ORALITY AND OJAIDE’S GLOBAL VISION: A STUDY OF I WANT TO DANCE

Akano Kehinde

Department of English

University of Ilorin, Ilorin Nigeria

 e-mail: omotwins@gmail.com, akanoken@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

No art work emanates from a vacuum as artists harp on happenings around them to produce their works. As such, creative writers often engage social reality in order to project their understanding of the society through reconstruction of artistic materials. Oral art forms which encapsulate a people’s way of life provide the aesthetic residue which is transposed by artists to make comment on contemporary social practices.This paper considers Ojaide’s transposition of oral traditions in projecting a universal vision in his poetic collection, I want to Dance. The poet is seen as an ideologue whose work bears imprint of a revolutionary as anchored on the theory of dialectical materialism. The paper concludes that there is a symbiosis between art and society as art seeks to rid the society of social doldrums.