The Ozidi Saga

The Ozidi Saga, an Ijaw oral epic as performed by the bard Okabou Ojobolo and transcribed and translated by J. P. Clark-Bekederemo, published by Ibadan University Press in 1977, is the primary published record in English of a major West African oral epic tradition, performed over multiple days as a combination of narrative, song and ritual drama among the Ijaw of the Niger Delta. Its strength is that Clark-Bekederemo, himself Ijaw and a noted Nigerian poet and playwright, recorded and translated a specific living performance directly, preserving detail an outside collector working through an interpreter would likely miss. Its limit is that any single transcribed performance represents one bard's particular telling of a saga that exists in oral tradition across many performances and performers, so a claim about the Ozidi Saga's content should note it reflects Ojobolo's version as Clark-Bekederemo recorded it.