INTRODUCTION Oral literature of folk literature refers to the heritage of imaginative verbal creations, stories, folk believes and songs of pre-literate societies have been evolved and passed on through the spoken word from one generation to the other. As a relatively new field of study. The African literature is a produce within an environment in the predominant of mode of communication is oral. African writers have also been falling back on the rich oral tradition of their people. The extent to see a writer uses the oral tradition is always often determined by his closeness to the Africa oral tradition. The influence of African oral tradition on African poetry helps to authenticate or establish the authencity of Africa literary tradition Orality in Modern African poetry manifest itself in a number of ways. It has to do with both the content as well as the form of African poetry.
The most obvious prove that contemporary African poets are indebted to the indigenous poetic tradition of their people is in their interest in rehabilitating and excavating traditional poetic forms. For instance Wole Soyinka ‘IDANRE’ is best understood within the Ijala poetic traditions among the Yoruba culture. The poem in a sense is a form of Ijala as it celebrates Ogun- the god of Iron
Kofi Awoonor also models his poem on the traditional poems of abuse among the Ewe of Ghana. Niyi Osundare has also admitted at many of his poems are written in form of ‘oriki’. Each of these poets has been extending the possibility of the same indigenous poetic The influence which the various elements of oral traditions exert on modern African writing especially poetry is indeed tremendous. In fact, major African literary texts indicate attachment to the African cosmic setting. This is the setting which Mazisi Kunene describes as the primary basis of all literatures. Part of the reasons why many African writers borrow from the stock of oral traditions can be attributed to the writers recognition of the functions which verbal art forms perform in the society. For instance, William Bascorm believes that verbal art forms such as myths and legends contain detailed descriptions of sacred ritual, the codified belief or dogma of the religious system of the people. A.H. Gayton amplified this idea in his ‘Perspectives in Folklore’ when he argues that the mythological system of a people is often their educational system and that the children who sit listening to an evening’s tale under the bright moonlight ate imbibing traditional knowledge and attitudes. In a study of education among the Chaga of east Africa, Raum also observes that the intrinsic value of proverbs to the people lies in two qualities. They are regarded as ‘inheritance from their ancestors incorporating the experience of the tribe, and they serve as instruments both for self control and for the control of others.

Both Okot p’Bitck and Crhistopher Okigbo are significantly influenced by African oral traditions. Like other African artists, they borrow from the rich African verbal art forms to create new vision of life and new poetic idioms with remarkable originality. These borrowing occur in the form of imaginative use of African traditional symbols, images, proverbs, myths and other traditional stylistic devices.
Okot p’Bitek’s ‘Song of Lawino’

Symbols
Adrian Roscoe’s comment on ‘Song of Lawino’ in his ‘Uhuru’s Fire’ touches on Okot p’Bitek’s imaginative use of oral traditions. Roscoe declares that Okot p’Bitek’s song ‘has been a truly seminal development’ and that its success ‘stems in part from its relationship to oral tradition’. He emphasizes that Okot p’Bitek’s achievement is that, ‘better than most African poets, he has created in ‘Song of Lawino’ a form which is popular and the outgrowth of home tradition’. One of the conscpicous traditional icons in Okot p’Bitek’s poetry is symbolism, Lawino, the speaker of the poem relies on the traditional Acholi symbols of the horn, the bull and the spear to lament her husband’s loss of traditional qualities. Among the Acholi, the horn is not only a musical instrument but also a ritual object connected with the initiation into adulthood. In Ceremonies, young men blow their horns as signals of their individuality and reputation. Thus, Lawino speaks of her own fame that spreads far beyond her immediate environment like the horn that extends a young man’s fame. I was the leader of the girls And my name blew like a horn Among the Payira and I played on my blor harp and praised my love.
In her comment on modern day elections, Lawimo also uses the horn symbol for effect. She talks of the ‘horn loud and proud’ of the victorious in contrast to the silent horn of the defeated. Also among the Acholi, the bull is a panegyric title used as a compliment fro bravery and respect. Lawino combines the symbols of the bull and the horn to remind Ocol, her husband, of the respectable and famous ancestry from which he descends. She indicts Ocol for behaving like ‘a dog of the white man’ (p.116) and reminds him of his proud ancestry: Your grandfather was a Bull among men And although he died long ago His name still blows like a horn His name is still heard Throughout the land (P.116)
Like the horn, the spear possesses a ritual essence. A man is never buried without his spear carefully placed by his side. The phallic significance of the spear is obvious. It is a symbol of masculinity which Lawino uses to capture Ocol’s impotence and alienation from tradition: When you have gained your full strength Go to the shrine of your father, Prepare a feast… Beg forgiveness from them And ask them to give you a new spear A new spear with a sharp and hard point A spear that will crack the rock Ask for a spear that you will thrust… Ask them to restore your manhood! For I am sick of sharing a bed with a woman (p.119)
With the spear symbol, Okot p’Bitek makes a major statement about the effect of modernization. He warns that too much modernization paralyses the traditional essence and emasculates victims like Ocol.

Images, Proverbs and Myths In an introduction to Okot p’Bitek’s ‘Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol’. Heron makes an important statement which underscores the uniqueness of Okot p’Bitek’s use of tradional imagery: The most important influence Acholi songs have on Song of Lawino is the Imagery Okot uses, Okot has completely avoided the stock of common images of English literature’ through his familiarity with the stock of common images of Acholi literature. (p.7)

Heron stresses that in the English version, the stock of Acholi imagery gives hgis poem a feeling of freshness for every reader and a sense of Africanness for African readers. Lawino relies on a string of traditional images to criticize Clementine, her rival for Ocol. She describes the woman’s lips as ‘red-hot like glowing charcoal and when she ‘dusts powder on her face, she resembles the wizard getting ready for the midnight dance . This frightening image is an appropriate picture that captures the weird adornment that shows on Clementine’s face. Section eleven of Song of Lawino presents independence in the image of a fallen buffalo which the eager policians, like hunters rush to share: Independence falls like a bull buffalo And the hunters rush to it with frawn knives Sharp shinning knives for carving the carcass And if your chest is small, bony and weak They push you off, and if your knife is blunt You get the dung on your elbow You come home empty handed And the dogs bark at you
‘In the same section of the poem, Lawino exposes the poverty and neglect which the voters are forced to bear after each election. The politicians ‘who have falled into things’, throw themselves ‘into soft birds while the hip bones of the voters grow painful sleeping on the same earth they slept before Uhuru!’ (P.110). She castigates the politicians who abandon the voters and are rarely seen again after their election victory, like the local python ‘with a bull water buck in its tummy’ (p.110), the politiicians’hibernate and stay away and eat!’Lawino takes the image of the kite from Acholi oral song and adapt it to convey the exploitative attitude of the modern day African politicians who ‘return to the countryside fro the next election/like the kite/That returns during the Dry Season (p.110). Proverbs are common features of oral traditions. In Songg of Lawino, the central proverb is the one built on the pumpkin. In the Acholi oral tradition, the pumpkin planted aroung the homestead is never uprooted even when the old homestead is to be abandoned. The proverb, ‘The pumpkin in the old homestead/must not be uprooted’ recurs in the poem. Each time Lawino uses the proverb, it serves as a subtle warning to Ocol who ahs not only embraced the new way of life brought by modernization but is set to destroy the old, represented by ‘the pumpkin in the old homestead’.Apart from proverbs. Okot p’Bitek uses local saying to add freshness and weight to his poetry. Ehen Lawino points to the need for an Arican to be himself, she draws out the picture by using a witty local saying: No leopard Would change into a hyena And the crested crane Would hate to be changed Into the bald-headed Dung eating vulture The long-necked and graceful giraffe Cannot become a monkey (p.56)
One of the technical devices used by Okot p'Bitek in Song of Lawino is the incorporation of the Acholi myth to shape Lawino’s character as well as the setting of the poem. Unable to understand the process by which electricity works, Lawino falls back to the myth surrounding it in her tradition: They say When the rain-cock Opens its wings The blinding light And the deadly fire Flow through the wires And lighten the streets And the houses And the fire Goes into the electric stove (p.57).
By making Lawino speak this way, Okot p’Bitek sets her and Ocol further apart as characters who belong to different worldviews. Although he may laugh at her for her ignorance, his uprooted state, resulting from the alienating cult of modernity is the more pathetic.

Repetition and Audience Involvement

In song of Lawino, certain phrases are repeated as in the oral performance. The repletion of ‘Let no one uproot the pumpkin’ throughout the sections of ‘Song of Lawino’ is intended to emphasis Lawino’s attempt to preserve traditional values in the face of the destructive encroachment of Western tradition. Ocol receives verbal lashing from Lawino for his slavish attachment to the white man’s social codes. In a bitting criticism of the relationship between Ocol and Clementian, Lawino repeats the line ‘As white people do’ to emphasis Ocol’s obsession with the white man’s social values: You kiss her on the cheek As white people do, You kiss her open sore lops As white people do You suck the slimy saliva From each other’s mouths As white people do (p.44)
Audience involvement is a significant aspect of the oral art. Abu Abarry states that this is so important that its removal will render andy oralo performance meaningless. Lawino’s eageness to involve the audience in her narration is signalled by expressions like ‘come brother’ and ‘my clansmen’. Their use in the poem shows the symbiotic interaction between the oral performer and the audience. Also, it portrays the fundamental spirit of collective production that prevails in the African creative arts.

Christopher Okigbo’s ‘Path of thunder’

Symbols and Images.

Although Okigbo is extrensively influenced by European poets, there is suffericient evidence of traditional materials in his poetry. Even the “Troika’. Chinweizu, Jemie and Madubuike, who criticize him along with other poets for glorifying in ‘obscrurantism and senseless narcissism’ in his earlier poem, acknowledge his use of oral traditions in ‘path of thunder’.

The high peak attained by Okigbo in ‘Path of Thunder’ towers above the low irregular landscape of Nigerian poetry in English. So far, the only other peak that rivals it in African poetry in English is Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino which is possibly the best rounded single work of African poetry in English today.

The rituals and sacrifices in ‘Lustra’ are heightened through skilful association of images and symbols. In this section of Labyrinths, the poet, who has been alienated from the indigenous culture now comes back like a prodigal wishing to be readmitted into communion with the goddess , Idoto. The significance of the ritual offering on the part of the poet-hero is stressed by Dan Izevbaye. He notes that since the poet of the poet-hero is stressed by Dan Izevbaye. He notes that since the poet is technically a stranger, he requires ritual cleasing. The three parts of ‘Lustra’ are therefore concerned with this traditional feast of purification. The ‘traditionally prescribed objects of purification’ like vegetable offering, chalk, long-drums and cannons are ritual symbols intended to effect the poetry’s ascent towards acceptance. In the rest of Labyrinths, images and symbols such as ‘palm-grove’, weaver-bird’, ‘the town crier’, the born bill’ and ‘the sacrificial ram’, are used for the exploration of the poet’s socio-spiritual state as he searches for purification, acceptance into the traditional culture and poetic illumination.

Traditional Poetic Forms

Okigbo borrows the invocational and incantatory devices from the oral traditions and uses them imaginatively to draw attention to the traditional religion from which he has been exiled and to which he now returns like a prodigal. In Okigbo’s Labyrinths, the scenes of sacrifice are occasions for the presentation of the invocational and incantatory ttones. This indigenous influence is noted by Egudu who affirms that Okigbo’s adaptation of the tone of incantation for his ritual scenes in Labyrinths is consistent with the use in which this traditional icon is put ‘by every Igbo high priest of the indigenous god’.
Sometimes, Okigbo makes an innovative combination of the incantatory and invocational techniques and the traditional praise-poem. For instance, in ‘Siren Limits’, he invokes the goddess of the palm groves reflecting the structure of the traditional praise poem. Queen of the damp half light, I have had my cleansing Emigrant with air air-borne nose, The he-goat-on-heat. (p.23)
The traditional praise poem influences the second stanza of Okigbo’s ‘Hurrah for thunder’. Here, he describes the might of the elephant, a symbol for the Federal government during the first regime in Nigeria.: The Elephant, tetrarch of the jungle: With a wave of the hand He could pull four trees to the ground: His four mortar legs pounded the earth: Wherever they treaded, The grass was forbidden to be there. (p.67)
The description of the qualities of the elephant echoes the traditional changts (especially the Yoruba Ijala) on this animal by the oral artistsd. S.A. Babalola recognizes verbal salute to particular animals as one of the dominant subjects of the Ijala praise poetry. He stresses that the oral artist does this by giving.

A character sketch of the animal or bird. Such a chant contains information About the physical appearance, the characteristic cry, the characteristic gait And the characteristic habits of the animal or bird.

Some of the animals identified as subjects of this species of traditional poetry are the elephant, the buffalo, the lion and the baboon. Okigbo’s ‘Hurrah for thunder’ is an imaginative transfer of this loval poetic kind into modern poetry. The imaginative use of the praise form allows for an equally imaginative political interpretation. The elephant becomes a symbol of the federal Government of Nigeria in the sixties which threatened to destroy the four regions of Nigeria (the ‘four mortar legs’) ‘with a wave of the hand’. The destructive brute force of the Government is further underscored by the image of an elephant pulling ‘four tress to the ground’.

Proverbs, Repetitions and Musical Accompaniments

Okigbo’s Labyrinths contains proverbs which are borrowed from oral traditions amd modified to suit the socio-political vision intended in the poetry. Helen Chekwuma stresses the importance of proverbs especially when they are borrowed and modified to project opinions in modern African writing: Proverbs are used to express an essential idea. When they are used in verse, they are not usually subject to a rendition in their original forms. Rather they are modified and adapted according to the demand of rhythm and beat. Adaptation may take the form of adding a few words or of contrasting the proverb words while still retaining the essential image necessary for its identification.
Again in ‘Hurrah for thunder’ Okigbo hears the hunters, the military, ‘already…. Talking about pumpkins’ (p.67). He uses local proverbs to bear the weight of his warning: ‘The eye that looks down will surely see the nose’ and the finder that fits should be used to pick the nose’(p.67). The two proverbs are direct translations from the local stock of proverbs. The former is strikingly close to the type used by Agboreko in Wolw Soyinka’s A dance of the forests:

OLD MAN: Yes , yes, we’ll be patient AGBOREKO: the eye that looks downwards will certainly see the nose.

What Okigbo intendes to communicate through this proverb is similar to Agboreko’s amplification of Old Man’s plea for patience. Okigbo uses the proverb to caution those in the vanguard of Nigerian politics especially at a crucial moment of the political history of the country. Like Oko p’Bitek, Okigbo uses repletion as a rhetorical device. Again. Helen Chekwuma locates repletion as ‘a basic principle of oral art and can be viewed as a stylistic and fundamental grammatical form’. She offers that ‘verbal repletion in oral art is sometimes used as a way of establishing emphasis’ and that ‘in a typical oral verse, repetition entails not only the structure but the words of the stanzas themselves’. The device of repetition contributes immensely to the music of Okigbo’s poetry. In ‘ Elegy for Slit-drum’ where the traditional dirge form is used, repetition helps to intensify the sura of grief as well as the sense of instability that befalls the nation. The word ‘condolences’ is repeated several times in this section of the poem. Also, some lines are repeated to evoke the elevated sound effect suitable for the dire form. The following lines are examples: The panther has delivered a hare The hare is beginning to leap The panther has delivered a hare The panther is about to leap. (p.68)
And:
The elephant has fallen The mortars have won the day The ekephant has fallen Does he deserve his fate The elephant has fallen Can we remember the date. (p.67)

Another form of repetition which enhances the musical quality of Okigbo’s verse is parallelism. This type not only creates melody, it intensifies the emotional impact which the poet intends to register. One example of such parallelism is the couplet that ends ‘Elegy for Slit-drum: Trunk of the iron tree we cry condolence when we break Shells of the open sea we cry condolences when we shake… (p.70)
And in ‘Distance VI’, we have another example: I have fed out of the drum I jave drunk out of the cymbal (p.60)
Ulli Beier, one of the foremost collectors of verbal art forms in Nigeria was so much charmed by the melody of Okigbo’s poetry that he commented e4nthusiastically: Everything he touches vibrates and swing and we are compelled to read on and to follow the tune of his chant, hardly worried about the fact that we understand little of what he has to say Okigbo uses drum and rattles accompaniments in ‘Elegy for Alto’ and ‘elegy for slit-drum’ respectively. This is consistent with the use of such musical objects as hollow-wood, resonated pot and rattles in oral performances where poetry is realized in song. There is no doubt that Okigbo shows his originality in the fashioning of new poetic techniques from oral traditions and used music accompaniments to create an intensely resonant poetry. His skill in the imaginative use of oral art forms is celebrated by many of the poets who lament his death in don’t let Him Die.

Conclusion
The poetry of Okot p’Bitek and Okigbo reflects the influences which oral traditions exert on modern African poetry. These borrowed materials have the capacity to improve the content and form of modern poetry as indicated in the works of the two poets. Although the modern African poet does not see himself using exactly the same methods of composition as the traditional artist, as Echeruo observes, the echoes of traditional symbols, images and local idioms are enough to create a new poetic style quite distinguishable from the species produced by Western poet. It is a fact that those materials that are borrowed from oral traditions are often expressed in languages that are non-African. However, experienced poets like Okot p’ Bitek abd Okigbo even in their use of the English language still manage to deploy local symbols, images and traditional poetic devices in such a way as to resonate the artistic experience of the African people with almost as much concern and enthusiasm as the indigenous artists. This is one of the worthy legacies left behind by these two poets.

REFERENCE

1. Cyprian Ekwensi, ‘Thje Dilemma of the African Writer’. West African review, 27 (1956): 701-2. 2. Joel Adedeji, Oral Tradition and the Contemporary theatre in Nigera, Research in African Literatures. 2.2 (1971): 134 3. Adedeji: 136 4. Harold Scheub, ‘Review of African Oral Traditions and Literature’. The African studies review, 28, 2/3 (June/September, 1985). 5. ruth Einnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970): 10-11. 6. S. Macebuh, African Aesthetics in Traditional African Art’, Okike 5 (1974):22. 7. See Mazisi Kunene, ‘The relevance of African Cosmological Systems to African Literature today’. African literature today , 11 (1980):200. 8. William Bascom, Four functions of Folklore, Journal of American Folklore, 67,226 (1954):345. 9. A. H. Gayton ‘ Perspectives in folklore, Journal of American Folklore, 64 (1951):149. 10. O.F. raum, Ghaga Childhood: A Description of Indigenous Education in an East African tribe (London: OUP, 1940):214. 11. Adrian Roscoe, Uhuru’s fire (Lodon: Cmbridge University Press, 1977): 56 12. Okot p’Bitek, Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol (Lodon: Heinemann, 1984):48. All subsequent page references are made to this edition and appear in the text. 13. Abu Abarry,’Oral Rhetoric and Poetics’. In comparative Approaches to Modern African Literature, ed S.O. Asein (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1984):2. 14. Chinweizu et al. Toward the Decolonization of African Literature (Enugu: fourth Dimension, 1980):187 15. Wole Soyinka, A Dance of the Forests (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963): 38 16. Achebe and Dubem Okafor eds.. Don’t let Him Die (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978)