Ojú l’ọ̀rọ̀ọ́ wà: The Praise Gaze in Oríkì Performance

Abstract Living traditions of praise-singing are found throughout sub-Saharan Africa, bridging orality, literacy, digital media and the internet. The transcribed text has been the primary focus of scholarship on African oral traditions. Because of the growing number of digital audiovisual recordings available on streaming and social media platforms, it is possible to analyse more modalities of praise-singing. Along with fieldwork observations, this article reports on a multimodal analysis that was applied to music videos and field recordings to study the role of gaze in oríkì, or praise poetry, a cultural phenomenon amongst Yorùbá speakers of West Africa. The Yorùbá proverb “Ojù l’òṛ òó ̣ wà” suggests that “the meaning of the words is in the eyes of the speaker”. Although scholars have addressed the visual imagery included in oríkì texts, to date, no scholar has made gaze the focus of a research study on praise-singing performance practice. To theorise the praise gaze, the analysis drew on a small but growing body of psychological literature on gaze in Western music (and Indian classical music) and, also, participant-observation. Research has shown that the direction of the performer's head, face and eyes plays a role in the reception of Western concert music. However, in praise-singing traditions, such as oríkì, gaze plays a more important role where the singer looking at the addressee identifies the focal point for the audience. If the addressee returns the gaze, forming a mutual gaze, this is likely to increase the “head-swelling” effect of the praise. These preliminary findings on the topic of gaze in praise-singing, specifically Yorùbá oríkì, are intended to be a basis for further research on a central aspect of performance practice in sub-Saharan Africa. It is expected that as research on this topic expands, variation and nuance in the gaze modality will be revealed.