Lágbájá Revisited (II): Drums, Divinity, and Democracy
This is a 3-part critique of Lágbájás seminal album “We before Me” released in 2000 (selections from the double album “We”/“Me” released a year before). I delve deep into the multi-dimensional perspectives of Lágbájá as a musician, a performance artist, and a political satirist.
Part II
The costume Lágbájá wears in Feyin E, which is reminiscent of the Egúngún, stuns when refracted through an art-historical prism, it finds us searching for meaning in the unknown and pondering our existence.
Looking At Loss
Seeing does not preclude belief. For the Yoruba, religious practices and divinity systems are typically hidden or shrouded in secrecy. An example of this are the crowns with beaded veils worn by the Oba, which visualize the deep correlation between power and concealment. Another example is masquerades like the Egúngún who are ancestors reincarnated. For an ancestor to be summoned, a ritual must take place where a family member of the deceased is prepared to become an appropriate receptacle. The medium then becomes passive and the spirit of the ancestor awakes in this world. In essence, the medium transforms into the living dead.
The Egúngún is powerful because we can not precisely grasp the technologies of enchantment by which it came to be. The masquerade is as much ritual as it is performance art. The spectacle involves a multitude of entertainment elements including music, dance, acrobatics, drama, poetry, and costume. When the dead return they are clad in large swathes of fabric; adire, locally woven damask, silk, printed cotton, and lace. The more elaborate the fabrics, the more social power and influence a family is considered to have. These fabrics are central to the masquerading tradition, the materials are inseparable from death because they become a conduit for the dead. They become a bridge between the physical world and the ancestral plane.
The Egúngún manage to be both beautiful and grotesque. Intricate dance steps augment the surrealness of their costume. The voluminous regalia thrills and twirls out imposingly, flapping up and down in a display of power. They provide a framework in which we can assess Yorùbá cosmology, one part is òrun, which is the realm of the ancestors, the unknown, the unseen, and the primordial. The other is the physical world, ayé, which contains the seen, the human, and the terrestrial. The Yorùbá think of death more as a transition than an end. They believe life and death exist on a continuum, and the soul can be reincarnated through many vessels. Emi, closely translated as soul or breath, is considered to be immortal and may exist in a liminal state, able to return periodically through reincarnation, àtúnwá. Often accompanied by an entourage that is composed of dancers, drummers, family members, friends, and onlookers, the Egúngún appears at a pivotal time to bless, warn, and punish. The masquerade’s presence indicates a time of rejoicing and a renewal of familial bonds. The Yorùbá feelings about death are a paradox; the Egúngún, a symbol of loss, is welcomed with much fanfare and celebration from the community.
Lágbájá has a myriad of beautiful costumes but the most fitting example to discuss the resemblances between himself and the Egúngún is the costume he wears in Feyin E. Firstly, his identity is almost completely concealed and he wears a capacious costume that is a disparate patchwork of colorful fabrics. Secondly, he speaks in an unrecognizable guttural voice. This vocal change suggests another entity is present. Additionally, for one to be an Egúngún they must have a vast repository and of praise poems, proverbs, fables, wise sayings, incantations, and jokes to draw from. Finally, the masking performance is done only by men, although women are also main performers too. Women conduct the Iwi Egúngún, an invocation that pays homage to divine powers, important individuals, and the history of lineages. This brings to mind the role Ego Ihenacho played in the band. The softness of her voice always shone against the gruffness of Lágbájá’s crooning. The second scene of Feyin E opens to stills of Lágbájá in flux (minute 0:30–1:10). However short this clip is, the inspiration it induces stays with us long after the video ends. The video effect used illustrates the infinite power of the Egúngún; he appears and disappears in various spaces on the screen. He becomes boundless, time traveling and existing in multiples. It looks as though he’s able to manipulate the laws of physics and invert the boundaries of nature.
Eyes Are For Talking
As the Yorùbás quip, “Oju l’oro wa”. Oju, the word for eye, can also mean face and presence. Oro means issue, matter, or topic of discussion. Wa indicates a place or position. Put together and translated, it means, “the eyes are where the discussion resides.” It is used in scenarios when one means to talk to another seriously or in confidence. Sustained eye contact usually suggests emotional intimacy, familiarity, and trust. Lágbájá hides his face but there is a cut out where his eyes and mouth are revealed. This signals that it is more than an aesthetic choice, he’s also concerned with telling us the truth or engaging in honest conversation.
What we see under Lágbájá’s mask are his real eyes or his inner eyes referred to as Oju Inu. People with this sight have the ability to see in a new dimension. Oju inu is the locus of enlightenment, intuition, clarity, and concentration. In his book, Seeking the African in African Art, Professor Rowland Abiodun refers to Oju Inu as insight, an artistic device which “is the intellect with which one perceives the individualized form, color, substance, outline, rhythm, and harmony…”. Lágbájá uses this device to make an art of the masquerades, he ensures the designs and materials of his masks and costumes are attention arresting and awe-inducing.
The power of his mask lies in its aesthetic impact. The oddness of it makes it curious and unforgettable. Lágbájá’s identity might be concealed but what he reveals is what we should focus on: His eyes. He gives us new eyes to see with, asking us not just to look at his eyes but through them. Lágbájá shows us a new way of seeing, a profound shift in the way we look at the world.
As someone who deals in contradictions, his artistry constantly juxtaposes elements in opposition to each other; sacred and secular, dead and living, physical and spiritual, individual and collective. He is inseparable from his art because he is his art. He is the creator of the spectacle while being the spectacle himself. We unknowingly engage in this layered meta-commentary that Lágbájá has constructed because he is watching us watch him, aware we only see what he permits. He is at once beholder and beholden. He is in control of our gaze looking at us without being seen in return. When we watch Lágbájá, we enter a matrix woven from the metaphysical and the mysterious. His costume sharpens the difference between looking and seeing. It questions what it means to see, to be seen, and to see beyond the unseen. He transports us through a four-dimensional reality, collapsing past with present, shattering space, and suspending reality.
Seeing Uncertainty
Calling 2020 an extremely difficult year would be understating it, from those we’ve lost due to the pandemic to worldwide police brutality protests. This year seemed to expose and exacerbate already existing inequalities and societal injustices. In a matter of weeks, our lives rapidly changed and we needed to adapt to new routines with a prolonged sense of uncertainty and instability. But as human beings we crave security, we want to feel safe and have control over our lives. The Egúngún return that sense of control to us; they teach us how to contend with the unknown, how to look deeper and how to collaborate in times of adversity. The resurrection of an ancestor is a reminder to us to honor life; theirs and ours. They cause us to reexamine and if necessary, reconfigure our relationship to ourselves, our family, and our history. They help us to contemplate the nature of our impermanence and give us the clarity and motivation to live good lives.
Although the masquerade does not heal, it bears witness. It does not erase our suffering but it acknowledges it and that is what sets us on a road to healing. It reconciles where we’ve been as a community and where we want to go, what we thought we knew, and the possibility of what we can imagine. The masquerades teach us that there is beauty in the ephemeral and that our uncertainty about life spurs our creativity. Using the Egúngún tradition, Lágbájá helps us to remember our past and teaches us to confront our fears. He helps us to negotiate our understanding of the impossible as he sparks our curiosity, emancipates cultural knowledge, and reflects the depth of the human spirit.
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