Original subtitles

From the West Coast of Africa...

to North and South America,

Cuba, and the whole Caribbean,

the Yorubas came en masse.

From the 15th to the 18th century,

enslavement of the Africans was the most lucrative business

all over Europe.

From the Atlantic coast of Badagry,

Cotonou, Port of No Return,

to the Gorée Island in Senegal,

90% of the enslaved Africans taken out of the continent

took their last steps on the west coast of Africa.

First we have the Portuguese who were the first ones

to come to Dahomey in 1580.

You have to understand they were sent to America,

but the majority were sent to Brazil,

Salvador da Bahia, Haiti and Cuba, and a small amount to the Caribbean.

Hundreds of African culture and ethnic groups left the continent,

but only one remains visible till date in the New World.

The culture of the Yorubas.

Growing up in Trinidad, the culture that I identified as African was Yoruba.

Shango people. And Shango is Yoruba.

Olodum is a Yoruba-originated word,

the full word is Olodumare.

It's the biggest black music cultural festival in Brazil

influenced directly from the cities of Oyo and Ife.

If I free my mind and let it go,

I would say that we are an extension of the Yorubaland.

It is all around us from city to city,

in music and fashion,

religion, and arts.

It was not only the Yorubas that was taken as slaves.

You have Angola people, you have Mozambique people.

You have from different places.

Why actually people talk about Yorubas?

Why they don't talk about the other African cultures?

Yorubas were not the only one taken as slaves.

There are other tribes from Ghana, Sierra Leone,

Gabon, out to Congo,

but the Yoruba culture are very strong.

As of 1976,

over 3,000 literatures has been written on the Yorubas,

making it one of the most researched cultures

of the world.

Hundreds of culture and traditions

landed with the Africans to the New World.

But this particular West African culture

might have survived it all.

With dresses that are different from the Western style.

Masquerade carnivals.

Then the King and his Council of Chiefs.

I bet the question on your mind will be,

"Is this Africa?"

The correct answer will be no.

Welcome to Oyotunji, the African village in South Carolina.

Oyotunji was developed by African Americans

who were seeking something African,

but did not have a spiritual community in which to do so.

The 1960s, this was a very powerful time

in African people's history in this country.

We, as a people, were tired of being second-class,

third-class, fourth-class citizens in this country.

Some people say there was two movements.

There was the Civil Rights Movement

and there was this cultural movement.

I think this march will go down

as one of the greatest demonstrations for freedom and human dignity

ever held in the United States.

The Yoruba Cultural Restoration Movement

began in Harlem, New York, back around 1956.

Baba wanted African culture,

but he did not know which culture to practice.

As you know, Yoruba culture is all over the world.

However, the African Americans never developed a culture

based on African traditions.

In North America, we are descendants primarily

of Yoruba and Dahomean.

In this area, was mostly Sierra Leone and Ghana,

but the rest of Louisiana and parts of South Carolina

were Yoruba and Benin or Dahomey.

And so Baba met a gentleman from Curaçao,

his name was Chris Oliana and he knew people in Cuba.

So they traveled to Cuba.

And when he came back, he came back with the culture of the Yoruba.

It has always been used as a source of pride

by people of African descent throughout the New World.

This group of African Americans

uncovered their Yoruba culture when the afros began to grow.

Black pride was on the rise in the United States.

It was during the civil right ages

and we were opening up Yoruba culture.

We were opening Yoruba culture

to the black people that had no knowledge of where they came from,

had no knowledge of who they were,

had no knowledge of ancestors.

They would make clothes and they would go out and give them the dashikis.

That's how the dashiki became popular.

Oba would say, "Just make them up. Go out and just give them away."

What was happening in the '60s

was rather overshadowed what Oba Ofuntola was doing

because Martin Luther King had a massive movement.

My father, the first king, he was arrested many times

for practicing African tradition in North America.

Baba didn't even care.

His biggest care was the re-implementation and restoration of African culture

so that children in America forever and ever, after he's gone,

will know about the culture of their ancestors.

And we filter that culture through Yoruba.

Research into who we are before we get here

dominates the minds and movements of the African Americans

in the '50s and the 1960s.

Lots of African heritage and history were uncovered.

Most of the people who came to America

came from the west coast of Africa.

Oyotunji means Oyo rises again.

Between the 14th to the 18th century,

one of the largest and most formidable empire in West Africa

was the Yoruba Empire of Oyo,

spreading along the coast of modern day Nigeria,

Republic of Benin,

Togo and some part of Ghana.

Baba realized

that Africans in America did not know their culture.

Baba started to teach them through the dress, through the language,

through an understanding of the sociology of the Yoruba people.

Baba built this African village here on a old plantation land.

This is a part of a old plantation.

And so Oyotunji is sitting in the light of the plantation.

Oba Ofuntola was the first one, African born in America

to return to the indigenous traditions of the Yoruba people.

Collectively and individually,

people stood up against oppression in various forms in that era.

The founder of this village took pride in the culture of the Yorubas

and stood up against injustice with it.

I am one of the living founders left from New York City.

And we worked very closely with the Black Panthers.

And all Serge had to do was snap his fingers and they were there.

They were very loyal to Your Highness.

Baba was a part of a group called the Republic of New Africa.

Their idea was they were gonna take over five southern states

with guns and military.

They were gonna take over Louisiana, Mississippi,

Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

And the reason they wanted to do this was because they say we built South Carolina,

we built all of those states.

As Black people for 300 years, we built all of that.

At one time, in South Carolina,

the Europeans who would travel from Massachusetts or New England

to have a vacation in South Carolina, they called it a Black country.

They said, "This is more like a Black country than a white colony,"

because... in South Carolina,

Africans outnumbered the Europeans 17 to one.

Because they were bringing so many Africans

from West Africa to South Carolina,

the state legislature had to pass a law.

They would have concurrent ships coming in back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

So they went to Detroit, Michigan,

at Aretha Franklin's father church.

Aretha Franklin's father's church

was the place where a lot of people would come.

Historically, it was a place to talk about the movement

and what we needed to do to get from under oppression.

Detroit Police Department showed up and just unloaded on the church.

They just came in... and they started shooting up the church.

We had women and children with us.

Our soldiers fired back until they had no more ammunition.

Meanwhile, the Black Panthers got a hold of what was happening to us.

They came immediately.

The people who began the village came from the Black Panthers,

they came from the Martin Luther King movements,

they came from the Civil Rights Movements,

the Malcolm X movements, Stokely Carmichael.

They were fired up.

From the Odunde Festival in Philadelphia,

the largest African-American festival in the United States,

to the South,

traces of Yoruba culture continue to be seen in the United States.

What preceded the civil rights movement, though,

was the era of slavery.

Fighting for freedom and maintaining one's identity

was an uphill battle for people of African descent.

This group, the Yorubas,

relentlessly left clues of their passage everywhere they landed.

The enslaved Africans that came here at the end of the 18th century,

belong to a region in Africa called The Gulf of Benin.

From this region came diverse individuals,

presently called Togo, Ghana, Benin

and from the region that was Yoruba dominated.

We are the ones who have started the slavery

and we didn't bring the slaves to Europe.

We actually bring the slaves to South America

for the New World that we called the new continent

that was our colony, the Brazil.

Unfortunately, the Yoruba culture

arrived in a very heavy, sad way

because of our history in relation to the enslaved people of Africa

The Portuguese came to Dahomey, Beninese territory in 1580.

This place is one of the biggest ports in Africa.

Two separate Port of No Returns

lies in the heart of the old Yoruba Empire.

Any unfortunate Africans that made it this far

was never coming back home.

They came with nothing,

but they brought something that was stronger than any luggage.

They brought their ancestry in their heads.

According to our ancestors,

most of them originated from Ile-Ife,

Ile-Ife and other Nigerian cities.

All of our stories were passed down orally,

there aren't any official written records.

There was no record of them as a human being,

but there is a record of them as a commodity

to be bought and sold once landed in the New World.

Everything they knew culturally, traditionally and religiously

became prohibited.

Naturally, as a human being,

one of the things we think about at times of difficulties

was to seek the help of the higher power.

We must always look at culture as being multifaceted.

Uh-- Culture includes even spiritual practices.

Spirituality is embedded in human beings.

The superstructure, what sort of manifests spirituality

is what we call religion.

And so when people are deeply immersed in their own spirituality,

it doesn't matter where they go within the secular world.

They preserve that inner system of beliefs,

of relationship with outside phenomena, with nature.

And this, in turn, manifests itself in cultural production,

which these slaves took across the Atlantic with them.

The Yoruba culture and mythology

has been compared to that of other great cultures of the world...

with its own profound religious beliefs,

which has Olodumare as God, the supreme being.

What Yoruba believe is different from what other religion believes.

They believe in Olodumare.

The Yorubas, they don't worship people that have died.

The Yorubas worship Olodumare.

In the mythology of the Yorubas,

Olodumare, there's one God, one supreme being,

and there are different divinities.

Yoruba believes that you cannot contact direct with God.

You always have this divinity in between,

one Olodumare, different divinities

or different prophets like Jesus in Christianity.

You have to go through Jesus to reach God.

When we brought the slaves to Brazil,

I know that we forced them to adapt to Christianity.

We baptized them.

We believe the Africans don't have any religion or any belief.

They were forced to be Catholics. So they look at the Catholic religion

and look at the Yoruba deities.

So if you can worship Mary, I can worship Yemoja

in order to be able to resist.

They were maltreated, they were penalized,

and they were prohibited from believing in their orishas.

Orishas are mini gods and deities, worshipped by the Yorubas.

They're regarded as an intermediary between human beings and God.

Like Oshun, the goddess of beauty.

Shango, the god of thunder.

Yemoja, the goddess of the sea.

Ogun the Warrior, the god of iron.

And many other 401 Yoruba orishas.

The way Yoruba culture had several deities,

the Catholics have more than 365 saints.

To hide the worship of their gods,

they took that advantage

and relate some Catholic saints to their Yoruba deities.

The Church wasn't able to conquer the Yorubas

because they managed to be more resistant and savvy.

They would go to the church

and they would amalgamate themselves, come together,

and they would put the image of Jesus,

but in the back, they would put Obatala.

So what they did, they gave to the orisha,

they gave a saint from the Christianity.

And if you go to Brazil, you can see the candomblés.

This disguised effort

of masking the Yoruba deities within the Catholic church

marks the origin of what is now known as the candomblé worship today in Brazil.

The most profound influence of the Yoruba culture in Brazil

could be the religion.

But inheritance of Yoruba culture abound every corner,

alley, city, and way of life of many Brazilians.

The culture of the Yoruba people

was very important for the emancipation and freedom

of the African slaves that were here.

Especially in the city of Salvador,

which has the highest population of Blacks outside of Africa.

The Black women

were the first individual entrepreneurs of Brazil

selling products with African origins.

A classic example that everybody knows is akaraje

that you can find in several parts of the city.

Delicacies that were commercialized by the women

and with this money,

the women were able to buy freedom papers for a number of slaves.

And mainly the idea of a family hierarchy.

So, from the Yoruba people, we inherited the respect for elders.

When we talk to our elders, we give respect,

asking for their blessings.

We also have women in leadership.

So, it's something that we also inherited from the Yoruba people,

to have women in leadership.

Indeed, that statement could not be better said.

When many other ethnicity of the world recluse women

to the kitchen and childbearing,

the Yoruba women were not seen as so.

They were in commerce,

they were the business women of the family.

More so, in the Yoruba system of governance,

there is a seat reserved for a woman representative

as part of the cabinet of Oyo Empire.

No man is allowed to represent in women's affairs.

In the Yoruba system of beliefs,

some Yoruba gods were even women,

like Oshun, Yemoja and many others.

In Yorubaland they said, Iyalode Oba Obinrin.

That is the queen of the women.

And being the prime minister of the women,

she's in charge of other lieutenants, all other title of women.

In the Yoruba culture, in those days, woman are known to bring the money in

because they are the market woman.

The woman make more money in those days, more than their husband,

because the man would do the farming,

while the woman would go to the market to sell.

And when they sell, they take their own percentage

and they say, "my dear lovely husband, this is your money."

But woman are always known as traders.

They use their hand to work.

Inspired by the heritage of the Yorubas,

Olodum became the biggest Black musical festival in Brazil

that has attracted various artists of African descent from around the world.

Olodum, is a Yoruba-originated word.

The full word is Olodumare.

It's the biggest Black music cultural festival in Brazil,

influenced directly from the cities of Oyo and Ife.

Various African artists have performed and or combined shows with us,

also with African Americans like Spike Lee and Michael Jackson.

The Yoruba culture became the powerhouse

for emotional strength and resistance movement

for all the Africans in Brazil.

Orishas from various parts of Africa

meet up to dance and share their form of struggles and resistance

through their spiritual meetings.

This Yoruba way of thinking is empowering to individuals.

Black women were considered ugly,

but in the Yoruba culture, they're daughters of Oshun

and Oshun is the goddess of beauty.

So, no daughter of Oshun is ugly.

If a man is of Ogun, he can be 70 years old,

but he is strong because he is the son of Ogun, he has to be strong.

So, these cultural traces helped to build up our self-esteem.

It was a re-enforcement.

Because it was very hard to live through slavery.

There wasn't giving up, there wasn't moving backwards for the Yoruba people.

They never surrender.

But what remained of the Yoruba

is a very important lesson of strength, of joy, of love,

of people that manage to maintain their tradition

though being in a land where they were enslaved.

We have their music, their dances, their religion,

their words imprinted everywhere in the city of Salvador.

We're proud of being descendants of kings, priests and warriors.

We're not descendants of slaves.

Our ancestors were enslaved, but we colonized Brazil.

We must always remember that the quality,

the nature of oppression, of racial oppression,

the nature of colonialism was different from country to country.

Unlike Brazil, Cuba was a Spanish colony.

Were these West African trying anything cultural or religious here

under the Spaniards?

In the mid 1800s,

Cuba was refining over 450,000 tons of sugar crystals.

That's roughly about 30% of the entire world's consumption.

Majority of these sugar laborers were Yoruba slaves,

earriving from West Africa.

The first slaves which arrived in Cuba

in their ships came Igbos,

Hausas from the Ashanti Kingdom in Ghana,

Kalabaris, many of them,

but the majority of them who went to Cuba were Yorubas.

That's why the Yoruba is the largest proportion

of the Africans in Cuba.

You have to get to 19th century or last of 18th century.

As you should know, the Regla de Ocha or Santeria

is Cuban way of saying all of this culture

of different tribes or deities of Nigeria.

And Nigeria have 400 deities, more or less.

And we suppose to Cuba have come around 300 of these deities.

-Beautiful.

With over 300 of the 401 Yoruba deities landing in Cuba,

it's only imaginable that what was done in Brazil

will be attempted under the Spaniards in Cuba.

In Cuba,

the Africans were prohibited from practicing their own religion.

They were prohibited from adoring their orishas.

Yoruba religion synchronization effort with the Europeans

did not end in Brazil.

They adopted the Catholic saints to protect their orishas.

For example, Santa Barbara is Shango,

Elegua is San Antonio de Padua or The Infant of Atocha.

Babalu-Aye is Saint Lazarus.

Obatala is Mercedes.

Oshun, the patron of Cuba.

Our Lady of Charity.

That's the way it was merged.

And then that's why we call Santeria

because the Yoruba saints

were related to the Catholic saints.

This synchronization was not only called Santeria in Cuba,

but the entire Latin America.

Obviously, this group of Africans were not on a religious crusade.

They seem to have one common problem

everywhere they've landed...

slavery.

And in search of only one goal, freedom.

Escaping slavery with what they knew was their number one goal.

Various aspects of human activities, social activities,

are embedded in the spirituality of the Yoruba.

The dances, the attires, the music.

In the music, of course.

In the music, of course.

Because all these elements of the music

have to do with the music of the secret society.

The Yoruba culture and Cuban tradition

is so deeply entangled, it's inseparable.

With hundreds of years of separations,

Yoruba speakers from West Africa till date

could still pick up many words from the Cuban songs and traditions.

When religious synchronism began, which also had influence in the music,

they began to make drums that were like the batá of today,

but they were more rustic, some were vertical and things like that.

They say batá have another way of play,

but all of them have been used in all these sectors of all the music,

the Cuban music, the popular Cuban music.

These three drums are the ones that gives the fundamental

and characteristics to Cuban music,

which are polyrhythmic and plural-tonality.

And this stems precisely from the drums that came with the Yoruba slaves to Cuba,

because they are drums that have six patches

and the six patches have a different rhythm

and different tonalities.

They say, "But how do you know so much about music?"

Before the revolution, I used to play guitar.

I promised one of the men who was killed

in the attack of the presidential palace in 1957

that when-- even if they kill him or kill me,

I will leave the guitar.

When we were in the underground,

in the houses I used to have with them,

I used to play guitar with them-- to them.

And they say, "Well, if some things happen to me,

don't play no more guitar."

And they killed him in the attack of the presidential palace.

So I put my two guitar,

which were beautiful guitar and very good in his tomb.

I gave it there and I never played guitar.

When Fidel Castro led his rebellion against Batista

in Manzanillo, in the Oriente Province,

he was able to succeed as much as he did,

at least it was aided by the fact that Yoruba culture was strongest there.

And Yoruba culture did not teach turn the other cheek.

On the contrary, Yoruba culture contains the god of war,

celebrates the god of war.

So, you can see that Yoruba played a role in liberation struggle in Latin America

and in the struggle for human rights.

During the revolution led by Fidel Castro...

an enormous participation from the black population

made possible for the revolution to win.

And after that, to keep the revolution working.

The first task of the revolution

was to eliminate discrimination and give opportunity to everybody.

It's a history of Cuban history, by the religions,

not only by the things that happen, like wars of independence.

By the religion and their influence in the Cuban history.

We have babalawo.

Many-- we have plenty of babalawos in Cuba, many.

That many that my neighbor is a babalawo.

In the Yoruba spirituality,

a babalawo is considered the priest.

Evidence of synchronization can still be seen in Santeria.

Independently from this, we are here in the church,

we independently believe in the Yoruba religion, in Bantu,

but we also believe in the Catholic religion,

we send people to church to pray and ask for things

and invocate for all things, so they may have health,

stability, and repose for all who believe in her.

The study of the orishas

has always influenced many artists throughout Cuban history.

They had been a point of view for all the people

who writes, who are poets, who paint,

who dances, who make the music.

Like Titón who was one of our best director of movies.

He was voted for the Oscar.

And he used to study every principal person of their movies

with the orishas.

They want to say this man is like Shango,

which is very--

and the music and then they went to the characteristics.

Tourists from all around the world

gathered every Sunday at Callejon de Hamel in Havana

to watch the Yoruba folkloric on display.

Even though the pronunciation might have eroded

due to hundreds of years of various influences,

many Yoruba words remain very clear.

Many of us are initiated

in this Santeria of the Yoruba religion

of which you give folkloric touches,

some of which you will now soon see.

To say the Yorubas brought their religion here in Trinidad and Tobago

will no more be surprising.

One thing that might be different here was the way they came.

A lot of people don't recognize it,

but Trinidad was a very late settlement for sugar.

If we look at Barbados or we look at Jamaica,

they were settled by the Europeans in the 17th century,

1620s, 1650s.

Trinidad was not settled until the late 18th century.

By the time we had begun to develop a sugar economy,

the slave trade was stopped.

So Trinidad never had the influx of slaves

directly from Africa that the other countries had had.

When the English put an embargo on slaves leaving Africa,

those freed slaves, those slaves that were taken,

uh-- they were called liberated Africans,

many of them were Yoruba.

They came as indentured or liberated Africans.

While we would've had Yoruba coming throughout,

but not in large numbers.

We had a large influx of Yoruba between about 1840 and 1860.

Embargo of the early 1800s

did not stop slave trade among all Europeans.

Illegal slave trade continued until the late 1800s,

an action that almost cost Africa another one of its finest.

My great-great-grandfather was captured

somewhere western part of Nigeria. I believe, Abeokuta.

And he was transported in the ship.

The slave trade had been abolished.

Governments of Europe now start to intercept

ships that were coming from Africa at this point in time.

And his ship was one of the ships intercepted

and they sent it back.

But they didn't send him back and dropped them in Badagry.

They dropped them in Sierra Leone.

So most of them that came from the same region as him

all walked back to Abeokuta from Sierra Leone.

Heroic feat must have been in the blood

of the Kuti families for generations.

At the time when there was no airplane, nor GPS,

imagine walking over 1,500 miles in the jungles of West Africa

in an effort to locate your homeland.

Despite this heroic act, we have to count him lucky.

How many did we know that took the same leap of faith

and never made it?

Perhaps the same could be said

for those that made it to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

How many did we know that never made it through the brutal middle passage?

Some Yorubas had made it, landed here in Trinidad and Tobago.

They set up what is known and still known as Yoruba Village

in the heart of Port of Spain.

And the spread-- the Yoruba settlement spread

from the East Port of Spain into Laventille,

into Belmont, into the Laventille Hills.

In fact, there are...

orisha shrines there that are more than 100 years old.

In Trinidad, based on the religion they practice,

whatever form, if orisha, they're always known as Shango people.

That's why they're branded as Shango people,

which when, in going to Africa or reading about Yorubaland,

Shango is predominantly practiced heavily

in the Oyo region of Yorubaland.

When the power that be ban the African drum for worship, remember?

They were saying we were sending message from one part of the island to the next

because in the still of the night,

up till today when we have Yoruba worship in the night,

you could hear the drums far, far, far, far across the land.

We were told that our ancestors' hands

used to be chopped off for playing a drum,

because off the fear that the drum was inciting people

to rebel and overthrow things and that sort of thing.

Neither the Portuguese, French, Spaniards or the British

was comfortable with the Yorubas and their drums

simply because of their ability to utilize it

for more than just entertainment.

As we know in Yorubaland,

that we can curse with the drum and praise with the drum.

Drums can be used to send coded messages

in times of misunderstanding in times like that,

drums are played independently of each other,

which all has meanings.

In the 1880s, the skin drum was banned in Trinidad

and the Africans used the bamboo, tamboo bamboo, to get the rhythms.

And along with the tamboo bamboo, there was always a sort of iron.

There was always the clang of the iron.

There was a very strong Yoruba input

in the development of the steel pan.

The historians always emphasize

that the parlay or the orisha yard was a sorta community center

where people would hang out and lime during the day,

during the-- when they're having the feasts

or the sarakas and the pleasure songs.

A lot of them evolve into social commentary and calypso.

Some of the earliest steel pans men were, in fact, Yoruba.

Many of them were butchers.

Many of them were committed to the god of iron.

The steel and the rhythm of steel is very definite

in the Yoruba tradition's teachings.

People come with it in their DNA.

So it wasn't like somebody dropped from the sky

and decided to invent the steel pan.

They had some kind of ancestral memory of what music can come out of iron,

what the god of iron, Ogun, creation,

could evolve in that-- that manifest into the steel pan.

The orisha iles were very powerful

in that they were the ones,

both in Port of Spain and in Tacarigua soon,

that created the birth of the pan.

In fact, it is reputed that the first recognizable notes

that were played in the steel pan, um--

that was a chant to Ogun.

The pan brought melody,

but the rhythm continued to be a very strong African rhythm.

Those rhythms, remember, when they are taken away from us,

we couldn't use them.

And the improvisation is what became the steel drum.

The pan is one round piece of steel.

The notes are separated by grooves

and have 36 different songs on one instrument,

but yet is one pan.

The pan is like the blood of Trinidad.

I mean, across all corners.

It's well-loved throughout the world

and its significant and unique to Trinidad,

it is our gift to the world.

As it is in Cuba and Brazil,

survival of Yoruba culture is pronounced on this island of Trinidad and Tobago.

There continue to be Yoruba, uh--

survivors in terms of food.

We-we still, the akara.

We still eat akara in Trinidad.

We don't use it with the beans.

We use it with salt fish, but we call it akara.

And to hear it called akara, you know it had to come--

And it's the same idea.

It's the same idea of the mush that is fried and eaten.

In Brazil, the Yoruba descendants that settled there,

still eat akara.

We in Yorubaland, we call it akara.

In Bahia, they call it akaraje.

Now they don't call it akara and stop there.

They call akara-that-you-eat.

Apart from the carnival in Trinidad,

Emancipation celebration is the biggest street parade

in Trinidad and Tobago.

You're gonna have thousands of people,

thousands and thousands of people

who are going to be wearing their African clothes.

When I started looking at the Yoruba all those years ago,

I recognized that it was because we did not know.

We just-- There was not enough knowledge.

As I said, I knew things, I'm a historian,

I lived in Ife, but I recognize that a lot of Trinidadians

were not aware of the details.

And around that time, there was a lot of research being done

and I got a sense, well, it's gonna happen.

Everybody's going to understand the connections

and now that I'm looking at it,

I realized that there was a kind of fall off in that respect,

so that while there is information,

that information is not as widely known as it ought to be

because in the 1970s, when we had the Black Power Revolution in Trinidad,

there was a lot of awareness and a lot of searching.

But over the last thirty years,

I don't think it has been as prominent.

Struggles of the Yoruba descendants here

has led to some legal provisions and amendments

in this multicultural society.

Achievements that might not even be available

in either Brazil or Cuba.

The Hindus are predominant in Trinidad,

they could get married under their traditional rites.

The Muslims can also be married under their traditional rights

and, of course, the Christians.

Trinidad and Tobago has the only marriage act,

the Orisha Marriage Act.

Where we can be married

under traditional Isese rites of the Ifa Orisha tradition.

I don't even think that in Nigeria they have it on their books.

In the past, we have a strong oral tradition

where many of the stories were handed down

through verbal influence.

Gone are the days where a child would sit and listen evening after evening

to the stories of grandparents or great-grandparents.

Gone are the days where grandparents and great-grandparents

have the time to sit with young people

and have the patience to sit with them and tell the stories

as their great grandparents would have with them.

We also have to accept that they learn

and they are exposed to information in a totally different way.

To this day, we still have not caught up with the documentation required

to ensure that future generations would understand where we came from,

the struggles that we would have been through

and therefore, using it as the light to guide their future.

But we cannot undervalue

the strength of oral traditions

to ensure that we utilize our brains effectively

and to stretch the capacity of our brains

to, uh-- have the level of memory

that our ancestors would have had.

We had a song being sung in Belmont about Ibadan,

among the elders, an old lady sang it.

And we as young people have been hearing this song

and we didn't know what it meant, but we were told that by the elder

that that song in particular

when it was sung years ago by her ancestors,

they used to actually cry, they used to well up.

They usually sing this song.

Nobody knew where it came from,

but now when we hear Ibadan, when we hear Oyo,

we can make the connection.

And we in Trinidad know in Belmont,

singing this of Ibadan,

and an old lady who was almost 90-something telling us

that her ancestors--

She be in, I guess what-- I think third generation

or fourth generation Yoruba,

used to sing this song,

not knowing that Ibadan is the largest West African city.

Despite all the hardship and brutality,

this African culture defined a way to survive it all.

Makes you wonder who are these Yorubas

and what's actually special about this particular group of Africans.

The Yoruba people...

are a people of West Africa.

But the Yoruba believe

that they're the original people of the world.

They believe...

that they were the first people to be created.

They were created by the orisha, their divinities,

who descended from heaven above.

400 plus one orisha.

And they landed in Ile-Ife.

From Togo to Cuba,

Republic of Benin to Brazil,

one consensus of all the Yorubas was that Ile-Ife is their origin.

And their ancestor from Ife is Oduduwa.

You talk about Oduduwa,

you talk about Obatala, you talk about Ogun, you talk about--

Many of these are Yoruba gods and goddesses.

And they founded Yoruba civilization

on what would eventually endure.

What is widely known about the Yorubas

has always been their spirituality.

Little acknowledgement has been given to their system of governance.

If you look at the history of Yorubaland,

you will see Ile-Ife as the cradle of Yoruba race and civilization.

Ile-Ife would later become too small for the other Yoruba groups.

Many of them moved out.

And when they moved out,

they established their own kingdoms, they established their own states

but they fashioned or patterned the system of government

under the example of Ile-Ife.

Ile-Ife played a very pivotal role

in which all the descendants of Oduduwa actually left the land

to go and resettle in some other places.

Oyo Empire further improved on the structure.

From Ife to the formation

of the largest West African state of the era, the Oyo Empire.

Oyo would be the first empire in sub-Saharan Africa

to emerge with an elaborate system of government

with checks and balances

and with what we call the arms of government,

the executive, the legislature, the judiciary.

Many things were said to have been introduced

to the Africans by the Europeans.

To the Yorubas, democracy was definitely not one of them.

How did the Yorubas view the monarchy?

The monarchical system, in fact, among the Yoruba, was very democratic.

The Oba's powers were limited by a Council of Chiefs,

sometimes known as the Ogboni, a conclave.

And the Oba couldn't be as autocratic as he might've wished

or as autocratic as many outsiders view the Oba,

because he's a revered figure,

but he's primus inter pares, first among others,

the chiefs and so on and so forth.

And that evolved into a kind of democratic setting,

which might seem strange.

The system of government in Yorubaland

is such that it will fit into any age.

They have the Alaafin as head of the administration.

Below that Alaafin, you have the Oyomesi.

The Oyomesi are regarded as kingmakers

who are regarded in contemporary times as the prime minister of the state.

You have the Ogboni even to check the activities of the Oyomesi,

who could be regarded as the judicial arm

and they belong to a cult

to which they have sworn that they will keep

the sanctity of the state and they'll not betray

the trust reposed in them.

We have the Esho, the class of accomplished military officers,

headed by the Are-Ona-Kakanfo.

They were responsible for the military activities of the state.

The Alaafin could check them

because the Alaafin will have to give specific instructions

before the Esho could go out to lead the army into any direction.

So you now have a delicate mechanism of control,

one level of power checking the other.

That's what you have in constitutionalism.

This oral constitution is well-structured

that not even the king, whom they call Oba, is above the law.

You must know, of course, that when the Oba went beyond his bounds,

when he tried to flout laid down traditions,

the controlling mechanisms,

to go around the controlling mechanisms of society,

he was duly invited to go in there

and open the calabash that he would find there

and this meant commit suicide.

If an Oba commits an abomination,

there's ways of dealing with it.

Either he abdicates or he commits suicide,

depending on the level of abomination.

The least will be exile.

It may be temporary. It may be permanent.

Despite all these traditional guidelines in place,

the Yorubas still see their kings as their next

after their gods.

If you look at the way God structured everybody,

God honors and favor

people that give respect to him as our creator.

The culture and tradition of Yoruba has to do with respect.

Yoruba race has strong respect for elders,

not to talk of their kings in which they hold in high esteem.

The norm in Yoruba culture

is that the younger ones always bow while greeting their elders.

But the reverse was the case here.

As the older former president of Nigeria

bows to greet the younger king, the Ooni of Ife.

No matter your social or political position,

our culture must not be trampled upon.

Our culture is our culture.

In Yorubaland, our culture says...

"You don't greet a king half bent.

You don't greet a King by squatting.

For those that might want to disrespect the King

You greet a king by prostrating."

In Yoruba understanding of government,

the earthly ruler of the world is a representative of the gods.

And that's why they call him Alashe Ekeji Orisha.

So the awe that you give to God,

you eventually extend to his earthly representative

who is the king.

In reading the literature in Trinidad,

you got the impression that when they came here,

whether they were in small groups or not, there was order,

and there was a sense of what ought to be done, what should not be done.

And there was a lot more order

than there might have been in some of the other groups.

With the Yorubas controlling

the most politically stable empire of West Africa,

European exploration of world politics

will later conflict with their states.

When the Europeans came,

they were two, the English and the French.

When they divided the land

Alaketu, Onisabe and Onipopo,

three of us who were Oduduwa's sons, now fell under the French colony.

Our great ancestor is called Oduduwa,

the one that landed with a mysterious chain in Ife.

We came from Ife,

round at about year 1000 A.D.

Colonization had a lot of impact,

not only on the Yoruba people, but on all peoples who were colonized.

Colonization is another name for slavery.

It's a kind of slavery.

When the European--

five European power met in Berlin, in 1885,

they partition different part of Africa

without involving the people.

Togo and Dahomey were carved-- and Cotonou were carved out of Yoruba

and was under the French.

In Berlin, they divided us.

They use to call Republic of Benin here Slave Coast,

Niger area, the bank of river Niger was named Nigeria.

Every African state has its own tradition and culture

which was destroyed by colonization

in the form of their own system of government

that was transferred to replace our own system of governance.

As it did on the entire continent of Africa,

the Berlin Conference of 1885

created borders between these brothers

and they will begin to answer to citizens of different countries

under the colony of the Europeans.

The first impact of colonization was that our kings--

The Yorubas had many kings.

All those kings lost their sovereignty,

even though they still had some authority.

The most telling aspect of colonization

was the strength and the power that it gave the missionaries.

The missionaries, emboldened by the fact that their own people were in charge.

By the time we had independence in 1960,

a sizable number of Yorubaland

had already been Christianized.

Our people started to think that our culture was worthless.

Everything African was taught to be primitive,

a stigma the entire continent of Africa still struggles with till date.

I've met few people who have come

from Yorubaland, per se,

and some of them I found they do not satisfy me,

You know, that they, too, have been robbed.

Yes, I am Yoruba, but I'm so many others.

Staying in a particular piece of geography don't make you it.

Geography is geography.

And I want to say this to anybody and confront you with that

so you would say, "Who the hell do you think you are?"

So I could repeat it.

Ideas and innovations of these progressive people

will be suppressed and relegated.

Metal works,

what is referred to as bronze metal works, has been done by the Yoruba's for ages.

They will dig up the soil, base on the soil color,

they can tell what kind of metal it might contain.

They will now park it up, heat it up

and extract the metal

to make hoes, cutlasses and so on.

They extract it from the ground.

Once they found it, they will pour it into a heated furnace.

It will now solidify, once heated,

then we will shape it to whatever we want.

Unknown to many and before genealogy and ancestry records,

the Yorubas had their own identity database called Oriki.

This oral database traces lineages for generations

and can identify family places of origin,

family occupation, status, physical looks,

character traits and so on.

Each family knows theirs,

but collective database are kept by the drummers and entertainers.

Everybody have different Oriki.

Every houses have their own different Oriki.

It was a tool to evoke emotional pride in people

for which they were abundantly rewarded.

That is my trait. Oriki.

You must look for it.

Knowing people and what they stand for.

Oriki reminds you of where you came from,

gives you a permanent link with origin,

brings clan, family together.

And, ultimately, in fact, it is pure poetry,

which appeals to the artistic in those human beings.

You have to consider that the Yoruba,

the Lucumi, as we call them and the Nagos, they're known in Brazil,

these were people who came from a thriving empire,

an empire that had subject states,

an empire that was well-organized, well-structured, well-founded. Right?

This is a culture, but this is also a historical group,

a traditional group, an established group.

The religion is only part of it.

400 years and counting,

presence of these West Africans remain a force across the Atlantic.

The fact that they were able to influence non-Yorubas

to behave in ways that reflected Yoruba culture,

I have always been trying to figure out

in terms of the elements of the Yoruba culture

that had a universality that was able to bring in

whether it was the Congos or, you know, the others.

So, I get a sense that there was a strength in the Yoruba culture,

a very deep understanding of what was being done.

People in the Yoruba religion,

they may be practitioners or priests of Ifa, of Ogun, of Shango,

any number of the 401 orishas.

And within that system,

people are both the same and different.

The Yoruba thought system allows people

to be united at the same time that it allows them

to express their individuality

and be in a unique community of togetherness.

Yoruba culture is not only a Nigerian heritage.

It is a world heritage

because it has a universal exceptional value.

You go to Brazil, you have Yoruba heritage,

which is preserved by the government already.

You go to Cuba, you have Yoruba heritage.

They're even represented in the parliament.

The fact that it came in so late,

I think is a major contributor to its survival in Cuba.

You can go to Chinatown and see things that are very Chinese.

You can go to Jewish Town and see things that are very Jewish.

They wear their big hats. I saw a hat big like this,

and it was about that thick all the way around.

That is what they have. Where is that for Black people?

Where is that for African people in North America?

Where do you go to see things that are very African?

You can have the shackles off of your legs and your hands,

but if your mind is still shackled,

if your spirit is still shackled,

then how far can you go?

One of the things that I did is try to connect.

I took our instrument pan to the Alaafin of Oyo as a gift,

I'm gonna send another one for the Ooni of Ife

to make sure that he gets his.

The Alaafin was amazed to see something evolve

from of the loss of the batá, let's say the batá.

And we coming up with this remarkable story

about something being invented in Trinidad,

amongst his own people and we bringing it to him.

And he was amazed, he was mesmerized by it.

We-- He showcased it, we gonna take a steel pan

to the new king in Ile-Ife which is the spiritual home of the Yorubas

and to the Ooni as a gift

with the intention of also taking back things that we lost

to add to our stock over here in Trinidad.

What we need is unity of purpose.

The Jews that are Jews in France,

they are Jews in France,

and they're part and parcel of France,

but if anything happens,

that is of importance to Jews, anywhere,

they are all up to defend, to protect the interest of Jews.

I believe we can do the same.

Those Africans in diaspora,

let them be good citizens of wherever they are.

But let them know that your root is in Yorubaland,

either Yorubaland in Nigeria

or Yorubaland in Republic of Benin,

or even Yorubaland in Republic of Togo.

The history of Africa, the history of the Yorubaland

has to be written by its people

because the history which exists now

was written by the colonial-- colonialism.

I think the more that we see and travel--

I know one of the problems of course, is the distance.

Encouragement of physical visits

by leaders of the diaspora,

I mean, cultural leaders, community leaders,

who then return and share their findings with others.

Sons, daughters, relations curious about this origin of theirs.

There are movements, for instance, like Return-to-Africa movements.

It-it arouses curiosity, people ask questions,

and then they say, okay, we're coming to see for ourselves.

I think there is a very conscious and vibrant return

to the acceptance of what we are.

So, today, you have diaspora, kinfolk, coming home.

To them, home is Ile-Ife, is Yorubaland,

and they proudly return.

Little snippets.

We are Yorubas.

The great-grandfather teaches the grandfather,

the grand father teaches the father,

the father teaches the son,

and in this way we accurately maintain this tradition.

We have this song...

that has been sung in our parlay...

since our ancestors came.

And it was like...

And it said, "We are are your children. My God, do not throw us away."

For me, it's a very sad song because it reminds me

of the pain of my ancestors, but we sing it still.

We sing it still.