Serving Culture in Print: On Iwe Amuludun’s Noble Adventure – Joba Ojelabi

There is something fitting about a magazine about Yoruba cultural pleasure emerging from a restaurant. Culture, after all, is rarely experienced in isolation. It is tasted, heard, spoken, worn, and remembered in fragments that accumulate over time. Iwe Amuludun, the new magazine published by Ile Iyan by PODs, seems premised in an understanding of this simple truth. What gained our attention as a culinary space (amidst some social media brouhaha on ownership etc.) dedicated to Yoruba food now attempts something more ambitious: translating the spirit of that experience into print.

The title itself is a telling starting point. Amúlùdùn speaks to sweetness, delight, and enjoyment. It is a word that carries both emotional and sensory meaning in Yoruba. By naming the publication Iwe Amuludun, the editors signal two tendencies; a desire to document the pleasures of the merrymakers and/or a desire to curate a publication that makes life sweet.

In many ways, the magazine enters a cultural moment where Yoruba identity is being revisited with renewed curiosity. Across music, fashion, film, and food, there is a visible turn toward indigenous memory and cultural confidence. What Iwe Amuludun attempts is to bring this energy into the slower, more reflective space of print. That decision alone is significant. In an era dominated by fleeting digital content, a magazine demands pause. It demands care and attention.

One of the magazine’s most interesting gestures is its proximity to food. This is not surprising, the publishers are a hospitality brand after all. Most of the Yoruba cuisine that makes up their menu carry stories, stories of geography, labour, migration, ritual, and social structure. A bowl of àmàlà or a plate of ìyàn contains histories that stretch across towns and generations. By situating a cultural publication within a culinary brand, Iwe Amuludun quietly acknowledges that food can be a gateway into deeper conversations about heritage. Recipes become archives. Dining becomes cultural storytelling.

The first edition is ambitious- featuring interviews and articles from some popular faces that are becoming icons of the Yoruba culture. Yet the success of the magazine will ultimately depend on how far it is willing to push beyond celebration. Cultural projects often fall into the comfort of praise. Heritage becomes something to admire from a distance rather than something to interrogate. If Iwe Amuludun is to grow into a serious cultural platform, it must create space for voices that question as much as they document. Writers, historians, artists, and critics should be invited not only to affirm Yoruba culture but to explore its contradictions and evolving realities.

Language will also be central to the magazine’s identity. Yoruba culture cannot be fully articulated outside the rhythms of the Yoruba language itself. At the same time, contemporary audiences move fluidly between Yoruba and English. The magazine therefore sits at an interesting intersection. The most compelling future for Iwe Amuludun would be one where both languages coexist, allowing meaning to travel without losing its texture. This is no easy task.
For now, the magazine’s greatest achievement is the gesture it makes. It proposes that culture deserves documentation beyond memory and beyond performance. In giving Yoruba pleasure a printed form, Iwe Amuludun begins the quiet work of archiving a way of life. Whether it becomes a lasting cultural document will depend on how boldly it continues that work.