4 - The Narrator and His Audience

Summary

As I have pointed out, Okabou told the Ozidi story to an audience in Ibadan at a time when the political climate there was deteriorating. Partisan politics was increasingly bringing rivals into confrontation—ideological, physical, and otherwise—with one another. Civic institutions were steadily collapsing, the prospects of peaceful resolution were gradually declining, and it was clear to many people that the country was heading toward catastrophe of some sort. In this kind of atmosphere, would the storyteller tell the sort of story he has usually told to fellow citizens back in the delta? How would such a story be received here?

Although in oral literary studies it is widely accepted that the audience of an oral performance generally exerts a dynamic influence on the performer's work, whether in a participatory or a critical capacity, case studies of this influence are somewhat rare. This is largely because the business of transcribing with absolute faith the relevant contingencies of an oral performance is a very expensive one. There are rather few books in which these contingencies are recorded at the appropriate points, because there are equally few publishers willing to commit their money to the volume of material that would result from such meticulous documentation. Consequently, we have mostly been content with platitudes about the integration of the audience in the performance of a song or a tale; seldom have we been exposed to enlightening insights because this integration seems generally accepted as an article of faith.