Yoruba Religious Textiles: Essays in Honor of Cornelius Adepegba

Yoruba Religious Textiles Essays in Honor of Cornelius Adepegba Edited by Elisha P. Renne and Babatunde Agbaje-Williams Ibadan: Book Builders. 259 pp., 16 color plates, 68 b/w illustrations. $16.95 paper

This is an important book dealing with a subject worthy of extensive research. Renne and Agbaje-Williams should be congratulated on compiling a group of essays, largely by Nigerian scholars, focusing upon an important aspect of Yoruba art and religious studies that has received little attention in past scholarship. In this festschrift to Yoruba art historian Cornelius Adepegba, the stated goal of the editors is to provide primary information on twentieth century Yoruba textile traditions and the role they play in religious contexts.

Nine studies, based on field research conducted throughout Yorubaland, focus on cloth and clothing used in "traditionalist," Christian, and Islamic settings to identify continuities and disjunctures in the use, formal qualities, and meaning of religious textiles over the past one hundred years. Each essay incorporates primary information from field-based research. In presenting these oral traditions, individual authors are to be commended for including the sometimes-conflicting histories provided by informants, which further demonstrate the complexity of their areas of research.

In the introductory chapter, the editors identify a number of aesthetic principles and practices in the Yoruba ritual use of cloth. Religious groups differentiate themselves and visually emphasize their beliefs through their choices of production behaviors, materials, colors, and motifs in the construction of ritual textiles and dress. A number of common dialectic juxtapositions in cloth construction and use are revealed. These include an "aesthetic of fanciness" versus an "aesthetic of plainness" in dress to honor deities; the "hidden" versus the "revealed" in the layering of dress; and the use of color contrasts such as white (healing) and red (danger) to signal dualities of belief. Other shared characteristics of the Yoruba traditions are belief in the potency of cloth to absorb religious power; the role of cloth in the display of wealth and power; the creation of ritual textiles and dress as a form of religious practice; and the use of dress to signal membership in and commitment to religious groups. One recurring practice--the use of white cloth--is given special attention as an example of continuities and disjunctures in traditionalist, Christian, and Islamic contexts.

In "A Semiotics of Clothing Insignia of Indigenous Secret Societies among the Ijebu Yoruba," Aderonke Adesola Adesanya offers a semiotic analysis of the complexities of ritual dress through an examination of two major religious societies, the Osugbo and the Osoosi. The Osugbo (Ogboni), composed of male and female elders, has vital political, judicial, and religious functions in the community. The female Osoosi society is dedicated to a water goddess. Adesanya focuses upon the use of textile ensembles as identifying insignia of membership and as signifiers of power and ritual secrets. Her analysis of the dress of Osugbo members, particularly the iconography of hand-woven itagbe cloth, is a significant addition to the existing literature, and her briefer description of the clothing worn by Osoosi cult members also makes an important contribution.

In two related essays, Tunde Akinwumi and Aretha Asakitikpi address ritual textile use in religious societies of the town of Owo and the interplay of gender roles in the production, commissioning and display of cloth. Akinwumi's "Ero: A Celebration of Eldership in the Indigo Cloths of Owo" describes how textiles enrich the rituals and ceremonies by which men move Into the status of elderhood. The Ero festival, held every eight years in Owo, involves a series of ritual events that celebrate the transition of men who have reached the requisite age of sixty to sixty-five. For the occasion, daughters of candidates commission special hand-woven, indigo-dyed cloth which is worn only by members of the Ero age-grade. The women who weave this broadloom cloth in the seven days preceding the commencement of the festival must observe taboos that ensure the production of ritually pure garments. This contribution is of particular interest for the insights it provides into the interdependence between genders and generations in the commissioning, production, and ownership of the cloth. The essay ends by describing the resilience of this distinctive Yoruba textile tradition despite modification of rituals to fit the beliefs of Christian and Muslim candidates.

"Women's Religious Textiles in Owo" by Aretha Asakitikpi makes a strong case for the social power of women in the male-dominated religious and political activities of Owo. She argues that women create, through activities and ritual practices revolving around cloth production and use, a "female essence" that generates female solidarity. Through these activities women define "areas of control" that Owo men recognize and respect, although they are excluded from participation. In addition to the textiles woven specifically for male elders described above, four other important ritual textiles subject to production taboos are woven and worn in women's rituals. Two types of white and blue striped cloth, created with intricate rituals, are worn as women's sashes, primarily as proprietary insignias of family at important burials. A more specialized ritual cloth is worn only by women who sequentially give birth to three living children of the same sex. Finally, the most expensive cloth produced in Owo, senwonsen, could be worn only by female elders, at least in the past. In her description of weaving and female rituals from which men are excluded, Asakitikpi has made a strong case for the "female essence" which is expressed in many ways throughout Yorubaland.