{"id":27436,"date":"2019-09-19T16:07:48","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T16:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=27436"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:30:17","slug":"window-wide-open","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/window-wide-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Window Wide Open"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n \n \n \n \n
\n\n
<\/div>\n \n
\n
\n\n

\n Window Wide Open\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

Crickets are chirpin\u2019 the water is high
\n<\/em>There\u2019s a soft cotton dress on the line hangin\u2019 dry
\n<\/em>Window wide open African trees
\n<\/em>Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze
\n<\/em>Not a word of goodbye not even a note
\n<\/em>She gone with the man in the long black coat<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Bob Dylan<\/em>,<\/em>“Man in the Long Black Coat\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, Bob Dylan’s 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature Award was controversial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it was likely the most publicly contested Nobel Prize in Literature<\/a> ever received, having provoked the ire of traditionalists who believe \u201cliterature\u201d is a rigidly defined, sacred genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days following the announcement, there were also many \u201cwhat about \u2026\u201d op-eds and tweets from celebrated journalists and writers that included Hari Kunzru, Norman Mailer, and Jason Pinter.  Undeniably, there is a long list of story_intro_authors who deserved the same honour as Dylan \u2014 a list which includes the likes of such towering literary revolutionaries as Chinua Achebe, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and James Baldwin. Nevertheless, these glaring omissions have no bearing on Dylan\u2019s merit as a very deserving prize winner, argues Professor in the Institute of African Studies<\/a>, Nduka Otiono<\/a>, in the just-released and already critically acclaimed book, Polyvocal Bob Dylan: Music, Performance, Literature<\/a>, <\/em>which he co-edited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Polyvocal<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDating back to over a half century ago, an imaginary jury had begun to deliberate on Bob Dylan\u2019s transgressive creative imagination to determine whether indeed his works qualified as poetry and the story_intro_author\/singer qualified to be addressed as a poet,\u201d explains Otiono. \u201cThe question of why Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize can be found by unpacking the art of Bob Dylan, to understand his complex persona and 50-year long career of prolific artistic production that spans various musical genres including folk, rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, pop, country, gospel, R&B, and others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Produced in collaboration with English Professor at MacEwan University, Josh Toth<\/a>, Polyvocal Bob Dylan<\/a> <\/em>brings together an interdisciplinary series of scholarly essays that explore the powerful cultural impact of Dylan\u2019s music, writing, aesthetic, and persona. In re-examining Dylan\u2019s transformative presence, the book challenges those who shouted \u2018Sacrosanct!\u2019 at Dylan\u2019s prize to interrogate their own entrenched notions of \u201cliterature\u201d as a category. Together, Toth and Otiono write in the introduction of Polyvocal Bob Dylan<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dylan is not a \u201cpoet\u201d\u2014 not, anyway, in any traditional sense; nor is his writing (in isolation) comparable to the work of \u201cgreat poets\u201d like Yeats or Eliot. It\u2019s simply not the same thing \u2014 even if, at the same time (and however paradoxically), it works to confuse the very possibility of making such a distinction. We are not, in other words, interested in suggesting that Dylan\u2019s work simply marks a unique space for itself anterior to a clearly delimited field of \u201cliterature.\u201d Nor are we interested in \u201crecovering\u201d Dylan\u2019s work as traditionally literary and, for that reason, of value. Our position is that it is unique insofar as it functions, rather (or finally), to straddle and confuse any number of modalities, any number of genres, any number of forms: it is literary only insofar as it is also musical; readable only insofar as it must also be heard; new only insofar as it is haunted by tradition. It is, we are saying, polyvocal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, Otiono and Toth hold the position that Dylan\u2019s unique writing and art, which often feels so gallingly unrefined and so unlike literature, actually and dexterously perform the same evocative function for audiences as the work of the world\u2019s most celebrated traditional story_intro_authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsurprisingly, Prof. Otiono has been a dedicated member of the Dylan<\/a> congregation for decades. During this time, with Dylan\u2019s music as his soundtrack, Otiono has navigated multiple norm-challenging careers, enjoyed a rich personal and family life, and lived in cities across the globe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Magical Power of Storytelling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Otiono was born in Kano, Northern Nigeria\u2019s largest city, and the country\u2019s second-largest city overall. Kano is known as a bustling commercial epicentre and is home to Kannywood, a section of Nigeria\u2019s burgeoning film industry called Nollywood. His father was of Niger Delta origin, but fell in love with northern Nigeria, moving around to various cities in the northern region before the Biafran war broke out in 1967.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDad was an accountant who loved English literature. My mum was a teacher and a disciplinarian. Together, they inculcated the love of books in me and my siblings,\u201d says Otiono. \u201cDad would share classics such as Tom Sawyer, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth, The Arabian Nights Entertainment, Round the World in Eighty Days<\/em>, and so on, but there wasn\u2019t much of African literature besides Shaka the Zulu<\/em> and Things Fall Apart<\/em>. Mum spellbound us with a lot of African folktales, complete with their moving choruses, some of which I still remember.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otiono describes his childhood in Kano as dramatic, the experience of the war scars his memories. He remembers a train and truck journey back to his hometown of Ogwashi Uku in midwestern Nigeria, just before the war broke out, \u201cAlthough I was too young to recall details of the war, memories of air raids, taking cover under beds, and sojourning in the farm and bushes to evade rampaging Nigerian soldiers still haunt me. I particularly remember a narrow escape from a bullet that flew into my grandpa\u2019s living room, ricocheted on the mud walls and settled mercifully on the floor without hurting anyone,\u201d he says. It was this very experience which inspired \u201cGrandma\u2019s Pipe\u201d, one of Otiono\u2019s poems in his second collection of poems titled, love in a Time of Nightmares<\/em> (2008). Otiono has always relied on writing and creating art to deconstruct his experiences. \u201cThe war defined and lacerated my childhood, so storytelling became one of my healing therapies. The love of books and the magical power of storytellers escorted me through primary and secondary schools, and finally corralled me into studying English at the University of Ibadan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Prof.<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For his honors and master\u2019s theses, Otiono remained at Ibadan to focus on two spectacular oral performance groups under the supervision of Prof. Isidore Okpewho<\/a>, one of the most exceptional scholars of African oral literature.  Upon graduation, the unrelenting lure of storytelling drew him into work as a journalist, and while he had a noteworthy career working in this field, the pursuit of knowledge finally jostled him into a second profession in the professoriate via a doctorate at the University of Alberta, and a postdoctorate at Brown University, in America. It was a Banting Fellowship that brought Otiono and his family to Canada in 2012 to Carleton University, where he was hired as the first 100 per cent faculty on a tenure track in African Studies. \u201cMy family and I were delighted to return to Canada,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otiono and Dylan \u2013 Love at First Sight<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It was during Prof. Otiono\u2019s most creatively formative years as a journalist in the streets of Lagos (Nigeria\u2019s most densely populated commercial and cultural capital city) when he first encountered Bob Dylan. Having just graduated from Ibadan and, impressively, holding a job as a staff writer for The Guardian newspaper, he was an active member of a group of progressive young writers (mostly poets) in the early 1990s, a time when Lagos was a hotbed of brilliant creatives from various parts of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among this group of writers and poets was Idzia Ahmad, who introduced Dylan to Otiono by handing him an audio cassette of taped music mostly comprised of Dylan\u2019s mid-career album Oh Mercy <\/em>(1989)<\/a>. Otiono recollects the experience of listening to the tape as tantamount to love at first sight. \u201cThe sheer poetic force of the songs delivered in that inimitable languorous, whining voice instantly suited my immersion then in the tortured sensibility that underpinned the poetry of our \u2018Ibadan school\u2019 of poets\u2014if I may use that term loosely,\u201d he says. \u201cI cherished the gift from Idzia so much that I kept it for over a decade and took it along with me to Edmonton when I relocated for my doctoral program. Losing it\u2014even with the faded sounds\u2014is one of the most painful losses of an item with strong sentimental value that I possessed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cover
Cover of Bob Dylan’s album “Oh Mercy” 1989<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By the time he had arrived in Alberta for his Ph.D., Otiono was firmly in Dylan\u2019s clutch. He had familiarized himself with the full Dylan discography and had read many of the countless books and think pieces penned on his favourite artist. Otiono had cultivated a love for the whole of Dylan, however Oh Mercy<\/em><\/a> remained his favourite, particularly the song \u201cMan in a Long Black Coat\u201d. He adored this track so much that he taught the song as a poem in a first-year writing course at the University of Alberta titled English Literature in Global Perspectives. \u201cBesides how well my students received the Dylan \u2018poem,\u2019 my friendship with a course mate, Marco Katz, an experienced musician, became catalytical to cementing my romance with Dylan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n