| Remembering Okot p’Bitek’s
‘comic singing’
By Johnson Ndukwe
Sunday July 13, 2008
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P'Bitek
Photo: Sun News Publishing
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Ugandan poet, anthropologist, and social critic, who wrote
in Luo and in English. P'Bitek was one of the most vigorous
and original voices in East African 20th-century poetry. His
satirical monologues dealt with the conflict between European
and African cultures. In his most famous poem, The Song of
Lawino (1966), p'Bitek introduced a style that became known
as "comic singing."
Stop despising people
As if you were a little foolish man,
Stop treating me like saltless ash
Become barren of insults and stupidity;
Who has ever uprooted the Pumpkin?
(from 'My Husband's Tongue Is Bitter,' in The Song of Lawino)
Okot p'Bitek was born in Gulu, Northern Uganda, into a family
of Luo people.
At that time Uganda was a protectorate of the British Empire.
P'Bitek's mother was a gifted singer, composer, and leader
of her clan. Under the influence of his mother, p'Bitek grew
up learning the tales, proverbs and songs of Acoli folklore
(sometimes referred to as Lwo or Luo). P'Bitek himself was
an accomplished dancer and drummer. P'Bitek attended Gulu
High School and King's College, Budo, where he wrote and produced
theatre and opera. After a two-year course at the Government
Training College in Mbarara, p'Bitek taught at Sir Samuel
Baker's School near Gulu. While still a student, p'Bitek published
his first poem, 'The Lost Spear', based on a traditional Luo
folk story.
As a member of the Uganda national soccer team, he toured
Britain in 1956, and stayed there to study. His first novel,
Lak Tar Miyo Kinyero Wi Lobo (If Your Teeth are White, Laugh!),
p'Bitek published in Luo in 1953. P'Bitek took a diploma in
education in Bristol, and later he studied law at the University
of Wales at Aberystwyth and social anthropology at Oxford,
where he completed in 1963 a B.Litt. thesis on the traditional
songs of Acoli and Largo. Returning to Uganda at the age of
33, he joined the staff of the Department of Sociology at
Makerere University College in Kampala, the capital city.
Two years later he became a tutor with the Extra-Mural department.
P'Bitek also founded the Gulu and was appointed director of
the National Theatre and National Cultural Centre in Kampala.
Later in 1968 in Kenya he founded Kisumu Arts Festivals.
As a poet p'Bitek made his breakthrough with The Song of Lawino.
It was first composed in Luo in rhyming couplets and was translated
into English by the author, who according to his own words
"clipped a bit of the eagle's wings and rendered the
sharp edges of the warrior's sword rusty and blunt, and also
murdered rhythm and rhyme". Although the work was turned
down by several British publishers, in 1966 it became a bestseller.
A separate American edition, by the World Publishing Company,
was issued in 1969.
The Luo original was published in 1971. "It may seem
ironical that the first important poem in English to emerge
in Eastern Africa should be a translation from the vernacular
original," wrote Gerald Moore in Transition (no. 31,
June-July, 1967). Like p'Bitek's other long poems, it was
written as a story, narrated by one person. Lawino, a non-literate
woman, laments her fate. "Husband, now you despise me
/ Now you treat me with spite / And say I have inherited the
/ stupidity of my aunt /". Her university-educated husband
has adopted Western ways, rejected her, and taken another,
Westernized woman. Lawino claims that he has lost his manhood
by reading books: "Bile burns my inside! / I feel like
vomiting! / For all our young men / Were finished in the forest,
/ Their manhood was finished / In the class-rooms, / Their
testicles / Were smashed / With large books!"
The Song of Lawino was followed by Song of Ocol (1970), in
which Lawino's husband respons to her. "Mother, mother,
/ Why, / Why was I born / Black?" says Ocol eventually
in 'What Is Africa to Me?', revealing his true alienated character.
Together these books form a polemic, oratorical account of
the changing times, dramatized through the accusing voices
of marriage conflict. However, p'Bitek's narrators are not
only representatives of certain opposing values and attitudes,
but lively personalities, with their deficiencies, humor,
bitterness, and need of understanding. Skilfully p'Bitek inspires
his readers to make conclusions and to create a synthesis
after reading both collections. The author himself belonged
to the generation, that had absorbed early native culture
during the colonial period, but then had received a British
education. P'Bitek's own choice was to take a stand against
Western infiltration and defend Acoli traditions and customs.
Two Songs (1971) included Song of a Prisoner, apparently inspired
by the assassination of the Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, and
Song of Malaya, about hypocrisy and sexual morals (malaya
means "prostitute"). The book, dedicated to Patrice
Lumumba (1925-1961), the murdered prime minister of the Republic
of the Congo, was awarded the inaugural Kenyatta Prize for
Literature in 1972. All these early collections were published
by the East African Publishing House. P'Bitek also published
a collection of Acoli traditional songs, The Horn of My Love
(1974), and a collection of Acoli folktales and short stories,
Hare and Hornbill (1978). His major academic studies were
Religion of the Central Luo (1971), African Religions in Western
Scholarship (1972), and Africa's Cultural Revolution (1973).
P'Bitek was a frequent contributor to Transition, a journal
published at Makerere, and other journals. His essays varied
from literary criticism, such as 'The Self in African Imagery',
to articles on anthropological, sociological, and philosophical
questions. P'Bitek's direct poems and his academic works caused
much debate. He attacked both reactionary modes of thought
and the uncritical acceptance of modernization, and was criticised
by British observers for his Afrocentric views and cultural
nationalism, and by feminist observers, who had trouble in
accepting p'Bitek's one-sided satirical portrayal of African
women.
Uganda became an independent member of the Commonwealth in
1962 with Milton Obote as prime minister. After criticizing
the government of Uganda in Zambia, p'Bitek became persona
non grata in his own country and moved to Kenya. His disillusionment
he expressed in the poem 'They Sowed and Watered', in which
a lamb named Freedom is dead, the cynical people laugh bitterly,
and a young boy who cares, is killed. "The peals of laughter
/ Poisoned arrows / Hit the boy like swords of steel / And
blood from his heart / Anointing the land." The rest
of his life p'Bitek spent teaching in Kenya and in the United
States. Obote was overthrown in a miliary coup in 1971, and
Idi Amin seized power. During his reign a huge number of Ugandans
were killed and the economy collapsed.
In 1971 p'Bitek became a senior research fellow at the Institute
of African Studies in Nairobi. He also lectured in sociology
and literature at the university. The Amin years P'Bitek spent
in exile, and then returned to Makerere as a professor of
creative writing. He died of a liver infection on July 19,
1982. His daughter, Jane Okot P'Bitek, is also a writer, whose
Song of Farewell (1994, a volume of poetry, was dedicated
to the memory of her father. |
