Word: yoruba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Nigeria had been independent for six years, but "a nation in name only." Tension among the Yoruba, Ibo, and some two hundred other tribes came to a head when an aborted coup led by lbo army officers resulted in the death of a Moslem leader. The call reverberated throughout Nigeria: "One million Ibos must die to avenge the death of the Saudana." In October, 1966, the Federal Military Government of Nigeria began a blockade of the Eastern Region--seven months before Biafra would secede...
This troubled area was Soyinka's birthright. His parents, members of the Yoruba tribe in southwestern Nigeria, were also Christians and thus at some remove from the native life around them. In his memoir Ake: The Years of Childhood (1981), Soyinka portrays the divided realms of his early impressions: the beliefs handed down by his mother and father vs. the animism of village rituals, particularly the tradition of the egungun, the ancestral spirits who can be summoned whenever their masks are displayed at local festivals. For a time, the boy had the best of both worlds: the sensuous, + imaginative life...
...President released more than 100 detainees and made a point of inviting critics of past Nigerian governments to serve in his administration. He took steps to defuse tribal conflicts by distributing important government jobs among representatives of Nigeria's major tribes, the Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani. Babangida himself is a Muslim from the Nupe tribe in the northern part of the country. His striking wife Maryam is a Roman Catholic of Ibo background. The First Couple have become well known for their frequent soirees where guests can easily and openly engage in discussions of nearly every aspect of Nigerian...
...child prodigy who sat in with Cuba's best musicians as early as the age of seven, D'Rivera went on to become a founding member of the Cuban super band, Irakere. Founded in the early 1970s, Irakere (whose name is a Yoruba meaning forest), an II-piece aggregation that drew on Afro-Cuban religion and folklore as well as jazz, rock and even classical music, was typical of the eclectic approach many Cuban bands took following the revolution...