IDEOLOGY AND AESTHETICS OF SONGS AND CHANTS IN FEMI OSOFISAN’S DRAMA

Abstract

Songs and chants constitute multimedia aesthetics by which African playwrights and dramatists project their sociocultural background, ideas and visions. Theatre critics have examined history, myths, legends and heroic deeds as topical issues in the plays of Osofisan without in-depth exploration of the multimedia role of songs and chants with respect to class consciousness. In this study, Femi Osofisan’s use of songs and chants to invoke class consciousness was investigated with a view to establishing his ideological deployment of oral aesthetics to project revolutionary ethos in African society as represented in the selected plays.

Marxism and Postcolonial Feminism were adopted as theoretical framework owing to the emphasis on individual’s self-consciousness and self-realisation and Osofisan’s feminist postures, respectively. Twelve plays of Osofisan were purposively selected based on their oral aesthetic relevance to class consciousness. They were Tegonni: An African Antigone (TAA), Women of Owu (WO), Another Raft (AR), Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels (EVM),Once Upon Four Robbers (OFR), Midnight Hotel (MH), The Chattering and the Song (TCS), Farewell to a Cannibal Rage (FCR), Aringindin and the Night Watchmen (ANW), Many Colours Make the Thunder-King (MCT), Morountodun (MT) and Yungba-Yungba and the Dance Contest (YYDC). Forty songs and 32 chants in the 12 plays were examined. Texts were subjected to literary criticism.

Songs and chants in Osofisan’s plays constitute indirect means of talking to power, as well as appealing to the sensibilities of the oppressed through self-consciousness and self-realisation. The songs and chants are used to create humour, suspense, spontaneity and permit audience participation. They aesthetically reveal post-independence disillusionment, squalor, corruption, injustice and historical reconstruction. Post-independence disillusionment is portrayed in TAA, while the issue of maladministration and inept leadership reveal bad policies and lack of social cohesion in TCS, OFR, EVM and YYDC. Squalor is portrayed in OFR due to social inequalities, while sit-tight syndrome manifests in Iyeneri, the priestess in YYDC. Corruption is depicted in both the military and civilian administrations in TCS, EVM and MH. Moremi’s panegyric songs and chants in MT are both mythical and historical, while TCS reconstructs the reign of Alaafin Abiodun. Unity, collaboration and reconciliation are portrayed in FCR and YYDC, while MCT, EVM, WO, AR, and ANW portray injustice and oppression, as well as reincarnation, folkloric elements and the magical power of incantation. These elements are used to project the African psychosocial milieu. Dirges and chants in WO, TAA, FCR, MCT, AR and ANW reveal African history, beliefs, norms and mores. Female characters such as Titubi, Tegonni, Olabisi, Ayoka, Yobi, Lawumi, market women in MT, TAA, FCR, YYDC, ANW, WO and OFR are agents of change and emancipation of the oppressed.

Femi Osofisan ingeniously embedded imitation, entertainment and imagined situation in songs and chants to communicate oppression and provoke revolutionary consciousness in the oppressed.