Folklore as cultural memory and resistance in James Eze’s ‘Unbind Me Now’

By Deborah Chinonyerem Uzoma

WHEN histories become absurd to the people, ancestral stories and communal proverbs provides another platform for interpreting pain, suffering, hope and resistance. James Ngwu Eze’s Unbind Me Now presents the act of returning to these stories as not an escape into the past, but as a tool for navigating the present. Through folklore, people reclaim the right to narrate themselves — and in doing so, they reclaim the future. Thus, by examining the role of folklore as cultural memory and resistance in the selected poems of this collection; this essay investigates traditional folklore in three lenses: as a repository of cosmology and values, as a performative language of healing, and as a tool for cultural survival. This study concludes that freedom remembers personal and collective struggles, and through folklore, to speak in the voice of the ancestors, and to live in continuity with tradition amidst urbanization.

Historical events of a particular era form an important source for writing and poetry is no exception to it. Poetry, written during a specific period of time covers the poet’s personal experiences involving cultural, social, emotional, and political ideologies. These ideologies also take its root in the traditional norms thus, they create a deep impact in the mind of the poet and eventually in their poetic rendition.

In recent times of rapid technological change, and cultural homogenization, the question of who we are — and where we come from — has become both urgent and contested. Folklore, understood as the body of myths, legends, proverbs, songs, rituals, and oral narratives transmitted within a community, serves as more than illusion. It is the living archive of a people’s memory, values, cosmology, and survival strategies. Folklore functions beyond ornamentation. It serves as cultural memory, trees, lifestyle as a tool of resistance against erasure in a globalized, postcolonial context. Eze’s poetry collection Unbind Me Now weaves myths, proverbs, stories of a shared group of people, rituals, chants, and ancestral motifs into contemporary verse.

In Unbind Me Now, Eze reclaims indigenous knowledge systems and positions them as living resources for negotiating modern realities. He continues from the impact in his two poetry collections, dispossessed and Goosebumps but this time around intense.The poet believes that his poetry belongs to the streets- the broken voices, that through his art, his telling of their wounds would be heard.This telling is what Foucault calls “Parrhesia” (Discourse and Truth,1) In Discourse and Truth, Michel Foucault posits that the “Parrhesiastes”, who is the teller or speaker says what he knows to be true and he is affected by coincidence of belief and truth and uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find (2-3). Throughout the seventy-one poems of the collection. Eze is fighting the fire that burns Nigeria, retelling what makes a people who they are and reveals the resilient spirit in his arts as a tool for transformation in the society.

In his review of Unbind Me Now, Ugochukwu Anadị emphasises on Eze’s carefulness in handling language when he states that “This is the work of a poet-activist who believes language is a tool of revolution. The words burn yet are sublime. They rage, they blaze, sometimes they sputter, but the flame of artistry is never extinguished.” Anadị suggests that Eze is a poet confident in his craft and uses the best choice of words to convey his messages; the creative spirit and the drive for change are never completely put out.

On another hand, Jeff Iwu claims that Eze’s work is full of wounds and at such pleas for a reclaim of history. He asserts that “the title, Unbind Me Now, therefore functions not simply as an appeal for political liberation but as a plea for emotional release from histories that continue to imprison memory. This concern with suffering finds its fullest expression in the collection’s persistent use of bodily imagery.” Iwu’s postulation here is that the reader encounters an intimate experience of pain amidst political liberation which begins with speech(arts).

Adding to our discussion, Anayo Nkamnebe asserts that “the collection is dense, lyrical, and image-driven, drawing confidently on African cosmology, Christian symbolism, and elemental forces such as fire, rain, wind, and earth.”This means that Eze’s poetry demands attention and useful engagement from its reader.

The essence of this study is to define oneself outside of crossroads, to heal cultural rupture, and to locate contemporary struggles within a longer continuum of resilience. Folklore offers language for that work as it explores indigenous epistemologies that formal history often erases. Hence, this essay examines how traditional folklore is represented in through three lenses: as a repository of cosmology and values, as a performative language of healing, and as a tool for cultural survival.

Folklore as Repository of Igbo Cosmology and Values

As repository of Igbo cosmology and values, Eze often retreats to folk images — the iroko tree, the talking drum, the market square — to suggest that solutions may lie not in imported models but in rooted wisdom. There are references to traditional practices, ritual spaces, dieties amongst others in the collection.

For example, the first poem in the collection, ‘divination time’ references the village square as the centre for gathering of traditional norms. There is evidence of the flute-songs, the ‘ogene’, the drumming feet descending from the local drum of ‘Ekwe’. This tells of the traditional symbol and heritage of the Igbo cosmology. The sound of the Ekwe serves as a bridges between the dead and the living. It conveys messages from the ancestors to the living for guidiance. The melodious sounds from the beating honours great feats – human achievement, strength, and the individual spirit (Ikenga). Thus the excerpt:

the village square is aflame
with flute-songs.
drums impel the feet
with incendiary rumble.
ekwe’s urgent strokes
draw fiery notes from ogene.

From the excerpt above, the atmosphere in the viilage is vibrant, intense, and filled with the music oftraditional musical instruments—flutes, drums, the ekwe, and the ogene—are playing together with such intense, infectious energy that the entire village square is alive with passionate dancing and celebration.

In the poem, we see “Kolanut” presented which represents a symbol of communality and love that binds a shared group of people. The mentioning of the “chief priest” who performs the ritual “glide to the clearing”, and the then four Igbo marks days “oye, afo, nkwo, eke “ remind us of whom we are ; and emphasizes to remember that divination time is a call to action for assuredly, the gods must speak. The ancestral presence insists that individual identity is communal, tied to lineage and land.

In the lead poem, Unbind Me Now, the speaking voice seeks liberation.Folklore here represents the symbolic vocabulary for bondage and freedom. Chains are not only personal or political, they are spiritual. What Eze does here is to reactivate these in a poetic register, to remind the reader that in Igbo thought, a person’s worth is measured not only by personal success but by how well they uphold umunna values. Thus, folklore becomes a moral compass within poems that confront love, betrayal, and exile. In the opening poem, the poet explains that he will continue to speak out loud on things that have existed from the very beginning till his lungs drip blood:

i shall scream until my lungs drip blood
until the earth rethinks its primeval dance,
and the moon glares down the sun
in a duel of wounded fire.

The metaphor of the ‘moon’ glaring down the sun suggests a subversion of natural order—the quiet, nocturnal force rising up to overpower the aggressive, solar force. In folklore mythology, there is a cosmic battle and blend of opposing power. Usually, the sun- the ultimate source of light and life, is “wounded” as its light is tampered; while the moon -a cold or stolen light, “glares down” with a fierce, not just hatred, but a fierce causing a devastating passion. This exemplifies the passion that fuels in the heart of the speaking voice demanding justice because “a tempest is upon my land/ beheading statues of benevolent gods”, thus have removed a heritage steeped “in myth.” The speaking voice serves as a social crusader calling forth all that’s stolen and taken away from their land to be restored , hence the poem Unbind me now.

Folklore as Performative Language of Healing and Liberation
The performativity in this collection draws directly from the shared narrative traditions found in healing. This healing is rooted in emotional and political bondage — colonial trauma, failed leadership, personal grief; and language becomes the ritual instrument.

In the poem, “Holy Rain,” the title suggests a purification or cleansing since the rain is Holy. Reading through the poem, the reader discovers that healing itself and liberation doesn’t just happen without a trace of the past. The voice echoes on the justice awaiting at the door which is referred as “vapour of holy rain”. The poem begins with an act of telling, recalling the destruction that has transpired in two decades in the heart of humanity and in submission to those who rule; whom the voice describes as “vampire god.” The opening line reads:

tell hegseth
our doors are open.
hands outstretched to hills
awaiting the flare
before the blast.

Folklore presents itself in the title of “the New Baptism” telling the importance of a place as the voice takes his reader to import of the sound of the “mother’s pestle” and “father’s cough”. The gathering at the village square and its significance. The mentioning of the adada river reclaiming its bank ; and the speaking voice rising with his ofo in his right hand (Ikenga) gives credence to the power in the right hand- honouring the effort and labour required to accomplish goals. The poem ends with a strong affirmation to reclaim what was lost through poetry. Thus the excerpt:

i am from a place
where things
have lost their names
and my poetry
shall rename them.

Folklore as Strategy for Cultural Survival and Resistance
This section explores the cultural dilution of indigenous knowledge at cross roads in the height of urbanization. In the poem, “My Chains Are Broken”, the speaking voice presents the resilient spirit as involving both remembrance and renewed participation in cultural life. Music, dance and indigenous imagery function as restorative practices that reconnect individuals to communities fragmented by violence. The “drums, “thundering cannons” and “flute” embody a harmony at the pain of survival. Here, Jeff Iwu opines that” freedom is imagined not simply as political victory but as bodily release.”

Similarly in the poem, “when the earth grieves,”reverberates echoes of survival and resistance even in home away from the main home. The poem opens with the speaking voice informing the reader the inheritance his father left for him, “the patch of the earth,” which he states that/ “no one shall take it”/ and “walk away with it”. That’s fierceness and resistance. The voice continues to disclose that this inheritance from his grandfather and those of his fathers has threatened the bones of those who sleep due to erosion. The destruction of farm lands, trees and the consequence death of things. However the speaker takes solace in the words of his father as he concludes never to shed tears. “but my father told me not to shed a tear/ for all things shall pass away”. This signifies that holding on to what makes us a people, to remember the words of the elders in the midst of turbulence and holding on to fate as each phase passes by.

In conclusion, Eze demonstrates that Igbo myths and motifs can inhabit global literary spaces without losing their specificity. This is resistance against the notion that folklore is “primitive” or irrelevant to present-day grammar, politics, and identity. In Unbind Me Now, Eze does not merely reference folklore; he enacts it. Traditional folklore serves as repository of cultural memory that preserves Igbo cosmology, as performative language that heals and liberates, and as a resistant practice that asserts indigenous relevance in contemporary times.

* Uzoma, the author of My Father’s House and Other Poems, teaches Use of English and Communication in English at the Department of Humanities, Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, Imo State. She can be reached @ uzomadeborah@gmail.com