YORUBA'S ANCIENT CULTURES

The Indulgement of the Yoruba’s ancient cultures ranges from the ancient to the present new generation with new ideas of culture, costumes, gestures, and head wraps.

In tracing back to the ancient Yoruba’s Costumes, to the developing of today’s new generation garments, culture tradition, physical styles, postures, attitudes and gestures, reveal’s a shift in culture and tradition.  Analyzing the change in fabric and textile projection, the design, and cut in the late century and early twenty first century, is slightly different.  It’s obvious that there is a great turn over with the modern generation and their Costumes.

Culture/ Development 

The Yoruba’s are located in the Country of West Africa.  The Yoruba people of Nigeria have an excellent traditional custom in their religious beliefs; trades with foreign countries have unique traditional African textiles that are made out of a variety of natural materials.  Besides cotton, special plant fibers are made into cloth; Oreis Raffia, which is a kind of palm tree that maintains as a useful fiber in the stalks.  This is for weaving traditional cloth.  Another plant fiber that was used is the tree bark which wrapped in banana leaves and steamed over a small tree; the bark was then beaten to soften it.

            In the sixteenth century, the Yoruba traveled on camel across the Saraha desert to the coast to ship textiles to other countries all around the Mediterranean Sea.  According to Danielle Sienseir, this trading remains until this day.  (p 27).  The Yoruba people wear a traditional patterned cloth called adire.  This cloth is long; it is use for wraparound garments and turbans.  This tie-dyed is made by tying or stretching the cloth tightly with pieces of raffia it is dyed.  Leaving pale pattern on a dark background, with these cloths there is there is a proverb name that is given to it, “that lazy man cannot be proud.”

            Looking at the cut and design of the Yoruba’s clothing; I acknowledge that these costumes are worn by both men and women; and the men wear jewelry around their necks, broad bands around their waist, each of them holds onto a staff.  The men wore sandals with their toes out.  The women wore headbands, heavy jewelry around the neck, bracelet around the elbows, and feet; they worn sandals with open toes like the men.

            The Yoruba are people who believe highly in fashion- conscious.

The “Yoruba women switch in matching costumes, from one clothing to the next, their head cloth is a sight to behold.  The beauty of the women’s head-wraps shines with the softness of the also oke(woven).  The Yoruba men dressed radiantly in their abada and they are stunning.  Most of the Yoruba’s cloth are worn by shape, size and manufacture colors can change from season to season and such non-traditional fibers as lurex can be introduced into stripe- woven cloth.  Looking closely at the Yoruba stripes cloth which is called the Yoruba’s Spanish lace, the Yoruba stripe-weavers introduces rows of holes along the length of the stripe.  The main ancient costume of the Yoruba people loves aso oke.  Aso Oke is known as Ofi.  Ofi is a traditional textiles of the Yoruba people, Oke is normally handmade from scratch and the process of making it has not changed much since the conception of its culture significance.  In modern day, the wearing of Oke has declined due to western civilization and importation of readymade fabrics and clothing into the country.  However, the textile is still worn by Yoruba men and women during special occasions such as weddings, naming ceremony(child christening), funerals and religious festivals.  Oke comes in various colors and some colors have significance among various sub-groups of the Yoruba tribes.

            Oke was formally hand woven only by men but since 1900’s, women have been allowed to learn the process.  It is made from pure cotton grown locally and has to be manually processed to separate the cotton seed from the wool to make tread using a bow-like instrument called “Orun” (spindlier).  Once the tread is completely collected, it can be dyed to various color like Burgundy color is worn for the wedding ceremony and the indigo and crimson color is worn for funeral by the Ondo people, a subgroup of the Yoruba trib.  In the olden days, the tread was mixed with magneta- colored waste silk imported from Tunisia, Italy and france which is processed in the same way as locally grown cotton and adds prestige and cost to the completed aso oke.  Today, the mangenta-colored waste silk and expensive dyed local threads have been replaced by shiny metallic Lurex from Japan and brightly colored rayon treads.  The loom used to weave aso oke is made from wood and patterns can be made based on how the weaver sets the loom.  The loom can make cloth about six inches wide aso oke and the weaver, waves a forty feet strip which is later cut and sown together by a tailor.

            The end result of aso oke is very beautiful, expensive and time consuming.  In the olden days, aso oke was sown into buba(blouse), iro (wrap-around skirt), iboru(scarf) and ipela(shawl) for women and agbada (large and wide gown), sokoto(trouser), buba (shirt) or dashiki and fila (hat) for men which is the complete traditional costume.  The costume is very modest and had to be worn completely because it portrays the identity of the Yoruba’s tribe.  The downside to wearing the complete costume, especially for men, is the amount of clothing they would have to put on, bearing in mind that Nigeria has very hot climate.  It is very common thing to sweat when they have it on and due to this fact, in modern day the complete male costume has been somewhat extinct besides the fila.   Yoruba men will mostly certainly wear the complete costume only during their wedding ceremony and very unlikely afterwards.  For women, they retained th ipele and the iborun wearing the buba and iro made from aso oke have almost become extinct but wearing the complete costume on their wedding day is still the norm.  The demand as oke is declined over the years partly due to the expense.  Fewer available weavers to meet the needs of the people and increase in civilization.  The traditional costume has also evolved into a more readymade imported fabric such as lace, Ankara, satin, and organza which is sown into various styles of skirts, and blouses, and ‘ buba and iro’ for women and buba or dashiki and sokoto’ and sometimes including ‘agbada’ for men. Women now consider buba and iro ‘ old school’ and would rather wear less modest style of clothing.

            Before the only style of clothing for them was buba and iro and has long been discarded for more attractive, tight fitting and fleshy revealing styles.  For younger women, they would prefer not to wear iborun (scarf) and would prefer to expose their hair with beautiful hair styles.  Overall, with the demand for aso oke diminishing so is the demand for its weavers.  The importation of foreign fabrics to meet  the needs of the people has created an increase in the number of tailors with the best innovative style.  The custom of wearing aso oke is kept alive today whereby it is referred to as ‘ aso ebi’ (family cloth) which is chosen and collective worn by family members to distinguish themselves during special occasions.  This part is the most beautiful aspect of aso oke when lots of people wear the same pattern and color.  This way, aso oke still serves its original purpose to create identity among groups of people.

            The creativity of the Yoruba PEOPLE IN West Africa in fashion design brings out the beauty of the mother Africa tradition design during 1945, “ when silk would still be available, and weavers use machine-spun cotton, viscose (replacing silk/rayon in the period since 1945) and also 1970s, the popularity of the double-heddle loom in an extremely long four-inch-wide strip which is cut and sewn together edge to edge to form the cloth as needed for the agbada, which is the man’s long sleeved gown, or the woman’s wrap-around skirt.”  Makes them beautiful and welcoming.