dance" to the tune of the drumming to receive "Creative Energy". Again, here, "Dance" becomes supernatural forces that is deployed to receive external messages.

iv. "Ijo Ayo, Ijo Idunnu" (Dance of Joy, Dance of rejoice) is a Yoruba people's way of appraising "joyful occurence. In other words sadness could also assume a "dance" format in case of funeral celebration.

All these are encapsulation of "body" unique intercepts: arts, artiste and performance aesthetics. Having established this, the cultural context of Olamide Adedeji's "Wo" worths to be fully explicated in light of the song as a "cultural semiotic".

In "Wo" Olamide says:

Wo, won bai wi nibi, Wo,
Malo sebi ogoro, Wo
Awon Omo tika bodi, Wo
Malo lalakibo, Wo
Oya jo bi Mummy, Wo
Oya jo bi Daddy, Wo...

Here "look, "Wo" is an hypertextual massage decoded through the exercise of the "eye". In other words"eyes" has become a security outfit where the adddresse can acquire the smart option and go away with "Awon omo tikabodi"(The children of who deep finger into private part) . The artiste uses the euphemistic lexis "Tikabodi" as literal signpost or process of deeping finger into the "vargina" and linguistically relegate being acting like "Ogoro", a term which is used by the artiste to background open discussion of the addressee's "dullness".

This is not the only image of the song. The erotic dimension the song-text assumes is another implication for "para-symbolism". "Mummy" and "Daddy" are twisted ironic metaphors for conflictual interest between being poor and rich, tradition and modernity. Being old or being elderly within the cultural purview of Yoruba tradition is a signpost of wisdom, experience, calmness, diligent, devotion, trustworthy and brave among others. So when the artiste advises the addressee to "Dance" like "Mummy" and "Daddy", it appears that the artiste is setting the following pretexts for the addressee as a path of orality and wisdom:

"Agba tin lagun, ekun inu loun sun" (The elder that is sweating is crying inside)
"Bomode ba subu, awo waju, bagba ba subu eyin ni owo" (if a toddler falls down, he looks frontward and when the elder falls down he looks backward).

The two proverbs are what appears that the artiste is calling the attention of the addressee to. Now, the first premise of the first proverb focuses on the aspect of unquantifiable wisdom of an elderly person in Yoruba cosmos. So when Olamide is drawing attent to "Daddy" and "Mummy" he is simply telling the addressee to tap from the established "sweat" (experience, calmness, etc) of "Daddy" and "Mummy" and forsake copying his contemporaries who could not merely decode the reason or the significance of the "sweat" of an elderly person.

The second proverb sets another ideological foundation for understanding the ironic tropes "Mummy" and "Daddy". The elders are so wise. When something befalls them, they see it as challenges and look "backward" for the causative agent. Meanwhile, the attached youthful lust would normally deny an average inexperienced person the ability to rethink, and recast other several options.

The word "Faka Fiki" is onomatopoeic and Kinesical. The onomatopoiiec substance of the words come at two levels. The first aesthetical order is that the word is suggestivelyy musical and depict a certain sonorosity.The sounds 'a' and 'i' are alphabetical variants of Yoruba vowel sounds; and retain some continum in musical artistry of the "song-text'.

The third order is on the aspect of how the co-occurence of the vowel and consonant sounds in the phrase form a contrastive musical conjecture. Vowel sounds are alway voiced and sonorous. The consonant sounds /f/ and /k/ are voiceless fricative and velar respectively. The contrastive instinct appears as the artiste's way of showing conflict between tradition and modernity, youthful lust or exuberance and wisdom associated with being elderly . These are paramount issues in postmodern Nigerian urban setting.

The kinesical aesthetics of the phrase is a scientific measurement of body as a "para-symbolic agent". The movement of body and various part of the body like eyes, leg, hands and the dynamism of the mind toward the tune of of the songwhile "dancing" go along way in studying the song-text as a semiotic cultural artefact.

Oju loba ninu ara (the eye is the king in the body)
Olohun maje e fe nuko (May God protect us from injuring our mouth)
Olohun maje a sirin (May God not let us miss our way)
Apalara, ejika niye e kan (The arm is the body, the shoulder is its relation)
Olohun ma dia leti ooo (May God not deafen us)
Fiditi (lean on your buttock)

Zulu Sofola says "...in dance art, man faces boldly, the problems of life through the movement of mass in space...choreographed movement of body in space, what words cannot express..."

The Yoruba prayers cum wise sayings above tilt toward the traditional usages of human body and how such usages manifested on different occasion or scenario. Olamide might have probably ignites the logic's of Yoruba loric traditions without having to revisit the extent of how "Dance" do mean in the indigenous contexts of the Yoruba world view.