Shepherding the Chants Home: Language and Mmanwu Minstrelsy in Ezenwa–Ohaeto's Poetry

In: Matatu, Band 33, Heft 1, S. 135-152

Abstract

The essay discusses Ezenwa–Ohaeto's use of the masquerade () minstrel as a paradigm in his experimentation with language in his poetry. Such experimentation with local African oral aesthetics is common in postcolonial African literature, and has been one way that African writers have hoped to create authenticity for their writings. Ezenwa–Ohaeto in his poetry, however, does not practise this experimentation as a mere identification and use of for the minstrel (for instance in the use of proverbs, paradoxical expressions, etc. culturally associated with the persona), but reworks and re-contextualizes the local expressions. His attention to language, though not entirely successful, reveals the project on the localization of the language of African poetry as being worth-while if it treats the local sayings as raw materials from which something new must be created. The African poet who is able to take language beyond what the indigenous sources have provided is the real "shepherd" of chants.