INTERVIEW: Exploring Yoruba Culture and The Importance of Cultural Heritage With Yorubaizm

Image via Yorubaizm

During my uni years, I was lucky enough to get involved in making a documentary on the Black Liberation Front with the Young Historians Project, a political and cultural group that emerged from the struggles of what it meant to be a Black Briton in the early 1970s to the early 1990s. I was not taught about the Black Liberation Front in school, they housed Black homeless youths, created supplementary schools to tackle the attainment gap and set up a Black Bookshop in Tottenham for Black Britons to learn our history. Archiving their journey has given my generation a way of looking into the past to support and brighten our futures. The importance of Black Cultural heritage in the UK has not escaped my thinking. 

I am incredibly proud of the phenomenal work I see from people around me aiming to make this country, this world, a better place. Black Lives Matter this summer challenged Britons everywhere to confront the difficult history of this country’s involvement in slavery and colonisation. A message that really resonated is that our relationship, for many of us, with this country spans well beyond our parents relatively recent arrival and deserves to be explored and discussed. 

My friends, Tale and Tumi, two amazing sisters from South London launched their six-part Yoruba spirituality series this summer delivered by their platform Yorubaizm. This has indirectly helped me explore our difficult relationships to Britain’s past in greatly disrupting the way of life and being of our ancestors into new modes of living, a violent adaption to modernity making colonisation a much smoother process. This resulted in a divestment from our history and culture, typically shared through the oral tradition. The six-part series gave those of us that engaged a crash course into Yoruba culture and a snapshot into the worldview of the Yoruba people. 

Whilst I am not Yoruba, nor do I practise African Traditional Spirituality, I am a strong advocate for the diversity within Blackness. Often, Black Britons are portrayed as a unified body, or flatly conflated into the category of “BAME”, whilst this can create a powerful force in pushing back against injustice, it goes without saying, what it means to be Black is a lot more complex and diverse. Nowadays, the need to define being Black seems counterintuitive at times, because you just are Black. I believe in making being Black less easy to define because that reflects the reality of us as humans from different cultures and family ties, with different ideas, religions and histories. One of the more controversial issues within Black cultures everywhere is the push to define Blackness as palatable and less “African”, this can sometimes come in the ostracization of those who choose to practise African Traditional Religions (ATRs). 

Yorubaizm does an amazing job of demystifying Yoruba spirituality, one of the more prominent ATRs, from the rather dramatic attacks of ATRs endemic in many Afrodiasporic communities, with the Black British community not being exempt as J Hus quickly learnt. Tale and Tumi has boldly asserted that those who practise ATRs are deserving of the same respect that Christians and Muslims have for each other and they are determined to create a space for young people to explore Yoruba culture without judgement. For me, this is not even a debate, it is just common decency. Following their launch in 2019 at SOAS, they have pushed on delivering virtual events providing a community for people to lean on and learn from. It is truly a family affair. 

In September, I arranged a 40 min zoom call with Tale and Tumi to better understand their hopes and dreams for Yorubaizm, the idiosyncrasies of working as a family towards their vision and their thoughts on how to improve the African diaspora.

“Yorùbáizm is a platform designed to curate products and experiences centered around the Yorùbá language, culture and heritage.   Our aim is to serve as a repository of knowledge for ALL those who wish to become more acquainted with issues around the culture and tradition through a decolonised lens in a fun and engaging way. Particularly, as we see a growing amount of interest from African youth, both on the continent and in the diaspora.”

So to kick off, what do you love the most about being Black British? 

Tale: The Black British banter. The Black British swag. Like on twitter, the Black British internet culture, sometimes it can be ruthless though.

Enna: Like the Lani Good situation? 

Tale: *laughs* I’m sitting on a bad boy piece of information.

Tumi: What I like about being Black British is that a lot of us are first/second generation, meaning we are quite closely linked to our cultures of origin. For me, I have friends from so many different Caribbean islands, which has taught me that Jamaica is not the whole of the Caribbean. I have friends from East, North, South and West Africa. I may not have been afforded that if I lived elsewhere. We have a shared Black British Identity and all of us have commonalities, but it is still a uniquely formed special culture. We have been able to carve out unique things to the British identity, such as with music genres, like Grime. And then, when you look at Afroswing, you can tell it’s been informed by the fact that a lot of us have grew up with the amalgamation of Caribbean and African influences, and you get that unique sound. When you go to a rave, when “talking the hardest” comes on, you know… that’s my national anthem. Also, we have some diaspora wars, the fact that we have them means there is some level of familiarity. Instead of having those wars, we should think about how we can grow and make the diaspora better.

I know both of you ride hard for Yoruba culture. Yorubaizm is such a natural thing to come out of both of you. We all have ideas but it takes a lot of drive, passion and most of all, work, for our ideas to come into fruition. Firstly, who came up with the idea of creating Yorùbáizm and if you have to put it one to thing, what is the real driving force behind the project?

Tale: I wouldn’t say there was anyone in particular that came up with the idea first. The Yoruba tradition has always been a prevalent thing in our household. From an early age, both us knew that whatever we go into, it would have that aspect in it.

Tumi: For me, as you grow older and you are forming your own identity, you realise what forms and informs your identity. I think a disconnect from your culture is a disconnect from your identity. As great-grandparents die, as grandparents die, you realise, if they are the custodians of traditions and cultures, if it is not being documented and being preserved in some way, it will die with the people that are dying too. I felt really sad about that. Just looking around, you can see there are lot of groups, Igbo diasporans, Ghanaian diasporans and their parents have their ethnic group community meetings, I did not feel like I was seeing as much for the youth. So I thought we should make a space for it.

Why did you feel it was important to create a British platform explaining African (Yoruba) spirituality? 

Tumi: I wouldn’t say I sought out to build a British platform, it is a platform based in Britain. Logistically, I am based in the UK, but it is a platform I would like to take globally. It is important for me that Yorubaizm caters to people in the diaspora and the continent. Whilst, I don’t believe a red passport means I should have a saviour complex, that I will be the one to fix all the issues that Africans have. But it is important to understand the privileges of being in the diaspora, using that knowledge to build connections on the continent and to impart knowledge.

Tale: And charity starts at home, we weren’t going to start a Yoruba Canadian group before starting a British platform because we are British and it’s what we know.

Just so we can get a clearer picture of the timeline, when did you start doing the groundwork to create the platform? What were some key elements needed to get right before you were ready to present it to the world?

Tale: We wrote our first plan in 2016. It is funny how time flies, we had the conversations about teaching Yoruba, then we wrote our first plan. Then, rah, a year has gone by, then all of a sudden it was 2019. In September 2019, we established Yorubaizm then October, we had our first event. 

Tumi: It’s interesting that you used the phrase “get it right” because trying to get it right is the thing that held us back from going ahead. It was important to me that we presented accurate information, we presented ourselves as a source of verified and credible information. (A lack of) Credibility and accuracy does a disservice to a lot of the information I have heard before. I wanted to make sure it was not too much from a western paradigm. Then, how do we reach the audience we want to reach? How does it connect with people on the continent and in the diaspora? Even small things like our logo, the name, is it moist? Is it this or is it that? There are so many things you can overthink about. You won’t know if you are getting it right until you just go for it.

You recently finished a 6-part series on Yoruba spirituality. The interest in Yoruba spirituality has been bubbling up across the African diaspora in pop culture. Especially after the representation of the orisha, Oshun/Oṣun in Beyoncé’s Lemonade. The series involved several guests, including writer JJ Bola, scholar Iya Funlayo, but also, your dad, Dubi Imevbore, who spoke on each part of the series teaching on the Ifa tradition. How was the whole process working as a family to bring about the series? 

Tumi: When you do things with family, we have these discussion on a regular, which means that ideas can come at any point of the day. If you are working with colleagues, for example, you cannot call them at 2am, be like “This is the only time that I am free”. With family, you can be like “Can we quickly talk about this?”

Tale: Or at 2am, you are with your notepad like “I have this quick question”. You never really switch off.

Tumi: Which I guess is a good and bad thing, like can I watch Netflix in peace? Also, it means you don’t really have to tip toe around topics or arguments that you have.

Tale: We did not have to compromise on certain things we did not want to include and on things we did want to include. We were so sure about everything that we felt. Such as including gender fluidity, whilst it is a prevalent topic in Yoruba spirituality, some people in the community will leave it out. Working with family, it was easier to just not compromise on certain things.

Tumi: Yoruba culture is very respectful to older people, if we were working with someone else, we might not have been able to correct and educate, but working with our dad meant that we could. Also, it was good to have a different perspective, working with someone of a different generation meant we could have a cultural exchange. I think sometimes, we actually are a bit arrogant in thinking that we know so much better than the older generation and they are so far behind in their thinking. In someways, there is some evolving to do but there is actually a lot I have learnt from them that has informed my opinion.

What was your favourite part of the six-part series and why?

Tale: It was probably the sense of community, being able to hear African spirituality being spoken about in such a positive light from everybody in the series. I particularly enjoyed “What is Ase?”. I see Ase being used a lot and sometimes I think “That’s an interesting context to use it in”. People know it’s associated with Ifa, so they are like “ooo Ase”.

Tumi: I actually don’t think people know it is associated with Ifa. It’s kinda like how people do not know where Namaste comes from and says it.

Tale: I thought I knew what it meant but I did not realise how much power was in that word. That session in particularly, just felt really vibrational and it really did speak out to me.

What is Ase for the BLK Brit audience?

Tale: Simply, it is say, it will be done. 

Tumi: To invoke divine authority. Someone tweeted “The sense of community is so palpable”. I really agreed with that. Often when you have discussions with people about African spirituality, it is basically like you are trying to defend it. It is hard to argue with people that are hellbent on being against you or who miscued what you are trying to say. It was nice to have a cultural exchange with people who were informed in some ways. Like an actual symbiotic exchange of information. Because African spirituality informs every facet in our way of life, it was not about just learning about spirituality, it was also about looking into things like governance, gender complementarity. Even during this time, with BLM, when I was reading about abolition, it forced me to read about traditional Yoruba judicial systems.

Tale: It was a huge learning experience for us, I learnt that there was a huge Yoruba community in Trinidad. There were a lot of people that tuned into the six-part series that were from Trinidad.

Tumi: Even in the series, people were asking, “what if my ancestors are evil? What if they are this and that?” And one thing Iya Funlayo said was “Let go of fear”, our culture is not meant to be about being fearful about what is going to happen in the future. I think that was a really important message.

It seems our generation is embracing a less western puritanical lens on African Traditional Religions/Spirituality, which are essentially our indigenous cultural ways of life. However, the Black community is mostly either Christian or Muslim in the UK. What would you say to Christians or Muslims that may want to join another six-part series, for example, from an educational perspective, but is worried about possible evangelism and “juju”? 

Tumi: I think we need to understand that Ifa is not a religion, it is a way of life, it is an individual journey. Yoruba culture is traditionally tolerant, you will have someone with a Christian dad, a Muslim mum and they practise Ifa. If you are Christian and you want to learn, the whole point of spirituality is that it is supposed to be amenable to you, you wouldn’t have to leave the mosque to learn about Ifa. Another thing is, evangelism is not a pastime in African spirituality, I know nowadays a lot of people have a lot of Babalawos in their DMs in the same way you have Pastors hustling and not necessarily doing things that are “of the church”. There are paedophiles in the catholic church, but it does not get Catholicism cancelled as a whole. In the society we live in, people manipulate things to their will, that is not to say it is representative of the whole of spirituality. Also, do we realise a lot of the words we use is rooted in a lot of anti-blackness and imperialism? Even “Juju”, it derives from a French term, “Joue, joue” which means “Play, play”, so like “toy thing”, because they could not understand the belief systems. Do we understand where the language we use to describe African spirituality comes from? How can we say everything our ancestors practised was demonic? What does that say about what we think of ourselves as a people? Spirituality is about how we view things on a cosmic level, the way we view the divine, the way of the world, how things work is innately evil, what does that say about us? I think we need to do a bit of work to move away from that.

Tale: Even Yoruba, Christians and Muslims with Yoruba surnames, just take a second to research what that means. That will help with getting rid of some of that fear.

Tumi: If it was really true that Nigerians can bang juju and do blood money, do you think Nigeria will be the way it is? I think at the basic level, even if you are not willing to learn, there should be a basic level of respect in the same ways Christians and Muslims have for each other. All spirituality is, are people’s viewpoint of this world and God from their cultural perspective. 

The six-part series is over now, sadly because we were all enjoying it. What are your ongoing projects? Can we get a sneak peek into some of your possible future plans or is it a surprise?

Tale: We just finished our first intake for our 5-week Yoruba language course.

Tumi: If anyone wants to learn let us know. We also recorded the spirituality series, we want to put that out. We will be jumping on YouTube soon, making podcasts.  When social distancing is more relaxed, we hope to have the spirituality series in physical spaces. We want to collab with Yoruba artists in the continent and the diaspora working in film, poetry, music - just everything. Even in tech, when typing in Yoruba, adding accents counts as another character. Also when writing in Yoruba, you are limited to text that accommodates for Yoruba. We want to partner with people producing Yoruba dictionaries.

9) Lastly, where can people find you? 

You can find us @yorubaizm on twitter, @Yorubaizm on IG and also on our website Yorubaizm.com