Extra-theatrical Functions of Igbabonelimhin Music and Dance of
the Esan
By
Osakue S. Omoera & Charles O. Aluede
Department of Theatre and Media Arts, Faculty of Arts,
Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, Nigeria
Abstract
Ceremonial activities abound in traditional African societies whose functions are still very
much germane to contemporary milieus in Nigeria and elsewhere. These ceremonies are often
accompanied with much music and dance and, of course, music and dance constitute an integral part
of masquerade performance. Several studies have been done on Igbabonelimhin as a masquerade
performance, especially in relation to its potentiality for geriatric and entertainment purposes. This
present effort examines the extra-theatrical functions of Igbabonelimhin with a view to X-raying its
ritualistic and cleansing propensities and the need to incorporate these offerings into the social fabric
of contemporary Esan society, the whole essence being the promotion of a more harmonious and
progress-minded society.
Introduction
Masquerade performances and other icono-cultural activities abound in traditional Nigeria
and indeed Africa. Many of these activities are accompanied by music and dance which provide
avenues for communal reunion, religious devotion, entertainment, therapeutic intervention, cleansing
of the land, among other important interventions even in contemporary milieus. In Esan land, many of
the traditional dance/music types such as Ijieleghe, Ilo, Ukpukpe, Asologun, among others, attach
credence to this view. A critical appraisal of the above forms of traditional performing/masquerade
arts show that the expressive factors, which to a large extent, determine the choice and quality of their
movements/pitches are deeply rooted in mythology, mysticism, folklore, and traditions that constitute
a reaffirmation and projection of Esan beliefs and customs. According to Enekwe (9) the centre of the
dynamic traditional dance in Nigeria is the indigenous community, where dance has a social/cultural
significance. Waapala (72), with specific reference to the Tiv of north-central Nigeria, asserts that:
Throughout the ages, music and dance have been a significant part
of cultural heritage essential in religious, cultural, ritual, entertainment
and theatrical activities. Music and dance thus provide an excellent means
of healing, divination, exorcism rites, blessing and explanation to many
mysteries of life among the advov in Tiv religion.
Thus, Enekwe and Waapala agree that music and dance are used as functional platforms that
serve both sacred and secular interests in traditional Nigerian societies. Iyorkaa (37) had earlier noted
that the Tiv music and dance are sacred when performed in circumstances that seem to recognise the
existence and presence of God, cosmic forces, the living dead or ancestors. In their form, Tiv music
and dance contain conceptual contexts that are addressed to secular authorities and the conscience of
the community. Harper uses kwagh-hir, one of the performances in Tiv land to exemplify the
outstanding display of masterly skills of the musical, kinetic, verbal and visual arts of the Tiv race (3).
Among the Benin people of south-south Nigeria, the ritualistic propensities of music and
dance are evident in ritual dances/masquerade performances such as Ogun, Ekaba, Ugie-Oro, Ewuwu,
Olokun, among many others. Abbe (10) asserts that Ogun, Olokun and Eziza are not only meant to
celebrate the gods, but also for cleansing or healing people who have been afflicted or who wish to
make progress in life. In the same vein, Okoye reports that among the Igbo of south-east Nigeria,
masquerade performances, subsuming dance, music, costume and other visual and aural arts are
unarguably the most popular forms of communal cultural expression because masquerades in Igbo
land are figured as ancestral characters who presumably take on physical forms on the invitation of
the community to participate in important communal ceremonies or perform specific social or
religious roles (60).
Unfortunately, the ritual theatre which is a major category of African and, indeed, Nigerian
performing arts seems to have been relegated to the back seat in contemporary theatre/masquerade
performance discourse. Musa (60) asserts that ritual theatre comprises performances that are derived
from the congeries of atavistic communal events; myths, rituals, festivals, initiation, masquerading
and puppetry. Apart from the presence of music, songs and dancing, which are also found in other
forms of traditional theatres, some of the elements that are peculiar to this category are masks and
masquerading. In this present effort the extra-theatrical functions of Igbabonelimhin, including its
ritualistic and cleansing propensities and how they could be incorporated into the social fabric of
contemporary Esan society engages our interest.
Esan in History and Traditions of Origin
The term Esan refers to a group of people and language spoken in a particular locale in Edo
central senatorial district of Edo state. This people are spread over five local government areas.
Virtually all contributions to the corpus of literature on the origin of Esan people hold that Benin is
their ancestral home. Egharevba (84) holds the opinion that the Esan people deserted Benin kingdom
during the reign of Oba Ewuare. Scholars of different persuasions within Esan are not too comfortable
with this view because his position indicates that there was no Esan until after 1440 AD. Okojie (19)
and Okoduwa (57) hold that Egharevba’s idea of the evolution of Esan automatically means Esan
province is just barely five hundred years old. They contend that the origin of Esan pre-dates the 15th
century exodus from Benin Kingdom under Oba Ewuare the great. In this regard, the contribution of
Ojeifoh (2) on the origin of Uromi, one of the Esan towns is germane. He remarks that:
The first settlers at Uromi emigrated to Uromi about 1025 A.D after
the death of the king, Ogiso Ere. There was said to be an epidemic in
the land during the reign of Ogiso Orire, the outbreak of small pox
that claimed many lives. The soothsayers were said to have consulted
their oracle and the result was that some people who are wizards and
witches were responsible for the epidemic. Many people died through
ordeals to determine whether they were witches/wizards. The few
that escaped from the village went into the jungle and wandered far
away from the cruel laws of the Ogiso. They later came to the table
land now known and called Urobhum (Uromi is the anglicized
version of Urobhun).
Regardless of the time of migration virtually all available records trace the origin of the Esan
people to the desertion of Benin. This is ostensibly why the Esan are generally believed to be of
Edoid extraction.
The Dynamics and Relevance of Igbabonelimhin in Esan Cosmology
In the whole of Esan land, the term Igbabonelimhin means clapping for the ancestors.
Nowhere in the land is this masquerade seen or treated as a human being. Early in time this
masquerade had limited audience as its spectators were mainly boys, men, and elderly women. And,
of course, young girls who were desirous to watch this masquerade needed to be initiated into its
spectatorship. This process of initiation was called Ilobhialimin. The initiation was usually done in the
midnight. However, the initiation items, processes and oaths of secrecy involved in this exercise are
outside the purview of this discourse. One may ask: Why the initiation of persons before having
access to the performance? Is there any form of consecration performed on their costumes? In Esan
belief system, Igbabonelimhin as its name implies is a dance which has anthropomorphic attributes
and certain individuals needed to be cleansed before communing or coming face to face with these
deified masquerades.
At this juncture, it may be profiting that we do a clarification of some terms: Ojọku and
Ọdiọn Ojọku. An Ojọku is a man or woman who has financed the making/buying of Igbabonelimhin
costume for a dancer and Ọdiọn Ojọku is the head of other Ojọku. This headship comes by the virtue
of the number of such costumes one has bought for the dancers. As soon as these costumes are
bought, they become the property of the entire village even when they were made to specifications of
individual dancers. Known or unknown to the dancers, the end users of these costumes, over half of
the costumes are traditionally consecrated. This consecration is thought necessary because of their
beliefs. While discussing fortification measures put in place in Ijieleghe ensemble of the Esan, Aluede
(49) observed that their dancers wear cowries which are fastened to a piece of cloth on their heads. He
asserts that:
The real function of the cowries is to ward off all evil plans by
opponents. Such plan as planting potions in the arena of
Ijieleghe performance so that the dancers will be falling as they
dance or that each time the dancers take flights, they see a big
cobra or flowing river before them and so are tempted to land in
a supposedly safe place which turns out to be unsafe.
In a similar vein, Aluede contends that:
In Esan belief and practice, Utagba is any substance such as
needles, stones, animals’ bones and animals’ teeth which are
magically thrown by native or witch doctors into the bodies of
people who may have offended them knowingly or unknowingly.
When these foreign substances are introduced to bodies of their
victims, they cause all manners of sicknesses ranging from mere
headaches to migraine, high blood pressure to stroke, general
body heat to all sorts of fever, mental health and epilepsy (72).
In recognition of the supra-physical challenges or hazards associated with this
performance, at individual or collective level, the support of known medicine men are sought to
consecrate their costumes and to make incisions through which some potions are introduced into
the dancers’ bodies. This act is believed to be an antidote against the evil machinations of
opponents and spectators with evil intents. Overtime, this communally orchestrated measure of
fortification of these masquerades and their treatment as spirit beings make them operate above
the scopes of ordinary men. Their counsels and views in matters concerning individuals or groups
of people in the community are highly respected because the traditional Esan person believes that
the masquerades are gifted with the clairvoyant powers of hindsight, insight and foresight. This
clearly shows that the applications of Igbabonelimhin transcend entertainment.
Exploring the therapeutic potency of mantra music among the African Indians of South
Africa, Das (51) posits that throughout history music/dance has been an important adjunct to
ritual and has been credited with the capacity to reflect and influence human emotion (human
behaviour). Relating this to Igbabonelimhin, Aluede and Omoera (1) contend that aspects of the
masquerade performance could be used to add fruitful years to the age of the elderly Esan given
the regrettable state where there are no old people’s homes in Esan land. It is probably because of
the extra-theatrical proclivities of the performance that in every conclave of Igbabonelimhin
masquerades the Alimin-Edion or Elimin-Eghughu, who is usually the eldest of all the
masquerades, leads in most of the socio-spiritual functions in any given community. It is this cusp
of the Igbabonelimhin masquerade art that excites further discussion in this paper.
Extra-theatrical Functions of the Igbabonelimhin
In Africa, the concept of God is that the Supreme Being is not alone in the spiritual realm but
with other divinities, spirits and ancestors. Though veracity of this belief varies from one African
community to the other, there are elements of ancestral veneration in African arts and religion
(Dosunmu, 135). It is the belief and expansion of the foregoing that is responsible for the traditional
festivals and traditional music/dances, including the Igbabonelimhin that are performed yearly in most
traditional African milieus. Dances performed during traditional festivals or ceremonies are of two
types, namely, the ritual and social dances. Dosunmu (137) notes that these dances perform different
functions in their various communities because of their magical and mystical values. He cites an
example of the Gelede masquerade dance of the Ijebus in Ogun State and people of Epe in Lagos
State, which is designed to sublimate the dangerous powers of Aje (witches) among the Yoruba people
to foreground his point.
Some of the extra-theatrical functions associated with the Igbabonelimhin are: healing of
polluted land, banishing of evil hands and thieves, oath taking and swearing to innocence in the land
in times of epidemic, drought or constant deaths and Ibhialimingbe. These socio-spiritual activities
affect virtually all aspects of life in traditional Esan society and it is their reinforcement we presently
canvass as a way of checking the mounting challenges of kidnapping, stealing of farm produce, raping
of innocent girls and other criminalities threatening to tear apart the sinews of love, harmony and
peace that bind contemporary Esan communities together.
Healing polluted land
The misconduct of an individual or a group of people within a particular community could
attract the wrath of the deities and the ancestors of the land. This form of misconduct may range from
incestuous dalliances, eating of forbidden foods or animals, spilling a neighbour’s blood without
penance to neglect of their gods that have given them victories over opposing communities in times of
communal clashes. It is in such circumstances that the Igbabonelimhin masquerade leads other
members of the community in a musico-ritual dance through the village to retune. In the ensuing ritual
performance, native chickens are used for purification and earthenware pots containing medicine with
certain solvents are sprinkled on the ground to heal the land and usher in good health. The traditional
Esan also believes that this effort also reconnects the living with the ancestors as it also serves
propitiatory functions.
Thus, the Igbabonelimhin masquerade serves as a representative of a personality and medium
between the dead and the living. The masquerades are religiously humanised because they are
ancestors that come from the world of the dead to minister to the needs of the people including the
pollution of the land. Like other traditional societies, the Esan evolved rites and rituals that ensure
harmonious relationship between its own physical existence, its environment and its supernatural
world of spirits and other invisible forces that are responsible for various phenomena. Using the
Eggon society as a template, Musa (60) further asserts that the supernatural and the real, therefore, co-
exist in the daily lives of the people. A body of performances intended to propitiate these forces has,
therefore, always existed in the cultural praxis of traditional society. Hence, the Igbabonelimhin
masquerades have successfully been used to heal the land in traditional Esan society and we believe if
the necessary ritualistic steps are taken this could be done to address current challenges of mysterious
sicknesses, road mishaps, poor harvests, among others issues confronting the contemporary Esan
person.
Banishing evil hands and known thieves
When there is an overwhelming evidence that an individual is an unrepentant evil doer or a
notorious thief in any Esan community, after passing a verdict of banishment on the person(s) by the
council of elders, the Igbabonelimhin masquerade leads the youths who help the person billed to be
banished to pick his/her belongings to the village’s boundary where him/her, including other
belongings will be abandoned. Like Likya masquerade performance whose major function is to
cleanse and regenerate the Eggon society (Musa, 103), the Igbabonelimhin is a masquerade theatre of
cleansing, binding, communal and re-creative force, which brings the human society and the ancestral
and spiritual into some cosmic harmony for society progress. During the performance in traditional
Esan communities, evil-minded persons such as witches, wizards, witchets and sundry evils are bound
and sent out of the communities where they may have or about to cause family havoc or communal
problem. This functioning of Igbabonelimhin is perhaps what Dosumu (137) tried to describe when he
asserted that “the masquerade, as a personification of the ancestral spirit also acts as the guardian of
society, be it primitive or modern”.
Similarly, Hagher (180) affirms that, in Tiv culture, the people engage in different types of
rituals which aim at repairing the damage done to the society by mbatsav, witches and that nearly all
the rituals in akombo sorun, have their accompanying performances whether these are songs, or
music, or dance or a combination of all the above. He further exemplifies dance as a “ritualisation”
process by referring to the Igbe masquerade dance which is danced by grown-up men at night on a
chosen night before the Igbe rituals the following day to banish all manners of evil from the land. The
point to take away from all these is that the masquerade, in a traditional African sense, propels and
compels the progress of humanity. To the Esan mind as far as the Igbabonelimhin originated from
their belief system of ancestral veneration they accord it a high regard as total wisdom is attributed to
the gods. Hence, the Igbabonelimhin cult is sacred and only initiates can fully understand the modus
operandi of the performance and its socio-spiritual functions in Esan land.
Oath taking and swearing to innocence in the land in times of epidemic, drought or constant
deaths
When sudden, unexplained deaths and epidemics such as drought, cloudbursts, heavy winds
and the like begin to threaten the community, the traditional Esan society resort to certain time-
honoured means, including the use of Igbabonelimhin to trace or detect the “dark” cloud in their
cosmos. If anyone is found to be culpable in flouting rules governing mutual coexistence, there is
usually a swift turn to re-aligning with the community mores and appropriate punishment meted out.
Suspected persons, regardless of the age groups/grades they belong, are made to swear to an oath in
the presence of family members and community leaders a way of proving their innocence and
reaffirming their willingness and loyalty to the commonwealth of the community. The
Igbabonelimhin masquerade dancers normally act as the “eyes” and “ears” of the ancestors in such
situations.
Ibhialimingbe
Ibhialimingbe1 is an Esan term which can best be referred to as an annual festival/fair of
Igbabonelimhin masquerade dancers and community members. During this festival, members of a
particular community visit and perform in what looks like a music and dance carnival in another
community within Esan land (in the five Esan speaking local government areas of Edo State going by
the present geopolitical arrangement). This festival normally holds when dry season is fast
approaching and intense farming activity is on the decline in traditional Esan society. It holds on an
agreed weekend among the potential guests and hosts. For a numbers of days, each adult /married
1
Ibhialimingbe does not have an exact English equivalent.
man admits a guest into his home. This guest also admits his host the following year when the festival
is to be held alternately. Overtime, this festival fosters good community relations because members
of adjacent communities in terms of distance are able to establish lasting relationships through
Igbabonelimhin masquerade performances. In contemporary society the idea of Ibhialimingbe is
perhaps best explored in what is commonly referred to as exchange programmes in performing arts
circles.
Conclusion
This paper has argued that masquerade performances serve more than the commonly
acknowledged entertainment purposes in traditional Nigerian society. To achieve the set task, it used
the Igbabonelimhin masquerade dance and music of the Esan people as a platform to explain some of
the extra-theatrical functions of traditional masquerades. It concluded that masquerade performances
could be useful in many ways in contemporary society where they could perform different functions
beyond the spheres of entertainment such as correctional/therapeutic interventions and spiritual
realignments, which help to provide bases for peaceful coexistence and progress in society. It is hoped
that this small effort will help to further the discourse on masquerade performances and their extra
theatrical functions in traditional Nigerian society.
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