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Abiku
Abiku is a Yoruba word that can be translated as "predestined to death". It is from (abi) "that which was born" and (iku) "death". Definition Abiku refers to the spirits of children who die before reaching puberty; a child who dies before twelve years of age being called an Abiku, and the spirit, or spirits, who caused the death being also called Abiku. Not only is an ''abiku'' a spirit of a child who dies young, the belief is that the spirit returns to the same mother multiple times to be reborn multiple times. It is the belief that the spirit does not ever plan to "stay put in life" so it is "indifferent to the plight of its mother and her grief." The spirits themselves are believed to live in trees, especially the iroko, baobab and silk-cotton species. Literature "Ben Okri's novel ''The Famished Road'' is based upon an abiku. Debo Kotun's novel ''Abiku'', a political satire of the Nigerian military oligarchy, is based upon an abiku. Gerald Brom's illustrated novel, ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abiku (novel)
Abiku is a Yoruba word that can be translated as "predestined to death". It is from (abi) "that which was born" and (iku) "death". Definition Abiku refers to the spirits of children who die before reaching puberty; a child who dies before twelve years of age being called an Abiku, and the spirit, or spirits, who caused the death being also called Abiku. Not only is an ''abiku'' a spirit of a child who dies young, the belief is that the spirit returns to the same mother multiple times to be reborn multiple times. It is the belief that the spirit does not ever plan to "stay put in life" so it is "indifferent to the plight of its mother and her grief." The spirits themselves are believed to live in trees, especially the iroko, baobab and silk-cotton species. Literature " Ben Okri's novel '' The Famished Road'' is based upon an abiku. Debo Kotun's novel '' Abiku'', a political satire of the Nigerian military oligarchy, is based upon an abiku. Gerald Brom's illustrated novel, ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoruba Culture
Distinctive cultural norms prevail in Yorubaland and among the Yoruba people.Kola Abimbola, Yoruba Culture: ''A Philosophical Account'', Iroko Academic Publishers, 2005. Art Sculpture The Yoruba are said to be prolific sculptors, famous for their terra cotta works throughout the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries; artists have also shown the capacity to make artwork out of bronze. Esiẹ Museum is a museum in Esiẹ ;a neighbouring town to Oro in Irepodun, Kwara. The museum was the first to be established in Nigeria when it opened in 1945. It once housed over a thousand tombstone figures or images representing human beings. It is reputed to have the largest collection of soapstone images in the world. In modern times, the Esie museum has been the center of religious activities and host a festival in the month of April every year. Textile Weaving is done on different types of looms in order to create hundreds of different patterns. Adire and Aso Oke are some of the popular texti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ogbanje
An ''ọgbanje'' is a term in Odinani (Igbo: ọ̀dị̀nànị̀) for what was thought to be an evil spirit that would deliberately plague a family with misfortune. Belief in ọgbanje in Igboland is not as strong as it once was, although there are still some believers. Its literal meaning in the Igbo language is "children who come and go". Sometimes the word ''ọgbanje'' has been used as a synonym for a rude or stubborn child. The word ''ọgbanje'' is often translated as changeling, due to the similarities they share with the fairy changelings of Celtic and broader European mythology. Some theorists have hypothesized that these conceptions serve as mythological ways of understanding what were once unknown diseases that often claimed the lives of children (such as SIDS and sickle cell disease), as the inheritance of these diseases within families may have led people to conclude that the children involved were all incarnations of the same malevolent spirit. It was believed that w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoruba Language
Yoruba (, ; Yor. '; Ajami script, Ajami: ) is a language spoken in West Africa, primarily in South West (Nigeria), Southwestern Middle Belt, and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the Ethnic group, ethnic Yoruba people. The number of Yoruba speakers is roughly 50 million, plus about 2 million second-language speakers. As a pluricentric language, it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria and Benin with smaller migrated communities in Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and The Gambia. Yoruba vocabulary is also used in the Afro-Brazilian religion known as Candomblé, in the Caribbean religion of Santería in the form of the liturgical Lucumí language and various Afro-American religions of North America. Practitioners of these religions in the Americas no longer speak or understand the Yorùbá language, rather they use remnants of Yorùbá language for singing songs that for them are shrouded in mystery. Usage of a lexicon of Yorùbá words and short phrases during ritua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoruba Mythology
The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute more than 42 million people in Africa, are a few hundred thousand outside the continent, and bear further representation among members of the African diaspora. The vast majority of the Yoruba population is today within the country of Nigeria, where they make up 21% of the country's population according to CIA estimations, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. Most Yoruba people speak the Yoruba language, which is the Niger-Congo language with the largest number of native or L1 speakers. In Africa, the Yoruba are contiguous with the Yoruboid Itsekiri to the south-east in the northwest Niger Delta, Bariba to the northwest in Benin and Nigeria, the Nupe to the north, and the Ebira to the northeast in central Nigeria. To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tobi Ogundiran
ToBI (; an abbreviation of tones and break indices) is a set of conventions for transcribing and annotating the prosody of speech. The term "ToBI" is sometimes used to refer to the conventions used for describing American English specifically, which was the first ToBI system, developed by Mary Beckman and Janet Pierrehumbert, among others. Other ToBI systems have been defined for a number of languages; for example, J-ToBI refers to the ToBI conventions for Tokyo Japanese, and an adaptation of ToBI to describe Dutch intonation was developed by Carlos Gussenhoven, and called ToDI. Another variation of ToBI, called IViE (Intonational Variation in English), was established in 1998 to enable comparison between several dialects of British English. Overview A full ToBI transcription consists of six parts: (a) an audio recording, (b) an electronic print-out or paper record of the F0 (fundamental pitch), (c) a tones tier, with an analysis of the tonal events in terms of H and L, (d) a words ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ayobami Adebayo
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (born 29 January 1988) is a Nigerian writer. Her 2017 debut novel, '' Stay With Me'', won the 9mobile Prize for Literature and the Prix Les Afriques. She was awarded The Future Awards Africa Prize for Arts and Culture in 2017. Early years Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ was born in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1988; shortly after, her family moved to Ilesa and then to Ile-Ife, where she spent most of her childhood in the University Staff Quarters of Obafemi Awolowo University. Writing career Adébáyọ̀ studied at Obafemi Awolowo University, earning BA and MA degrees in Literature in English. She went to study Creative Writing (MA Prose fiction) at the University of East Anglia, where she was awarded an International Bursary. She has also studied writing with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Margaret Atwood. In 2015, Adébáyọ̀ was listed by the ''Financial Times'' as one of the bright stars of Nigerian literature. Her debut novel, '' Stay With Me'', was publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: ''Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká''; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriela Babnik
Gabriela Babnik (born 1979) is a Slovene writer, literary critic and translator. She has published three novels and her journalistic literary and film criticism regularly appears in national newspapers and magazines in Slovenia. Babnik was born in Göppingen in Germany in 1979. She studied comparative literature at the University of Ljubljana and then travelled to Africa, particularly Burkina Faso, which has become the inspiration for much of her work. She holds an MA on the Contemporary Nigerian Novel and has also translated Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel ''Half of a Yellow Sun'' into Slovene (Slovene title: ''Polovica rumenega sonca''). Her first novel ''Koža iz bombaža'' won the Best First Book Award at the Slovenian Book Fair in 2007. Her third novel ''Sušna doba'' won the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature (Slovenia). Published works * ''Koža iz bombaža'', 2007 * ''V visoki travi'', 2009 * ''Sušna doba'', 2011 Delo7 February 2012 Translated into Englis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iroko
Iroko (also known as in Igbo language, '' in the Urhobo language of Southern Nigeria, and as odum in the Kwa languages of Ghana) is a large hardwood tree from the west coast of tropical Africa that can live up to 500 years. This is the common name for the genus ''Milicia'', in which there are two recognized species, which are closely related: ''Milicia excelsa'' and '' Milicia regia''. The genus name of ''Milicia'' is in honour of Milici (19th and 20th centuries), an administrator in Portuguese East Africa (in modern-day Mozambique) who supported the work of the author of the genus, Thomas Robertson Sim. It was first described and published in Forest Fl. Port. E. Afr. on page 97 in 1909. The tree is known to the Yoruba as , or and is believed to have healing properties. Iroko is known to the Igbo people as wood. It is one of the woods sometimes referred to as African teak, although it is unrelated to the teak family. The wood colour is initially yellow but darkens to a riche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Plucker
''The Plucker'' is a 160 page novel both written and illustrated by Brom. There are three parts to the story, in 22 chapters, and over 100 illustrations in full color. This story takes place in the shadowy land of make-believe, where Jack and his box are stuck beneath the bed with the other castaway toys. When Plucker, a malevolent spirit, is set loose upon the world of make-believe, Jack is thrust into the unlikely role of defending Thomas, the very child who abandoned him. Adaptations The Movie Channing Tatum brought the book to producers over at New Line Cinema. The movie was slated for a 2010 release date. However, in early 2008 Warner Bros. absorbed New Line Cinema, and all progress seems to have stopped on the picture. The Plucker on stage There were rumors that a student organization at the University of Hawaii was adapting the book for a stage play. This was confirmed by a YouTubebr>video ''The Plucker'' opened on Valentine's weekend 2009 for one weekend only. The pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
