Drumbeats for the Divine Ofala Festival: A Folkloric-Musical Analysis of Corpus Christi Procession in Nigeria

Abstract

Festivals are natural to humanity and can be found at various levels of human existence. It has always been part of organized religion. The Catholic liturgy/practice is built around a yearly calendar that features different feasts celebrated at varying levels of solemnity. One of such feasts is the Corpus Christi which centres on the Catholic belief in transubstantiation, that is, the radical transformation of bread and wine into the true body and blood of Christ. This belief gives rise to various manners of devotions, veneration and adoration of the consecrated bread and wine, regarded by Catholics as the Body and Blood of Christ. One of the most distinctive devotions to the Holy Eucharist is the festive procession which follows upon celebration of the Mass of the Corpus Christi. In Nigeria, this procession has acquired much cultural significance that it is now presently viewed as Ofala of Christ, evoking the Igbo concept of perpetual anamnesis of the immortal reign of a traditional ruler. But at a deeper level, over time and in various places, Corpus Christi procession has become such strongly cultural event that it has become a locus of negotiation of multiple cultural identities. A critical observer begins to wonder if the procession is still only or principally about honouring the Body of Christ. The present essay sets out to reconcile such contrarieties by advertence to that phenomenological epoch characteristic of genuine participant-observation approach and concludes with the genuine present and urgent need of enrooting Christian beliefs and practices in the African native genius. There is also a recommendation for a deepening of the various modes and manners of African unique expression of Christian religiosity.