Yoruba Mythology: Stories of the Oriṣa from West Africa and the Diaspora – Oludamini Ogunnaike, Ayodeji Ogunnaike

Yorùbá [YOH-roo-BAH] mythology is sacred to a growing religious community of more than one hundred million practitioners, who can be found on every continent, and an inspiration to millions more, both on the African continent and in the diaspora. This community is composed of devotees of the òrìṣà [oh-ree-shah] (divinities) of the Yoruba people of West Africa found primarily in Nigeria, Bénin Republic, and Togo, but there are now even more practitioners across the Americas than in West Africa—a legacy of the transatlantic slave trade—with a growing number in Europe and Asia as well. In addition to the large portion of the global population with religious ties to the oriṣa, no African society can claim to have had a greater influence on art and culture around the world than the Yoruba. Yoruba art is some of the most prized and studied on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Many famous salsa singers and musicians, such as Celia Cruz and Tito Puente, were initiates of oriṣa traditions and sang about the oriṣa in their songs. The oriṣa also appear prominently in Brazilian popular music and culture, such as the works of former minister of culture and singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, author Jorge Amado, and more recently the country’s biggest megastar Anitta. Beyoncé’s 2017 Grammy performance overtly invoked the oriṣa Ọ `ṣun [aw-SHOOHN] (riverine divinity of beauty, fertility, and femininity), and the various allusions to the oriṣa in her album Lemonade marked the growing interest in and engagement with Yoruba religion in popular culture in the United States.

While some of the greatest scholars of African and Afro-diasporic art have studied the material culture of the Yoruba, the Yoruba also boast impressive verbal arts, with mythology and storytelling being perhaps the most widespread and globally influential. Yoruba mythology commanded the attention and respect of the earliest scholars of Afro- diasporic cultures, such as Nina Rodrigues and Arthur Ramos in Brazil and Fernando Ortiz and Lydia Cabrera in Cuba. Some hypothesize that the oriṣa Èṣù [ay-shoo] (divinity of communication, intersections, and transitions)—or another related divinity from West Africa—is behind the American trope of musicians meeting the “devil” at a crossroads at midnight to exchange their souls for musical talent. Tomi Adeyemi’s successful young adult book Children of Blood and Bone drew inspiration directly from the global Yoruba mythological tradition, and its more than 150-week run on The New York Times bestsellers list clearly indicated the wide popular appeal of the oriṣa and Yoruba stories.