The Art of The Ozidi Saga

Abstract

When in 1977 the Nigerian poet-playwright John Pepper Clark[-Bekederemo] published The Ozidi Saga, a folk epic from the Ijo of the Niger Delta, he secured for himself a place in African (and world) literary history quite as distinguished as he had won for his creative writing. 1 The story was recorded neither in its hallowed delta home, Tarakiri Orua, nor in its traditional context, a periodic festival honoring the culture hero Ozidi, but at a command performance in the university city of Ibadan, nearly three hundred miles from Orua, by a troupe led by an outstanding storyteller named Okabou Ojobolo. The performance was hosted in 1963 by an Ijo matron, Madam Yabuku of Inekorogha, before an audience made up partly of Ijo residents in Ibadan (a Yoruba town) and partly of non-Ijo Nigerians and expatriate colleagues of Clark from Ibadan University. The uniqueness of The Ozidi Saga lies mainly in the fact that whereas festival re-enactments of the Ozidi myth usually entailed dramatizing key episodes or moments in the career of the hero—as evidenced by the film Tides of the Delta, made from one such performance, Okabou's performance, freed from the protocol of ritual acts that traditionally defined the festival, gave full vent to the word-hoard of the storyteller, augmented at relevant moments by dance and histrionic displays for graphic effect. The result was a narrative of true epic status that has, in significant ways, aided our understanding of the nature of this subgenre of oral literature.