Africa is a continent dotted with rich and diverse indigenous and modern festivals, rituals, ancestral worships which constitute the dramatic and quasi-dramatic character of its literature. However, little attention has been awarded to some age-long, perhaps less known festivals that have not only reasonably held autochthons together since time immemorial but whose study would throw more light on the festival institutions in Africa and the pedagogy of African heritage in general.
On this basis, I and a team of six researchers armed ourselves with pens and papers, and journeyed to Igodan Lisa, Okitipupa, Ondo State, Nigeria on the 19th of August, 2018, to inquire about a festival called Ere. I had heard about the Ere Festival from an Uncle who hails from the town. He had inundated my helpless ears with soliloquies of how rallying and ornate the festival was even though I never had reasons to want to know more about this festival nor did I place any importance on the place of my heritage: the African Heritage. At least not until I took up an Oral Literature in Africa class where dim lenses were stripped off my eyes and those of my colleagues like a child would strip pink robes off of a candy. Here, we learnt an important thing: pristine African values, folklore and systems are not scraps of relics and madness, they are, on the other hand, a thriving way of life of a people that should be celebrated, documented, visited and re-visited. This class tinkered with orientations and made thinkers out of mere men. Some of those thinkers became part of the earlier mentioned team.
On linking back to the roots, we met with a prominent chief and ritual master, Gbolabo Joseph, the Son of Geere, Loogun Ajagbeyara of Igodan Lisa, for inquiries. I and my team also made further observations and scavenged for information through video recordings that had been taken during the most recent Ere Festival which took place in June 2018. At the core, we examined the social context, history, aesthetics and the significance of the Ere Festival to the Igodan Lisa people of Ondo State, Nigeria. Here, I will limit my discussion to the aesthetic dimensions and the significance of this festival to Igodan Lisa.
