‘Old Wine in the New Wineskin’: A Womanist Interrogation of Ękún Ìyàwó Yorùbá Bridal Chant


Published in UTUENIKANG - December, 2021

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Abstract

This study examines the convergence of historical, cultural and literary praxes that are built around the Yorùbá Ękún Ìyàwó (bridal/nuptial chants), in the light of contemporary postmodern socio-cultural knowledge society. Womanist and postmodern theoretical parameters are used as the analytical imports of the study. This is done with a view to situating and interrogating the utility of the cultural artifact and the oral artistic category of Ękún Ìyàwó bridal chant. The work is analysed within the framework of postmodern and womanist critical lenses. The study relies on the data sourced from traditional cultural artifacts and nuances of the old and contemporary cultural orientations against the backlashes of postmodern world order. A scene mapping of Ękún Ìyàwó (bridal/nuptial chants) was carried out to firm up the analytical thrust of the paper. The study reveals that the rich coded African cultural heritages and values are embedded in the values and utilities of communalism, nurturing, gender complementarities and promotion of life-enhancing ethos of mothering useful in the traditional universe and valuable in the modern world. The paper concludes that the propagation, affirmation and preservation of communal identity, family consciousness, gender complementarities and enunciation of personal self-worth, which constituted the core of African cultural universe, should be the fulcrum upon which society is framed for the sustenance of the goals of progressive values in the midst of the pervasive virus of cultural corruption inherent in postmodernist value system.

Keywords: Womanist Ideology Cultural Artifacts Yorùbá Ękún Ìyàwó [Bridal Chants] Postmodernist Society

Cataloging & Classification: Bi-annually , Vol.1(1) pp. 99-117

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