An Èwi Deep Dive with Lanrewaju Adepọju

Even if I weren't already a huge fan of Lanrewaju Adepọju, I would have bought this album for the cover art alone! Aláfọwósowópó (Lanre Adepoju Records LALPS 72, 1980) is a tribute to the cooperative movement in Nigeria: "The greatest weapon the masses have to fight the formidable forces of oppressive capitalism, mindless and the unconcerned attitude of few privileged rich overlords, is to form themselves into cooperative societies."

In a previous post, I wrote of Alhaji Adepoju and his mastery of the Yoruba poetic form known as èwi, of which this LP is a fine example. Many of his compositions deal with Islamic religious themes but apparently not the ones here. Although I know only a few words of Yoruba, I find his lyrical declamations thoroughly entrancing. And check out the instrumental breaks from 12:32 to 13:37 and from 16:01 to 16:46 in the first track. Somebody should sample those!

Lanrewaju Adepọju & his Akewi Theatre - Èbìtì 'Ò P'eèrà

Lanrewaju Adepọju & his Akewi Theatre - Aláfọwósowó̩pò / Ẹgbe Owolowo (Ibadan)

Download Aláfọwósowópóó as a zipped file here.

The Alasa of Ibadanland

To an outsider, Lanrewaju Adepoju's Èwì would seem to be just another one of the many Yoruba percussion styles that are so popular in the southwestern corner of Nigeria: Fújì, Wákà, Àpàlà and the like. I've come to find out that èwì, properly understood, is not "music" at all but a chanted form of epic poetry, and that Adepoju is considered one of its greatest practitioners.

This by way of a fascinating essay, "Lanrewaju Adepoju and the Making of Modern Yoruba Poetry," by Oyeniyi Okunoye, which you can read in its entirety here. Okunoye marks the development of modern  èwì  around the time of Independence in 1960 and the broadcast of poetry in Western Nigeria. In 1964 Adepoju, who is proud of his status as a "self-made man" despite his lack of a formal education, began reading his poetry on Tiwa n Tiwa, a program on the Western Nigeria Broadcast Service in Ibadan, and went on to produce such programs as Kaaaro o o Jiire? ("Good Morning"), Barika ("Blessing/Greetings") and Ijinji Akewi ("The Poet at Dawn").

Born into a Muslim family, Adepoju dabbled for a time in mystical doctrines, associating with a group called the Servers of Cosmic Light for some years, returning to mainstream Sunni Islam in 1985. Okunoye writes:

Although Adepoju has emphasized the impact of his return to a conservative form of Islam on his poetic imagination, it is projected only superficially within the broader theistic vision that emerges in his work as a whole. With the obvious exception of poems in which he sets out to propagate particular Islamic doctrines, the vision that pervades his work constantly shifts between the Islamic and the ecumenical, blending Christian, Islamic and traditional Yoruba outlooks. This suggests either a split consciousness underlying Adepoju's work or a deliberate strategy aimed at popularity and relevance in a multi-religious society. His "Oriki Olodumare," a work that conceptually integrates Islamic, Christian and traditional Yoruba theistic visions, testifies to this.

The 1993 cassette Ìrònúpìwàdà ("Repentance," Lanrad LALPS 150), which I present here, is apparently one of Adepoju's works in a more "orthodox" Islamic vein. If anyone out there would care to provide a translation of the lyrics, I'm sure we'd all be interested:

Chief Lanrewaju Adepoju - Ìrònúpìwàdà

Chief Lanrewaju Adepoju - Àsà Burúkú  

Download Ìrònúpìwàdà as a zipped file here.