Yoruba Sonic

Yoruba Sonic is a sonic and sound-based performance event which explores Yoruba systems of knowledge and anti-colonial methods of pedagogy, organised by curators and researchers Amina Lawal Agoro, Pelumi Odubanjo and Steveen Ulysse. Incorporating sonic elements, live sound and performance into a presentation of academic research, Yoruba Sonic invites three artists; Yewande YoYo Odunubi, Dele Adeyemo, Ted Beaubrun, to respond to questions concerning African knowledge systems, indigenous language and oceanography, amongst others. 

Dele Adeyemo is a Scottish / Nigerian artist, architect, and critical urban theorist based in London and Lagos. Dele’s research and creative practice address the architectures of racial capitalism and the contemporary lifeworlds that exist in their midst. Paying tribute to the radical acts of everyday Black life in Africa and the diaspora through drawing, film, sculpture and installation design, Dele’s projects trace the contours of Black socialities through their embodied cultures of movement and their circulation to mobilise what he calls the Black radical spatial imaginary.

Ted Beaubrun is a Vodou pop artist, and outstanding percussionist. His practices focus on exploring the various ways in which Vodou and music intersect, reimagining and highlighting the role of the drum in Vodou musical practices. Ted comes from a large family of artists in Haiti who have dedicated their crafts to facilitate a balanced understanding of Vodou through music. At the moment, Ted is based in Switzerland, where he continues to share Vodou and his energy with the public through his skills as a trained percussionist and his album Lachêr prise, as well as his upcoming album Synchronocité-Vent et Eau.

Yewande YoYo Odunubi is an artist, researcher, and cultural producer whose practice centres around the inquiry, "what does the body need to dream?” Viewing the body beyond the idea of a singular fixed form, identity or function, she is interested in how we see, read, shape and practise ourselves. Inspired by freestyle and improvisation as choreographic and pedagogical methodologies, Yewande is curious about what can be enacted into space through attuning to intuitive experiences and bodily rhythms. She experiments with movement, performance, film, music, text and facilitation as acts of translation and a means of dialogue with the body’s present and imagined possibilities. Alongside artist, poet and friend Rohan Ayinde, Yewande is one-half of the wayward/motile collaborative duo i.as.in.we.

Pelumi Odubanjo is a curator, writer and PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on women’s historical and contemporary vernacular photo archives across West African geographies.

Amina Lawal Agoro is a researcher and cultural producer working between the UK and West Africa. She is currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at the intersection of architecture and curatorial enquiry. 

Steveen Ulysse is a Postgraduate Researcher at the University of Glasgow, his research mainly focuses on the exploration of Vodou and its links with other Afro-based religious traditions.

This event is made possible with additional support from the University of Glasgow’s James McCune Smith Scholarship Programme, and the College of Arts Graduate School.