Editorial

Abstract

This latest edition of Ede: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences is devoted to the study of some traditional festival performances in Nigeria. The festivals are drawn from different areas and cultures within the country with emphasis on the mode and features of the performances, with specific attention on the significance of the festivals to the community. The articles look at specific theatrical elements found in the festival. In all, there are four papers in this edition of the journal. Aside from the three articles on the festival performances, there is also a short story. In the first article, Peter Adeiza Bello, looks at the role of music and dance in the Ebira-Mattaga performance of the Anebira of Kogi State, Central Nigeria. Bello argues that in Africa, oral culture thrives, and the application of music and dance in drama and theatre is a common practice among the people. He notes that for Ebira-mattaga in particular, music and dance aspect of the performance, enable the performers to mobilize the people and subsequently instruct them on the need to eschew destructive practices and acts that can instigate moral decadence within the society. In the second article, Adebisi Basiru Adeyemi, looks at the traditional cultural aesthetic in Opele-Iba masquerade festival, a significant performance among the indigenous people of Osogbo in Osun State, Southwest Nigeria. He emphasizes the import of technical aids to the overall performances of the masquerade festival. Adeyemi argues that the expressive nature of the technical aids, like, costume, props, make-up, light and others, fulfil the utilitarian nature of African performance arts, especially masquerade festivals. This article which adopts the participant’s observation descriptive method, is aided by the technocultural performance theory developed by Sunday Enesi Ododo. The third article by Olanrewaju Isiak Balogun follows the same methodological approach as the one before it by providing a participant observation description of the Lisabi Festival of the Egba people of Abeokuta, Ogun State, Southwest Nigeria. In contrary to the Opele-Iba festival that is considered a old tradition, Balogun argues that Lisabi festival is a recently developed event in reverence of the Egba’s 19th Century hero – Lisabi Agbongbo Akala – who led the Egba warriors to victory over the Alaafin of Oyo’s army. Balogun participated in the seven-day long activities that characterizes the festival and presented a detailed analysis of it with specific date of a particular performance along with the photographic depiction of the many events and the major participants. The concluding paper is a never-before-published short story written by late Bunmi Oyeyemi Julius-Adeoye sometime in 2009. The story, Yuppy Father, follows the life of a hilarious eponymous character that seizes every given opportunity to tell whoever cares to known the circumstances that leads to his present life as a freeloader. All the articles and the short story in this volume of the journal are well researched and will make good resource material for researchers in the field of African performances, ethnographic studies and literature.