Toyin Falola Public Lecture

Toyin Falola (UT Austin) will deliver deliver a public lecture on 10th June 2026. Full details, including location and time, tbc: check back on this page!

Title: Creating with the Gods: Yoruba Metaphysical Imaginations in Contemporary Creative Practices

Abstract:

Yoruba cosmological concepts are motivating new modes of creative production in music, film, dance, and literature on divination. In this lecture, I will discuss how Yoruba metaphysics inspires art, meaning, and performance. The metaphysical is not something we simply create to preserve or represent through religion and philosophy. It is the fuel for new forms of creativity that we present to the world. Through music, works like Teledalase's compositions show us how Orisa devotional themes are finding new life breathed into them through modern musical mediums, converting hitherto exclusively religious praise into shareable art. Through film, Kunle Afolayan's “Anikulapo” (2022) centers Yoruba conceptions of death, spiritual potency, and karmic retribution, presenting them as a commercial film that treats cosmology as practical experience rather than theoretical understanding. The movie, a work of visual storytelling, helps modern audiences understand historical beliefs regarding death and spiritual consequences. In dance, Qudus Onikeku’s Terrapolis draws directly on the Yoruba Orisa to comment on social loss and social death, and to argue for a return to the long forgotten ancestral past to “modernize” society. In the domain of Ifa, the works of Moyo Okediji and Toyin Adepoju represent attempts at expanding the literary and mathematical structures of Ifa itself, eliciting considerable debate about the demarcations between tradition and innovation. Reading these cases collectively gives us the impression that Yoruba metaphysics is undergoing a metamorphosis of its creative impulse. This counters the misbelief that all indigenous metaphysics are static or overly primitive for contemporary times. As such, new representations breathe life into ancient worldviews, making them more applicable to the contemporary world. This lecture argues that these new practices of ancestral knowledge provide us with powerful global platforms for generating endless meanings, purposes, and cultural expressions.