Philosophers in Musicians and the Yorùbá Oral Performatives: Jutting the Future from the Contemporary Perspective

Music is therapeutic in nature, and this is evident from various oral indigenous genres available within the Yorùbá worldview. Classifications of musicians whose compositions in context attest to the view that music is socializing and healing are in no doubt available in written documentations. Within the entertainment world, in Nigeria and across the globe, some musicians are best classified as folklorists (see Ilésanmí, 2004), jùjú, àpàlà, fújì, modern hip-hop artists, or Islamic musicians (Raji, 2014). In fact, with their thematic messages, they are best referred to as Yorùbá philosophers of the time. Our observation is that these musicians, through their creativity, are somewhat very interrogative of the present situation, projecting into the future of their environment and nation at large. Such intervention and interrogations often serve as precautions to the leaders and the led in most instances. In this paper, therefore, the search is to interrogate the views of three musicians—Síkírù Àyìndé Barrister, Ebenezer Obey Fábíyìí, and Beautiful Nobia—whose audio-visual compositions are predictive, suggestive, and cautionary in nature. This paper situates and argues that the present challenges Nigeria, as a country, faces with respect to the economy, moral decadence, religious intolerance, and the need for cessation— as being called for—are a subject of history that the trio ‘messiahs in the creative entertainment world’ earlier interrogated. Our findings shall further justify the need to pay attention to the artists in their cries to assisting the nation. The various lessons from the analysis of the three musicians shall be analyzed through the theories of cultural semiotics.

Predictive, Social-religious issues, Interrogating Culture, Contemporary Artistes, and Projections.

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