The Song of San Kano: A Poetic Hagiography
That persona so extolled here is none other than the eponymous, highly revered, long reigning Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness, Alhaji (Dr) Ado Bayero. By so doing, The Song of San Kano therefore stresses the accepted values, history and culture of the people of Kano. In one sense then the poem is as much […]
That persona so extolled here is none other than the eponymous, highly revered, long reigning Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness, Alhaji (Dr) Ado Bayero. By so doing, The Song of San Kano therefore stresses the accepted values, history and culture of the people of Kano. In one sense then the poem is as much a poetic celebration and panegyric evocation of Kano as it is of the Emir. The Song of San Kano is a quintessence case of the text and context merging together seamlessly to form a rich poetic tapestry. The Emir—the embodiment of Kano’s pre-eminence in commerce, education and rich cultural traditions; indeed the “positive archetype”—is here also depicted as a symbolization (and not just a mere symbol) of all the cherished moral values of the people of Kano.
Many scholars of African oral literature have emphasized the importance of this kind of poetry not just for the way it records and poeticises history, but also—and this is significant—in the way in which panegyric poetry invokes the noble and heroic qualities of its subject, using, as it were, apt metaphors, precise symbols and dense religio-historical allusions. The Song of San Kano is without doubt the closest paragon of such panegyric poetry. This panegyric deployment of “oral” tropes often represents the most condensed, exemplary poetic usage of language. Despite the fact that the present song is in English (one which would surely be within the easy hearing of many Hausa speakers of English), nonetheless The Song of San Kano’s unique panegyric features come to the fore brilliantly. Indeed, upon reading the poem (or succession of poems, which when read together make a coherent whole), the reader has the ultimate feeling and satisfaction of reading an essentially Hausa praise poem, in the mould and temperament of, say, Mamman Shata’s or Dan Kwairo’s; a poem which is beautifully, and to boot, skillfully “couched” in rhythmic, proverbial English “translation”.
One general feature of praise poetry (especially those written or performed in African languages) is its mild referential—though not lexical—obscurity. Despite this slight obscurity, The Song of San Kano evinces a simplicity that transcends its complexity of poetic vision and stylistic idiosyncrasies. The other feature is praise poem’s exploitation of allusion and imagery to a large extent than any other sub-genre of poetry. The Song of San Kano partakes in all this, but in an amazing reader-friendly way via which the Emir of Kano together with the whole gamut of etiquettes and traditions of the royal palace emerge in a deceptively plain, but highly charged poetic language. The present song is a textual treasure trove of eulogies, praises, hagiography, homilies that rather than obfuscate the persona (the Emir) in an eerie air of metaphorization and allusive density (which all too often are the bane of panegyric poetry) reveals a verbal portrait of the Emir who is at once just, humble, pious and deeply religious. Praise names also are a strong feature of panegyric poetry. Here, the various praise names of the Emir, starting from the epithet “San Kano” are deftly used as a backdrop of a prolonged, often incantatory praise of the persona and what he resolutely stands for in The Song of San Kano.
In the end, The Song of San Kano emerges not just as a praise poem but more significantly as a piece of a literary alternative “history” of the Emir of Kano: of his epochal reign and of the legendary fame of Kano State as a whole. As a poem, the book is relevant and topical for the way in which the difficult to handle cornucopia of poetic resources are memorably used and effortlessly etched in the memory of the reader. And as an instance of hagiography it achieves the singular feat of reverentially hagiographing the persona whose life and times, no matter how sympathetically celebrated and praised, deserved every bit of it. As a piece of history it surpasses (perhaps even effaces in a simple but profound way) conventional history for its bountiful, symmetrical blend of both hard fact and evidence so beloved of professional historians. For its poetic “reification” of the history and the subject of such history this book should be read by all. Such combination of writerly sophistication and readerly approaches in so short a book, so ambitious a poem is rare within the entire corpus of Nigerian (written or oral) literature.
Bala Muhammad is a Columnist with Weekly Trust and the immediate past Director General of Kano State Directorate of Societal Reorientation.