The Piano and The Drums

Hello! I am Divya Parmar and I warmly welcome you all to read my blog. This blog is a response to the thinking activity which is given by yesha Bhatt. In this Blog i will write about the poem "The Piano and The Drums" and "You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed" by Gabriel Okara. First of all let's read about the poet. 

Gabriel Okara: 

Gabriel Okara, in full Gabriel Imomotimi Gbaingbain Okara, (born April 21, 1921, Bumodi, Nigeria—died March 25, 2019, Yenagoa, Nigeria), Nigerian poet and novelist whose verse had been translated into several languages by the early 1960s. 

A largely self-educated man, Okara became a bookbinder after leaving school and soon began writing plays and features for radio. In 1953 his poem “The Call of the River Nun” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts. Some of his poems were published in the influential periodical Black Orpheus, and by 1960 he was recognized as an accomplished literary craftsman. 

Okara’s poetry is based on a series of contrasts in which symbols are neatly balanced against each other. The need to reconcile the extremes of experience (life and death are common themes) preoccupies his verse, and a typical poem has a circular movement from everyday reality to a moment of joy and back to reality again. Okara incorporated African thought, religion, folklore, and imagery into both his verse and prose. His first novel, The Voice (1964), is a remarkable linguistic experiment in which Okara translated directly from the Ijo (Ijaw) language, imposing Ijo syntax onto English in order to give literal expression to African ideas and imagery. The novel creates a symbolic landscape in which the forces of traditional African culture and Western materialism contend. Its tragic hero, Okolo, is both an individual and a universal figure, and the ephemeral “it” that he is searching for could represent any number of transcendent moral values. Okara’s skilled portrayal of the inner tensions of his hero distinguished him from many other Nigerian novelists.

During much of the 1960s Okara worked in civil service. From 1972 to 1980 he was director of the Rivers State Publishing House in Port Harcourt. His later work includes a collection of poems, The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), and two books for children, Little Snake and Little Frog (1981) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992). 

Stanza by Stanza explanation of Poem : The Piano and The Drums 

When at break of day at a riverside

I hear jungle drums telegraphing

the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw

like bleeding flesh, speaking of

primal youth and the beginning

I see the panther ready to pounce,

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with

spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,

topples the years and at once I’m

in my mother’s lap a suckling;

at once I’m walking simple

paths with no innovations,

rugged, fashioned with the naked

warmth of hurrying feet and

groping hearts

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing

Then I hear a wailing piano

solo speaking of complex ways

in tear-furrowed concerto;

of far away lands

and new horizons with

coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint

crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth

of its complexities, it ends in the middle

of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and the concerto.

 Stanza 1: 

In this stanza, the poetic persona speaks of the sound of the jungle drum. This sound of drum he feels is mystical, that is, there are so many supernatural things that comes with it. The sound of the drum to him, creates agility, strength and quickness of action. This can be seen from lines 3 to 4 as he runs into imagination to the primordial time picturing what this sound would do to the jungle residents. 

All is action and natural. The poetic persona with a straight use of imagery and comprehensible words draws the readers’ attention to the fact that everything about this sound is in their natural states using words like, “riverside, jungle, raw, fresh,” names of animal in the jungle – natural habitat, and the last line of the stanza speaking of a hunter with spear ready to strike and hunt. Everything about this stanza depicts the freshness of nature and life as of the old. 

Stanza:2

Once again, the poetic persona remembers of years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast. Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born into:

“At once I’m walking simple

Paths with no innovations,

Rugged, fashioned with the naked

Warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts

In green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.”

 

Stanza :3 

Then, here in stanza three, reality changed as the poetic persona came in contact with a different sound from a faraway land:

“Then I hear a wailing piano

Solo speaking of complex ways in

Tear-furrowed concerto;

Of far-away lands”

The change in the sound came with a different instrument other than African native drum, and it also produces a sound that is different with so many musical technicalitieswhich the poetic persona expresses with musical dictions in words like, “concerto, diminuendo, crescendo.” He deploys them to emphasize the difficulty in understanding this new sound

“… but lost in the labyrinth

Of its complexities…”

Consequently, in the last four lines, the poetic persona laments on the level of confusion the new sound brings when it mixes with the drums:

“And I lost in the morning mist

Of an age at a riverside keep

Wandering in the mystic rhythm

Of jungle drums and the concerto”

On a general note, the poet discusses the confusion that is created when western culture mixes with African culture. Any attempt to unify the two results to confusion and disorder. Therefore, one is keenly advised to abhor such style of life. If you want to be African, be it, otherwise, live like the white man.

The poetic persona is not against choosing any of the cultures, but don’t mix them together. Indirectly, he warns us against becoming whiter than the white themselves or more civilized than civilization. 

Themes of The poem: