There’s the amazingly colourful, vibrant Geledé festival, dedicated to Mother Earth or Iyà Nlà as she is known locally and is characterized by the beautifully-crafted masks worn by dancers accompanied by singers and drummers. The festival is an ode to Yoruba heritage and includes the symbolic use of animal figures such as birds and serpents.
The Gelede is performed by the Yoruba-Nago community that is spread over Benin, Nigeria and Togo. For more than a century, this ceremony has been performed to pay tribute to the primordial mother Iyà Nlà and to the role women play in the process of social organization and development of Yoruba society.
The Gelede takes place every year after the harvests, at important events and during drought or epidemics and is characterized by carved masks, dances and chants, sung in the Yoruba language and retracing the history and myths of the Yoruba-Nago people. The ceremony usually takes place at night on a public square and the dancers prepare in a nearby house. The singers and the drummers are the first to appear. They are accompanied by an orchestra and followed by the masked dancers wearing splendid costumes. There is a great deal of preparatory craftwork involved, especially mask carving and costume making.
The performances convey an oral heritage that blends epic and lyric verses, which employ a good deal of irony and mockery, supported by satirical masks. Figures of animals are often used, such as the serpent, a symbol of power, or the bird, the messenger of the “mothers”. The community is divided into groups of men and women led by a male and a female head. It is the only known masked society, which is also governed by women. Although the Gelede has nowadays adapted to a more patriarchal society, the oral heritage and dances can be considered as a testimony of the former matriarchal order.
Technical development is resulting in a gradual loss of traditional know-how, and tourism is jeopardizing the Gelede by turning it into a folklore product. Nevertheless, the Gelede community shows great awareness of the value of their intangible heritage, which is reflected in the efforts put into the preparation work and in the growing number of participants.
Ìyá Nlá is the primordial spirit of all creation in Yoruba cosmology. She is believed to be the source of all existence. Iya Nla literally means “Great Mother” in the Yoruba language (Ìyá: Mother; Nlá: Big or Great). In The Gẹ̀lẹ̀dẹ́ Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture, art historian Babatunde Lawal reveals that Ìyá Nlá in Yoruba cosmology is the orisha who is the “Mother of All Things, including the deities.”
Lawal also asserts that the female principle in nature has been personified as Ìyá Nlá (The Great Mother), whereby human beings can relate to one another as children of the same mother.” Teresa N. Washington’s Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Àjẹ́ in Africana Literature, states that Ìyá Nlá — the Mother of All, who is also known as Yewájọbí, Odù, Odùduwà, and Àjẹ́ — is not merely an orisha; Ìyá Nlá is the primordial force of all creation.
