Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie?

Okpewho, Isidore.
Journal of Folklore Research, Volume 40, Number 3, September-December
2003, pp. 215-232 (Article)
Published by Indiana University Press
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215
Isidore Okpewho
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie?
I N ONE OF THE MANY arresting moments of The Ozidi Saga, an epic
tale from the Ijo of the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, the narrator,
Okabou Ojobolo, has just finished presenting Ozidis encounter with
Ogueren, the formidable monster of twenty limbs. Then comes a new
opponent, Badoba, bragging that he will dispose of Ozidi without
any difficulty; the heros earlier opponents performed so poorly
against him because they lacked the necessary resources for taking
him on. Okabou then paints a fittingly terrifying picture of Badobas
physique: his head touches the sky and the length of his sword is
interminable. In light of the picture Okabou painted earlier of
Ogueren, a comparison between him and Badoba becomes inevitable,
as we can see in the following exchange between the narrator and a
member of the audience:
Spectator: Was he greater than Ogueren?
Okabou: What, greater than Ogueren? The heroes and heroes there
how can they be compared? Each had his own might.
Audience: Right. (Clark-Bekederemo [1977] 1991:14748)
1
The episode illustrates well the challenges facing oral narrators in
the all too immediate circumstances of their performance before a
discerning audience. A careful reading of The Ozidi Saga reveals that
Okabou enjoyed considerable empathy from his ethnic fellows among
the audience, whose patriotic pride was greatly fired by this perfor-
mance of their traditional epic in an environment (Ibadan) far from
their Delta homeland. But the spectators question clearly indicates
the always-present risk of an aesthetic discrepancy between narrator
and audience: the latter are less easily drawn than the former into
Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 40, No. 3, 2003
Copyright 2003 Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University
216 Isidore Okpewho
the fantastical world of the tale, being frequently inclined to take a
realistic view of the images conjured by the narrator. This does not
mean that our spectator thinks any the less of the narrator. It may
simply point to an effort on the spectators part to come to terms
with the highly nuanced outlook the narrator is trying to present
with his choice of figures that are not exactly part of the landscape of
everyday life; in other words, the spectator is struggling to make a
mental switch from objective to mythic reality.
Yet these narrators, even the highly skilled ones among them, have
been so customized by their training and practice in the craft that
they make these aesthetic demands of their audience even in tales
located squarely in the world of everyday reality. In this paper, I wish
to examine some of the narratives I have collected over the years
from my part of Nigeria, the Delta State, in light of the aesthetic dis-
crepancy I have suggested between narrator and audience. For al-
though I agree that the audience, being arguably less subject than
the performer to the emotive charge of the tale, are entirely entitled
to take a more rational view of its contents, I fear their expectations
may not sufficiently address some of the perspectives from which the
narrative art endeavors to reorder the often complex signs (cultural,
political, and otherwise) of our varied existence.
Over the past three decades, I have undertaken an extensive project
of recording tales told in areas where I grew up. Although I started
out collecting any tales I could find, I decided quite early to concen-
trate my efforts on the subclass of epic, or heroic narratives. The de-
cision was not hard to make. I come from the section of Nigeriathe
midwestern corner of the country, bordered to the east by the River
Niger and to the south by the Atlantic Oceanwhere the old king-
dom of Benin had flexed its military and political muscle most pow-
erfully. So strong was the influence of Benin in the lives of the people
that a safe majority of tales found in any community in this area
even tales entirely about animal charactersare likely to be set in old
Benin. So I had before me a wealth of stories about the various wars
the communities had fought with Benin in defense of their interests
and their pride. Their heroes were invariably men endowed with ei-
ther extraordinary physical qualities or mystical resources, sometimes
with a combination of both. I have no tale, in my collection, in which
any of these communities lost a war to Benineven though we know
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 217
that given the kingdoms superior military organization, it stood a
much better chance of beating each of them in a fight.
Most of the narrators from whom I collected the tales have been
men, and there are reasons for this gender bias. For one thing, since
the old days women have been accustomed to tell tales of a more
educational or moralistic qualityespecially tales about animals and
humans and the lessons to be drawn from their interactionsrather
than tales of military confrontation. This is partly because warfare
was considered a male affair but also partly because in many of these
confrontations the warriors equipped themselves with certain occult
resources that are available only to men. For another thing, in more
recent times, as I have pointed out recently, women have become
so deeply engaged in the entrepreneurial endeavors of the post-
independence economy that they show little interest in some tradi-
tional pastimes, like storytelling; hence, if you went to the village
enquiring for the best known narrators, you would be as likely to be
pointed by women as by men to male ones (1998:14142). The point
I make here may not be very convincing to feminist judges of such
matters, and I am quite prepared to be challenged for not having
tried hard enough to exploit more feminine talent than I seem to
have done so far. But the male interest in matters of war, especially in
a traditional African society, can hardly be denied. In the particular
case of male narrators who may never themselves have fought in any
war, the opportunity to experience, even vicariously, the glory that
comes from the martial life evidently has an appeal that may be gain-
fully invested in the narrative performance.
Of the several narrators I worked with in the villages, I spent most
of my time with Charles Boy Simayi of the village of Ubulu-Uno,
whom I first met in June 1980. Now nearing eighty, Simayi grew up,
like most men his age, in the conflict-prone atmosphere of the
polygynous family and in the hard but chastening life of the rural
economy. Thanks largely to his innate industry as well as a keen eye
for the valuable examples of enterprising elders, he found himself
mastering a variety of skills such as farming, hunting, and herbal and
occult medicine, as well as allied traditional arts like carpentry, archi-
tecture, craft-making, storytelling, and musicianship. In the 1980s,
when I recorded most of my oral tales from him, I observed him on
occasions at work on his farm, building a block of the only secondary
218 Isidore Okpewho
school in his village, and constructing a drum commissioned by one of
the orchestral groups in a neighboring village. It was clearly in recogni-
tion of his eventful life, as well as his varied skills, that he was appointed
to perform not only counseling roles in the internal administration of
his community but even diplomatic duties, such as settling disputes
between citizens of the village living in faraway places. About ten years
ago, he was honored with a highly prized chieftaincy title as paramount
herbal doctor of his village. I learned this shortly after I relocated to
the U.S. in 1991, and I rejoiced in his good fortune. But the result of
his new position is that he can no longer engage in activities like music
making and storytelling. So, when I took home a camcorder in 1994,
hoping to capture a narrative performance by him on video, I had to
content myself instead with a matter-of-fact account of his life.
*
Of the stories I recorded from Simayi in the eighties, one of the
most significant concerns the well-documented war between his
people (the Ubulu) and the kingdom of Benin.
2
Briefly, an invitation
had been announced for herbalists in the Benin empire to offer
their services in saving an incumbent Oba (king) from dying, like
several others before him, from a congenital disease. All the herbal-
ists who failed the qualifying test (for the opportunity to cure the
Oba) had been executed, but the Ubulu expert prevailed and finally
brought the Oba to good health. As a reward, the Oba gave him his
daughter (Adesua) to take home as his wife. On his way home, Ezemu
was confronted by a key imperial official (Ezomo), who questioned
the offer of a Benin princess to a chief from the outbacks. Ezemu
smiled away the insult, but on getting home he cast a spell that in-
stantly spirited the princess all the way from Benin to his side. When
this trick finally came to light, the Ezomo persuaded the Oba to de-
clare war on the Ubulu. Against the entire imperial command, Ezemu
simply led seven hunters, fortified with charms, in a redoubt that
destroyed not only the army but also a formidable array of Benin
witches, who were summoned by the Oba when everything else had
failed. In the end, the Oba was forced to sue for peace, by whose
terms a territorial boundary was drawn between the Benin and Ubulu
nations that Benin was enjoined never to violate. In concluding his
story, Simayi is doing his best here to cope with the reactions of some
of us around him:
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 219
Narrator: That was how they fixed the boundary at Abudu.
Okpewho: The boundary between the Bini [people of Benin] and
Narrator: And . . . and the Ubulu.
Okpewho: I see.
Narrator: Its at Abudu, which is what entitles us to claim Abudu, we of
these parts.
Thats where Ezemu fixed the boundary.
Mr. Enyi [percussionist]: Its the white man that changed it as it is now.
Narrator: They didnt change itit remains in the same place till to-
morrow.
Benin dare not overstep it, and pledged never to kill the
Ubulu people again.
Okpewho: I see.
Narrator: So . . . when that recent war came,
And they killed Ubulu people, their kings began to die.
They no longer fulfill their days, and they have continued
to send emissaries to settle matters.
That was where I took my leave of them, and returned.
3
As I pointed out above, the heroes of these anti-imperial war tales
I have collected from the west-Niger Igbo are invariably men like
Ezemu, endowed with either physical or mystical powers, very often
both. With respect to Simayis narratives, although he has never fought
in a war, the fact that he is himself a distinguished herbalist brings an
element of personal interest to his representation of Ezemu and other
heroes who undertake these delicate tasks of national defense.
4
Al-
though I had no reason to suspect that he had skewed the details of
his accounts in an effort to dignify his profession, I thought it might
be interesting to see what kind of image he cut of himself in experi-
ences analogous to the kinds his heroes faced. After he told me the
Ezemu story, we took an entertainment break, during which we dis-
cussed certain details of the story. At an opportune moment, I asked
Simayi if there were any difficult encounters he had himself survived
that he cared to tell me about. He reflected briefly, and indeed he
seemed to have trouble distinguishing between being an eyewitness
of an event and being actually involved in it. He then performed a
story in which, although he was not a principal agonist (in terms of
being directly affected by the outcome of the event), he played some
form of a contributory role.
The story is about a competition for a chieftaincy title between
two young men, Azujionye and his kinsman Odobukwu, in the neigh-
boring town of Ogwashi-Uku, under the paramount rulership of Obi
220 Isidore Okpewho
Izediuno. These title-taking rituals were courtesies traditionally ex-
tended to sons and daughters of the community who had distinguished
themselves in some endeavor or service, and they were designed to
reward them for raising the image of the community in the eyes of
the world. In more recent times, however, there has been fierce com-
petition for these honors in some places by entrepreneurs aiming to
boost their image and draw attention to their material success. In this
particular case, the competition takes the form of each rival trying
hard to outdo the other not only in the size of his entourage (which
includes herbalists employed to ensure the candidates victory) but
also in the quantity of foodstuffs and game carted to the residence of
Obi Izediuno to influence his decision. The ruler, overwhelmed by
this frenzied rivalry in wealth, summons one of his ministers, Odafe,
to help him settle the issue. In turn, Odafe, whose mother happens
to come from Simayis village of Ubulu-Uno, sends for Simayi to join
him in the task. In a brazen display of favoritism, achieved by ma-
nipulating an officiant at the ceremony (boy in the passage cited
below), Odafe and Simayi decide in favor of Odobukwu by determin-
ing that he was the first to present himself to Izediuno, when in real-
ity they have succeeded in helping themselves to some of the bounty
Odobukwu has brought to the ruler. So Izediuno, scarcely unaware
of the intrigue of his advisers, pretends he is merely following their
well-considered counsel in awarding the prize to Odobukwu. Simayi
concludes his tale with Izediunos feigned irritation at the whole
troublesome affair (the first line is spoken in a loud voice):
Narrator: THE KING THEN ROSE UP, SAYING TO THEM, WAIT A
MINUTE!
Let no one come here to bother me any more.
Since, in my first offering of the kolanut [a traditional en-
tertainment],
This boy took it and gave to this man [Odobukwu],
Those who curse me are only cursing themselves:
The clear conscience is free of all indemnity.
Thats as far as I went with them, and returned, while [the
winner] claimed his chieftaincy.
Audience: Welcome!
Narrator: Welcome to you all!
Er, they say that when a fart gets out of hand, the arse is
bared wide for it! (Narrator burst out laughing at the amused
satisfaction of Okpewho.)
5
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 221
There was a particularly awkward moment in the performance of
this tale. When Simayi reported how he had accepted the invitation
to join Odafe in the counseling mission, a member of the audience
(Mr. Kifodu), sitting nearby, promptly asked him, O yu nke a? (You
meanyou here?), emphasizing his misgivings with a pointed hand.
Undeterred, Simayi replied straight away, Mmu agwa i nu! (Im tell-
ing you!). Presumably, Odafe had summoned Simayis help in this
business because of the latters acknowledged wisdom not only in
consultative but also in mystical mattersboth rivals had summoned
herbalists to their aid. But for the ruling council of Ogwashi-Uku to
admit an outsiderone, for that matter, from a much smaller com-
munityinto its decision-making business, however well-endowed that
person may be, certainly taxes the credibility of the narrator a little
even for such rural communities. It was no doubt to prevent any more
awkward confrontations that Simayis chief percussionist, Mr. Enyi,
dropped an aside to the narrator, Jua ajuju nakuku nke o./ Gba nkiti
(Ask questions in this regard./ [Or] be silent [about it]). But Simayi
brushed him aside, Na-aku if y aaku! (Keep to your striking!). When
Enyi urged silence once more shortly after, Simayi simply ignored
him. Kifodus presence clearly put some risk, perhaps a political one,
on Simayis claims about participating in an affair relating to the po-
litically superior community of Ogwashi-Uku; the percussionist was
probably trying to save his leader from any problems that might arise
from his interference in such complex matters.
6
Although I had found this story a compelling performance
musically and otherwiseit was not exactly the kind of story I had in
mind: I had asked for one in which Simayi was a central agonist. I
therefore put the question a little more pointedly to him, causing
him to narrate to me an event that happened in his village during the
Nigerian civil war (196770). It is interesting that although he had
narrated the Ezemu and Izediuno tales against the background of
percussive music provided by his two regular accompanists, the civil
war story was totally unaided by music.
On the face of it, the incident illustrates the highhandedness for
which armies in such war situations are generally notorious, but it
had a special relevance for Simayis little community and clearly for
himself as its champion. Briefly, the villages grand matron (Omu)
was scheduled to be given the most distinguished female honor in
the land (Ada) on an appointed day. A day or so before then, the
222 Isidore Okpewho
village awoke to discover that its entire stock of cattle, from which a
few animals were to be chosen for ritual sacrifice and entertainment
at the occasion, had vanished; inquiries revealed that the stock had
been commandeered by a detachment of the Nigerian (federal) army
stationed within the grounds of a high school in Ogwashi-Uku, about
five miles away. Nobody in Ubulu-Uno was willing to risk a mission of
recovery to the dreaded Nigerian army. Simayi himself flinched when
the appeal was made to him; nonetheless, he assumed the task, though
not without arming himself with adequate charms for the risks ahead.
The soldiers, true to their reputation, put some obstacles in Simayis
way, at one point ordering him to stand up in order to be shot. How-
ever, intervention always managed to come in the nick of time. In the
end, Simayi was allowed by the soldiers to recover his own cow, pav-
ing the way for fellow citizens he had brought with him to make their
own claims. Although the soldiers continued to prove a menace even
when the rites of installation of the Ada had proceeded, the village
was ultimately restored to peace, thanks to its prominent son, who
had put his mystical powers as well as his self-assurance at its service.
Simayi here begins his conclusion of the tale with the angry words of
the federal officer in charge, berating his men for retarding the fed-
eral war effort with their unruly conduct:
THIS IS NOT THE WAR-FRONT.
Its not necessary for you to bring the war to the rear, since
we have already left this place behind.
So, you dont know what youre taking on.
Go to the war-front, if you love fighting, go over there and
fight.
And stop making war on . . . civilians.
That was the order given, and we thus saved our heads.
The Ada was installed,
And that was where I took my leave of them, and returned.
(Okpewho 1992:191)
This story posed yet another test to Simayis credibility in present-
ing historical reality, but this time he enjoyed ample support from a
particular member of the audience. Raphael Ajidoe, a wiry, pint-sized
man of about sixty-five, had frequently punctuated Simayis narra-
tion with comments that the narrator politely indulged. A member
of the party that accompanied Simayi on the rescue mission, Ajidoe
was visibly agitated as the story was being recorded; at one point,
unable to contain himself, he interjected, We were the ones who
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 223
suffered all this [physical abuse by the soldiers]!causing Simayi to
pacify him with a softly spoken, Its all right (Okpewho 1992:191).
No sooner had the story ended and we had entered into a discussion
of the issues raised, than Ajidoe burst into a quite emotional account
he was a stammererof the brutality he had personally suffered from
one of the soldiers on his return from the military camp. He felt
personally hurt by the experience, because two of his sons had fought
on the federal side on a different front in the civil war. Ajidoe caused
much laughter when he concluded his testimony by stating that, not
long after the event he had narrated, the soldier in question had
gone mad on the streets of Ogwashi-Uku: the soldier obviously had
not realized what powers he was fooling with! If a member of Simayis
embassy had the power to hex one misguided soldier, would anyone
doubt that the leader himself had the resources to take on the entire
command?
Considering how much emotion the memory of this incident
aroused on that occasion, I never managed to ask Simayi why he had
not used musical accompaniment for the performance. I suppose
one could suggest that, although Simayi and his people had triumphed
over the risks posed to their lives by the military presence, the civil
war remained a sore issue to deal with, even with the best of narrative
skills. And, perhaps for the same reason, we could go on to argue that
Simayi never really found the impetus to weave the details of his war
account into the familiar structure, musical and otherwise, of his
performances. The implication of this is that if the war story were
performed against a musical background, whether by Simayi himself
or by some future narrator taking up where the master left off, it
would possibly ride on a wave of artistic assumptions (I believe the
classic phrase for this is a willing suspension of disbelief) that would
bring it closer to the realm of myth than to that of history. Whether
or not such an account would invite the sort of misgivings Simayi
faced in his narration of the chieftaincy contest would depend either
on how well the narrator told the story or else on the kind of local
partisan interest that might be at play thereat.
Whatever the case may be, it is clear from the stories I have col-
lected from Simayi that the artistic success of tales in the oral tradi-
tion depends, to a certain extent, on the degree to which a narrator
can internalize the details of his or her account: notice how steadily
Simayi weaves his persona into his narrative events. At one level, this
224 Isidore Okpewho
explains why male and female narrators, as I pointed out earlier, hardly
tell the same kinds of stories. Women would not normally tell war
stories because, although they certainly could, they are somewhat lim-
ited (by experience, at any rate) in the degree to which they can ap-
propriate the martial imagination.
7
By the same token, men are not
as skillful as women in narrating tales of moral education because,
thanks partly to the traditional systems of role distribution in the
domestic economy and partly to the complicated structure of the
polygynous household in which the likes of Simayi were raised, they
are not as well equipped as women for handling the more delicate
aspects of relations, especially between children.
*
This brings me to a second level of considerations. I have spoken
of history and myth as models of representation by which Simayis
war account, told against a musical background, might be assessed.
In our study of stories in the oral tradition, we seem so often inclined
to see these as opposing categories that we hardly stop to ponder the
continuities between them or even the validity of our categorizations
for the people who tell the stories. In an earlier discussion of Simayis
war account (1989), I expressed the faith that personal narratives of
this kind would be of immense value whenever the history of the
Nigerian civil war came to be written. But even there the interfaces
between life and art were hardly lost to me as I reflected how in-
timately Simayi, in the various tales I had been fortunate in collecting
from him, wove his backgrounds and circumstances into the experi-
ences he narrated.
The spectator who doubted Simayis role in the chieftaincy con-
test may have been right. Simayi himself may, in a different context,
disclaim participation in that affair. But the poetic assumptions of
the narrative act might be all the justification he needs for making
his claim; in other words, a well-told tale bears the guarantee of its
authenticity. In inserting himself into the event, Simayi may indeed
be saying something more: Given the delicate nature of the decision
Obi Izediuno had to make between two rivals vying for a title with
mystical as well as material resources, he needed the presence of a
mystic as well endowed as Simayi for the task; the narrators insertion
of himself may be the clinching metonym for the effectiveness by which
the ruler resolved the dilemma facing him. The very act of performing a
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 225
story evidently sets the narrator up to take figurative liberties with truth
as understood in normal everyday discourse; the more elaborate the
apparatus for doing such a performance (e.g., musical accompani-
ment), the greater the tendency toward figuration.
Was Simayi trying to impress mea university professor, with my
sophisticated recording tackleby making claims his rural fellows
might be inclined to question? Possibly. But evidently self-insertion is
accepted practice in oral narrative performance, though it is more
prominent in some places than in others. Ruth Finnegan has remarked
the habit of one of her narrators among the Limba of Sierra Leone,
a blind man, who frequently added to the vividness of his narration
by adding in an aside that he had been there at that point, standing
silently by and observing with his own eyesblind though his listen-
ers knew them to bethe fantastic doings of animals or Kanu (God)
(1967:74). In the Malian epic Kambili, the narrator (Seydou Camara,
a hunters bard) often proclaims his sympathies with the hunter hero
Kambili and characters allied to his cause by using the possessive pro-
noun my in referring to them (Bird 1974). Based on performances
he recorded from his principal Xhosa (South Africa) narrator, Harold
Scheub has observed the storytellers tendency to [move] out of her
role as narrator to assume fully the character that she is depicting
(1977:354). Finally, Odogwu Okwuashi, one of the most accomplished
raconteurs I have had the pleasure of recording among the west-Niger
Igbo, frequently ended his tales about ancient Benin by claiming that
the heroes, who successfully rebelled against the dreaded kingdom,
had personally invited him to record their triumphs for the benefit
of the wider world (Okpewho 1998:15469)!
The conventional wisdom about these acts of self-insertion is that
they are devices that facilitate the narrators imaginative infiltration
of, and exit from, the extraordinary worlds of the events they nar-
rate. This is no doubt true. But clearly there is so much political
interest invested in many of the tales I have recorded from the west-
Niger Igboseveral of them anti-hegemonist tales of relations be-
tween peoplesthat we must look somewhat beyond aestheticist
explanations for the phenomenon of self-insertion. Jan Vansina has
cited these intrusions of the narrators personality as a principal prob-
lem in establishing the historical value of oral traditions (1965:108,
130). While we question such purist aspirations of conventional West-
ern historiography, we can at least begin to recognize the peculiar
226 Isidore Okpewho
intersection of aesthetic and pragmatic imperatives undergirding
these narrative acts in oral culture.
The phenomenon is not unknown in other traditions outside Af-
rica,
8
although I imagine each society has its own criteria, within its
systems of discourse, for determining the value of any piece of oral
evidence. While we cannot stop historians and other social scientists
who explore the evidential value of oral narratives from operating
within their recognized parameters for dealing with distortions in
their texts, I urge that we resist the temptation to use the truth/
lie dichotomy in judging the practice of self-insertion by narrators.
I suspect that informants who felt sufficiently committed to a nega-
tive cause would hardly offer themselves for a spotlighted perfor-
mance; if they did, they would hardly do a job of much artistic merit.
9
When a narrator inserts himself into his account of an event he may
not have participated in or even witnessed, or when he maneuvers
his interests, his backgrounds, or personal circumstances into his
portraits of favored characters, he is in essence offering a critical
perspective on issues relating to his communitys social or political
history, or else putting his signature, his seal of approval, on an expe-
rience he sees as bearing some relevance for himself or a community
of interests he identifies with. Performance becomes the right set-
ting for such an act because it facilitates the transfer of ordinary ex-
perience to a larger metaphorical level of signification, within the
canons of representation recognized by the culture.
*
Why do these interventions of the narrators personality and in-
terests matter in our study of oral narratives? There has been a tradi-
tion, in cognitionist scholarship, of considering orality a degenerate
brother of literacy in the representation of social reality, whereby the
former is seen as lacking the capacity for accuracy that is considered
a hallmark of the latter (e.g., Horton 1967; Havelock 1976, 1982;
Goody 1977, 1986, 2000).
10
Other scholars, however, have argued quite
differently and persuasively (e.g., Finnegan 1988). Also, anyone who
has read Zora Neale Hurstons delightful masterpiece, Mules and Men,
is no doubt familiar with her well-meaning portraits of rural folk in
Florida as a community where they really lies up a storm on their
front porches and in lumber camps. Hurston has shown unexcep-
tionable commitment to that community in her use of the materials
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 227
she collected from it, and Robert Hemenway has done a credible job
of demonstrating that these tales should be seen less as quaint fic-
tions created by a primitive people than as profound expressions of
a groups behavior (1980:168).
Among other theorists on the subject, William Bascom follows
earlier scholars like Durkheim and Malinowski in categorizing oral
narratives on the criterion of believability, though he takes care to
caution that he is referring only to the beliefs of those who tell and
hear these tales, and not to our beliefs as outside investigators
(1965:7). The division often assumed between fact and fiction, truth
and lying, continues to engage scholarly attention. Two of the more
recent views on the issue, by Richard Bauman and Elizabeth Tonkin,
deserve special mention because they have been based on a careful
consideration of the contexts of narrative performance as a valuable
criterion for studying storytelling as a factor of the social construc-
tion of identity in oral culture. In his seminal work, Story, Performance,
and Event (1986), Bauman examines the relevance of performance
contexts in the interplay of events and stories told about them; mov-
ing beyond the simple divisions erected between truth and falsehood,
he explores the ethnographic foundations of storytelling both as a
creative tradition and as a strategy for the construction and negotia-
tion of personal and social identities. In her equally incisive Narrat-
ing Our Pasts (1992), a study of oral history among the Kru of Liberia,
Tonkin abjures the individualistic ideology of Western (literate) his-
toriography by exploring the place of these storytelling events in com-
munal life; again, moving beyond the truth/falsehood dichotomy,
she gives due attention to specific performance contexts in interro-
gating the relationship between personal and collective memory
and the ways in which personal identity, social identity, processes of
identification and historical representations are so intertwined (132).
Even more importantly, Tonkin succeeds in showing that, in recog-
nizing the interplay of personal and social interests, oral historiogra-
phy is no less authentic or credible in the representation of historical
reality. In this sense, self-insertion may be seen as a ploy that achieves,
in oral culture, the same effect as an authors critical perspective in
literate historiography.
11
Like visual artists, perhaps, who inscribe images of themselves into
their representation of a wide range of scenes (Salvador Dali, Norman
Rockwell, and others), the narrator who weaves his life into his narra-
228 Isidore Okpewho
tive dramas is less inclined to violate reality than to identify himself
with the larger metaphorical relevance of his text. Such an activity is
not unlike the situation in autobiographical writing. John Eakin makes
the interesting point that autobiographical truth is not a fixed but
an evolving content in an intricate process of self-discovery and self-
creation, and . . . that the self that is the center of all autobiographi-
cal narrative is necessarily a fictive structure (3).
12
By fictive I un-
derstand Eakin to imply not so much that writers of autobiography
are necessarily engaged in lying as that they have undertaken to in-
stall themselves at the center of their narrative universe and to
reconfigure that universe in order to validate their place within its
structure of relations. A narrator like Simayi is obviously well placed
to assume such a reconstitutive role. Living in a militarized polity that
placed enormous constraints on individual self-assertion and telling
tales of powerful men who won their leadership by employing far from
ordinary methods, he is driven to place himself at the center of his
narrative world partly under the aesthetic impulse of performance but
also partly because he feels committed enough to the interests of his
society to take a subjective stand in interrogating them. What is at play
in such narratives is not so much an abstract concept of truth as the
right of the individual to review the facts of historical experience in the
context of contemporary realities. In the process, he reinvents himself
even as he redraws the outlines of his peoples cultural history.
In the final analysis, the challenges posed to Okabous tale of Ozidi
are not radically different from the misgivings raised against Simayis
story of the chieftaincy contest, although we are dealing with narra-
tives set in two rather different time frames. Each storyteller finds
himself making, in the course of a spotlighted performance, claims
he might be hard put to defend in normal daily discourse. And each
stands his ground because for him the telling of the tale is not just an
act of entertainment. Rather, he sees in his performance an opportu-
nity both to give an account of himself as a skilled man of words and
to project to his audience some of the deadly serious, transcendent
import of the details of the picture he paints with those words. In
appreciating narratives of cultural history, in particular, we need to
rethink the all-too-easy lines we draw between truth and lying.
Department of Africana Studies
Binghamton University
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 229
Notes
1. The Ozidi Saga was recorded in performance in 1963 by J. P. Clark[-Bekederemo],
then a research fellow in African Studies at the University of Ibadan. The recording
took place at the residence of Madam Yabuku, an Ijo resident in Ibadan, then capital
of the Western Region of Nigeria. The narrator, heading an orchestra of fellow Ijo,
performed this epic (of the Tarakiri clan of the Ijo) in the Ijo language and in the
total of seven days decreed by tradition. The audience comprised many Ijo residents
in Ibadan, a Yoruba town, as well as several curious non-Ijo, including some of Clark-
Bekederemos colleagues who had accompanied him from the university.
2. See Okpewho (1992:192202) for the story (in translation) and discussion,
and Okpewho (1998:1518) for a comparative treatment of the story with other ver-
sions of it in Egharevba ([1934] 1968:4142) and Sidahome (1964:4572).
3. Although the administrative arrangement claimed here by the narrator is ques-
tionable, the Ika tongue spoken in Abudu today is largely an admixture of Igbo and
Bini linguistic elements. The point about Benin kings dying again is evidently a ref-
erence to the death of Oba Akenzua II not long after the end of the civil war.
4. See, for instance, Okpewho (1990:12735).
5. The metaphor of the unruly fart is meant to capture the irresponsible display
by the two rivals for the chieftaincy title: they were simply given the room they needed
to make absolute fools of themselves!
6. At my request, my brother-in-law and field assistant, Patrick Arinze, later asked
Kifodu why he had questioned Simayis claim, and Kifodu simply said he didnt think
Simayi had the kind of influence in Ogwashi-Uku that he claimed to have!
7. I do not mean to simplify the structure of power relations that excludes women,
under such circumstances, from participation in the decision-making processes of
the traditional society. But I believe that Ifi Amadiume (1987) has demonstrated
how well the distribution of roles was worked out between the genders in precolonial
times, so that neither of them transgressed the established areas of authority and
responsibility without consequences. In her judgment, it was colonialism that brought
about the demise of such balanced relationships.
8. See, for instance, Bryce Boyers discussion (1958) of legend distortion among
the Mescalero Apache Indians.
9. Oral artists are, of course, frequently hired to promote unpopular causes. But
if the careers of such stooges in the troubled days of Nigerias First Republic are any
guide, their effectiveness is all too often marred by the face-saving devices they are
driven to adopt in their performances. It is comforting to note that the better artists
in a community, who have a reputation and an honor to protect, have often resisted
the pressure to support unpopular politicians, though they have been made to pay
dearly for their forthrightness. Olatunde Olatunjis discussion of this subject (1979)
is quite enlightening.
10. Pascal Boyer (1990) has offered some insightful qualifications to the cognitionist
conclusions reached by Horton, Goody, and others, but I find aspects of his discus-
sion of the truth-value of traditional statements just as reductionist. On the basis of
his field study of ritualists and mvet epic narrators among the Fang, he takes a num-
ber of positions on the rationality of beliefs held and claims made by the people. For
instance, he thinks that, contrary to what happens in Western scientific culture, the
230 Isidore Okpewho
Fang have a sense of categories that is based not on theoretical foundations but on
an episodic memory of specific situations. The examples he cites convince me,
rather, that Fang representations of these specific situations argue a sense of cat-
egories (i.e., a theory) that serves to validate specific cases. More pertinently, he is
persuaded that whereas the Fang have no difficulty accepting claims made by cus-
tomized persons (e.g., ritual specialists and mvet bards) as trueclaims like twins
are birds or anthills are witch-craftsuch claims would get little credit in their
rational thinking, as though the situation were any different with Christian dogmas
like the Virgin birth or the Resurrection. However, when Boyer acknowledges the
customized situations in which these claims are made as conferring a special truth
value to them, his arguments achieve a certain validity in recognizing the context of
performance as conferring some metaphoric quality to statements and a more tran-
scendent authority to their customized makers, beyond what ordinary life would
allow. As I indicated above, Simayi himself might not so readily admit in daily dis-
course that he had participated in decisions over the chieftaincy contest in the pal-
ace of Obi Izediuno.
11. For an equally valid argument from the ethnography of speaking school, which
has put much needed emphasis on narrative contexts and especially ethnographer-
subject relations, I think that the following from Elaine Lawless is relevant here: A
reflexive stance should illuminate the biases and preconceptions that inform our
interpretations (where we are) and move us forward, then, in the direction of collec-
tivity in interpretation and a new authentication of a multivocal kind of ethnogra-
phy, which includes, as well, where others are, but which does not privilege one inter-
pretation over another (1992:302)a position that amply complements Dennis
Tedlocks landmark plea for a dialogical anthropology (1983:32138). Although I
recognize that generic classification (e.g., fact/fancy, history/myth, etc.) is part of
our strategy as scholars to fashion some scheme for resolving challenges posed by
the ways of oral culture, the idea of lying or falsehood has no place in my concept of
myth. My reflections on it, against the background of Bascoms use of belief as a
basis of judgment (Okpewho 1983:5759), finally lead me to a definition of myth
which takes full account of the imaginative imperatives of performance and the
relevance of oral tradition to cultural history: Myth is not really a particular type of
tale as against another; it is neither the spoken counterpart of an antecedent ritual,
nor is it a tale determined exclusively by a binary scheme of abstract ideas or a se-
quential order of elements. It is simply . . . that quality of fancy which informs the
symbolistic or configurative powers of the human mind at varying degrees of inten-
sity; its principal virtue is that it tends to resist all constraint to time and experience
to the end that it satisfies the deepest urges of a people or of mankind (69, 219).
12. Compare Derek Walcott: every I is a/fiction finally (Omeros 291).
Oral Tradition: Do Storytellers Lie? 231
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