Mulikah Adeyemi Lawal

Assistant Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Lagos. Her research focuses on African Oral Literature, African Literature, Popular Culture, and Digital Humanities, with an emphasis on Yoruba oral traditions and their evolution in modern contexts. She explores how digital tools and popular culture shape the preservation and reinterpretation of African narratives. Dr. Lawal has presented her work at local and international conferences and published in reputable journals and edited volumes.

Yorùbá Court Poetry (YCP) is a timeless cultural treasure in many Yorùbá communities because it preserves essential knowledge about the people’s heritage, values, and worldview. As a result, it serves as an important medium for educating audiences about key aspects of Yorùbá culture. However, existing studies on the genre have largely relied on traditional qualitative approaches, focusing mainly on its panegyrics and historical elements. To move beyond this narrow analytical frame, this study explores the aesthetics of YCP through a digital examination of its broader features. Data were collected from the palaces of the Aláàfin of Ọ̀yọ́, the Ọọ̀ni of Ifẹ̀, and the Ṣọ̀ún of Ògbómọ̀ṣọ́ through fieldwork interviews with their official palace poets. These chants were compared with those of freelance chanters unaffiliated with the palaces but who also praise the monarchs. The collected materials were transformed into a digital corpus compatible with Digital Humanities software and analyzed using Sketch Engine and Voyant Tools, which highlighted the defining linguistic and stylistic characteristics of YCP.

Findings from the digital analysis show that YCP embodies a wide range of features, demonstrating its complexity and versatility. Although chants from palace poets differed from those of freelance chanters, both consistently centered their praise on the monarch and his community, suggesting that the thematic focus of YCP remains largely stable across performers. Based on these insights, the study recommends that YCP be streamed online more frequently in order to broaden access to its cultural and artistic value. Overall, the study affirms the importance of YCP to the field of oral poetry and to society at large. It further demonstrates that Digital Humanities methods are not only applicable to written literary texts but are also highly effective tools for analyzing genres of oral literature.

Keywords: Digital Humanities, Features, Sketch Engine, Voyant Tools, Yorùbá Court poetry

I am Mulikah Adeyemi Lawal, an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Lagos. I am deeply interested in research in different aspects of African Studies including culture, dispersal of languages, youth issues, etc. My primary research interests include African oral literature, African literature, popular culture, and Digital Humanities. I conduct research on African literature in English or indigenous languages in an attempt to investigate how African writes portray the continent. I try to attempt an interdisciplinary study of African Studies in relation to digital literature/humanities and the new media. Thus, I also conduct research on the use of popular culture to project aspects of African studies. My research in Oral African Literature have focused on different genres of Oral literature and the way they maintain their relevance in spite of being a genre largely based on memory. This aspect of my research interest aligns with ethnographic and anthropological studies so I also conduct research in those areas especially in relation to Oral Literature. I also enjoy conducting fieldwork to gather data for my research.

In addition, I like to examine the functionalism and evolution of African studies and/or Oral literature in a bid to highlight their growth and development. It also aids the dispersal of such cultures especially because of its functionality and possibility of being adopted or adapted by modern users. As a result of this, I have come to realize that studies on African Studies continue to evolve perhaps the African people are quick to adopt different cultures and mannerisms of other climes. Thus, I enjoy examining the way(s) Africans refine some of these cultures to come up with a new indigenous one that is both original and dependent on pre-existing cultures.

My master’s thesis focused on the functions of satirical songs amongst the Yorùbá while my Ph. D was an interdisciplinary study on the features of traditional and modern Yorùbá court poetry in relation to the use of Digital Humanities tools to foreground qualitative and quantitative analysis. I have also conducted different research works on some of the interests mentioned above and I have presented the research findings in learned conferences and journal articles.