Obituary: isidore Okpewho

[Toyin Falola]

I bring sad news.

Professor Isidore Okpewho, our great friend, teacher, and mentor died yesterday. I just spoke with his wife, and funeral arrangements are being made for September.  Orations to follow.

It was a privilege for me to interact with this great scholar, publishing his last major book in my University of Rochester’s Series, Blood on the Tides: The Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology. He completed this book while sick. A masterpiece, I will talk about this great book after I recover from this shock.

A man of grace and elegance, it was always a delight to be with him. I visited him and his wife at their home in Binghamton, where we discussed his collected essays which I also promised to publish for him. 

I will attend his funeral service and report back.

Toyin Falola

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Great thanks for informing us and in this rich memorial

toyin

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[Amatoritsero Ede]

Folks,

This is a great loss to africanist scholarship and intellection. Professor Okpewho was a great scholar, no doubt, and man of letters. As I know him from the University of Ibadan, he very humble and approachable man despite his great achievements. May his soul rest in peace! And may his family have the fortitude to bear this great loss. 

ᐧ

[jare Ajayi]

Professor Isidore Okpewho is, by all standard, a scholar, writer and certainly, a humanist.

Just last month, I had a cause to mention him during a radio programme in which I featured - not knowing that this man of great virtues was in his last days.

We in the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and, indeed, the entire African literary world, would be missing this eminent personality.

May his soul rest in peace.

Jare Ajayi

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[Kenneth Harrow]

Whoever knows or has studied or taught oral literature in Africa has had to read and use isidore okpewho’s major works. He was absolutely central to the field. He was a wonderful man, and we will grieve his passing for some time

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

har...@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

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[Okey Ndibe]

A star--of interdisciplinary scholarship and possessed of a deep humanity--has dazzled us and now gone to the realm of ancestors. An irreplaceable loss. I will long treasure imperishable memories of the man and scholar. 

ON

Sent from my iPhone

[cafeaf...@aol.com]

This is very sad. May His Soul Rest in Peace. Edumae a gba won si afeferere o. Ee ni ku, aku fa o. Ase

Funmi Tofowomo Okelola

[ADETAYO ALABI]

This is really sad. We lost one of the most reputable scholars of African literature and a decent human being. Rest in peace, Professor Isidore Okpewho.  May the Lord comfort all of us who are mourning.  

Adetayo Alabi

Department of English

University of Mississippi 

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[Toyin Falola]

T 

From: AbdulRasheed Na'Allah <abdulrashe...@kwasu.edu.ng>
Date: Monday, September 5, 2016 at 9:41 AM
T 
Subject: Re: Obituary: isidore Okpewho

This is a personal loss to my family and I, and to so many of scholars of African literature and our families.

Okpewho was a mentor and role model to us who do research in African Oral Literature. He took everyone as a friend, and would go to any length to offer love and support. I interviewed him many years ago, and I am in the process of compiling all those interviews (including the ones with other scholars and writers) into a book.

Towards the end of his life, he offered very strong criticism of African oral traditions and took the stand of what can be described as progressive orature. He questioned why tradition would be invoked by those who stole public treasures and who took kick backs in disguise of traditional African gifts. At an ALA meeting in 2002, he challenged scholars to question aspects of oral traditions and not just be reporters of events. Ato Quayson, popular postcolonial theorist, in an interview I had with him on this, observed, "for someone like Isidore Okpewho, who is unparalleled in the area of his scholarship, to reach the point of saturation, the saturation point where he’s calling for us to question oral traditions more rigorously than he has questioned it himself is very positive, because it’s good that somebody with that kind of grasp and authority can make such a pronouncement." The truth was that Okpewho did not reach any saturation at all, I think by 2002 he decided to explore new excitement in taking responsibility to offer new insights into African orature. After all, he was equally endowed as a critic, novelist, essayist, and oral literature scholar, and some time in the same piece, he explores his many skills from all his scholarly talents.

Okpewho was one of the leading scholars I spoke to in 2009 on returning from USA to Nigeria to head a new public University as pioneer president (Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive) and we discussed the possibility for establishing a Centre for Oral Traditions in Africa at the Kwara State University. I gave him a verbal invitation to come to KWASU to assist in doing this, and despite his beginning to confront health issues even at that time, he was positive and discussed exactly what roles he might take when he comes. Alas, he never actually was able to come, but every day as we (scholars of African oral literature world wide) work towards a stronger, more progressive and unequaled standards of research in African oral literature, we invoke the great paradigms established by this great son of Nigeria and Africa. Adieu, Isidore Okpewho!

Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah

 

_ 

[Rex Marinus]

People like Isidore Okpewho do not die. They just transit. It has been a hard and heroic six years of struggle with his health, since that return from St. Petersburg. Okpewho was a titan. His giant strides are all that we see in his work to recover the authentic voice of Africa, through the study of her oral archives. One of the greatest alums of Ibadan, when it was the "real Ibadan" and one of the kindest, most unassuming, most original, and most genial scholars I knew, Okpewho lives for many of us who found through his work a path to our own destinations.

Obi Nwakanma

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From: cafeafricana1 via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, September 5, 2016 2:59 PM
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Obituary: isidore Okpewho

This is very sad. May His Soul Rest in Peace. Edumae a gba won si afeferere o. Ee ni ku, aku fa o. Ase

Funmi Tofowomo Okelola

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[Segun Ogungbemi]

It is sad to lose such a great literary scholar. As he joins the Ancestors he will now see where he went wrong in his criticism of African Orature. 
May Olodumare conform his family, relations, friends and admirers. Aase. 

SO
Sent from my iPhone 

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[Folu Ogundimu]

Sad, sad, sad. What a great loss, may his gentle soul rest in peace. And thanks for the eloquent testimonials on this great man of letters and dignified comportment for all ages. He will be sorely missed. 

Please keep us posted on funeral and memorial arrangements. May his wife, children, grandchildren, and the rest of his family be comforted. May they bear the loss with the same dignity be lived his life. 

K'asun re. 

Folu 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 5, 2016, at 10:12 AM, Michael Afolayan <mafo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Good grief! Why Okpewho, and why now? This is the felling of an Iroko tree in the thinning desert of African literary circle. A great man of letters and audacity, I recall Okpewho as a guest lecturer at Yale in 1982. He made every African/African American on campus proud. The man who destroyed to its foundations the intellectual insult of people like Ruth Finnegan who had believed and propagated the erroneous notion that there existed nothing like epic tradition in Africa, silencing the opponents with astute brightness, prodigious evidence and intellectual finesse.  What a loss! A few weeks ago was Dan Kunene of the Heroic Poetry of the Basotho fame; today, another renaissance mind has stepped into the pantheon of his ancestors. Isidore Okpewho came to us in a hurry and left us in a hurry; but he is the legendary "Onírèsé" - the master carver; although Providence has stopped him from continuing his skills, his handicraft will remain immortal. May all those left behind be comforted. . . Ahhhhhhh!

Michael O. Afolayan

Sad in The Land of Lincoln - very sad!

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[Elias Bongmba]

I am very saddened this morning to read about the home going of Professor Isidore Okpewho. He was a brilliant scholar and wonderful person. I loved teaching his works in my classes. His book Myth in Africa remains the locus classicus in the field. He will be missed. May his soul rest in peace.

Elias Kifon Bongmba

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[Bosoma Sheriff]

It's sad. But he has left a profound legacy in the field of oral literature and performance studies-a feat that is best celebrated by establishing a university of orature and performance, or something of that nature somewhere in Africa with his name engraved in silver.  

On 7 September 2016 at 00:15, Bosoma Sheriff <bosom...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's sad. But he has left a profound legacy in the field of oral literature and performance studies-a feat that is best celebrated by establishing a university of orature and performance, or something of that nature somewhere in Africa with his name engrave in silver.  

Bosoma Sheriff

University of Maiduguri

[Bosoma Sheriff]

It's sad. But he has left a profound legacy in the field of oral literature and performance studies-a feat that is best celebrated by establishing a university of orature and performance, or something of that nature somewhere in Africa with his name engrave in silver.  

Bosoma Sheriff

University of Maiduguri

On 6 September 2016 at 15:27, Elias Bongmba <ebon...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Rex Marinus]

University of Orature and performance? Na waya! Perhaps an "Isidore Okpewho Center for the Study of the Humanities at Ibadan," his alma mater, where he also did some of his most accomplished work.

Obi Nwakanma

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Bosoma Sheriff <bosom...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2016 9:15 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obituary: isidore Okpewho

 

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[Mark Osama Ighile]

Adieu, my 1989/90 teacher of Oral Literature at the University of Ibadan, Prof Isidore Okoewho. How can i forget that historic trip to Benin City, Nigeria, together in 1990 where you gave me a baptism of oral literary and folkloric discipline? How can i forget that inaugural lecture where you made a strong case for the literary texture of oral scholarship? How can i forget the rigorous intellectual journey of deconstructing some of the fluid assumptions of Ruth Finnegan? We will surely miss you, the oracle of oral literature.
Dr. Mark Osama Ighile

[Emeagwali, Gloria (History)]

How about the Isidore Okpewho Center of  Orature and Performance?

 

Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department
CCSU. New Britain. CT 06050
africahistory.net

vimeo.com/user5946750/videos
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries on

Africa and the African Diaspora

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2016 8:25 PM

[Akin Ogundiran]

A Center of Orature and Performance named after this intellectual icon would not only honor Professor Okpewho’s contributions to Africana Studies and the Humanities in general, but would also help galvanize a new generation of scholars to take the study of orature to a new level. The relevance of Okpewho’s work is not limited to African literature. No Nigerian scholar has made a better case for the validity of orality in African history than Okpewho. He was also an anthropologist, among others. His fieldwork, and the theoretical sophistication of his scholarship are of superior quality.

 

It was by chance in graduate school that I attended one of his seminars at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, in 1989 or 1990. I remember him saying that most of his fieldwork projects were self-financed or foreign-finance. He mentioned one incident of pittance that he received from the University of Ibadan in form of research grant. Until that time, I had not read any of his works. It was only when I arrived in the US that I came across his books and began to follow his scholarship. Looking back, I think we missed a lot in the way we blindly copy Western academic boundaries in Nigerian and other African institutions. None of his writings was assigned in my undergraduate and graduate classes (in history, anthropology, and archaeology), both at UI and Ife, even in orality and historical memory courses. Maybe, I was just unlucky. Others may have a different experience. But I don’t think we have taken the cross-fertilization of methods, theories, and conceptualization of research questions across our borrowed artificial disciplinary boundaries beyond the usual programmatic slogans of decolonization. Unfortunately, much has not changed today. This occasion calls for a sense of renewal using the body of Professor Okpewho’s scholarship as a springboard. The center would provide the platform for scholars in both the humanities and social sciences to develop new works that cut across disciplinary boundaries.  Ibadan should surely take a leadership role in this endeavor. There could also be a peer center at Binghamton named for him.

 

Akin Ogundiran

UNC Charlotte

[Okechukwu, Christiana]

This news is really sad. May his gracious soul rest in peace as we mourn him.

 

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bosoma Sheriff
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2016 5:18 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Obituary: isidore Okpewho

 

It's sad. But he has left a profound legacy in the field of oral literature and performance studies-a feat that is best celebrated by establishing a university of orature and performance, or something of that nature somewhere in Africa with his name engraved in silver.  

 

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