DAILY INDEPENDENT 10/18 Monday, October 18th, 2004 Culture, Ethnic Tradition and African Literature Today (1) By Emmanuel Sule Our world, like a wandering snake, is, whether we like it or not, gradually sloughing off its skin of culture and ethnic tradition. Westernisation, science and technology have held our breaths. Most of what we hold as our cultures and ethnic traditions today are like water held in a basket. Someone, who boasts he or she is from Hausa culture, soon realises he/she owns little or nothing of the real substance of Hausa culture. At least, every one wakes up to this reality helplessly every day; every one talks about a thing, which used to be – and ought to be, today, because of its cultural values – but is not in being. A modern African writer is also helpless about the situation, although in his or her idiosyncrasy, he or she prides himself or herself in being the custodian of culture. Rapid technological advancement is fast taking control of things. With such a situation what does an African writer do?First, he looks back to the early canons. The literature of culture contact or conflict is a formidable genesis. This literature, itself, is an age, loaded with many strands of culture and ethnic tradition. The toilers of this age, led by Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, make a list of writers that have become household names in departments of English (and allied departments) in African universities. These writers were born into bucolic settings and grew up imbibing much of their cultures and ethnic traditions. Although most of them went to school outside Africa, they held Africa to their breasts the way a woman holds her baby to her breasts and vice versa.And when they wrote it was natural that culture and ethnic tradition bustled in their works, triggering in them ideas and nuances, actions and attitudes, phenomena and philosophies that could be sourced from culture and ethnic tradition. Ambitious francophone and Caribbean writers came up with Negritude to attract and immortalise the beauty in the cultures and ethnic traditions of Africa. Given their birth histories and experiences, it was natural that their works had culture-embedded storylines and insistent bucolic flavour. And by the way, what could they have produced apart from that? I do not intend to denigrate them even though some of them – including their headmaster, Achebe – overdid culture and ethnic traditions thus edging their works towards anthropology and ethnography. They were confined to (or hamstrung by!) the three factors, according to Hippolyte Taine, which account for the particularisation of a work of arts namely biology (race), culture (environment) and history (epoch). Again, I ask, if they had not done a literature cooked in culture and ethnic tradition, what would they have done? After all, that age had a desperately yearning eye on Africa: colonialists were just fascinated that a literature could come out of Africa. And since the literary adventure (or misadventure!) of Tutuola, Palmwine Drinkard, received stupendous attention, those who could guide their pens on paper saw how they could portray their culture to the outside world. The attention they did get. But we must not be guided by that attention and call their works great simply because they were works of culture and ethnic tradition. Some critics insist – without enough substantiation – that literature written in that age, because of its culture-bound complexion, is great literature; and that we do not have great literature any more since we have abandoned our culture and ethnic tradition.Now, questions flood my mind. When you say a great writer of that age, say, Wole Soyinka, became great (if at all the yardstick for greatness should be the Nobel Prize) because of his romance with Yoruba culture and tradition, then tell us who didn’t write about that during that age and why didn’t all of them become great on that account? Did people see greatness in Soyinka’s works because he wrote about Yoruba culture and tradition or because of HOW he wrote about the culture and tradition? If at all culture and ethnic tradition, the ingredient for superior literature in Africa, is what we can use to judge writer’s prowess in literary pursuit, then would Soyinka’s dramas have been considered better than Ola Rotimi’s whose main forte derives from culture-specific dramatic adventurism? In other words, isn’t Rotimi a patron of culture and historical tradition more than Soyinka? Of what use is it if, in assessing our writers today, we jump into the past, dust up an old great writer, compare him/her with the writers of today and consider the old writer’s works greater because they are rooted in his culture and ethnic tradition?In our age today, we have to know that literature ought not to be a slaving apology to culture and ethnic tradition. Great writers in the past had written about culture and ethnic tradition because it was an age that culture blossomed, signposting several social realities. It was an age of tales by the moonlight; it was an age of authentic African ritualism when the minds of men were yet tautened in the phenomenal greatness of African traditional religion; it was an age that elders upheld social structures with wisdom and youth trod the path of wisdom burrowed by elders. Such an age with its cultural and traditional realities could not have substantiated literature in any other way apart from what we see in the works of the first generation writers of African literature. And as at that time that culture and ethnic tradition flourished in the womb of literature, there were some writers who wrote in pitiable apology to culture and tradition. Amadi’s The Concubine, Nwapa’s Efuru, Munonye’s The Only Son are a few examples of heavily culture-laden literature that lacks adequate artistry to live as important works of literature. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~