Cultural implication of costume and make-up in Shao Awon Mass wedding festival

Abstract

Culture is the belief, value, behavior, material and immaterial elements that constitute a people's way of life.Awon mass wedding festival of Shao is one culture that is of essence to the people of Shao. Consequently, this paper examines the implications of costume and make-up in Awon Mass wedding festival. It explores the cultural aesthetics of costume and make-up used by brides during the Awon Mass Wedding Festival. This study employed descriptive, participant-observation and interview methods of research. The participant-observation avails the researchers the opportunity to observer directly the festival from the pre-festival,festival to post-festival activities which affords it the opportunity to give a descriptive analysis of the various process of the ceremony. The interview method endow the researchers the opportunity to obtaining information directly from players at the festival. Information obtained from these methods provides our primary data. Materials sought from scholarly literary materials in the related fields such as; books, journals and internet sources provide our secondary data. Our findings reveal that make-up are not just used for beautification of brides, they are also used to discover pregnancy on the new brides and can also make a man impotent if necessary precautions are not taken. It was also discovered that brides take active part in the making of their cloth (Aso-oke) worn on the wedding day, from the planting and harvesting of cotton to making of the dye used on the clothing. This study concludes that Awon Mass Wedding Festival is a very rich traditional festival that can be placed side-by-side other traditional festival in Nigeria Therefore, people of Shao should elaborate it with a view to showcasing it to the outside world. In the same vein, Government of Kwara State and Nigeria should play their part in moving the Festival to the level of attracting global attention and patronage.