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Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
Osogbo, Osun State, was agog recently when dignitaries from different walks of life congregated to promote the rich Yoruba culture and tradition. They included traditional rulers, academics, members of the arts fraternity and students.
The occasion was the 41st Duro Ladipo Annual Lecture at the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Abere, Osogbo. They gathered to memorialise the theatre icon’s exploits in the Yoruba entertainment culture and the global art community.
Ladipo was a renowned Yoruba playwright and stage theatre giant whose strides in the Yoruba entertainment industry contributed a great deal to the development and promotion of the Yoruba cultural values. He expressed his passion for the Yoruba culture and tradition through drama, music, dance and stage performance.
Forty-one years after his demise, his contributions to the Yoruba cultural and traditional theatre works remain fresh in the memories of the promoters and custodians of the Yoruba culture and tradition.
Scores of family members, lovers and fans of Ladipo gathered to keep alive the memory of the theatre icon, dramatist and playwright. The event was put together to promote Yoruba cultural and traditional values.
Against this backdrop, a couple of the custodians of the Yoruba culture and tradition called on parents, guardians, and educationists to encourage children and wards to embrace and promote the culture and tradition of their father land. This, they said, could be expressed through music and dance, dressing speaking and writing of Yoruba language among others.
They stressed that with such appreciation and promotional stunt among students in schools and within the art community and tourism circles, the Yoruba culture and tradition would never go into extinction but remain in the limelight.
In tandem with the call for and promotion of the culture and tradition, some cultural values were showcased with theatrical performances by the Osun State cultural troupe. Members of the troupe decked in Yoruba costumes and armed with talking drums trooped to the stage and mesmerised the guests with Yoruba songs and dances amid loud ovation.
As a part of the moves to promote Yoruba culture and tradition, an annual Duro-Ladipo Memorial Inter-School Theatre Competition was earlier organised by the CBCIU where three secondary schools clinched the three prizes available. It was used to promote stage drama among secondary school students by catching them young and to encourage the speaking of mother tongue languages among the youth.
Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT), CBCIU, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, said: “Duro Ladipo’s transition throughout his life was such that encouraged us to look deeply and creatively into the rich history of the Yoruba culture. His untiring dedication to Yoruba stage plays remains phenomenal.”
The former governor disclosed that CBCIU had built a mausoleum at the playwright’s final resting as a part of its efforts to immortalise him because of the global expression he gave to Yoruba cultural values.
He urged people to improve on the practice of the Yoruba culture and tradition to keep them alive with a view to maximising the potentialities of the values among the Yoruba race as well as the lovers of Yoruba culture and tradition across the nation.
Executive Director of CBCIU and Professor of History at the Osun State University, Osogbo, Siyan Oyeweso, enthused that Ladipo’s plays were adaptations that looked deep into Yoruba history and culture:
“There is no gainsaying the fact that Duro Ladipo was one of the prominent purveyors of Yoruba culture and tradition. This he did in many of his major plays such as Suru Baba Iwa and Tani Mowo Iku?, most of which were also produced for television. He also founded in Osogbo the Mbari-Mbayo Cultural Society.
“For Duro Ladipo, entrenching and preserving Yoruba culture and traditions for the future generation was a task that must be taken seriously if Yoruba culture and tradition would survive centuries.” He called on stakeholders and policy makers to inspire programmes that could preserve the Yoruba culture and traditions, “because it is one of the only solutions to the myriad of challenges confronting our society.
«For Duro Ladipo, the best way to preserve one’s culture and tradition is through the language that we speak and pass on to the succeeding generations with its ethos. His rich theatrical works was one of the reasons that the Yoruba language has not totally gone into extinction.»
The guest speaker, Professor Duro Oni of the Department of Creative Arts, University of Lagos, said: “The late Ladipo’s contributions to the development of Yoruba culture and tradition were phenomenal. We must all put all hands on deck to continue the legacies.”
The Ataoja of Osogbo, Oba Jimoh Olanipekun, called on the people to leverage on Ladipo’s legacies to advance the cause of Yoruba’ s cultural values. The Orangun of Oke-Ila Orangun, Oba Adedeokun Abolarin, the founder of the Abolarin College, which also participated in cultural displays and drama, also called on the custodians of the Yoruba culture and tradition as well as the Yoruba youth to cherish and promote them:
“Since they have the potentialities to contribute to the socio-political and economic development of the Yoruba nation and the entire country.”
