| Abstract: |
During chants, Alekwu artists employ many strategies in order to strengthen their positions, clarify issues or simply pass information. Alekwu artists in their chants employ the use of folktales, proverbs, myths, legends, folk songs, anecdotes, riddles and other subgenres of oral literature. In this study, we looked at how Alekwu artists employ proverbs during performance. Their employ of proverbs, as we have seen, have various semantic implications depending on the artist that has employed it and the perspective from which he has used the proverb. We were able to actualize this through the theory of performance centrism which indicates that oral literature is performance based and therefore, to a very large extent, the essence of the literature is only realized through performance. Our primary source of data is an audio recording of the Alekwu masquerades; Ona Akpanta and Oblu Udenyi. All the proverbs are sourced from the performance of Ona Akpanta and Oblu Udenyi with transcription and translation from the Idoma language to English language. We discovered in the study that proverbs used by Alekwu artists have various meanings because they are usually employed during chants as techniques and strategies. We discovered that the same proverbs used by Oblu udenyi and Ona Akpanta, at different times and occasions, assume different meaning if their positions are swapped. |
EBONYI JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE
