This chapter also appreciates the aesthetics and cultural significance of African arts – celebrating the outstanding creativity inherent in Yoruba history, social life, and artistry; however, with a focus on painting, which, as other Yoruba arts, transforms their cultural ideas into materialization. Yoruba painting in this chapter is portrayed to provide “visual gratification” and “creative inspiration” as well as a means of engaging viewers in “critical commentaries” that promote culture. Also, it is seen as capable of engendering cultural unity with portrayals of “mythological and historical” aspects common to the Yoruba people, for instance. Beyond the above, Yoruba paintings are also used to illustrate the sociocultural principles of the Yoruba via “naturalistic postures and framings” in which individuals are shown to display some of these collective values. With pictorial evidence, the chapter references many of these cultural values, such as “reverence” depicted in the painting of an individual stooping. Like other materials in Yorubaland, paintings have meanings to them and are expressive, albeit in non-verbal communication mode, revealing who the owner is or their “intimacy with the idea, person, motifs, belief” being espoused in the painting.

This chapter is basically a review of a collection of poems mirroring the Yoruba cultural ethos, drawn from Etches on Fresh Waters, Scoundrels of Deferral, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, and Counting the Tiger’s Teeth. Believing the core of a nation to be its people, the poetry collections seek to present a narration of the nation through poems about the cultural practices, values, and beliefs of the people. Clearly, the chapter depicts poetry as a creative mode of expression, performing a “dialectic function of narrating a group’s culture,” and as a means of “documenting” and “teaching” culture. The chapter launches into the cultural significance of poetry and how poetry reflects the past and present cultural realities of the Yoruba people especially. The cultural ethos include salutations to the revered, celebration of ethnic identity, sermons on moderation, unrestrained freedom, and hospitality, amongst others, while some were used to show women’s sociocultural position.

Although Christianity and Islam dominate the religious landscape in Lagos, ‘Yoruba religion’ still plays a vital role. To conceptualize religious pluralism in a setting where ‘Yoruba religion’ does not exist as an ossified tradition but is part and parcel of Islam and Christianity, I use the term ‘Yoruba religion’ enclosed within inverted commas. Chapter 5 shows how the adherents of The Indigenous Faith of Africa (IFA), Ijo Orunmila Ato – a movement that was founded in 1920 by an Anglican Yoruba after he had a vision in which the orisa (deity) Orunmila appeared to him – have revived ‘Yoruba religion’ by appropriating Christian elements. While Ijo Orunmila’s doctrines are based on Ifa – a divination cult – the group’s worship is composed of hymns, prayers, and sermons modelled closely on those of the mission church, and, more recently, the Pentecostal church. Challenging the evolutionary perspective that typifies the study of religion in Africa, this chapter studies ‘traditional’ Yoruba religion and the ‘world’ religions as contemporaries, thereby opening conceptual space for rethinking the anthropological trope of ‘tradition’, as well as the ingrained tradition–modernity schism.