The John Randle Center for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos “explodes with sound” in a dazzling break with the colonial model
In front of the National Museum of Nigeria in downtown Lagos, a swimming pool and memorial corridor were once an integral component of the city, a collecting position that evoked a sense of pride.
This year, decades after the resort fell into disrepair, a new swimming pool opens its doors to the public next to a museum committed to Yoruba culture.
The John Randle Center for Yoruba Culture and History, which describes itself as “a fitting symbol of the metropolis’s multiplicity of identities,” is located in the Onikan region, the cultural center of Lagos Island. Unlike the National Museum, built in the 1950s in a Western style by English archaeologist Kenneth Murray, the center is “decidedly Yoruba,” according to Seun Oduwole, the site’s chief architect.
“If you go to a Western museum, the African segment is in the basement, it’s dark. But this museum is full of color and sound to show the vibrancy of Yoruba culture,” says Oduwole. Yoruba words are larger than their English opposites. Numbers on symptoms and manifestations.
Will Rea, the Nigerian-born curator and teacher who helped spearhead the project, adds, “It’s very different from a European museum: you’re walking in a soundscape and it’s noisy, it’s performative, you have to move the frame all the time. “time. “
The outer walls of the Yoruba center, which has 1,000 meters of exhibition space, are made of concrete and covered with earth-colored pigments reminiscent of the dust elements of ancient Yoruba settlements. The golden lattice refers to the craftsmanship of the Yoruba people.
Inside, visitors are greeted through an audio-visual demonstration that revives Yoruba myths about the origin of the world, employing the shape of a gourd, a gourd that has significance in Yoruba culture and beliefs. A separate room features deities and manifestations of saints, joined by Shango, god of thunder, and Oshun, goddess of femininity and fertility. There is an express domain for storytelling, to reflect Yoruba oral tradition, as well as sections on customs and practices.
Former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari opened the centre, commissioned by the Lagos State government, in January 2023 and it will open to the public this fall.
The original pool at the site was built by John Randle, a Sierra Leonean-born doctor from a circle of relatives of repatriated slaves. He saw young lakes drown in the surrounding lagoon and build a swimming pool when colonial rulers refused to do so.
The swimming pool Randle built in the 1920s in what was then known as George V Park has become a major charm: Lagos dwellers were excluded from the nearby British-run members-only club. A memorial corridor was added to the site in the 1950s, but as Lagos expanded over the following decades, the buildings fell into disrepair and closed in the late 1970s.
In addition to the museum, the center also has three dining halls serving fresh Yoruba cuisine, a library, a gallery for transitional exhibitions, seminar rooms, and a gift shop.
Oduwole, who works for the Lagos-based company SI. SA, says many Lagosians from his parents’ generation learned to swim in Randle’s pool and went to the theatre in the memorial hall.
“One of the things we wanted to do here was to interrogate museology as a structure and ask the question of why the Western style doesn’t work in the African context and how we can create a space that is not a museum in Africa. classical sense, but it’s more of a theatre of living memory,” he says.
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After the Promotion
Negotiations are underway to secure 12 long-term loan items from the British Museum, with the addition of the Lander stool, one of the first Yoruba pieces brought to Nigeria via the British, which has been the subject of repatriation appeals. Among the pieces donated to the British Museum is a dress worn by prominent Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, the king of Afrobeat.
Rea, a senior lecturer at the University of Leeds, says: “Yoruba culture is one of the most important oral artistic, musical and literary cultures in the world. It is impressive for its creativity and art history.
“Even today, we see Yoruba culture influencing the global in many ways, with Fela Kuti taking it out of oriki culture and creating a song for a fusion of West Coast jazz. The perception of, for example, salsa, which is a Yoruba dance movement adopted in Brazil. Yoruba cuisine can now be discovered in London and New York. There is a genuine sense that Yoruba culture desires more visibility.
A team of experts contributed to the center’s design and purpose, in addition to Nigerian-American scholar Rowland Abiodun, whose book, Yoruba Art and Language, is a key resource in academia.
Rea says Lagos has deep ties to Yoruba heritage. “The entire Onikan community has been lost in the sprawl of the city of Lagos, which is why the new center aims to turn this community into a cultural district,” he says.
The Yoruba speak one language and share a common cultural identity and cosmology that goes back to the past, he says.
Interest in Yoruba heritage has peaked among young Nigerians over the past decade and “that’s what the Randle Center does,” according to Rea.
“The essence of the medium is the refusal to communicate about the concept of classic. When you communicate about classical African art, it’s a very Eurocentric view of African art, it’s an ahistorical notion. Instead, we take a look at the traditions of Yoruba culture.