“Traditional Somethings”:
The Persistence of Ààlè
in Nigeria
by David T. Doris

December 15th, 2004
by Joanna Solfrian

The Ventriloquist’s
Daughter
by Susan Morehouse

“Traditional Somethings”: The Persistence of
Ààlè in Nigeria
    David T. Doris

Kini yìí?
What is this?
   —Yoruba expression

In autumn 1995 I saw an image that blew a hole in everything I thought I knew about African art. I was sitting in a darkened classroom at Amherst College, watching slides dance on the projection screen, listening to Professor Rowland Abíódún introduce his undergraduates to the excellence of African cultural achievement. Abíódún is a Yoruba man—born, raised, and educated in southwestern Nigeria—and like many Yoruba men and women at home and abroad, he is a vocal advocate of his culture. As a result, his slide lecture was heavily weighted with objects chosen principally from the Yoruba canon, and thus some of the best-known images in the history of African art. As the images came and went, the professor provided a running commentary, addressing each of them in turn, making them work hard to illustrate pivotal issues of the field.
     And then this image flashed upon the screen, and suddenly I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach. Against a background of thick green forest, a strangely configured assemblage of ordinary objects was suspended on a string from what seemed to be a branch of a tree. An old leather sandal formed the central mass of the thing. From it projected a large, rusted metal kitchen spoon and a straight wooden stick, extending outward like a pair of spindly, asymmetrical wings. A strip of bright red cloth dangled vertically on another string beneath the sole of the shoe.
     And that was it, as far as I could see. Abíódún said nothing at all about it. No name, no context, no exegesis, nothing. Was this a Yoruba art object? There were no telling surface details, no bits of stylistic evidence that would situate the object within any sort of “ethnic” frame, let alone determine the trace of a master’s hand. Nor was there any way to know why it was hanging from that branch, or what it might have meant for the person who hung it there, or for the persons who later saw it there.
     But suddenly, I was in love. “Professor Abíódún,” I announced after class, “that object you showed, that hanging shoe thing—that is what I am going to write my dissertation about. What is it?”

Continued in volume 42, issue 1, winter 2006