What is an Egungun festival?
Egungun festival is part of the Yoruba religious system, sometimes referred to as Orisa. It is celebrated as festivals and rituals through the masquerade. An elder from the Egungun family called Alagbaa sometimes presides over the ancestral rites.
Where is the Egungun festival celebrated?
Image caption, Nigeria’s annual Egungun festival is a centuries old Yoruba tradition, and one of the most colourful cultural celebrations in West and Central Africa. The streets of the town of Iwo in south-west Nigeria are flooded with crowds in late August, towards the end of the rainy season.
What is the purpose of Egungun festival?
In the Oyo area of Yorubaland, Odun Egungun festivals are held in communities to commemorate the ancestors. Egungun masks are performed during these annual or biennial ceremonies as well as during specific funeral rites throughout the year.
Who is the Egungun?
Egungun, (egúngún with Yorùbá language tone marks) in the broadest sense is any Yoruba masquerade or masked, costumed figure. More specifically, it is a Yoruba masquerade for ancestor reverence, or the ancestors themselves as a collective force.
What happens in the Yoruban Egungun festival?
Egúngún, which can be translated as ‘powers concealed’ is an annual or biennial masquerade festival held by Yoruba-speaking people in Nigeria. It takes the form of masked and costumed performers moving among the crowd, through the streets. An Egúngún masker represents, honours and invokes an ancestor.
How long is Egungun celebrated?
In Iragbiji, a town near Osogbo, the Egungun festival is celebrated as the period of interaction between the living and the dead. Many colourful masquerades parade the streets and offer prayers for the living. The festival takes place in May every year and lasts for seven days.
Is Egungun a religion?
Egungun is a part of the Yoruba pantheon of divinities. The Yoruba religious system is sometimes referred to as the ‘Yoruba Religion’ or simply ‘Orisa Veneration’. In the tradition of ancestor veneration, Egungun represents the “collective”.
How long is egungun celebrated?
What is Sango the god of?
Sango is the solar and thunder divinity, the lightning god. His wives were the rivers Awya (the Niger), Oshun, and Obba, who perhaps represented the tornado, the darkness, and the storm clouds.
Who is Orisha most feared?
Ṣàngó is viewed as the most powerful and feared of the orisha pantheon. He casts a “thunderstone” to earth, which creates thunder and lightning, to anyone who offends him.