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Adeleye Ifá Academy

Abẹ́òkúta, Nigeria

Six generations of babaláwo

Father to son. Voice to voice.

The six generations

  1. First generation
  2. Second generation
  3. Third generation
  4. Fourth generation
  5. Fifth generation
  6. Sixth generation
Hear a verse

in the practice room

Portrait of Ogundare Adeleye, standing in the white agbádá
Ogundare Adeleyeour Baba Ifá

The Elder of this house

Ogundare Adeleye, our Baba Ifá, was the Elder of this house. He is no longer with us: he left us the Ifá lineage that is taught here today.

The house in Abẹ́òkúta

The Adeleye family has carried Ifá in Abẹ́òkúta, in southwestern Nigeria, for six generations. Father to son, as traditional babaláwos: the verses, the scholarship and the ritual responsibility have been handed down within the house, unbroken.

Babaláwo Okanbi brought that lineage west and teaches from Miami. What you hear in the lessons is not a reconstruction assembled from books — it is that same transmission, recorded.

Honoring the tradition

Ogundare Adeleye, seated, and Babaláwo Okanbi holding the Òrìṣà Odù wrapped in palm fiber.
Abẹ́òkúta. Ogundare Adeleye hands Babaláwo Okanbi the Òrìṣà Odù, the most closely kept thing in this house of Ifá.

What Ifá is

The knowledge of the Yorùbá people, passed down through generations

Ifá is the spiritual tradition of the Yorùbá people and, at the same time, their body of knowledge: a way of reading the world handed down from elder to student across generations, without ever ceasing to be alive.

It is ordered into sixteen Ojú Odù. From their combinations come 256, and each one holds its verses, the stories they are born from, and what they come to say. It is an immense body, which is why it is studied little by little.

  • Ogbè
  • Ọ̀yẹ̀kú
  • Ìwòrì
  • Òdí
  • Ìrosùn
  • Ọ̀wọ́nrín
  • Ọ̀bàrà
  • Ọ̀kànràn
  • Ogúndá
  • Ọ̀sá
  • Ìká
  • Òtúrúpọ̀n
  • Òtúrá
  • Ìrẹtẹ̀
  • Ọ̀ṣẹ́
  • Òfún

One of them is Ìrẹtẹ̀: the verse that plays in the practice room.

Each odù gathers its verses and its songs, the stories they come from, and the message they carry. And, when the verse calls for it, the work and the ritual that go with it.

  • 6

    generations of babaláwo

  • Abẹ́òkúta

    Nigeria — the house it comes from

  • Miami

    United States — where it is taught

What was received by voice is kept by voice.

Recording does not break this line. The academy gathers the Ọlúwo’s voice verse by verse, transcribes it and translates it, and the app does what the Ọlúwo has always done before the ọmọ awo: recite, stop, and wait for you to repeat.

Explore the odùSee how the academy works