Tag Archives: Nigeria

The Chief and the Singer

Main Piece

“It must’ve been before I was in 5th grade — over the course of a few nights, my dad told a story to me, my brother, and my sister. In hindsight, it was very obviously something completely made up on the spot, but I think we were too young to realize.

Back home — ‘home’ referencing Nigeria, where my dad is from — there was an evil village chief. He was a vicious conqueror that took people’s lands, stole from the poor, and amassed a massive amount of wealth. Accordingly, his house was gigantic, and sat on a huge plot of land. One day, the chief captured a princess.”

(Informant MN then noted that he forgot if there was a reason the chief captured the princess, and assumes the story had minimal exposition).

“The chief held the princess in another building on his property. He planned to have her killed the next day. That night, the king was in his bed when he heard the sound of someone singing. He was confused, unsure of where the sound could be coming from, but soon realized the sound was coming from the princess’ cell. While he usually would have put a stop to it, the king instead decided to listen to the song. In fact, he was so taken aback by her voice that when the next day came, he decided to delay the execution until the next morning.

Night falls, and the voice returns. The king, again, is obsessed with her voice–rizz god!–and the next day, delays the execution even further.

This goes on for a while, and to be honest, the details fall away past that point. I think the king ends up marrying the woman, and there’s a sort of ‘happily-ever-after’ ending.”

Interpretation

Informant Interpretation: MN notes that “Nigerian parents do this thing where they tell you nothing about their childhood” and have “no photos of their upbringing,” especially as it pertains to things that happened while they lived in Nigeria. Thus, “you end up forming this fantasy-like [imagination] of what home was like for them,” and stories like this “feed into the fantastical imagery I have of that time and place. As roughly patched-together and made up as that story is, it’s as real as most of the made-up details about my dad’s confusing ass life that I call true.”

Personal Interpretation: I drew connections between this story and “One Thousand and One Nights”–an anthology frame tale that I don’t know well, but I recall contains a similar story about a brutal king and a storyteller woman, who he permits to live night by night as she tells him stories. To me, MN’s story read as an oicotypical variation of this concept, underscored by the fact that he changed between referring to one of the primary figures as “chief” and “king,” and the other as “princess,” “singer,” and sometimes just “woman” (though some of these changes may be attributable to memory). I also think MN’s personal connection to the story, belief that it was entirely made up by his father, and its role in shaping his childhood understanding of Nigeria makes the story feel like more than a tale to me–not a myth as it’s not something he claimed to believe in, but something that shapes his beliefs about a place in the real world. In that sense, it felt somewhere in the gray area between tale and legend.

Background

Informant MN is a current student at USC studying Aerospace Engineering. He grew up in Redmond, Washington and lives at home with his siblings and Mom. He notes that this story was told to him a long time ago, and he has some “amount of amnesia about the particular details of [his] childhood.”

MN is Nigerian and male-presenting.

Two Weddings

It is apparently common for Nigerian immigrants to the U.S. to have two weddings when they get married: one here in the States, either in American traditional style or in hybridized cultural fashion, and one back in Nigeria, following (often pre-colonial) traditions of their tribes. 

For example, the Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents of Chika, a Bay Area native, had a typical “white wedding” in the U.S., and another in Nigeria during which his mom and dad “walked through his [dad’s] neighborhood with everyone playing music and dancing on the way to the ceremony.”

This practice makes complete sense in the context of ceremonial rites of passage like weddings being ritualized and performed publicly in order for transitions and new identities to be communicated to and recognized by community members. Being that Nigerian immigrants often have at least two international communities, each with their own cultural norms and social categories, it can be affirming of new relationships developing on the intersection of both to have two weddings.

Money Dance, Nigerian Wedding Folk Custom

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: Pennsylvania
Performance Date: 4/16/21

“At weddings in our family and I know in most Nigerian weddings we throw large amounts of money at everyone it’s not even the married couple, literally everyone gets money thrown at them. We typically all stand in a circle and the elder members of the family will sometimes throw thousands of dollars each in the middle with bills ranging from singles to ten’s. My family calls it the money dance but I know some call it money spraying. This is pretty much to symbolize a showering of happiness and good fortune in their future lives together. It also shows how much the group cares for each other.”

Context:

Money throwing is pretty common at Nigerian weddings. My informant learned this from going to weddings in his family as a kid and young adult. My informant was born in Philadelphia but his parents moved from Nigeria with other family members and brought many of the customs with them, including this one. He said it his favorite part of going because who doesn’t love traditions that involve free money. 

Analysis:

Hearing this made me really want to implement this tradition in all weddings. It is a super cool Nigerian tradition that I had never heard being practiced in any other culture. I find it fascinating that so many different countries and cultures have very unique traditions when it comes to a wedding.

Nigerian eye twitches

Nationality: United States
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Boston, MA
Performance Date: 04/22/2021
Primary Language: English

BACKGROUND: My informant, CI, was born in the US. Her parents are immigrants from Nigeria. The following piece is a Nigerian superstition passed down from her parents to her. CI explained that this superstition has rung true for her in many of her real-life situations.

CONTEXT: This piece is from a text conversation I had with CI about her family’s beliefs.

CI: Idk how much text you need but a Nigerian superstition is that if one of your eyes twitches for an extended period of time it means that you will soon witness something of large consequence.

Me: Is it usually something bad?

CI: It could b good or bad or either. Like so many situations I’ve had point back to this.

THOUGHTS: The thing that struck me about this belief is its pure ambivalence. There is to be no fear or joy surrounding the eye twitching because the individual will not know if the predicted event will be negative or positive. I also think it’s interesting that the individual is more of a passive party in this belief. In many other cultures, I think it’s common for people to believe that after a certain sign something may happen to them or their family. But the way this is phrased suggests that the individual will only be witness to something of significance. It adds a layer of separation between the individual and the event.

Nigerian Thief Proverb

Nationality: Nigerian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 10 April 2018
Primary Language: English

Context:

Stanley Kalu was raised in Nigeria. Since then, he and his family have lived in various African countries. He currently studies screenwriting at the University of Southern California. He is a friend of mine, and he has often told me stories about growing up in Nigeria. I asked him for folklore, and without even needing to ask for Nigerian folklore, he offered up several pieces, including two proverbs. When I asked why he gave me two proverbs, he said that his mother often said them to him, and that mothers and their proverbs are so infamous that there are meme websites dedicated to them that he visits when he feels homesick. Stanley provided the proverb in English.

Transcript:

Stanley: This is a great Nigerian proverb. “Every day is for the thief. One day is for the owner of the house.”

Owen: Could you explain what this proverb means to you?

Stanley: It means that while you can do all the crimes that you want, every day, one day you will get caught and you will get found out.

Owen: Did someone used to say this to you repeatedly?

Stanley: Nah, my Mom just said it one time.

Interpretation:

This is a great example of a proverb that makes little sense to an outsider. When he told me the proverb, I could barely guess what it meant. It is his following explanation that is necessary for understanding. It was also interesting that I had to ask him for the explanation–he stated the proverb so obviously at first.