Proverbs in Yorùbá Contemporary Songs

Abstract

The Proverb is the wisdom of the wise; a terse statement of few words. Proverbs are allegorical as the expressed statement is meant to have by analogy or by extended reference, a general or specific connotation. This study serves as a discursive strategy in the knowledge of proverbial lore and language development as exemplified in the works of the two Yorùbá Contemporary song artists to be considered. This study attempts to explain how proverb usage in the hands of these two song artists serves as critical trajectories as it refracts and reforms the debased social constrictions that have engulfed society. Its usage by these song artists is wrapped up in the communal language to puncture the social constrictions and to x-ray the lived experiences of people in the society. This study reveals that the use of proverbs as indigenous tattoos has elevated both the language of the song artists to the status of living art of popular communication and their personalities to that of a mystic ‘massieur’ as there is the need to localize the global issues and globalized the local ones. Doing so would enhance and ensure continuity of the salient aspects of our culture especially the language, which now seems to have lost its potency and rhythm via the social constrictions.