research as participation
Figure 1
Scholars—anthropologists and historians mostly—have spent their whole lives studying the history, culture, art, and religion of the Yoruba people. The richness of the scholarship available is astounding. What’s more, quite a bit of this scholarship has been produced by the Yoruba people themselves. Indeed, indigenous scholars have written many of the foundational texts of Yoruba studies. This is unusual in terms of African studies, a field whose foundational literature has, in general, been produced by western scholars, researchers, and critics writing within and for the academy. Henry Drewal writes about this in his introduction to The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts: “The single most important fact about Yoruba studies is that it is a field of research and publication initiated by Yoruba people. It is an area of intellectual discourse about Africa in which the African ‘voice’ had been present from the beginning—and not merely present but the very agent of its inception” (3). Indigenous discourse on Yoruba art and culture, then, problematizes the traditional position of western scholars and the academy. No longer aloof outsiders excavating indigenous practice in order to illuminate it for a western audience, the western scholar of Yoruba culture instead participates in a multi-cultural field of scholarship characterized by a fluid give and take between non-western epistemologies and western modes of knowledge-making. Indeed, the western Yoruba scholar’s work is characterized to a large degree by participation, by cultural crossing, and by consciousness of bias and privilege.
Margaret Thompson Drewal writes about the position of the western critic in relation to African dance traditions in a chapter on improvisation, Improvisation as Participatory Performance: Egungun Masked Dancers in the Yoruba Tradition. “Western viewing traditions position critics as distanced observers,” she writes (119). In this sense, the distant gaze of the critic or the spectator makes the performing subject an object, and makes static and contained performance that is in reality improvisational and fluid. Drewal argues that, in Yoruba ritual, “knowledge is produced through embodied techniques and skills in collaboratively improvising spectacle” (130). In Egungun masquerades, for instance, participants who heckle the masker, sing, clap their hands, or intervene in the performance in some way are “at the same time both spectators and spectacle” (Drewal 130). For Drewal then, if the western critic is to engage with Yoruba performance tradition in any real way they must embrace participation as a mode of knowledge-making. We must collapse hierarchical distinctions between audience and performer, we must understand--through participation—that non-western modes of representation are not seen as products but rather as fluid, ontological journeys characterized by play, improvisation, and embodiment (Drewal 130).
While I am unable to participate in-person in the lively masquerades of the Egungun, I have tried to use Drewal’s concept of participation as knowledge-making as a theoretical lens through which to frame my own foray into the world of Yoruba studies. While I cannot participate in the ritual itself, I can still participate in the “ritual” of Yoruba studies by conducting research, asking questions, contextualizing and summarizing information. I have tried, using Drewal as my framework, to engage the material in an improvisational way that collapses distinctions between “audience” and “performer.” I am a spectator, twice-removed, of these rituals, and as such, I am both “spectator” and “spectacle.” I have tried to set aside the distant gaze of the western critic, for a different “participatory” lens.
Margaret Thompson Drewal writes about the position of the western critic in relation to African dance traditions in a chapter on improvisation, Improvisation as Participatory Performance: Egungun Masked Dancers in the Yoruba Tradition. “Western viewing traditions position critics as distanced observers,” she writes (119). In this sense, the distant gaze of the critic or the spectator makes the performing subject an object, and makes static and contained performance that is in reality improvisational and fluid. Drewal argues that, in Yoruba ritual, “knowledge is produced through embodied techniques and skills in collaboratively improvising spectacle” (130). In Egungun masquerades, for instance, participants who heckle the masker, sing, clap their hands, or intervene in the performance in some way are “at the same time both spectators and spectacle” (Drewal 130). For Drewal then, if the western critic is to engage with Yoruba performance tradition in any real way they must embrace participation as a mode of knowledge-making. We must collapse hierarchical distinctions between audience and performer, we must understand--through participation—that non-western modes of representation are not seen as products but rather as fluid, ontological journeys characterized by play, improvisation, and embodiment (Drewal 130).
While I am unable to participate in-person in the lively masquerades of the Egungun, I have tried to use Drewal’s concept of participation as knowledge-making as a theoretical lens through which to frame my own foray into the world of Yoruba studies. While I cannot participate in the ritual itself, I can still participate in the “ritual” of Yoruba studies by conducting research, asking questions, contextualizing and summarizing information. I have tried, using Drewal as my framework, to engage the material in an improvisational way that collapses distinctions between “audience” and “performer.” I am a spectator, twice-removed, of these rituals, and as such, I am both “spectator” and “spectacle.” I have tried to set aside the distant gaze of the western critic, for a different “participatory” lens.
The loom:
yoruba ritual: performers, play, agency
Figure 2
As I began the research process I realized that I did not possess and overarching theoretical lens through which to view my (at times expansive) collected material. I had articles and books aplenty, but the sheer scope of information they presented was daunting. What I needed was a frame through which to initially organize and view the material. Margaret T. Drewal’s work Yoruba Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency was just that frame. This extensive examination of the elements of Yoruba ritual provided me with a few theoretical jumping off points and initial questions that I could ask of my material. Continuing the metaphor of the tapestry, Drewal’s work served as a loom of sorts, upon which I began to place the individual threads of my research, and with which I was able to weave these individual threads into something that resembles a complete tapestry.
Drewal is an influential expert on West African performance, and her book on ritual has become a seminal, foundational text in the field of Yoruba studies. Drawing on extensive years of fieldwork in Nigeria, Brazil, and the United States Drewal crafts a rigorously detailed and cohesive portrait of the ways in which the improvisation, play, and agency of Yoruba “actors” interact with the dynamic performance traditions that make up Yoruba ritual. At the beginning of her book, Drewal theorizes ritual—specifically Yoruba ritual—as a journey, and as such, as a reflexive, progressive, and transformational force in the lives of those who experience it ( Drewal xiii). This transformation is “embedded in African performance practice,” Drewal argues, through ritual practitioners’ “acts of re-presentation, or repetition with critical difference” (xiii).
Given this, Drewal’s main argument is that “ritual practitioners as knowledgeable human agents transform ritual itself through play and improvisation” (xv). Participants (including performers and spectators) have the power to change ritual. While previous scholars have theorized the agency of the ritual structure, Drewal argues that it is really the participants who have agency over ritual structure itself. Based on learned, in-body performance traditions, participants are able to make a choice and take action in the moment to change the course of the ritual. Their very role as participants in repeated rituals empowers them to do this, Drewal argues.
Drewal’s argument directly responds to foundational theorists’ claims that ritual repetition is “rigid, stereotypic, conventional, conservative, invariant, uniform, redundant, predictable, and structurally static" (Drewal xiv). Drewal instead contends that ritual is actually always in flux precisely because of its repetitive nature. Ritual, in its constant re-presentation, is always subject to the “indeterminacy of improvisation as praxis, that is, the transformational capacity of repetition itself” (Drewal xvi-xv). Futher distancing herself from the anthropologists and religious scholars who first studied African ritual, Drewal observes that the very world ‘ritual’ represents a western desire to return to a romantic past where “communality, coherence, connectedness, collective conscience, and efficacy characterized the social order” (Drewal xv). This eurocentric nostalgia for a time that never was has little bearing on the reality of African performance. Even the term ritual, Drewal observes, “reflects more our own intellectual history, conceptual patterns, and ways of looking than it does any kind of African performance” (Drewal xv-xvi). In an attempt to move toward an African “epistemological locus,” Drewal choses to focus her study on ritual “actors”: the individuals who perform and participate in a wide range of Yoruba performance. Drewal writes that her approach “assumes the instrumentality of performers in invoking or even breaking rules, producing structures, and mobilizing resources and support. Particularly in Ritual, actors are engaged in framed, rule-oriented action as well as in the exercise of power to accomplish something” (xvi).
Overall, Drewal’s book seeks to re-frame western understandings of Yoruba ritual in terms of an African “epistemological locus.” She seeks to elucidate this locus by examining the complex and fluid ways knowledgeable performers and participants utilize repetition, play, and improvisation to alter rituals which “at once [encapsulate] the world of social relationships and the cosmos” (Drewal xv).
Drewal is an influential expert on West African performance, and her book on ritual has become a seminal, foundational text in the field of Yoruba studies. Drawing on extensive years of fieldwork in Nigeria, Brazil, and the United States Drewal crafts a rigorously detailed and cohesive portrait of the ways in which the improvisation, play, and agency of Yoruba “actors” interact with the dynamic performance traditions that make up Yoruba ritual. At the beginning of her book, Drewal theorizes ritual—specifically Yoruba ritual—as a journey, and as such, as a reflexive, progressive, and transformational force in the lives of those who experience it ( Drewal xiii). This transformation is “embedded in African performance practice,” Drewal argues, through ritual practitioners’ “acts of re-presentation, or repetition with critical difference” (xiii).
Given this, Drewal’s main argument is that “ritual practitioners as knowledgeable human agents transform ritual itself through play and improvisation” (xv). Participants (including performers and spectators) have the power to change ritual. While previous scholars have theorized the agency of the ritual structure, Drewal argues that it is really the participants who have agency over ritual structure itself. Based on learned, in-body performance traditions, participants are able to make a choice and take action in the moment to change the course of the ritual. Their very role as participants in repeated rituals empowers them to do this, Drewal argues.
Drewal’s argument directly responds to foundational theorists’ claims that ritual repetition is “rigid, stereotypic, conventional, conservative, invariant, uniform, redundant, predictable, and structurally static" (Drewal xiv). Drewal instead contends that ritual is actually always in flux precisely because of its repetitive nature. Ritual, in its constant re-presentation, is always subject to the “indeterminacy of improvisation as praxis, that is, the transformational capacity of repetition itself” (Drewal xvi-xv). Futher distancing herself from the anthropologists and religious scholars who first studied African ritual, Drewal observes that the very world ‘ritual’ represents a western desire to return to a romantic past where “communality, coherence, connectedness, collective conscience, and efficacy characterized the social order” (Drewal xv). This eurocentric nostalgia for a time that never was has little bearing on the reality of African performance. Even the term ritual, Drewal observes, “reflects more our own intellectual history, conceptual patterns, and ways of looking than it does any kind of African performance” (Drewal xv-xvi). In an attempt to move toward an African “epistemological locus,” Drewal choses to focus her study on ritual “actors”: the individuals who perform and participate in a wide range of Yoruba performance. Drewal writes that her approach “assumes the instrumentality of performers in invoking or even breaking rules, producing structures, and mobilizing resources and support. Particularly in Ritual, actors are engaged in framed, rule-oriented action as well as in the exercise of power to accomplish something” (xvi).
Overall, Drewal’s book seeks to re-frame western understandings of Yoruba ritual in terms of an African “epistemological locus.” She seeks to elucidate this locus by examining the complex and fluid ways knowledgeable performers and participants utilize repetition, play, and improvisation to alter rituals which “at once [encapsulate] the world of social relationships and the cosmos” (Drewal xv).
repetitionMargaret Drewal on repetition in Yoruba ritual:
Drewal sets out her theory of repetition as it relates to ritual by invoking Derrida: “Repetition is by definition a re-presentation, indeed, a representation” (Drewal 1). Repetition is always a representation of an earlier gesture or act, which in turn may have been a repetition of an even earlier gesture or act (Drewal 1). Thus, repetition is a form of creativity and a site for slippage of meaning. Within ritual repetition, Drewal argues, the past is present through representation. Performance happening now calls upon and remembers what has happened, but by its very virtue of being performed now, it is new in some way. In other words: “each repetition is in some measure original, just as it is at the same time never totally novel” (Drewal 1). “repetition operates within time to represent it, to mark it off, to measure it, to imbue it with a feeling of regularity and permanency, or even to substantiate its existence” (Drewal 1-2). Drewal goes on to discuss repetition with critical difference. She notes several instances in Yoruba ritual where repetition signals difference through parodic, ironic, or improvisational performance. Drawing of the work of Henry Louis Gates Jr. Drewal compares this repetition with critical difference to Gates’ term “signifyin(g)”, a complex theory of rhetorical play. Gates’ theory is a mode of political and historical revision and repetition that takes “the concepts of signifiers and signifieds…and [turns] them into a verb ‘signify,’ simultaneously turning the static equation between two related ‘things’ into a double-voiced process. ‘To signify’ is to revise that which is received, altering the way the past is read, thereby redefining one’s relationship to it” (Drewal 4). For Drewal, this notion of repetition with revision “disrupts the signified/signifier equation and opens up meaning” (5). Yoruba ritual then employs repetition with revision constantly through a form of rhetorical play that Drewal defines as improvisation. |
improvisationDrewal defines improvisation as: “moment-to moment maneuvering based on acquired in-body techniques to achieve a particular effect and/or style of performance” (7). The mastery over these “in-body techniques” is essential to a performer's ability to both employ them and subvert them when necessary – in short, to improvise. Drewal observes that improvisation in the Yoruba ritual context is often participatory and competitive. Dancers and drummers in particular have the ability to “negotiate rhythmically with each other, maintaining a competitive interrelatedness” (Drewal 7). It is not only ritual performers that improvise, for “participants intervene spontaneously in the ritual framework at their whims” (Drewal 7). When a spectator intervenes in the ritual they do take the risk of acting inappropriately, though Drewal points out that the “boundaries of appropriateness” in Yoruba ritual “are not hard and fixed…so that negotiating appropriateness is itself another dimension of improvisation” (Drewal 7). The improvisational quality of Yoruba ritual enacts a form of play. “It is indeed the playing, the improvising, that engages people, drawing them into the action, constructing their relationships, thereby generating multiple and simultaneous discourses always surging between harmony/disharmony, order/disorder, integration/opposition, and so on” (Drewal 7-8).
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RITUAl, spectacle, improvisation, and play
These are categories of performance that Drewal examines to some length at the beginning of her book. The concepts, theories, and methodologies explored in Drewal's definition of these terms helped set the ground work for my own research into the dynamics of performance and ritual in Egungun masquerades. Drewal takes great care to note that these terms are not static, rather they are "overlapping and interpenetrating," and as categories of performance they are open and inclusive not closed and exclusive (12).
Ritual
Drewal begins her section of the play of ritual with this broad definition: “Yoruba rituals (etutu) are propitiatory performances for the deities, ancestors, spirits, and human beings. They propitiate, or “cool” (tu), in that they entail both sacrifice (ebo) and play (ere), and in this they are socially and spiritually efficacious” (19). Yoruba ritual can be broken down into to various groupings (of which Egungun masquerades are a part), though performance norms and traditions vary radically from region to region. When the Yoruba talk of “performing ritual” they say that they are going to “play,” and as such, Drewal has theorized that “to play” in the ritual context means “to improvise” in some capacity.
spectacle
“Yoruba conceive spectacle as a permanent, otherworldly dimension of reality which, until revealed by knowledgeable actors, is inaccessible to human experience” (Drewal 13). Iran carries with it intrinsic connections to “repetition” and “transformation.” “In this sense then, Yoruba spectacle is by definition restored behavior based in the embodied practice of performers” (Drewal 15). Spectacle is participatory, creates a space where “subjects and object positions are continually in flux during performance” (Drewal 15).
play
“All Yoruba spectacle is play, but all play is not spectacle” (Drewal 15). Unlike in the western capitalist sense where time is money, play in the Yoruba sense is not considered wasteful, silly, frivolous, or childish. The Yoruba have a word for frivolous play--yeye—but Drewal in her book focuses on the Yoruba word ere. “Play—like Yoruba spectacle—is…an engaging participatory, transformational process that is often but not always, competitive” (Drewal 15). Drewal cites several examples of ritual play from her field work that exemplify the way Yoruba notions of play are exploratory exercises of power, the outcome of which is unpredictable (Drewal 18). Through play two individuals can begin to map out a relationship, an open space for the exchange of ideas. Thus, play for the Yoruba people is tactical, relational, exploratory, participatory, and transformational.
improvisation as ritual play
“I use the term ‘improvisation’—as Yoruba use the English word ‘play’—to refer to a whole gamut of spontaneous individual moves: ruses, parodies, transpositions, recontextualizations, elaborations, condensations, interruptions, interventions, and more” (Drewal 20). Drewal has observed that the act of improvisation is essential to the Yoruba understanding of performing traditions. That is, when a person claims to be performing a ritual like those before him did, it is expected that his performance will include a certain amount of revision. “Innovations in ritual, then,” Drewal writes, “do not break with tradition but rather are continuations of it in the spirit of improvisation. In practice, improvisation as a mode of operation destabilizes ritual—making it open, fluid, and malleable" (Drewal 23). Drewal goes on to suggest that Yoruba ritual is not born out of a desire to follow lock-step the ways of the past in order to support the hegemonic ideals of social order. Rather, because of its repetition with difference, its play and improvisation, its destabilizing qualities, Yoruba ritual has the real possibility to “test propriety, to challenge convention, and even commandeer and transform ritual structures” (Drewal 23).
performers: knowledge and agency
Alawo, Awo: The generic term in Yoruba for ritual specialist...that is, one who possesses specialized, esoteric knowledge and wisdom" (Drewal 24).
This concept has been translated as "secret," and Drewal argues that this translation misses the point. She argues that the term "implies deeper levels of meaning in relation to ritual," that is, that there are varied levels of meaning from knowledgeable performers down to novices. Indeed, elements of ritual are selective and restricted. Drewal writes that this restriction reflects the power that knowledge of performance brings, and the danger that the performer's ability to act poses to structured society. Ritual specialists undergo rigorous training that demands "rote exercise" and "effort and concentration" (Drewal 24). Specialists also learn and reflect on the "values and ethics" that support their specific ritual codes of performance. In a general sense, a ritual performer's training consists of "sustained, formal exposure to a ritual process, perseverance, and the contemplation of ritual knowledge" (Drewal 24). Drewal writes, "What distinguishes ritual specialists from each other, and from charlatans, are their particularized ritual roles, which they have often inherited and for which they have been specifically selected and trained" (24). Thus specialized ritual performers undergo an oral, reflective, genealogical process that focuses in a dual way on theory and practice in order to produce a repertory of in-body formulas that can be used to engage in the play of ritual.
This concept has been translated as "secret," and Drewal argues that this translation misses the point. She argues that the term "implies deeper levels of meaning in relation to ritual," that is, that there are varied levels of meaning from knowledgeable performers down to novices. Indeed, elements of ritual are selective and restricted. Drewal writes that this restriction reflects the power that knowledge of performance brings, and the danger that the performer's ability to act poses to structured society. Ritual specialists undergo rigorous training that demands "rote exercise" and "effort and concentration" (Drewal 24). Specialists also learn and reflect on the "values and ethics" that support their specific ritual codes of performance. In a general sense, a ritual performer's training consists of "sustained, formal exposure to a ritual process, perseverance, and the contemplation of ritual knowledge" (Drewal 24). Drewal writes, "What distinguishes ritual specialists from each other, and from charlatans, are their particularized ritual roles, which they have often inherited and for which they have been specifically selected and trained" (24). Thus specialized ritual performers undergo an oral, reflective, genealogical process that focuses in a dual way on theory and practice in order to produce a repertory of in-body formulas that can be used to engage in the play of ritual.
picture Sources
Header image: http://orishada.com/wordpress/?tag=egungun
Figure 1: "Egungun Masquerade Costume" (http://www.imamuseum.org)
Figure 2: http://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-Ritual-Performers-Play-Agency/dp/0253206847
Figure 3: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/tag/egungun/
Figure 4: http://www.hamillgallery.com/YORUBA/YorubaEgungunCostumes2/YorubaCostume20.html
Figure 5: http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/hjdrewal/otherworld.html
Figure 1: "Egungun Masquerade Costume" (http://www.imamuseum.org)
Figure 2: http://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-Ritual-Performers-Play-Agency/dp/0253206847
Figure 3: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/tag/egungun/
Figure 4: http://www.hamillgallery.com/YORUBA/YorubaEgungunCostumes2/YorubaCostume20.html
Figure 5: http://hum.lss.wisc.edu/hjdrewal/otherworld.html