Return to Shomolu in Search of Perfection: The Further Journeys of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art Part 5
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Return to Shomolu in Search of Perfection
The Further Journeys of Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art
Part 5
Abstract
On 24 June 2026, a meeting in a modest printing office in Shomolu, Lagos, Nigeria became the culmination of an intellectual journey spanning more than eighty years, three continents, and several generations. Gathered around a proof copy of the second edition of Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, I joined the book's printers in discussing how to perfect a work whose origins lay in Rowland Abiodun's childhood immersion in Yoruba culture, his scholarly formation in Nigeria, Canada, and the United States, and its first publication by Cambridge University Press.
This essay argues that the production of the book's second edition in Nigeria represents far more than a publishing project. It symbolizes the return of African knowledge to the cultural landscape that first gave it life, in a journey that mirrors larger patterns in the global circulation of knowledge from the African diaspora. Once compelled to seek validation through prestigious Western institutions, this project points to the possibility of that knowledge now increasingly entering a symbolic and practical homecoming through initiatives in Africa, such as local African publishing.
Interweaving autobiography, intellectual history, reflections on publishing, and meditations on books in the digital age, the essay follows the intertwined journeys of author, editor, printers, and text as they converge in the effort to make one of the most significant works on Yoruba art and philosophy accessible to the people whose civilisation it interprets, as well as readily available to the world at large.
The essay also explores broader questions concerning the global networking of knowledge, the continuing authority of books in an increasingly digital world, and the possibility of relocating Africa from the margins to the centre of intellectual production. Ultimately, it presents the making of the book not simply as an act of printing but as an event of cultural restoration, historical justice, and civilisational renewal.
At the centre of this narrative lies the Yoruba concept of oriki, understood not merely as praise poetry but as a dynamic mapping of identity across time and space. The migration of the book thus becomes an oriki of African intellectual life itself—a narrative of departure, transformation, return, and renewed global circulation in an age increasingly shaped by digital technologies.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
Contents
Abstract
Physical Books in the Age of the Smartphone and the Laptop
Image and Text: Trans-Atlantic Journey
The Cambridge Cognitive
Constellation
Image and Text: The Magic of Bookshops
The Precious Love that Eventually Proves Not Enough
Re-Making Yoruba Art and Language
Image and Text: Offices of KHL Printing
The Return of Knowledge
Image and Text: Celebrating a Milestone
Physical Books in the Age of the Smartphone and the Laptop
I, who am writing this, spend much more time on my phone and in front of my computer-devices conglomerating knowledge and entertainment from all over the world and dialogue with persons from that demographic breadth-than I do with physical books, in spite of my large physical library, my most precious possession and which I spent a lot of money and sacrificed much to build.
Image and Text: Trans-Atlantic Journey
Dispatching Proof Copy of the Book to the Author in the US through DHL
Are we
living in a post-book era, as Abiodun's former University of Ife student Moyo
Okediji puts it, moving towards a time when an accidental discovery of a book
on the ground would lead a child to cry out "what is this?!", a
caricature shared online by digital advocate Ikide Ikheloa?
Response by Hamed Muhammed to Alvin Foo's Linkedin post of the image above
''We may not be reading
books, but we are reading a lot more than we used to. If we insist on reading
the sometimes inappropriate content that comes scrolling past, perhaps, it’s
more a failure of leadership. Writers should meet readers where they are - in
front of digital screens.''
(Ikhide Ikheloa, June 17, 2023 Facebook post on the same image)
''Text to myself the reader-writer: Young people rarely read long form essays unless it is a test or there is a promise of money at the end. Use tweets or short social media posts to trick them into your writing. Use very short paragraphs, each led by a sentence that bears the [ the central point]''
( Ikhide Ikheloa, June 2, 2021 Facebook post, responding to the same picture)
Or do the times compel the rethinking of the concept of the book? Should the idea of a book not be expanded to go beyond even the conventional digital character of what is known as a book to something sensitive to what may be seen as the essence of the concept of a book? Is this essence not in volume and textual expensiveness? May volume and textual expansiveness not operating outside the well known parameters of the structure of a book and its forms of organization?
This essay, for example, is being written as an e-mail. It bypasses even the elasticity of expressive opportunity provided by the digital formats closer to the conventional book understood as a structure dedicated to the task of unfolding knowledge-the blog, essay aggregation platforms such as Substack, websites, Word, PDF and other text processing software.
Those others will eventually be used in disseminating the essay but the journey begins with this electronic mail, which can take a text the volume of a conventional book. It was through i such email essays of mine, in which I discussed his work, that I came to Abiodun's attention, leading to our eventual collaboration.
Nevertheless, the production of Abiodun's book as a physical text proceeds in Nigeria. It will later travel to Amazon, the globally central online marketplace, as a digital file, to be printed and sold to buyers across the world as they pay for it.
A physical book
is an instrument inspired by the embodied nature of the human being, that
creature who learns through the eyes all over his body, as one may adapt the
Igbo expression from John Umeh's After God is Dibia. That image visualizes the
sensitivity mobilized by the unity of bone and skin, blood, water, breadth and
thought that is the human person, the toolmaker whose combination of fingers and
intelligence enables him make things and restructure the Earth.
The Cambridge Cognitive Constellation
Entering
the flagship bookshop of Cambridge UP on Trinity Street, Cambridge, one would
still see at the entrance new books by the Press, a display of remarkable texts changed every week.
Image and Text: The Magic of Bookshops
Bookshop as oasis of wonder
What wisdoms lie beyond that door, what diamond configurations of thought to draw my gaping sight, my stupefied
presence, as I walk within?
'' In the center of the castle of Brahman, our own body,
There is a small shrine in the form of a lotus flower
and within can be found a small space.
We should find who dwells there and we should want to know him.
And if anyone asks, "Who is he who lives in a small shrine
in the form of a lotus flower in the center of the castle of Brahman?"
We can answer:
"The little space within the heart is as great as the universe.
The heaven and the earth are there; the sun, the moon, the stars;
fire and lightning and winds ...
For the whole universe is in Him and He dwells within our hearts."
From the Chandogya Upanishads in the Upanishads, foundational Indian sacred texts.
Ālaya
'' This word means a house or rather a home, which is in turn a place where all the valued things for use by us are kept
and among which we dwell. It came to mean also the spiritual storehouse of all the potentialities of life,which is to
be regarded as our true home, and also as our ultimate destination.''
Ernest Wood, Zen Dictionary, 1962.
Image: Cambridge University Press bookshop on Trinity Street, Cambridge, UK
From Cambridge University Press and Assessment, Facebook
A short walk from the Cambridge UP bookstore, one encounters Heffer's bookshop, a bibliophilic palace in which a lover of books would love to dwell in and die when his life comes to an end.
Also close to the Press' bookshop is G. David, another booksstore distinguished by seasoned age and uniqueness of book offerings.
At the centre of this bibliophilic shaping of space is the Cambridge central market, where the mesmerizing force of books in their inexhaustible manyness intersects with a broad price range, creating acquisition opportunities beyond the fixed prices of Cambridge UP, Heffer's and G.David.
Walking
further ahead, you come to the concentration of charity shops on Mill Road,
where bibliophilic elegance, range and affordability cohere uniquely.
The Precious Love that Eventually Proves Not Enough
A Mecca of books. Of knowledge of all kinds. Having been fortunate to live there for a time, immersing myself in its epistemic glory, I could identify with Abiodun's dilemma.
One is accepted by a precious, long desired lover, but the embrace eventually proves inadequately enabling of air for one to breathe.
Abiodun
wanted his book to reach more people but he describes the Press as unwilling to
print a cheaper, paperback edition, hence, since the problem persisted even
after I returned to Nigeria, he approached me, as a devotee of his work, to
find a way forward.
Re-Purposing Yoruba Art and Language
I informed Cambridge I wanted to re-publish Abiodun's complete works, including Yoruba Art and Language.
Through my persistence, complemented by negotiations by his lawyers, the Press eventually released full rights to the book back to its author.
Then our journey began.
A journey reaching a critical point in Shomolu, far from the polished streets of Cambridge and the modernistic monument that is the office of Cambridge's Singapore printer, KHL Printing, who produced the first edition of Yoruba Art and Language.
Image and Text: Offices of KHL Printing
Offices of KHL
Printing Co Pte Ltd, printer of the first edition of Yoruba Art and Language, ''one of the largest printing and media solutions
companies in South East Asia. Established in 1978, the Singapore-based firm
offers commercial printing, publishing, digital media, and packaging
services'' ( Google AI).
Image source: "Field Trip in KHL Printing Co Pte Ltd" by EgshigAmy
KHL Printing office interior at 57 Loyang Drive
''KHL Printing offers one stop solutions from concept to delivery in print and other platforms.
With its head office located in Loyang in the eastern suburb of Singapore, KHL employs more than 1000 employees at six production sites across two countries, generating an annual group turnover of S$200 million.'' ( Text and image source: KHL website)
What factors define where a publisher prints their books? How best may these factors be weighed against each other? Why did Cambridge UP stop printing their own books after 400 years, choosing to outsource to such printers as KHL, all the way in Asia?
( Google AI; Guardian UK; PrintBusiness UK; The Bookseller)
MPG Printgroup, to which Cambridge UP originally outsourced its printing, suffered an ironic fate the year after, leading to its current description as-
''MPG Printgroup (formerly the UK's largest independent book and journal manufacturer) ceased operations and entered administration in June 2013, resulting in the redundancy of 267 employees across its facilities in King's Lynn, Bodmin, and Bar Hill. [1]
The closure was
ultimately triggered by severe cashflow crises and heavy cost overruns
following a major equipment expansion at its Cambridge site. [1] ( Google AI).''
The referenced article elaborates:
''MPG had recently been
subject to £4 million of investment to bring in new equipment for the business,
including digital presses.
The failure is attributed to its rapid growth, an over-ambitious attempt to
expand, and in so doing losing control of its cashflow. In particular, a major
cost over-run at its new printing set up at the Cambridge site has been blamed
for the calamity. Pressures included issues with the floor and equipment set up
taking longer than anticipated."
( ''MPG Printgroup to be Sold in Pieces after Entering Administration'', Business Sale Report, 28 June 2013).
The summative rationale for the disinvestment from printing by Cambridge UP is summed up in these lines:
''…CUP spokesman Peter Davidson put the move in the context of the shifts taking place in publishing as digitisation takes hold. 'In the past six months we have outsourced our UK warehousing to DHL and our North American warehousing to Ingram. In the past two years the number of physical books we shipped has declined by two million,' he said.
'Now, with printing it is more complicated. Five years ago we were printing in the UK for a world market and shipping tons of books around the world. But just as the technologies exist that enable us to transmit information around the globe instantly, so those same technologies enable us to print globally, digitally.'
Davidson added that the investment in the kind of equipment and technologies MPG already has would have been strategically wrong for CUP. 'It would have cost millions—money that we want to invest in scholarly and academic publishing. Many publishers who started out as printers, such as Collins and OUP have now moved away. Publishers no longer need to own printing houses, in the same way that Apple doesn’t need to make its computers.'
( ''Cambridge University Press Ends Printing after 400 Years'', Benedict Page, The Bookseller, June 22, 2012)
On Apple making its own computers-
''Yes, Apple designs and
manufactures its own line of computers known as the Mac, which includes the
MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Studio. They completely
design both the hardware and the proprietary operating system, macOS. [1,
2]
Apple designs the
custom microprocessors—like the M1, M2, and M3 series—that power these
computers, moving away from relying on Intel chips. While contract
manufacturers physically assemble the hardware in factories, Apple controls the
entire research, development, and engineering process. [1, 2, 3,
4]"
( Google AI)
This second round of the journey of this wonderful book, Rowland Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language, adds an autobiographical preface, a superb opening chapter on the author's history, from Yorubaland to Canada and back to Yorubaland and from there to the US.
It also adds marvellous reviews of the first edition, including that by Nkiru Nzeogwu, which is equal to a book on its own.
The Return of Knowledge
People will read Abiodun's book on phones, tablets, and computers.
Will lift it from bookshelves to engage with it.
This second edition of Yoruba Art and Language is growing in my Ikeja, Lagos house and is being printed by the young men in Shomolu, helping to extend the reach of Abiodun's creative child from the prestige elevating publication by Cambridge UP into something within reach of people everywhere, including the Yoruba speakers on the rustic but industrious streets of Shomolu.
Moving between Yorubaland, Benin, Lagos, Cambridge, Canada, the United States, Shomolu and Ikeja, the book's journey demonstrates geography as intellectual metaphor.
These locations are not merely places. They are stations in the migration of ideas. The book itself behaves like a pilgrim, travelling across continents before returning to its place of origin transformed.
A work first issued under the imprimatur of
one of the world's most prestigious academic presses finds renewed life through
young Nigerian printers in Shomolu. The story thus ceases to be merely about a
book. It becomes a meditation on the circulation, estrangement, and eventual
homecoming of African knowledge itself and its consequent global spring as the Ikeja and Shomolu creation travels the world—a quiet but profound image of global knowledge re-circulation enacted through the painstaking labour of editing,
printing, and publishing.
Image and Text: Celebrating a Milestone
Relaxing at GTA Hotel, Amore Street, Ikeja, After Sending the Proof Copy to the Author
It resembles what historians call a return circuit. Framed through oriki, it becomes something richer: a spiral rather than a circle. The book does not simply return to where it began. It returns transformed, carrying with it the authority of decades of scholarship, international recognition, editorial expansion, and renewed accessibility. The journey is therefore not one of repetition but of enrichment, an intellectual homecoming that enlarges both the book and the world to which it returns.
This essay tells the story of a remarkable book but also illuminates a wider historical movement: the gradual reconfiguration of Africa from a destination of imported knowledge into an increasingly confident centre for the production, publication, circulation, and reinterpretation of its own intellectual traditions.
You may reach me at these contacts if you want to be updated when the book is published-
Email: ovadep...@gmail.com
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