Yoruba New Year Festival

The high priest sacrifices a goat and pours its blood over a symbol representing the god of the harvest.

Yoruba new year festival. In the new year festival of ife th ere was a time when the yoruba were generally thought to have originated outside of sub saharan africa. It usually takes place around the end of june and it is considered taboo to eat the newly harvested yam before this date. The yoruba calendar is a calendar used by the yoruba people of southwestern and north central nigeria and southern benin.

The festival takes place every year in the month of september and lasts for seventeen days. The festival is held in honour of queen orosen a goddess and a mythical wife of ancient oluwo of iwo olowo rerengejen. Some authors favoured canaan and arabia as the starting point of a great migration 1 others north africa and egypt 2 in view of the unlikeliness of a large scale movement of people whether by land or sea.

Day 1 is dedicated to obatala day 2 is dedicated to orunmila day 3 is dedicated to ogun day 4 is. Join chief alaje at 10pm for a virtual celebration that will include the sharing of the messages from the reading of the year in ile ife a collective community offering to ifa and a virtual after party featuring music by dj olobe. The new yam festival is a holiday celebrated annually by almost all of the ethnic groups in nigeria.

The four days that are dedicated to the orisa go as follow. The new year coincides with the ifá festival the traditional yoruba week has four days.