“Chorus:”
— Chorus:
The Yorùbá Lyrics Archive
Dive deep into Every Yorùbá song you know and love
Transcribed with authentic tone marks and translated line by line into English, with notes on proverbs, idioms, and wordplay.
Song of the Day
Kábiọ́ Ò Sí
by Tọ́pẹ́ Àlàbí · 2024 · Gospel
“Kábiọ́òsí (x2)”
— Who’s capable of questioning you? (x2)
Songs listed alphabetically
Recently Documented Songs
Transcribed with standard tone marks and line-by-line English translations.
“Kábiọ́òsí (x2)”
— Who’s capable of questioning you? (x2)
“Èmi mo oun ojú mi ti rí”
— I know what my eyes have seen
“INTRO”
— INTRO
Oral Tradition & Tones
Preserving Tone Melody
In Yorùbá musical heritage, melodic pitch is bound to spoken tones (high, mid, low) changing lexical meaning and song contours.
Ó
Ohùn Òkè
Mí · High
Acute (á, é, ó)
O
Ohùn Àárín
Re · Mid
Normal (a, e, o)
Ò
Ohùn Ìsàlẹ̀
Dò · Low
Grave (à, è, ò)
Every song in this archive preserves authentic tone marks (ó, o, ò) and subdots (ẹ, ọ, ṣ) to document traditional lyrics accurately.
Tools for reading and writing Yorùbá
From the team behind YorubaName.com.
WriteYoruba keyboard
Type tone marks and subdots (ẹ́, ọ̀, ṣ) anywhere on your computer, in any app. It's the easiest way to transcribe songs for this site.
$9.99
Mac or Windows · $15 for both
TTSYoruba
Type Yorùbá text and hear it spoken aloud by a Yorùbá speech synthesizer. Useful for checking how a tone-marked line should sound.
YorubaName
Over 10,000 Yorùbá names with meanings, tone marks, audio and etymology. Look up the names praised in oríkì and songs.