Esu gbaragbo, oooooo mo juba, are, are
Esu gbaragbo oooooooo mo juba
Ayamonde, mo juba aiye, e mojuba ayo o, lagbanda
Mojo ba ayo,o, ooooo lagbanda aaa
Yeyeyeye o Osun, Osun O Are mi Osunwa se kumere
Yeyeyeye o Osun, Osun O Are mi Osunwa se kumere
Dr Geraldine Connor, ethnomusicologist, carnivalist, mother to many.
Yeyeyeye , se kumere
This is Doctor Geraldine Roxanne Connor. And she changed my life, and she set me on a path of homecoming and belonging. I'm here today to inspire you on your own journey of homecoming and belonging.
My name is Doctor Lara Rose, I was born in Leicester and at about 5 years old I was taken to Nigeria where I wasn't allowed and forbidden from speaking my mother tongue, Yoruba.
Over the next 10 minutes, I'm going to share with you my journey on how I lost my Yoruba voice, how I'm in the process of finding my Yoruba voice, and then I'm going to invite you to reclaim the lost parts of yourself and bring them home so we can all belong.
So how did I lose my Yoruba voice at school and at home? In Nigeria, indigenous languages were classed as vernacular at school, including Yoruba. There were also classed as uncivilised.
You were not allowed to speak Yoruba at school. It was against school rules. And if you got caught, punishments such as face the wall, stoop down, kneels down, carry a chair on your head, sweep the floor, write 1000 lines.
“I will not speak vernacular on school premises.”
“I will not speak vernacular on school premises”, were commonplace.
Likewise, at home, communications were in English. For the first few months to a year of arriving in Nigeria, I stayed with my grandmother. Grandma was very strict. Grandma spoke to me in Queen's English. Grandma was a school teacher. Grandma even had her own finishing school where she would line us all up, shoulders back with books on our heads to walk in a straight line.
Especially the girls at home, you were not allowed to speak any Yoruba words that you heard outside, from neighbours, from school, from relatives, even in case it polluted our English words. I pretty much grew up in an English environment.
So how am I in the process of reclaiming my Yoruba voice through my music and through my art? But it all started with Geraldine and her Carnival Messiah.
The late Doctor Geraldine Connor was a British Trinidadian ethnomusicologist, theatre director, musician, singer-songwriter, mentor, teacher, mother. Geraldine was also a lecturer at the Old Breton Hall at the University of Leeds and for her PhD artefacts she pioneered the multicultural joyous theatre production Carnival Messiah. I had the opportunity to be a part of Carnival Messiah.
Carnival Messiah was actually a rework of Handel's Messiah and Geraldine had incorporated Caribbean culture, carnival culture alongside European classical music. And during the performances I was able to sing Yoruba lyrics alongside English lyrics.
And I felt so much at home, but I couldn't understand why.
I had lots of conversations with Geraldine and on her discovery of my Yoruba heritage, she said to me, child, you need to tell your Yoruba story in your music and art. No pressure.
So how did I go about telling my story in my music and my art? I thought, what Yoruba do I already know things like nursery rhymes. Greetings, e kaaro ma, e kaaro sa.
Good morning, Ma. Good morning, Sir.
Is Yoruba? I know is Yoruba. I know folk songs, one sort sort song I remember is one of our children dancing on the trees and it goes somewhere like this. And if there's any Yoruba in the audience, feel free to join in because you'll know this one.
And it goes like this:
L’abe igi orombo
N’ibe l’agbe nsere wa
Inu wa dun, ara wa ya
L’abe igi orombo
L’abe igi orombo
N’ibe l’agbe nsere wa
Inu wa dun, ara wa ya
We are happy
We are nice under the tree
L’abe igi orombo
Now you are allowed to play and dance under any tree except the iroko tree. So my English self was like, it's just a tree. What's so scary about a tree?
Of course, Yoruba culture has its own share of superstitions and taboos, just like any culture. I wanted to challenge the taboo of dancing under the iroko tree, but I also wanted to tackle my sense of loss of my Yoruba culture and my feeling of homelessness and of not feeling like I belonged in my own culture.
So I got the idea to also rework the L’abe igi song and incorporate the iroko tree just like Geraldine, you know, reworked the whole handle Messiah. So I thought I'll start with a little song and it goes like this.
L’Abe iroko
N’ibe l’agbe nsere wa
L’Abe iroko
(Under the iroko tree)
N’ibe l’agbe nsere wa
(That's where we play our game.
I'm going to fly away.
I'm going to run from this pain.
Motherland, why you pushed me away?
This is a very messy process as you can imagine, trying to retrieve a lost culture from fragments.
Sadly, by this time Geraldine had passed away, but I persevered. I wanted to portray difficult topics like the slave trade, abuse, displacement, the Windrush generation, migration but resilience, fortitude.
I also wanted to showcase the lost treasures of Africa including Yoruba culture. So I created an assemblage called Windrush Treasure Chest to represent how Yoruba culture had been lost, how it had migrated from Africa to the Caribbean, but how I've actually come to rediscover it and find it again in Leeds, a cold city, in a theatre.
Like I also wanted to honour Geraldine in my art in the way they do in Africa.
I recalled the ayo masquerade. The ayo masquerade is a masquerade that comes out when a king has died or a chief or an elder in society in Lagos, Nigeria. So I created the Ayo Carnival Messiah installation based on the ayo masquerade.
Now throughout my PhD journey, I allowed Yoruba culture to sit side by side with my art practise.
I discovered oriki - praise singing, aworan - visual representation.
So at the beginning of the TEDx talk I came out singing Oriki and carrying our world on my head to honour Geraldine. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be singing oriki in England as an English Yoruba girl, or Yoruba British with my artistic licence.
I'd fused the Yoruba culture, had retrieved and reworked it into contemporary art practise, which is the performance that I did at the beginning of the TEDx talk. Now my PhD journey was getting even more exciting now that I've discovered a way to honour my elders.
Which brings me to Dr Arthur France MBE, who we have in our midst today - founder, creator of the Leeds Carnival.
I'd made a statue of Arthur and Dr France was going to be honoured at the book launch in London at the Houses of Parliament, and I was invited to present my statue as part of the ceremony. The Queen had already given an MBE but I just wanted to honour Arthur because he's always saying we need to go back to our roots.
And so the opportunity came along in my style. I carried the statue on my head and walked down the aisle singing Oriki – “Doctor Arthur France, MBE” – I even knelt down – “carnivalist, educator. I've even been your carnival queen.” Winnie Mandela. No pressure, all his accolades.
Despite the grand setting, I fell at home doing this, honouring my elder. It was a very important moment in my journey of homecoming and belonging. For so many years I've been retrieving Yoruba culture and here I am in the heart of British government doing a Yoruba oriki and aworan - wonders shall never cease.
The culmination of my PhD resulted in me creating the first life-size statue of a black woman in Leeds and you guessed right, that of Doctor Geraldine Roxanne Connor. Geraldine said to me, Lara, you need to tell your Yoruba story.
You can't hide. Come on, child.
And I feel so grateful and I feel so blessed. I feel honoured that I am achieving this. I don't feel as nervous and anxious as I used to be about Yoruba culture. Indeed, I feel a new sense of homecoming and belonging and I'm finding my Yoruba voice.
I'm going to leave us with three questions. What part of yourselves are lost? What part of yourself do you need to bring home? And who is the Geraldine in your life?
Thank you.
