PRACTICE AS RESEARCH AS A DECOLONIAL PRAXIS: YORUBA CULTURE RETRIEVAL

Lara Rose^*

• Leeds Arts Research Centre, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, United Kingdom

Recent discourse around decolonial praxis has given rise to an urgency to look again at African indigenous cultures including Yoruba. In this article, I reveal how after being inspired by Dr Geraldine Connor, and her PhD artefact Carnival Messiah - a multicultural theatre production, I serendipitously imbibed in decolonial praxis at higher education. Connor was a British Trinidadian, ethnomusicologist, theatre director, singer, songwriter, and a lecturer at the old Bretton Hall at the University of Leeds, UK. She reworked Handels Messiah incorporating Carnival culture, Caribbean culture, and Yoruba culture alongside classical oratorio. I show how I am reclaiming my lost Yoruba culture and voice, via an ongoing decolonial afropoltan art praxis of retrieval of Yoruba culture and philosophy. My PhD ‘Practice as Research’ methodology, allowed theory to be bridged into praxis, and included what I call ‘decolonial autoethnography’, in which I explore my insider experience of Carnival Messiah. From my perspective, utilising Connor’s Third Space (inspired by Homi K. Bhabha) of multicultural coexistence is what afropolitan decolonial praxis could look like. Conner admonishing me to let my Yoruba voice speak (linguistic decolonisation) in my art, resulted in my resurrection of ancient Yoruba Àwòrán (visual representation) practices and the creation of the first life size statue of a black woman in Leeds - that of Dr Geraldine Roxanne Connor.