Yoruba People

Olokun cannot be contained within words

Or constrained within the boundaries of the imagination

Olokun cannot be restricted by thoughts 

Or straight jacketed by ways and means

Olokun resides in the earth-sustaining watery bliss of rigid fluidity

Yoruba in Jamaica

The story says, that the village/town of Abeokuta in Jamaica, was so named by the first group of Nigerian origins employed as indentured labourers.  The importation of Indentured labour became necessary after the abolition of the trade in enslaved Africans by an act signed into law on March 25, 1808 in Britain. The act prohibited the ‘trading’ of enslaved people but did not abolish ‘enslavement’. The system of slavery continued but was now supplemented by indentured labourers who came in with contracts and ‘salaries’ to work under similar working conditions as the enslaved population. 

On arrival in Western Jamaica (via Sierra Leone) the Nigerians were transported to large sugar plantation in the parish we now call Westmoreland.  Finding the area where they were located to be visibly like the town of Abeokuta in Nigeria (rock and all) they named it Abeokuta.  Nigerians were also taken to the parish now named Hanover.  History has identified most of these Nigerians as Yoruba peoples who have left with us their descendants identified as the Nago people and their presence in food, language and dance.  The Ettu (Etu) dance ritual, is a song and dance form done individually or collectively to facilitate connections with the ancestral energies to venerate, thank and propitiate them. 

Some aspects of Etu dancing are explained by Marjorie Whylie OD,  Jamaican musicologist, pianist, educator, among other distinctions, explains some aspect of the Etu dance in this short video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ULEwXX8zew.  It is interesting to note that some researchers link the Etu dance specifically to the Edo people.  The Edo and Yoruba people are ancestrally the same people who today are differently politically and geographically located in Nigeria.  

As with so many things African, even as the spiritual energy infused itself into the spiritual landscape of our country, the practices and retentions were diminished by what became, at least overtly, the dominant religion i.e. that of the enslavers.  Notwithstanding, Yoruba spirituality has resurfaced and is being reclaimed and maintained in Jamaica.  Many are living according to the precepts and practices of the ancestors and Orishas and there are Yoruba houses serving Yoruba spiritual communities.   

Sankofie teaches about the Yoruba spiritual system and maintains an altar honouring the orishas.