This paper attempts to trace the influences, interactions, conflations and developmental trajectories that link the ancient art of oral chants, poetry, minstrelsy, and the contemporary and modernist spoken word versifications in practice today in Nigeria. Audience, form, content, and intent have been pivotal factors in the different epochs that separate the ancient precursors and the present forms in this performance matrix. Through ethnographic and qualitative approaches, and textual analyses, select spoken word poets in contemporaneity have been studied and their verses analyzed for such influences from established traditional forms; validating credence that the ancient forms have built a formidable bulwark of elements and standards that give rise to spoken word poetry fitting for the malaise of the post colony. There has been a dearth of such research scope. Two contemporary spoken word poets with Yoruba (oriki and ijala elements) and Igbo (abu and mbem factors) nationalities are studied in this paper and a nexus has been established that oral tradition has through adequate metamorphoses, augmented a postcolonial tenor and relevance. This study has elicited the use of the spoken word poet as its theoretical anchor.
<p>Poetry is arguably the most ancient, direct and forceful genre of literature; whether written or oral. African’s foremost novelist and widely acclaimed father of literature, Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe, is mostly known for his prose works, especially the novel Things Fall Apart. Little comparatively, is known of his poetry. But the fact remains that Achebe is a good poet as he is widely recognized as a good novelist. Although the scale of preference tilts more to his prose works than poetry nevertheless; he made lasting impressions and remarks with his poems which are worthy of note. The collection, Beware Soul Brother exists to bear testimony on the personality of Achebe as a poet and what poetry achieves in society. Incidentally, his collection of poems, Beware Soul Brother is a veritable and worthwhile corpus of his characteristic package of Igbo lore, reminiscences, experiences and unique writing style; in the grand genre of poetry. Select poems in the collection make deft use of Igbo religious and cultural tenets which Achebe the poet masterfully weaves as muse, paradigm and cultural rooting in order to portray the Igbo cosmology and worldview. This paper explores his art and style in presenting the gods, totems and guiding ancestral wisdom of the rich, ancient lore of the Igbo. Select poems from the collection form the crux and illustrations of the thrust of this paper and demonstrates Achebe’s strong affinity with the cultural artefacts of his native custom. The implications of these in his culture are also predicated on his poems for effectiveness and to achieve a desired goal of portraying the poet as not just purveyor of his native custom and tenets but a crusader who preaches for social restoration and the need to mend walls and build bridges after years of war and wreckages.</p>
This essay redefines the idea of Afropolitanism lost in the world of identity and cultural studies. Defined by Taiye Selasi as a concept that studies persons of African descent who found home everywhere they lived, yet belonged nowhere, this paper holds an opposing view to this interpretation of Afropolitans. We argue that Afropolitans are African diaspora who are (un)consciously slanted to their root in a specific manner; they belong somewhere and the construction and reconstruction of their identity are tied to their root. To re-theorize Afropolitanism in this manner, this research examines Michael Kerr's idea of the post-modern self, showing a comparative account of the pseudo-self and the solid-self, in relation to the Afropolitan identity construction. The re-interpretation of James Clifford’s position on place and space and the examination of Cecil Blake’s ideology of belonging, root, and routes, are critical to my re-reading of the Afropolitan vibe. Although derived from theories of cultural hybridity, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and elective affinity, this paper demystifies Afropolitanism by showing how it differs remarkably from these theories in analyzing the underlying questions of frican identity and lived experience. Whilst lived experiences of African diaspora constitute part of the existence of the Afropolitan, we argue that the construction of the Afropolitan identity is not reliant on an acquired identity or lived experience but an ascribed identity and root. Okey Ndibe’s Never Look an American in the Eyes, will serve as the primary text for this analysis, and we conclude this research by articulating how Ndibe and other Afropolitan novelists manipulate culture, language, and race to reflect our position on Afropolitanism.
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