Harpur's Okpewho Reveals Truth of African Oral Traditions,
continued
Okpewho's
research uncovered another theme as well – the tales of oppression aren't confined
to Africa; those who were taken from their homelands as slaves brought their
ancient tales with them to America. Adding this twist to his work, Okpewho has
looked at the relationship between African oral traditions and the traditions
of black societies in the Americas. "Living and working in the Americas
has brought home the need for me to explore the relationships between these
traditions," he said.
There are strong similarities between tales from Africa told in
the United States and those told in the Caribbean, yet there are differences
as well. "You want to know how these transformations came to be, besides
saying 'Well, these are told in the Caribbean, these are told in the United
States so they would be different,'" he said. "Who are the people
who continue to tell these stories and what had the stories meant to them in
their social, cultural and political situations? If possible, what can we say
about the influence of the narrators on the content and style of the tales?"
In effect, such a study aims at establishing the value of a people’s
oral traditions in conveying the marks of their peculiar social, cultural and
other forms of identity.
A natural progression would be to compare African tales with tales
of oppression from around the world. "I've tried to bring the African traditions
into some kind of a conversation with various other cultures around the world,"
he said. "For instance, in Once Upon a Kingdom, I extrapolate from
these tales to suggest ways that the kinds of hegemonic situations in Nigeria
that my tales reflect are similar to hegemonic situations not only in Africa,
but also in other parts of the world."
Pointing out that governments don't often listen to the voices
of minorities, Okpewho'said the resulting political upheaval, protests and violence
can be avoided. "The tales that I have collected give me a tremendous amount
of insight into what governments need to do to ensure peace and harmony in their
communities by making sure that they guarantee something like an equal playing
field for the various political communities within them," he said.
His hope is to share stories from his homeland and give voice
to the oppressed. "I suggest ways in which people can have greater political
stability, not only in Nigeria, but across Africa and the rest of the world
where minorities don't get their fair share of attention," he said. "That's
one way of ensuring peace; establishing a just system in which people who have
been marginalized are given their fair share of attention as well as proper
representation, and their voices are listened to."
African oral literature has grown into an increasingly stable
area of research during Okpewho's career. In the past, scholars simply collected
spoken narratives without including the names of those who told them and lack
of solid technology was also a barrier. "These days we pay more attention
to the art of storytelling, the singing of songs and the performance of various
other kinds of oral literature, than to just the text. We study the people who
perform them and the situations in which they are performed, as well as the
text itself," he said.
Okpewho, a distinguished professor of Africana Studies, is also
a novelist who writes to inform and entertain. His most recent novel, Call
Me By My Rightful Name (2004), is the story of an African American who is
moved by several urgent voices from the African oral tradition to retrace his
roots back in Africa.
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