African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (review)

Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah’s volume is concerned with a wide range of literary issues in Nigeria, beginning with Yoruba approaches to literary criticism (the opening chapter) and including chapters on: particular volumes of Yoruba poetry; two Soyinka plays, a Yoruba adaption of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex; Yoruba masquerade (Egungun); and pre-Islamic Yoruba poetry. Judging by the table of contents, this book appears to be other than what its title suggests. If the author were to limit analysis to varieties of Yoruba literary genres and the influence of Islam in them, he would have his hands full enough.

However, the volume also contains two chapters that appear by their titles to seek a connection between Yoruba and Hausa literary traditions. One of these is the third chapter, and one is the last of ten chapters. These positions are interesting, because one would expect that one would lead into another, and that they would be outgrowths of previous analysis of Yoruba literary works. As it stands, the chapters do not comprise an organic whole, but appear to be a collection of papers delivered in separate venues, all loosely related to some aspect of oral tradition, but lacking a cohesive thread. Na’Allah refers to some significant authorities in the field of literary analysis in general and specific to African literature, but the citations seem only tangentially connected to the argument. This is likely due to the absence of a clearly stated thesis overall. Where reference is made to Hausa poetry, the points are off-point or just erroneous.

The title is enticing and promises attention to the role of Islam in influencing spoken and written expression in the predominantly Islamic region of northern Nigeria as well as in Yoruba culture in the country. There certainly is a need for such a study, but this one is not it. What Hausa and Yoruba cultures share most readily is Nigerian nationality and Islamic traditions. It is in the two Hausa-related chapters that Na’Allah attempts most clearly to approach the promise in his title, loosely discussing Islam in relation to its expression in oral traditions and performance in the region. The absence of many rich investigations of poetry among the Hausa (works by Furniss, Hiskett, and Skinner, to name a few, are not mentioned) and (separately) among the Yoruba is significant. Instead, he relies on specious sources such as Gates’s 1988 piece that has little bearing on the topic of this volume. This broad range of materials is stretched over diverse ethnic traditions and regions, and lacks a cohesive running thread. It would be a magnificent contribution to the field to engage in an intellectually rigorous investigation of Islamic influence across such ethnic parameters, and one hopes that in the future this author might focus on such an endeavor.