TAXONOMICAL STUDY OF THE POETICS IN IDOMA ORAL PERFORMANCES

ABSTRACT

This study attempts a classification of the poetics in Idoma oral performances through the analysis of the different components that constitute the oral poetry genre of Idoma oral literature. It defines and explains the various units of the taxonomy, it describes its main facets or dimensions, and it also offers detailed explanations of the context and content of performance of all the components of the classification for purposes of communicating meaning. The study further highlights the functions of oral performances among the people such as entertainment, awareness, socialization, language skills, political as well as religious-cultural values within the context of the present study through the theoretical lens of Greenblatt’s New Historicism.

KEYWORDS   AND   PHRASES:      Poetics,   Idoma,   Taxonomy,   Oral   Performance,   New

Historicism.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

It is a known fact that oral poetry exist in performance. One indeed appreciates the oral literary forms of Idoma by recognizing them as “performance literatures”. Ruth Finnegan seems to have provided answers to these questions by asserting that “it is well known in some circles—but worth adverting to again in this context—one way into tackling these questions has been through the notion of oral forms of literature” (2). According to her, this is evident by the various literary materials that are originally oral but later transformed into written literature e.g. Beowulf (epic of the Old English), the Homeric epics (in some sense at least “oral”), Elizabethan lyrics, performed poetry, folktales, scripts for or from plays—all these have long been captured in writing and studied as literary texts. A next step, however, has been more radical: taking the oral-ness of such examples as a positive and essential quality of their nature.

Therefore, orality studies have developed in various guises, mainly from the 1960s onwards. It has become increasingly clear that an oral performance can be analyzed not just as the contingent setting for some enduring—writable—text but as itself . There is now a large body of scholarship focusing on concepts like “oral,” “orality,” “oral literature” or “orature,” concerned among other things to understand oral performance in its own (that is, oral) right. A Ugandan linguist Pio Zirimu coined the term orature in the early seventies of the last century to counter the tendency to see the arts communicated orally and received aurally as an inferior or lower rung in the linear development of literature. His brief definition of orature as the use of utterance as an aesthetic

means of expression remains tantalizingly out there, pointing to an oral system of aesthetics that did not need validity from the literary.

This has meant extending the concept of literary expression to include many unwritten forms, and equally significant, treating their orally performed qualities as crucial to their literary realization. After all, we read in Nguggi’s Notes Toward a Performance Theory of Orature that “central to orature is the interconnectedness of all artistic elements and central to them, is performance” (4). He justifies this view by asserting that  each of the art forms is  a performance genre since performance holds them together.

In the Idoma Alekwu praise song, for instance, the praise singer fascinates his listeners through acoustic effects—rhythms, sonic parallelisms, strained mode of articulation, intonations, and ringing praise names while the sophisticated artistry of the lead Alekwu masker who narrates the epic genealogy of Idoma history of origin lies not just in verbal content but in the vivid way the narrator voices the performance and the skillful use of vocal dynamics, tempo, and intonation. More interesting about Idoma oral performing arts is the fascinating way in which the maskers dramatize various actions/issues captured in the renditions. This dramatization of actions makes the poems assume the proportion of life, even though they are purely imaginative fiction.

Part of our concern is to ascertain the literariness of these performances. The answer to this question regarding the literariness of these materials of Idoma oral poems under study can be found in David Daiches comment quoted in Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics that “work of literary art, by its diction as well as other devices, provides an implicit set of direction concerning the distance from the object in which the reader must stand if he is to see it for what it is” (6). Daiches’ comment implies that every artist must bear the responsibility of incorporating into his

works those devices that will help the reader determine the perspective or distance at which the work should be viewed. Also, borrowing from Jean Baudelaire’s view of experience as “a forest of symbols” to which the poet must give order, the artiste of Idoma oral poems tries to communicate concentrated feelings through the use of evocative symbols rather than rational statement and they also try to refine and purify language to obtain this sort of communication.

Furthermore, Idoma oral poem like most forms of oral performance are an integration of artistic forms. In its performance, for instance, there is drama. There is a combination of verbal elements with musical accompaniment. There could be visual aspects involving the use of costumes, mime and dance. In the Idoma Alekwu poems, especially the religious type, the rendition made during pouring of libation becomes important not only in the utterance of the poet/performer but how the message of the person on whose behalf the ritual is performed is weaved into the rendition. The action of pouring out the libation, the positions of feet, hands and indeed dramatic aspects such as how the artist holds a cup of Oburukutu (locally brewed beer) are all integral aspects that evoke the full essence of the performance. The artist in this instance addresses an audience that is physically present or one that is invisible such as ancestors. These assembled images go to remind us of Allan Poe’s assertion that “the symbolists were also conscientious craftsmen interested in the complex and subtle relationships existing between the total poem and its component words and images” (Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 6).

On her own part, Finnegan states that performance in oral poetry is a function not only of the skill or virtuosity of the reciter, but also of the type of occasion and the nature of the material being performed which may be pure recitation or invocation, chanting or full rhythmic singing with or without instrumental music. Similarly, Elisabeth Hangartner-Everts posits that “a piece of

oral literature is being created through performance, be it a song sung by a singer or a story or poem told or recited by an oral performer” (13). According to her, oral performance draws on visual resources. Such resources convey certain information very effectively. These could be the performer’s  dress,  accessory items  of dress  and  equipment,  or  gestures  of the  performer  in response to the demands of the audience.

To Charles Bodunde, this involvement of the community in the creative process as well as in the criticism is “one of the characteristics of oral traditions, which relates to the nature of performance” (1). He points out: “Finnegan reveals that in a creative performance, members of the audience neither listen silently nor wait for the chief performer’s invitation before they join in. Instead, the audience breaks into the performance with their additions, questions, and criticisms” (1). So Finnegan postulates rightly that oral genres from throughout the world once “dismissible as crude and “preliterate,” from Mongolian oral epics or the lyrics of Indian love songs to the extensive unwritten performances of Africa, have now come to be analyzed as forms of literature of “oral literature” (4).

This study endeavours to contribute towards the taxonomy of Idoma oral performance and aims to provide a tool to interpret and understand the people’s oral song poetry. This is not an isolated case of oral literature: many other expressions all over the world follow similar patterns which are all  part  of  the  study  of  oral  performance  encompassed  within  the  umbrella  term  Orality, understood as the use of speech, rather than writing, as means of communication, especially in communities where the tools of literacy are unfamiliar to the majority of the population. Walter J. Ong  distinguished  between  ‘primarily  oral  cultures’,  cultures  “totally  untouched  by  any knowledge of writing or print” (23); and ‘secondarily oral cultures’, cultures with “a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print” (Ong,

136). He defines ‘residual orality’ as “the verbal expression in cultures that have been exposed to writing and print, but have not fully ‘interiorized’ the use of these technologies in their daily lives”. ‘Verbal art’ was introduced by Bascom in his classic article, Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives as ‘a convenient and appropriate term for folktales, myths, legends, proverbs, riddles, and other “literary forms”’ (245). Finnegan informs us that a great deal of work has been carried out under this label, particularly by American folklorists and anthropologists. “It now usually also covers songs and poems, together with verbal processes like naming, rhetoric or tongue twisters” (118). According to her, the term is somewhat less contentious than many of the others here. It tends to highlight aesthetic aspects while avoiding the implicit constraints of ‘oral literature’ in not being confined to longer textually articulated forms. “It thus, facilitates verbal artistry of all kinds being treated together, while avoiding the emotive overtones sometimes associated with the term oral” (118-9).

In Ong’s view, orality and globalisation are somehow opposed terms: Ong says that “many of the contrasts often made between ‘Western’ and other views seem reducible to contrasts between deeply interiorized literacy and more or less residually oral states of consciousness” (Ong, 29). A view as this is somehow lopsided owing to the fact that the term exists in all cultures and languages including ‘globalised’ and ‘Western’. Among the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria, for instance, Emenanjo did a cursory study on how the language is used in modes. According to him, “in Igbo, for example, the spoken mode is realized on one hand as Okwu or Uka (living or free phrase speech) and is manifested as akuko, the generic name for non-folktales (41). On the other hand the spoken mode is realized as inu-inunu or ilu/ilulu the name for all sorts of gnomic, formulaic, short and witty statements. Among the Idoma of Benue state of Nigeria for instance, the sung, recited or chanted mode is manifested in songs, verses, ballads and poems are called Ikpela Ije while the

prosaic ones such as folktales and legends are called Ocha. The act of telling them is Ocha’Ocha. Proverb is called Ita while the act of telling it is Ita-Okwu. In fact, the idea of unwritten literature already occurred in nineteenth-century writing (Koelle 1854, Macdonald 1882, Burton 1865, Chatelain 1894). The concept was further propagated by H.M. and N.K.Chadwick’s massive opus on the ‘growth of literature’, where they explain, ‘the connection between literature and writing is accidental, and belongs to a secondary phase in the history of literature’ (Finnegan, 189).

It goes on and on as “it is clear that when we talk of poetry as the early Greeks and Romans knew it, we are not distinguishing between the oral and the written forms. Indeed, the oracle of Delphi and the Cumaean Sybils recited poetry, so did Homer; but Vergil, Horace, Ovid, and other creative minds wrote poetry” (Nwaegbe, 155). In English literary history, Beowulf probably was composed in England sometime in the eighth century AD. The poem was created in the oral- formulaic tradition (or oral poetic method), probably developing over a period of time with roots in folktales and traditional stories until a single, very talented poet put it in something very near its current form in 1000 AD.

Therefore, in this study, orality offers a framework for the study of oral literature, as it is an interdisciplinary field composed by many different areas. The key scholars in the creation of the study of oral traditions are W.  Ong, M. Parry, A. Lord  and J.  Foley:  their studies on oral formulaic theories during the 20th century highlighted the necessity for a separate but interconnected field that would then include contributions from disciplines like literature, ethnography or music, among others. All these field of study will help us to establish a general background for the taxonomical study of the poetics in the Idoma oral performances.

More importantly, an interdisciplinary framework is vital for the aim of this study, hence the adoption of Greenblatt’s cultural poetics as a major theoretical base in the analysis and classification of Idoma oral poetry. The proposal of this taxonomy aims to achieve three main objectives; first, a polyhedral approach will be proposed for the analysis of oral performance, a transversal field which has been approached from different angles. So this taxonomy seeks to offer a “first draft” of a multidisciplinary tool, adapted to Idoma poetry; second, the integrated vision of oral poetry will enhance empirical studies based on the current poem production, but it will also allow partial analysis of the corpora, as such, this taxonomy provides the possibility of undertaking combined research without including all the approaches; and last, the potential result of this study wants to be the first step in developing a powerful tool to widen the horizons of the study and research of Idoma oral poetry.

This research will have three main sections. The first part will be based on the description of Idoma oral poetry, explaining the content, context and reality of the oral performance aesthetics among the people. The second section will be devoted to the taxonomy, including its theoretical framework, some methodological guidelines and the description of the classification. A third part will account for the functions and contributions of the oral poetry to the social, educational, political and cultural advancement of the Idoma people. The last include the final considerations including summary, observation and suggestion for further studies. These sections will help throw light on the taxonomy.

1.2       A Brief Survey of Idoma Society

i.         Origin: Idoma people hailed from Apa in Kwararafa Confederacy and are all descendants of Idu. It was learnt from the interview I carried out with Alekwu poets that the father of the entire

A picture showing the front-view of Ochi’Idoma palace in Otukpo during the fieldwork

Idoma was Idu who happened to be the second son of Ale. Ale gave birth to four children: Atta, Idu, Idoko and Agabi. While Atta fathered the entire Igala kingdom, Idu fathered the Idoma, Idoko fathered the entire Igbira people, and Agabi fathered the Iyala and Ogoja people in Cross Rivers State.

Apa was a Jukun homeland. In most traditions, this locality was also known as Okali or Okolofa which is today called Wukari. The voice of the different Idoma historians and the epic poets is the same that Apa was the ancestral homeland of Idoma people. There are some suggestions by the informants, too, that some Idoma ancestors lived in Apa side by side with other ethnic groups and that the term Apa was a blanket one covering a wide collection of people, which is an evidence in this research interview with one of the narrators of this history as shown below:

IDOMA

Aalo ni’Idu maa, Aalo mna Apa Aipe ni’ Idu maa, leki Idoma Okoko, oi ki’ Idu, ada ko’ Otukpo Ale, oi ki’ Idu, ada ke’ Egwumale

Ode oi ki’ Idu, Omo’ Ogwuche, Onah, Ejeh

Ogwuche ada ko’ Oglehu Onah ada Ku’ Ugbokpo Ejeh ada Ku’ Umogidi

Aalo ba’ Apa mla’ ache oha

Ache lebe ku Jukun, Igbira, Igala

Wukari mla’ ache oha Eyeeyee

ENGLISH

We the children of Idu are from Apa

The children of Idu are named Idoma

Okoko, son of Idu and the father of Otukpo

Ale, son of Idu who begot Ogwuche, Onah & Ejeh

Ogwuche fathered Ugbokpo

Ejeh fathered Umogidi

We stayed in Apa with other people

Like Jukun, Igbira, Igala, Wukari and others.

This evidence is also backed by Armstrong’s suggestion that “the Idoma, Igala and the Yoruba

formed part of the same social complex until about 6,000 years ago” (14).

The various folktales, myths and legends rendered by Alekwu and Ichicha, and those narrated by the oral historians of Idoma such as the one above suggest that Idoma have been involved in series  of  migrations  before  arriving  at  their  present  location.  Based  on  the  Idoma  history traditions, Erim suggested this period, ‘‘1535-1625 A.D as the earliest recorded migration in the Idoma history’’ (6). All the traditions beginning in the third phase of Idoma emigrational history suggest that Idoma left Apa as a result of untenable conditions created by constant warfare. It would seem that the fortunes of the inhabitants of Apa in these wars were reflected in dynastic struggles, which brought about an increasing sense of insecurity. This situation continued to get worse for a period of time and Apa was eventually deserted. According to other historical sources, the war that caused the final migration that brought the Idoma to this part of the lower Benue valley was “the horse war” which the narrator termed “efu onya”.

The Idoma ethnic group in the present location is situated at the South eastern part of Benue State and is the second largest ethnic group after Tiv. Benue State was created on 3rd  February, 1976 from old Benue-Plateau. The state lies between longitudes 6o – 10o East and latitude 6o – 8o North. It is bounded by Nassarawa State in the North, Taraba in the Northeast, Enugu, Ebonyi and Cross River to the South and Southeast and Kogi to the West and Northwest. The state covers an area of about 69,740 square kilometers.

The Idoma-speaking group is also found in considerable number in Nassarawa and Cross River states. The recent population census put the population figure of the nine Idoma local government areas of Benue State at one million, two hundred and ninety three thousand (1,293,000).

ii.        Constituents: The Idoma ethnic group, as earlier pointed out above is a very broad entity which comprises nine local governments that make up the Benue South senatorial zone. The Local Governments are Apa, Agatu, Otukpo, Ohimini, Okpokwu, Ogbadibo, Obi, Oju, Ado. Among these are five dialectal variations in the Idoma language. The dialects of Otukpo, Ugboju, Adoka, Umogidi, Oglehu and Onyagede all of Otukpo and Ohimini local government areas resemble one another. The Otukpo dialect is described as the standard central dialect and has been chosen (consciously or unconsciously) as a lingua franca (so to speak) with Otukpo remaining as the cultural, commercial and administrative headquarters of the Idoma kingdom.

This research and investigation is centrally based in Umogidi and Otukpo. The other dialects are the Egwumale that differs significantly from all others and has been influenced by Igala, while that of Okpoga has specific feature. Otukpa, Owukpa, Orokam have common resemblance and are influenced by Nsukka Igbo. Another dialect is Agatu which differs from the others except Ochekwu, with which it has certain affinities.

iii.       Religious/Social Life: The Idoma people are very hardworking, hospitable people who treasure self-respect and independence. They are mainly farmers whose chief crops are yams, cassava, guinea corn, groundnuts, rice and cotton. Apart from farming, they also indulge themselves in hunting, fishing, carving and weaving. They usually live in clans which have central open playgrounds. They have a very strong chieftaincy which antedates colonial administrations. The institution of Oche is the political organization of chiefdom in Idoma nation. The head of this institution of government is what in Idoma is known as Oche (Chief or   King). The Oche of the entire Idoma is known as Ochi Idoma whose palace is in Otukpo and his title is Agaba-Idu, meaning the lion of Idu.

A sculpture showing Agaba in front of Ochi’ Idoma palace, taken during the fieldwork

The day-to-day running of the kingdom is not completely left in the hand of Oche who is the Chief Executive but there are other smaller Chiefs who assist him. They are the representatives of their various districts. They are district heads who legislate in the Oche’s palace.

The average Idoma person is religious. The traditional religion of Idoma teaches people to believe in different gods, including earth god and  ancestral god which Alekwu represents. Religion pervades all aspects of the life of the people which is the reason why there is a belief that God is present in their lives all the time. According to the Idoma belief, one’s success in life depends to a great extent not only on the correct observance of all the civil rules and regulations but meticulous adherence to taboos and acts that are prohibited. Respect or regard for the old people is part of such rules since they are believed to have constituted powerful intermediary between the world of the dead and the living. Any infringements on the rights and privileges of the elders will evoke severe repercussions as the ancestors and the spirits will also be offended. The Idoma people have a strong belief in ancestral Alekwu worship.

It is believed according to the Idoma worldview that the dead members of the Idoma kindred are alive. The implication of this is that death in corporeal sense did not remove the dead from the kindred membership as such. This suggests that when someone dies in the physical, the spirit keeps roaming about until it is invoked and initiated to join other members of the ancestors in the Alekwu cult which is symbolically represented by the mask of each ancestor. In that regard, certain  classes  of  ancestors  were  considered  vital  and  living  members  of  the  community. According to the Idoma world view, they are consequently endowed with certain rights and responsibilities, which in most cases include among other things to guide the affairs of the living

and to serve as link between the physical world and the spirit world. This position is similar to Bayo and Rasheed’s assertion that the cult of the ancestors has been perfectly built into the African perception of cosmic and social existence (67). The resurrected ancestors or the Alekwu concretely transform themselves to Ekwu Afia. It is believed that they come to the world occasionally to feel the spiritual pulse of the kindred spirit. This agrees with Ted and Amali’s positions on the reason why it is believed that the Alekwu in the Idoma society plays an important role in the lives of the people.

iv.       The  Archive:  The  ancestors  re-invoked  as  Alekwu  play  not  only  a  religious  and metaphysical role, but also serve as carrier of the people’s history, literature and philosophy. The Alekwu contributes towards oral history and literature of the Idoma, because in some festivities, including  funerals,  Alekwu  Afia  (masked  Alekwu)  recites  the  genealogies  of  the  different lineages and sing praises for their legendary heroes since the time of migration. Alekwu is a re- invoked spirits of the dead ancestors collected and put together to guide and protect the lives of their living offsprings. They engage one another in a competition where they test one another’s literary ingenuity by rendering beautiful poetry. In this instance, oral poetry in Idoma can be seen as a compendium of profound resources of language for expressing the feelings, thoughts, beliefs, philosophies, values and histories of the people. It contains aspects of culture such as social ethos, religious dogmas and all aspects of material and non-material culture in which the people live, move and have their being.

v.         The Idoma Verbal Arts/Performance

The Idoma Verbal Arts: Like any other cultural group where oral literature and oral arts exist, the Idoma verbal arts are sustained fundamentally by performance. In other words, virtually every

study on the concept of an Idoma oral literature stresses the complementary nature of the verbal arts with performance.

It is in view of this fact that Amali explains that the Idoma religious/Alekwu poetry is “a verbal form  of  expression  whose  composers  are  generally  not  known,  yet  handed  down  over  the centuries from generation to generation through the word of mouth” (32). Finnegan also asserts that one of the striking characteristics of oral as distinct from written literature is its “verbal variability” (8).

It is pertinent to point out here that every Idoma person who lives in that oral culture is a potential performer of some sort, but few ever distinguish themselves as artists of the first order. The reason  is  that,  during  this  festival,  the  general  adult  members  of  the  community  (males) participate in this performance. Alekwu-afia numbering about fifty engaged one another in a poetic rendition of different kinds, testing and proving their imaginative/creative ingenuities. As stated earlier, the artistes equally employ certain appeals not only in what they say but in the way it is said (whether in the manner of plain speech or of chanting or singing). Even in some categories of Idoma verbal arts where a more or less fixed body of text is recognized and the artiste is expected to recite it, much of the appeal lies in the quality of the voice used and the skill with which the speaker manipulates the tone of the words involved. Other more elaborate forms of oral performance during this festival involve the use of musical instruments and dance as accompanying devices. It is on this strength of creativity and imagination that we make bold to say that Idoma oral performing art is rich in literary qualities.

As an African group for whom praise and criticism are favoured forms of discourse, the freelance

Idoma poets who sing praises of Oche in his palace employ certain stylistic elements in their

songs  such  as  repetition.  The  interesting  thing  remains  the  way  and  manner  in  which  the repetition is manipulated. The poets, especially Alekwu afia, during performance usually build imagery out  of various  elements  taken  from  the surrounding  culture  and  environment  (e.g., animals, trees, rivers etc.). For instance, in one of the festivals a particular Ekwu afia uses the imagery of a goat selling leaves and yet could not find the same leaves to feed on even when it could not sell all the leaves it went to market with. This symbolically depicts a situation whereby someone finds himself amid plenty yet wallows in hunger and want. If present at the festival, one can see the various ways in which the oral poets (i.e. Alekwu afia) manipulate symbols and imageries within the poem, showing how one small image develops in scope as the poem is rendered. Speaking of Babalola’s Ijala, Okpewho reiterates that he (Babalola) treats us to an insider’s view of the various stylistic techniques and  characteristic of the Yoruba language. According to him, this lends  Ijala its poetic flavour, such as complex  structure of imagery and allusion, the manipulation of sounds and of the  voice to achieve specific effects of beauty and meaning, and (more interesting) those linguistic   devices which are   not common in everyday speech but are part of the poetic diction of Ijala.

The Aspect of Performance in Idoma Oral Poetry: More interesting about Idoma performing arts is the fascinating way in which the maskers dramatize various actions/issues captured in the renditions. This dramatization of actions makes the poems assume the proportion of life, even though they are purely imaginative fiction.

Furthermore, Idoma oral poetry like most forms of oral performance, is an integration of artistic forms. As pointed out earlier, in its performance, for instance, there is drama. There is a combination of verbal elements with musical accompaniment. There could be visual aspects involving the use of costumes, mime and dance. In the Idoma Alekwu poetry, especially religious

type, the rendition made during pouring of libation becomes important not only in the utterance of the poet/performer of Idoma ritual drama. The action of pouring out the libation, the positions of feet, hands and indeed dramatic aspects such as how the artiste holds a cup of Oburukutu (locally brewed beer) are all integral aspects that evoke the full essence of the performance. The artist in this instance addresses an audience that is physically present or one that is invisible such as ancestors.

Movement, an important aspect of acting, is involved as the artiste does not adopt a single posture. He may even put on a certain costume that may have colour symbolism. The costume worn by Alekwu afia has two colours of black and red with black symbolizing the world of the dead which is believed to be dark inside from which the ancestral spirit is believed to have lived, and later exhumed into the world of the living. The red on the other hand symbolizes the red earth where the said ancestor was buried when he died.

vi.       Symbols and Meanings: In the simple act of libation, a whole range of meanings operate. To this end, Onuekwusi asserts that, “we are not just concerned with words but with movement, action and symbolism all of which go to enhance the meaning of poetry” (80). This agrees with Mezu’s assertion that one of the most interesting aspects of traditional African civilization is “the unity of the art forms” (93). To Baudelaire, there exist the unity and association of     music, poetry, dance and painting in the process which the sounds of music, the rhythms, phrases and syllables, the allegories and analogies of poetry, the steps, movements, jumps and signals of dance and finally the colours of painting are unified in a symbolic world where religion provides a solid and firm structure.

In conclusion, the centrality of performance in the Idoma oral poetry genre is indeed significant. Songs are realized in performance and it is performance that gives each one of them its distinctive character. The good singer seeks the involvement of his or her audience through an appeal to both its emotional and intellectual faculties, thus the singer or performer of any kind of Idoma oral poetry needs to be very knowledgeable in the culture of the community. Because the effect that the singer has on his audience is invariably dependent on the dexterity with which he or she manipulates the values and resources embodied in the Idoma language, it is very advantageous for a singer to show unwavering allegiance to this crucial aspect of Idoma culture. In a similar study, Chukwuma Azuonye terms this functionality on the part of the artist, as according to him, by this principle, the Ohafia people evaluate the songs purely in terms of their manifest effects on culture and society and on the behaviour of individual members of the society. In his view, “this principle refers merely to the practical utility of the songs, especially when performing in association with the well known dramatic war dance of the people and its accompaniment of martial music as part of integrated heroic musical whole” (48).

The Idoma language too, has an exceptionally rich supply of proverbs and proverbial expressions, maxims, vowel harmony or assonance, puns, repetitions, alliterations, rhymes, tonal variations, and other sound patterns which heighten effect, and the gifted singer learns to use these materials to his advantage. In the Idoma worldview also are embedded numerous folktales, legends, anecdotes, myths, and beliefs that aid creativity.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

Since the field of oral literature is a vast one, classification becomes a crucial first step if we are to fully appreciate the diversity of materials which the society produces, disseminates and enjoys. Virtually in every scholarly discipline, classification constitutes a logical starting point.

There have been many studies of the vast body of the oral literature of Idoma, published and unpublished, dealing with arrays of issues but no work exists on the study of its classification with the view of bringing out the literary, social and aesthetic qualities in its poetics. Even a cursory glance at the works of such specialized scholars who have done much on this, like R.G. Armstrong, R.C. Abraham, S.O.O. Amali, Idris Amali, Ted Anyebe, and many others would show immediately that   much work has been done on Idoma literature without attention given to its taxonomy. This inadequacy constitutes one of the reasons why this study is proposed.

Similarly, a look at the works of other specialized researchers of other African groups as Isidore Okpewho, Jasper Onuekwusi, Ruth Fennigan, Abdulashid Na’Allah and Bayo Ogunjimi, C.A. Okafor, Ode Ogede, Nkem Okoh, F.B.O. Akparobaro, E.S. Timpunza, Helen Chukwuma, Chukwuma Azuonye and many others, show uniformity in the taxonomical approach to oral literature. They followed an already established three pronged literary division with which we are already familiar in written literature to classify oral literature in terms of the following: 1. Prose 2. Poetry 3. Drama. This research also considers the transfer of this traditional, tripartite Western model of literary genres to the study and classification of African Oral Literature in general and oral poetry in particular a rewarding contribution to the field. The researcher however agrees with Emenanjo who warns that there is “a need for scholars to treat universals with caution” (36) since oral performance captures the socio-historical, cultural, philosophical and religious ethos of the society under study; a problem this research equally seeks to address to take another critical look at the existing taxonomy with a view to improving on them.

1.4 Objective of the Study

The aim of the study is to carry out taxonomical study of the poetics in Idoma oral performances. The specific objectives are to: (i) produce a concrete taxonomical model for the study of Idoma oral poetry; (ii) explain the content, context and reality of the oral performance aesthetics among the people; and (iii) investigate the functions and contributions of the oral poetry to the social, educational, political and cultural advancement of Idoma people.

1.4 Significance of the Study

This study becomes relevant to the study of Idoma oral poetry in that it would have contributed towards the classification of the performance poetics of Idoma oral literature with a view to provide a tool for the understanding and interpretation of the people’s oral poetry. Through the study of the poetics in the Idoma oral performances, the people’s literary culture is re-situated in the context of other literatures. The work involves a broad interdisciplinary discourse with the aim of producing a concrete taxonomical model for the study of Idoma oral poetry in order to expose some of the vital issues concerning the greater sensitivity of representation, interpretation and evaluation of oral poetry genres. This study further argues its relevance, in that it is an attempt to open up Idoma oral literary universe to readers, students and scholars and to explore the way the interplay of culture and oral literature has enabled the society to develop a complex social system characterized by collectivism and egalitarian norms. The study also classified the meanings and themes of Idoma oral performance in a broader social context. Even the exploration into the significant  roles  the  variant  poetry  genres  play  in  maintaining  collective  wisdom,  national identity, solidarity and traditional moral values equally justifies the relevance of this study.

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