Check out this Yoruba musical short film directed by Tunde Kelani (a name that has come up a lot on this blog lately, in part because he's developing his next feature – an adaptation of a novel titled Dazzling Mirage).

It's an adaptation of late Nigerian playwright Hubert Ogunde’s Yoruba E Ronu (aka Yorubas, Think!).

Said to be Ogunde’s most famous play, Yoruba E Ronu, was first performed in 1964 (a few years after the country gained its independence from colonial rule), according to what my research tells me, and was considered a scathing political attack against the then premier of Nigeria’s Western region, Chief Samuel Akintola, so much that Ogunde and his theatre company were banned – a ban that was lifted in 1966 by Nigeria’s new military government.

This musical sequence opens director Kelani's last movie, the drama MAAMi, released in 2012, which tells the inspiring story of a poor conscientious single mother’s struggle to raise her only child, who, eventually, rises to international stardom in an English football club, Arsenal, and becomes a national hero.

MAAMi traveled the international film festival and film screening series circuit last year, and was well-received. I hope it becomes more widely available so that more of us can see it.

Until then, check out the short musical, Yoruba E Ronu (Yorubas, Think!) which the director uploaded to YouTube about a month ago: