ABSTRACT

This essay studies how oral performance constitutes the core poetic style employed by Niyi Osundare to project social commitment and vision in Songs of the Marketplace.  It discusses how the poet’s deployment of oral performance makes his poetry more accessible to a larger audience than those of his predecessors. The pervasive theme of moral degeneration remains a serious concern in the selected poems. Like the oral traditional performance, Osundare employs rich Yoruba oral literary devices in a way that is unique. His poetic style has a clearly defined concept and role of concentizing the masses toward revolutionary consciousness. The poem is  central to the depiction of the polemics of governance and politics in Nigerian society. In a way, the poem raises hope of redemption from the decadent situation that has eaten deep into the fabric of social existence.