Technicians of the Secular: Yoruba Poets and their Nigeria Publics

This essay focuses on the work of two Yoruba-language poet-performers, Lanrewaju Adepoju and Olatubosun Oladapo, as an example of artistic treatment of secularism. Both are accomplished poets with several poetry volumes, scores of audio LPs and cassettes, and studio broadcasts to their credit. They work in the genre of ewì, Yoruba poetry composed in print and recited over an orchestra of percussive music, with or without sung sequences. Though they compose and perform exclusively in Yoruba, the social impulse of their work is to an inclusive Nigerian public that is imagined to be differentiated and representative of the world at large. It is from this conception that I shall explore the idea of secularism, a worldly practice of political critique emerging out of the simultaneity of socioeconomic-artistic spheres that is flexible, incorporative, and open to change. The essay analyzes the changing political critiques in these poets' works as discourses of the secular.