My brother Buska,
Great thanks, but the wizards who composed that blog I linked are three undergraduates at Miami university.
It seems the US is the global centre for the study of Yoruba art in particular and African art in general.
I've kept the page permanently open on my computer for regular feasting and happy assimilation.
The writers have distilled much of the essence of what scholars like Abiodun and Blier have put much effort into finding and expounding.
Part of the beauty of this discussion of Yoruba aesthetics is that the writers have presented both the primarily conceptual aspect, dealing with ideas that require no identification with the Yoruba origin Orisa cosmology and linked this foundational conceptual universe to Orisa spirituality through summations on some of the most prominent Orisa or deities. One can therefore appreciate these two realms of ideas independently or in relation to each other and apply the purely aesthetic ideas to other subjects outside Orisa cosmology.
The discussion of the Orisa is very rich on account of broad scope of artistic images provided in the context of discussions covering traditional Yoruba, diaspora and contemporarily created styles of responding to the Orisa in Nigeria, a unique feature being a picture of and discussion of an Ogun priestess of whom the writers state, "The fact that this devotee is a woman, yet dressed as a man is reflective of Ogun's power to both create and destroy. The anatomy of women allows for the possibility of giving birth, or creating life. Throughout history, men are typically the ones to take arms and go to battle. Thus by being an armed woman, the priestess, just like Ogun, possesses the ability to both create and destroy".
This summation reflects the particularly striking significance of an Ogun priestess on account of the fearsome characterization of Ogun, Orisa of war, slaughterer of his own men after he got carried away with blood lust after decimating the enemy at the battle of Ire, depicted as playing with a woman, leading to her private parts dripping with blood, carver of the way for the Orisa from orun, the world of primal origins, to aye, earth, as described by Soyinka in Idanre and Myth, Literature and the African World, and in Yoruba oral poetry, therefore being a deity associated with the kind of energy men are best known for summonning, and not just any men but hunters and men working in masculine centred activities related to metals, although women also work with metals and people like the computer scientist Kunle Olukotun have taken Ogun into the broader world of technology, with Stanford computer scientist Kunle Olukotun at one time making his server name "Ogun" as represented by an email address of his being kunle@ogun.stanford.edu which he so justifies "As you know Ogun is the Yoruba god of iron and steel, invoked by all whose occupations rely on iron. Computer servers are sometimes called "big iron", so my server's name is 'Ogun'".
This summation reflects the particularly striking significance of an Ogun priestess on account of the fearsome characterization of Ogun, Orisa of war, slaughterer of his own men after he got carried away with blood lust after decimating the enemy at the battle of Ire, depicted as playing with a woman, leading to her private parts dripping with blood, carver of the way for the Orisa from orun, the world of primal origins, to aye, earth, as described by Soyinka in Idanre and Myth, Literature and the African World, and in Yoruba oral poetry, therefore being a deity associated with the kind of energy men are best known for summonning, and not just any men but hunters and men working in masculine centred activities related to metals, although women also work with metals and people like the computer scientist Kunle Olukotun have taken Ogun into the broader world of technology, with Stanford computer scientist Kunle Olukotun at one time making his server name "Ogun" as represented by an email address of his being kunle@ogun.stanford.edu which he so justifies "As you know Ogun is the Yoruba god of iron and steel, invoked by all whose occupations rely on iron. Computer servers are sometimes called "big iron", so my server's name is 'Ogun'".
As part of the expanding world of exposure to Yoruba and African art and thought, one may download the first chapter of the indispensable Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought from the linked site.
thanks
toyin
On 4 December 2016 at 11:26, BUSKA OLADOSU alaremu2007@gmail.com [NaijaObserver] <NaijaObserver@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Alagba Toyin, once again I must say kudos for a job well done, you have really done justice to the underlying strength of the Orishas and the Philosophy of the Yoruba traditional religion and the emerging generation in modernity
On Dec 4, 2016 9:23 AM, "Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju toyin.adepoju@gmail.com [NaijaObserver]" <NaijaObserver@yahoogroups.com> wrote: __._,_.___
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