ABSTRACT
There seems to be a general view and understanding by the different cultures of the world that a people’s story can never be told enough or stopped from being told, no matter the form or the medium used. In this age of rapid changes, we are also saddled with the rapid ripple effects of thesechanges which force us to find alternative new ways of appreciating some of the important things we hold dear. A classic work as Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe more than five decades ago needs not be limited to just the novel itself or a movie adaptation considering the strategic significance it gives to the image and historical essence of Africa, the Black race and all the people whose stories crossed path/s with it; hence, a need to diversify its medium of appreciation, preservation and promotion as far and as much as the creative mind can deal with. Adapting Things Fall Apart into an (African) opera will contribute to this diversification when done by a musically creative and artistic mind with good grasp and understanding of the work itself. It is achievable through a good crafting of the work into a fine libretto that would accommodate both the English and Igbo languages used inter-textually; making up fitful choruses, recitatives, arias, instrumental accompaniments, dances, etc that will have to considerably represent African vocalism and African musical idioms (especially of the Igbo areas) in sound; employing the African instrumental techniques like the African pianism and drummistic piano accompaniment styles, etc to make up for the mixed ensemble accompaniment, as well as deploying all other necessary effects and techniques of intercultural and multicultural research-compositional styles that can enable a modern opera represent a good level of African Identity.
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1 Background of the study
The media of African arts production and exportation are changing in varying degrees and forms. Their producers have the liberty to adapt to the changes or find ways of reinventing their products soas to sustain relevance and project their presence in the international circles as well as preserve same for generations unborn. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is reported to have been translated into more than 30 languages all over the world yet the original language of the author is not popularly known to be one of them. This compels questions like: If some important historical records written as stories in the bible have been adapted into different versions of opera by different composers in the contemporary times and fashion, why not an important and popular story about Africa like the Things Fall Apart? It is possible to realize an opera that can reflect the true nature of the story while allowing influences by modern compositional trends in African music and African musical arts. This work mainly contributes to the diversification of the appreciation given to literary works of arts. Expectedly, the deployment of ‘research-composition’ (Onyeji: 2008) in some areas of the work will draw from the musical cultures of the settings used in the novel itself (which areIdemili areas of Anambra State, Nigeria) as well as those of other areas in Igbo land. On research-composition as one of the major driving forces in African musical creative processes, the proponent, Onyeji (2008) asserts:
(It) is an approach to composition in which in-depth ethnomusicological research on the indigenous music of a given culture informs the creative and compositional theory of modern art music composition. It is a compositional process that enables a composer produce modern African music of any length or magnitude by the study and application of creative elements and idioms from identified African musical type or tradition (p.15).
The projection of these indigenous musical culture(s) and types of the selected areas through research-composition enabled in drawing the interest of an ordinary viewer of the opera to African creative skills artistically used in treating and sophisticating native musical idioms. There is more than one instance of the redacted excerpts of the traditional concepts gotten from the fieldwork. However, it is more germane to represent that of Egwugwu—which formedone of the most important themes of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: Mmonwu (masquerade). See:
(This is an excerpt of the Egwugwu masquerade music as played and sung by the masquerade’s adherents in Ogidi where the fieldwork to this research was conducted)
1.2 Purpose of the study
This work seeks to diversify the appreciation of the widely-acclaimed novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. By so doing, it equally opens up another medium of understanding, promoting and documenting the historical significance embodied by the novel. Extensively, this effort will help to awaken the African motion picture handlers (Nollywood precisely) to other possible art forms – (African opera being one) – which they can popularize by using them in the transfer of dramatic or filmic ideas, as to achieve quality variety in the African art.
1.3 Significance of the study
The one peculiarity shared by all art works is their ability to interrelate and adapt to other art forms, media, and even regions. As such, we can have a fiction made into a play or a play made into a fiction; or we can have a poem visualized into a painting or a painting transformed into a written text. We can also have a drama that was set in another continent adapted as a story that happened in another. These possibilities make arts inexhaustible and boundless in their potential. Considering such possibilities, music, as one of those arts, has its own potential of adapting a different art form to itself. Of such art forms it can adapt, fictional arts is one. And when such happens, we say that a dramatized story has been set to music. Bearing this in mind, this work sets out to diversify the possible art forms and media of appreciating the classic novel, Things Fall Apart – published in 1958 by the late Chinua Achebe – by adapting it into an African opera as well as other works in same category. Aside that is the totality of contributing to the archiving and promotion of the novel which bears a great deal of history of the pre-colonial African. Additionally, it seeks to contribute and promote studies in African operatic adaptations, especially in music institutions of Africa and at other places interested in African studies and African musical culture.
1.4 Aims and Objectives
The following are the aims and objectives of this study.
1. To make a contribution to a more studied growth of African Musical Theatre.
2. To contribute to the archiving of an important document as Things Fall Apart using the entertaining medium of music.
1.5. Scope
The opera covers the more musical and dramatic areas in the novel, Things Fall Apart leaving out the less musical and dramatic ones which could be merely prosaic or musically unimportant details. There are 24 chapters in the novel and they are in three parts. The first part contains the first 13 chapters. The second part contains chapters 14-19, while the third part contains chapter 20-24. In these mentioned parts and chapters, some details were cut out as they may not be necessary for the music which is more emphasized in an opera. Example of such places is in chapter 3 where Okonkwo, the protagonist of the novel met with another remarkable character, Nwakibie, to help him with yam seedlings for his farm. Another example of such place is in chapter 11 which has along narrative of the tortoise and the birds, and other examples. The opera also accommodated and elaborated some important scenes where poems were used by the characters. An example of such is the encounter between Okonkwo and Uchendu in chapter 14. In the encounter, Uchendu sang: “For whom is it well, for whom is it well? There is no one for whom it is well” (p.108).
Such poems were elaborately composed as to be sung both by the character and the chorus (audience-participants). Such places are accompanied by a mixed ensemble of Western and African instruments. The opera also made provisions for scenes that will accommodate organized dance steps, choreographies or make-shift dances that can come up at some scenes as elicited in the novel or at the discretion of the director or producer of the opera. An
example of such is seen in Act III, scene I titled “Iyi-Uwa” where a group of women danced in celebration of Ekwefi’s reassurance of motherhood as represented in a chapter of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. In all, the 24 chapters of the novel were collapsed into 4 Acts and 16 scenes excluding the overture.
1.6. Methodology
Music, like other arts, is always characterized by that significant trait of order. Its harmony, rhythm and horizontal stack of notes that form the melody are some of the characteristics of such orderliness. An opera that will reflect, to a good extent, the true essence of an African story, needs approaches that would be thought out well; and that is why a methodology to such attempts deserves a mention.
This work’s method of research begins with a library research (online and offline) which reviews the nature of opera as a compositional genre already existing in musicological studies of the past and the present. The researcher now embarks on an intense field-work where analysis of mmonwu (masquerade) musical theatre genres like Egwugwun’egwuregwuof the Ogidi people in Anambra State—the hometown of the Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart.(Evidence of this is shown in a picture displayed on page 37). This was necessary considering that there were countless mention of Egwugwu in two chapters of Things Fall Apart. That experience lends opportunity for making a structure that allows free musical creativity around the dramatic, musical and textural material of study; a structure that hopes to meet the demands of the modern scriptwriting for the musical theatre while expressing the traditional essence of its inspirational source.
This material content is developed to serve as a GUIDE for students to conduct academic research
OKONKWỌ (AN OPERATIC ADAPTATION OF CHINUA ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART)>
A1Project Hub Support Team Are Always (24/7) Online To Help You With Your Project
Chat Us on WhatsApp » 09063590000
DO YOU NEED CLARIFICATION? CALL OUR HELP DESK:
09063590000 (Country Code: +234)
YOU CAN REACH OUR SUPPORT TEAM VIA MAIL: [email protected]
09063590000 (Country Code: +234)