How is IIII+IIII pronounced “Edgy-Og-Beh”?

Question

ÌFÉ says their album IIII+IIII is:

pronounced “Edgy-Og-Beh”

NPR in their review wrote:

IIII+IIII (pronounced Eji-Ogbe)

How/where is IIII+IIII pronounced “Edgy-Og-Beh”/Eji-Ogbe?

Is it Yoruba?

Probably not Spanish or English?

Answer 1

Building on Chris' and Angst's answers, the "Odu Ifá" (the sacred oral corpus in the Ifá religion) is composed of 256 liturgical poems. Each one is specified by a combination of two binary numerals each of four digits. Ogbe is:

I I I I

as opposed to Iwori:

II I I II

Eji means 2, so "Eji Iwori" would be two of Iwori:

II I I II + II I I II

Similarly, "Eji Ogbe" is:

I I I I + I I I I

Ogbe is a contraction of "o egbe", which means "The collective consciousness of everything in the Universe." It seems that each of the 16 principal odu have unique names that have larger significance than just describing the numerical set of 4-digit binaries.

The remaining Odu names are either "Eji" proceeded by the name of the principal Odu (or also the name of the principal odu followed by "Meji") or just contractions of the names of the two Odu (see full list here).

The 256 Odu are supposed to explain all combinations of life circumstances in Yoruba sprituality (according to wikipedia and this scripd word doc and also this).

Answer 2

Sources: the band's own website and wikipedia.

ÌFÉ have connections to Yoruba Ifá religion and music, through founder Otura Mun who is a Babalawo or Ifá high priest.

The Ifá religion has sacred writings known as the "Odu Ifá", : Eji-Ogbe is the name of a book within these writings, so it is a word in the Yoruba language. Yorubaland is the cultural region of the Yoruba people in West Africa. It spans the modern day countries of Nigeria, Togo and Benin.

For pronunciation, google translate's "sound" function is a starting point - knowing that the word is in the Yoruba language may lead you to better samples of the pronunciation.

Answer 3

Building on Angst's research -- "Eji", "Og" and "Be" all seem to be syllables used in the rather complex Yoruba counting system.

Although this is just speculation, it seems likely that this title is a math problem with an answer that is pronounced "Eji Ogbe", and that the number it denotes is either also the title of a sacred Yoruba book, or a homonym for it.