Sogidi festival music as an archive for indigenous practices of the awe people, Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Western dominance on African societies has resulted to the dearth or near extinction of some indigenous practices or activities of the Africans. One of the cherished activities by the people is the traditional festival. Traditional festival, being a communal event set aside to celebrate significant historical experience in a given community, provides a platform where norms, beliefs, customs, and socio-cultural values are expressed and projected on one hand, as well as being archival (re)source where historical pasts of a community are recalled, retrieved and (re)enacted on the other hand. In the light of the foregoing, this paper examines Sogidi festival among the Awe people of Oyo state and focuses on how the musical performances in the festival serve as archival resources for the people, through which the histories and past significant events are recalled and pass to the younger generations. Ethnographic techniques such as non-participant observation and in-depth interviews with custodians of Sogidi festival were used to gather data and the data were subjected analysis. The paper traced the history of Sogidi in Awe, and the song-texts express that Sogidi was a mysterious lake and river where various ailments were being healed. The paper, thus, argues that the scope of archive should not be limited to materials stored in a building but most indigenous practices and performances are also archival resources in recalling the history and practices of the indigenous people.