Echoes Of Cultural Conflict In The Mystic Drum By Gabriel Okara

Table of Contents

Introduction:

“Echoes of Cultural Conflict in The Mystic Drum” centers on how Gabriel Okara portrays the tension between indigenous African traditions and the disruptive influence of Western culture. In The Mystic Drum, the drum symbolizes the poet’s deep-rooted connection to his native heritage, spiritual harmony, and communal identity. However, as foreign influences enter, this harmony is gradually broken, leading to confusion, alienation, and loss of cultural purity.

**Echoes of Cultural Conflict in The Mystic Drum by Gabriel Okara**

The poem briefly yet powerfully reflects the inner conflict of a society—and an individual—caught between two worlds: the richness of traditional life and the pressures of modern, colonial change.

Gabriel Okara: Themes, Style, and Cultural Conflict:

Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet. His verse had been translated into several languages by the early 1960s. 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. Cultural conflict is regarded one of the most prominent points in African poetry. In Africa, what is culture and tradition seems uncultured, or peculiar to the westerners. African poet, Gabriel Okara focuses the ice-cold attitude of Europeans to the African culture.

Use of Native Elements and Symbolism in Okara’s Poetry:

Gabriel Okara has infused his poetry with images of Nigerian landscape, traditional rituals and writing it with ideas and syntax of his native language, Ijaw, with English vocabulary and grammar. His poem The Mystic Drum is African in both content and form. In African religion and folklore, drum beating is a ritualistic process. It has also a mythical significance. By talking about this ritualistic process, the poet goes back to his roots in history, religion, culture and folklore. The poet uses images and symbols to intensify the mysterious power of the drum beating. The beauty of the drum unites the mind and heart, or rather the thoughts and feelings of the drumbeater with the external world or nature. It shows the intensity of the drum beating and the unity of the people of Africa:

“The mystic drum beat in my inside
and fishes danced in the rivers
and men and women danced on land
to the rhythm of my drum
But standing behind a tree
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.”

Symbolism of the Mystic Drum and Cultural Unity:

The drum in African poems generally stands for the spiritual pulse of traditional African life. The poet asserts that first as the drum beat inside him fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on the land to the rhythm of the drum. But standing behind the tree there stood an outsider who smiled with an air of indifference at the richness of their culture; however, the drum still continued to beat rippling the air with quickened temp compelling the dead to dance and sing with their shadows. The ancestral glory overpowers other considerations: so powerful is the mystic drum, that it brings back even the dead alive. The rhythm of the drum is the aching for an ideal Nigerian state of harmony.

The Outsider as a Symbol of Western Imperialism:

The outsider is used in the poem for western imperialism that was looked down upon anything Eastern, non-Western, alien and therefore incomprehensible for their own good as the other:

“Then the drum beat with the rhythm
of the things of the ground
and invoked the eye of the sky
the sun and the moon and the river gods-
and the trees began to dance. “

Harmony Between Nature and African Culture:

The African culture is so much in tune with nature that the mystic drum invokes the sun, the moon, the river gods and the trees began to dance. The gap finally gets bridged between humanity and nature, the animal world and human world, the hydrosphere and lithosphere that fishes turned men, and men became fishes.

“The fishes turned men
and men turned fishes
and things stopped to grow—
But standing behind a tree.
with leaves around her waist
she only smiled with a shake of her head.

And then the mystic drum
in my inside stopped to beat—
and men became men,
fishes became fishes
and trees, the sun and the moon
found their places, and the dead·
went and leaves growing on her head.”

Loss of Cultural Vitality and Rise of Rationalism:

But later as the mystic drum stopped beating, men became men, and fishes became fishes. Life now became dry, logical and mechanical. Leaves started sprouting on the woman. She started to flourish on the land. Gradually her roots struck the ground. Spreading a kind of parched rationalism smoke issued from nose and her lips parted in smile. Ultimately the narrator was left in belching, darkness, completely cut off from the hurt of his culture and he packed the mystic drum not to beat loudly anymore.

Cultural Conflict and Identity Crisis in Okara’s Poetry

Okara’s poem tends to reflect the problems that African nations face as they are torn between the culture of their European colonists and their traditional African heritage. He also looks at the traumatic effect that colonization and de- colonization can have on the self and on one’s sense of personal identity. For example, Okara often depicts characters suffering from ‘culture shock as they are torn between these two irreconcilable cultures. On the one hand, there is Christianity and the definite material benefits such as classroom education and well-paid jobs that the European way of life offers, while on the other hand, there is the unspoken expectation that the true African was allegiance to his original tribal culture and should embrace these ‘roots’.

Critique of Western Imperialism and Cultural Displacement:

Gabriel Okara considers the invader as an enemy whom it is not easy to conquer. During the British imperialism the South African culture, the poet’s ancient heritage was ruined. The poet is worried about his countrymen who are torn between the two cultures but cannot accept one. Gabriel Okara criticises the western ways that have been adopted by the natives. He raises his voice against the western hegemony and he unmasks western imperialism.