Nigerian artist Teledalase is building a body of Yorùbá-language folk and alternative music from family lineage, oral tradition and mythology, with her latest single “SANGO, IGI NLA” addressing justice, equality and persistence.
Her work arrives as a new generation of Nigerian listeners and artists turns toward indigenous languages, traditional instruments, folklore and stories that do not need translation before they are understood.
Indigenous music beyond Afrobeats#
Before Afrobeats gained global youth-culture status, artists such as Alhaji Barrister Sikiru Ayinde, King Sunny Ade, Ebenezer Obey and Haruna Ishola documented anxieties, celebrations, spiritualities and everyday life through Juju, Apala and Fuji.
Their recordings functioned as a living archive of language, belief, aspiration and memory. Today, some Nigerian artists are returning to that archive, working outside the algorithm-driven demands of the global music industry.
Teledalase sits within that shift. Born in Osogbo and shaped by time in Nigeria and the diaspora, she treats Yorùbá culture as a language for understanding herself and her surroundings rather than an aesthetic to borrow.
Her work moves across folk, soul, alternative sounds and traditional Yorùbá expression. Her songs are sung entirely in Yorùbá. Her work presents Yorùbá folk music as a living, evolving language.
On songs such as “Eledumare” and the recent “SANGO, IGI NLA”, she draws on Yorùbá mythology, spirituality, language and oral tradition, allowing those forms to operate in the present rather than reproducing them unchanged.
Family and early influences#
Teledalase described a household where art was part of daily life.
- Her father was a visual artist.
- Her mother is a dancer and the Yeye Asa of Iragbiji Land, who toured parts of Europe and the United States teaching traditional Yorùbá dances and curating stage plays.
- Her mother led a dance troupe called Omitun, whose early morning rehearsals exposed Teledalase to drumming and singing.
- Her paternal grandfather, Chief Muraina Oyelami, was a founding member of the Mbari Mbayo Osogbo artist movement.
“I wouldn’t say it was Osun State that necessarily influenced me. I would credit my parents and my extended family. My dad, who has passed, was a visual artist, and my mum is also an artist and a dancer. My paternal grandfather, Chief Muraina Oyelami, was one of the founding members of the Mbari Mbayo Osogbo artist movement. So I was born into a family that was truly all about the culture.”
“My mum is the Yeye Asa of Iragbiji Land. She used to tour parts of Europe and the United States, teaching traditional Yorùbá dances and curating stage plays. She also had a dance troupe called Omitun, and we would wake up early in the morning just to watch them practise, playing the drums and singing. So I was exposed to life being interpreted and digested as a Yorùbá person, and to music being that way.”
“Everything else was introduced as I grew up because my parents had a very diverse palate. My siblings and I were exposed to all sorts of music, but at the foundation of it all was everything I’m about.”
Writing in Yorùbá first#
Asked what Yorùbá allows her to say that English cannot, Teledalase said translation often fails to carry the full weight of the language.
“When I started releasing my singles, people asked me to put them in translation, and I thought, I don’t think I can necessarily translate that into English. Western languages can be very rigid and restrictive. Take love songs in English, for example. Honestly, shout out to the poets, because they help expand how malleable the language can be, but there are only so many words for the depth of feeling and emotions that the English language can express.”
“There are themes of life I cannot put into English because I did not experience them from that perspective, or because they were not explained to me in English as a child. The proverbs I learned early on are now part of my school of thought. If I have to write something in English, I write it in Yorùbá first and then translate it to English.”
“It’s interesting when Nigerians ask me why I write in Yorùbá, and I’m like, because I am a Yorùbá person. I don’t want to generalise, but it’s like asking a Korean person why they sing in Hangul.”
Justice and persistence#
She now writes from the diaspora. Her latest single, “SANGO, IGI NLA”, addresses justice and equality as well as persistence.
“The fact that you’re still here breathing makes you an activist,” she said.
She cited market women who fund their children’s university fees and secondary school students who dream of becoming astronauts without an astronaut in the family as examples of that persistence. “To be a Nigerian or to be a black person is to dream without limits,” she said.
