The Oral Artist and Oppositional Politics in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Denja Abdullahi’s Mairogo

Abstract

In the context of modern societies, criticism of political leadership is located within the framework of formalized, democratized organizations, movements, and rights groups. These are modern paradigms within which dissenting factions of society express contradictory perspectives of the policies, actions or inactions of the leadership. This article examines the role of the social critic which oral artists played in traditional African societies in two selected literary works: Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman (1975) (a play) and Denja Abdullahi’s Mairogo (2009) (a dramatic poem). It also investigates how the symbolism-rich oral aesthetics aid the criticism. This essay regards the role of the oral artist in the society as a viable model of opposition which can be synthesized with aspects of the modern model. This would produce an effective medium for the expression of opinions and dissents against constituted authorities in postcolonial African societies. This exploration is crucial as postcolonial African states continue to grapple with the challenges of stabilizing their polity within a western framework which breeds factional rivalries and conflict between competing parties. This article concludes that re-thinking and merging traditional and modern paradigms of opposition discourse is fundamental to postcolonial African states attaining the needed environment crucial to their socio-political and economic development.