Bamgboye
(Odo-Owa, Ekiti region, ca. 1893-1978)
Photograph by William Fagg, 1949-50.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Department of the Arts of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas,
Photograph Study Collection.
Courtesy the Royal Anthropological
Institute, London.
The elephant has fled in the face of the hunter.
The mighty one has fallen in the forest and can no
longer rise.
The elephant has fallen; the elephant is gone.
The elephant has fallen; the elephant is gone.
Ajanaku the mighty one has fallen and can no longer
rise.
Ajanaku has fallen and cannot climb the mountain.
Our father has indeed departed.
Well done, son of Olora, who walks majestically.
[From Rowland Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal, and John Pemberton III, eds., The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts (The Smithsonian Institution, 1994): 133]
