Gender Conversion and Yoruba Beliefs: A Cautionary Musical Narrative in Portable’s Brotherhood Song

Abstract

This paper offers a critical review of existing literature on Yoruba cosmology and gender identity, with a focus on male-to-female gender conversion, and situates this review within an analysis of Portable’s controversial street-pop track "Brotherhood." Drawing on indigenous Yoruba epistemologies, the study explores how traditional beliefs where gender is spiritually assigned, symbolically fixed, and communally regulated conflict with modern expressions of transgender identity emerging within Nigeria’s globalized youth culture. Literature reviewed suggests that while Yoruba thought allows for symbolic fluidity, it maintains strict boundaries around bodily or social gender transformation. Male-to-female transitions, in particular, are often perceived as metaphysical disruptions or spiritual aberrations (Oyěwùmí, 1997; Epprecht, 2008; Nzegwu, 2006 and Ajibade 2013). Within this framework, "Brotherhood" is analyzed not merely as a diss track but as a cautionary cultural text that draws on Yoruba moral codes, ancestral symbolism, and metaphors of betrayal to critique gender nonconformity. Portable’s lyrics and performance are positioned as articulating indigenous anxieties about the erosion of traditional gender roles in a postcolonial, media-driven environment. Through an intertextual reading of the song, proverbs, and cosmological themes, this paper argues that "Brotherhood" mirrors and reinforces a growing cultural backlash against transgender visibility in Nigeria. Ultimately, the song is understood as a site where Yoruba values are mobilized to resist contemporary gender discourses, offering insight into the cultural and spiritual dimensions shaping gender identity politics in modern African contexts.