Yoruba Sonnets: audience feedback

Lekan Babalola at Yoruba Sonnets

On 15 February, Grammy award-winning Lekan Babalola brought his Sacred Funk Quartet and spoken word poet Dr Olu Taiwo to perform the Yoruba Sonnets at Wolfson College, Oxford. The performance pairs ancient verses from the Ifa divination with contemporary Western funk music.

Dr Rajinder Dudrah, who organised the event and leads Creative Multilingualism's Creative Economy strand, commented, Our evening of Yoruba Sonnets was Creative Multilingualism in action. It brought together different languages, cultures and performing traditions and illustrated through the energy and joy of music and dance what can be achieved when languages are brought to life and creatively explored together.

Read our interview with Lekan Babalola to find out more about the inspiration behind Yoruba Sonnets and read Professor Julie Curtis's review of the event to find out more about the performance.

After the event, the audience were asked to write any feedback or comments on postcards. Some of these are shared below along with photos of the performance. We will also have a film of the event available soon watch this space! 

Audience feedback Yoruba Sonnets

Audience feedback Yoruba Sonnets

Audience feedback Yoruba Sonnets

Audience feedback Yoruba Sonnets

Audience feedback Yoruba Sonnets

Audience feedback on Yoruba Sonnets

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Photo of Yoruba Sonnets performance 15 Feb 2019

Where next?

What does it mean to perform language?

Finding poetry in a new language

Languages in the Creative Economy: On Equality, Inequality and Unequality…