Mythologizing Yoruba Orature in Poetry: Lobotomizing the Swivelled Pulses of Laughter in Niyi Osundare's Waiting Laughters and Remi Raji's A Harvest of Laughters

Dr. Niyi Akingbe Professor of Comparative Literature Department of English and Literary Studies, Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti state, Nigeria

Introduction

African literary scholarship in the recent time has been embroiled in a dilemma, about whether the African literature should be written in the indigenous languages or not. The debate was kick-started by the Nigerian born Chinua Achebe, in his reaction to the African cultural misrepresentation by Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson (1951). But at the forefront of this debate is the Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who although has written in English language for several years, begins in 1977 to write in his indigenous African language, Gikuyu.

This paper will be examining how Niyi Osundare and Remi Raji have essentially utilised the Yoruba orature as an alternative tradition, in crafting the poetics which reiterate the protection of the world eco-system, an articulation of African tradition and the condemnation of military brutality in the Waiting Laughters (1990) and A Harvest of Laughters (1997).

Oral Tradition and Literary Production in Contemporary Nigerian Poetry

Unlike the older generation of the Nigerian poets like Wole Soyinka, J.P Clark-Ambekedermo, Christopher Okigbo and Gabriel Imomotime Okara who wrote in English, and borrowed excessively from the European poets like W.B Yeats, Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot, the younger generation Nigerian poets’ uniqueness lies in their sustained appropriation of oral tradition and traditional linguistic elements grounded in their socio-cultural milieu.

Chanting Oral Tradition in Waiting Laughters and A Harvest of Laughters

The Yoruba proverbial serves as the vehicle of literary communication in Osundare’s Waiting Laughters and Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters because the duo perceive “proverbs, as a means of communication which oil the wheels of human interaction in day-to-day social contexts.”

Criticizing the Ecological Degradation

The problematic of daily existence, essentially created by the global warming and its attendant effect in the forms of acid rain, famine, poor agricultural produce and hunger is devastatingly analysed in the poem. Global warming’s effect is felt world over, but its occurrence in Nigeria, has robbed it of the African communal conviviality.

Foregrounding Yoruba Orature

Both Osundare and Raji appropriate Yoruba oral tradition in varied poetic forms ranging from proverbial, satire, song and other elements of oral performance to foreground the Yoruba’s poetic dexterity in their poetry. Osundare often uses songs in his poetry either to praise or as a satire.

Venerating the Rain

‘Ijala’ or hunting poem originally in the Yoruba tradition are songs that are often chanted at the funerals of brave and distinguished hunters in the Yoruba country. The influence and phonological appurtenances of ‘ijala’ are appropriated to sing praise to the rain, in Raji’s ‘Rain Song’ and Osundare’s untitled poem in Waiting Laughters.

Appraising Nigeria’s Season of Anomie

Nigeria’s journey into nationhood was signalled by its independence in 1960, but Nigeria as a nation has traversed a tortuous political road full of bends and twists. Its apocalyptic period of political anomie was ushered in by the military who “ruled Nigeria from 1966-1979, and 1983-1999.” During these periods, poetry was engaged as a literary communicative platform for the criticism of brutality and dehumanisation associated with the military rule.

Maximizing the Laughter Therapy

While most developed and developing countries of the world are breaking new grounds in the areas of technology, healthcare and poverty alleviation, a greater proportion of African countries are still trapped in the throes of poverty, unemployment, AIDS pandemic, and majority of them are still engaged in the internecine wars. Nevertheless, Osundare and Raji have adopted the ‘agbe’ poetry stylistic in the format of their poems, to distil laughter, which serves as an enduring elixir in the midst of chaos.

Conclusion

The paper has evaluated the significance of Yoruba orature in the Niyi Osundare’s Waiting Laughters and Remi Raji’s A Harvest of Laughters, to emphasise that despite many years of neglect, the Yoruba oral tradition has not gone into extinction, but has been re-structured linguistically as a platform of literary communication by the younger generation Nigerian writers. The paper has also identified the appropriation of Yoruba oral poetic forms like, ‘Ijala’, ‘satire’, ‘lament’, ‘song’ and ‘Agbe’ in the poetry of both Osundare and Raji.

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