AESTETHICS OF FOLKISM: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF AHMED YERIMA’S ABOBAKU AND ORISA IBEJI

Abstract

Under the condition of cultural hierarchy, playwrights, theatre operas, the symphony, musicians and galleries were funded by wealthy patrons present and in order to preserve the best of African tradition. The point is that while the western world tends to see and cherish their arts as the storehouse where their culture could be expressed and preserved. In many Nigerian community today, our arts, culture and belief systems are viewed as self-seeking, barbaric, outdated and therefore deemed not fit, but relegated and considered ‘idolatrous’ because of the foregoing, many of the indigenous cultural practices in contemporary Nigeria are at the verge of extinction. Some ethnic groups have been redesigned and stripped of the cultural imports which make them ‘tick’. So many cultural practices in Nigeria today are at the point of extinction or are already redesigned out of the cultural significance of the people, especially the marriage practices of many Nigerian ethnic groups. It is in this context that I examine the king’s horseman (royal family) and twins’ rites amongst some ethnicities in Nigeria.