"Myths, legends and heroic tales of the Yoruba people of West Africa"--Cover subtitle.

Gods and Heroes is the first volume of the Itan—Legends of the Golden Age trilogy about the thousand-year story of the Yoruba people. It starts with the establishment of Ile-Ife by Oduduwa and the great sacrifice of the heroine Moremi. The ancient gods of Yorubaland, Obatala, Orunmila, Ogun, and Olokun all play their part, as well as the great heroes and heroines of antiquity—Oranmiyan, Sango, Oya, Oba Esigie of Benin, and Obanta of Ijebuland. The author uses the genre of the historical novel in a refreshing and imaginative fashion to present the whole tableau of Yoruba history. The result is a vast and rich panorama enlivened with traditional myths and legends seen through the eyes of a single Yoruba family and the Old Woman, the fabled storyteller.

Storytelling is an ancient practice known in all civilizations throughout history. Characters, tales, techniques, oral traditions, motifs, and tale types transcend individual cultures - elements and names change, but the stories are remarkably similar with each rendition, highlighting the values and concerns of the host culture. Examining the stories and the oral traditions associated with different cultures offers a unique view of practices and traditions."Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore" brings past and present cultures of the world to life through their stories, oral traditions, and performance styles. It combines folklore and mythology, traditional arts, history, literature, and festivals to present an overview of world cultures through their liveliest and most fascinating mode of expression. This appealing resource includes specific storytelling techniques as well as retellings of stories from various cultures and traditions.

A poetic ‘voice’ scans the rhythm of academic research, telling of the encounter with odún; then the voice falls silent. What is then raised is the dust of a forgotten academic debate on the nature of theatre and drama, and the following divergent standpoints of critical discourses bent on empowering their own vision, and defining themselves, rather, as counterdiscourses. This, the first part of the book: a metacritical discourse, on the geopolitics (the inherent power imbalances) of academic writing and its effects on odún, the performances dedicated to the gods, ancestors, and heroes of Yorùbá history. But odún: where is it? and what is it? And the ‘voice’? The many critical discourses have not really answered these questions. In effect, odún is many things. To enable the reader to see these, the study proceeds with an ‘intermezzo’: a frame of reference that sets odún, the festival, in its own historico-cultural ecoenvironment, identifying the strategies that inform the performance and constitute its aesthetic. It is a ‘classical’ yet, for odún, an innovative procedure. This interdisciplinary background equips the reader with the knowledge necessary to watch the performance, to witness its beauty, and to understand the ‘half words’ odún utters. And now the performance can begin. The ‘voice’ emerges one last time, to introduce the second section, which presents two case studies. The reader is led, day by day, through the celebrations –odún edì, Morèmi’s story, and its realization in performance; then confrontation by the masks of the ancestors duing odún egúngún (particularly as held in Ibadan). The meaning of odún becomes clearer and clearer. Odún is poetry, dances, masks, food, prayer. It is play (eré) and belief (ìgbàgbó). It is interaction between the players (both performers and spectators). It is also politics and power. It contains secrets and sacrifices. It is a reality with its own dimension and, above all, as the quintessential site of knowledge, it possesses the power to transform. In short, it is a challenge – a challenge that the present book and its voices take up.

A concise monograph which describes the bronze art created by the African Yoruba culture more than 3,000 years ago, this informative text includes 50 photographs to illustrate the great diversity within the Yoruba bronze art idiom.

The Black Unicorn is a collection of poems by a woman who, Adrienne Rich writes, "for the complexity of her vision, for her moral courage and the catalytic passion of her language, has already become, for many, an indispensable poet." Rich continues: "Refusing to be circumscribed by any simple identity, Audre Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity. Her rhythms and accents have the timelessness of a poetry which extends beyond white Western politics, beyond the anger and wisdom of Black America, beyond the North American earth, to Abomey and the Dahomeyan Amazons. These are poems nourished in an oral tradition, which also blaze and pulse on the page, beneath the reader's eye."

This book introduces readers to Vodou's rich history, powerful ancestors, and vibrant spirits, known as Lwa. With more than one hundred breathtaking illustrations, Vodou Visions reveals how to honor and invoke the Lwa with specific ceremonial offerings and litanies. Using methods drawn from more than twenty years of practice, Vodou priestess Sallie Ann Glassman shares purification and empowerment rituals for individuals, communities, homes and spiritual spaces.