Technologising Orality: A Reflection on Femi Lasode’s ‘Sango’

Abstract

Filmmakers have made recourse to traditional materials and oral aesthetics and blended them with technology in their narratives in order to achieve a unique film tradition. This paper assessed Lasode's deployment of oral and film aesthetics in reconstructing the story of the legendary hero-god, Sango. It focused on the narratology of the text, in its adaptation of oral materials. Relying on the concepts of adaptation and translation, the paper adopted character and thematic analytical approach. The paper established that, the film-text has combined technology with orality to present Sango, not only as a legendary figure who inundation his world with mystic grandeur but a tragic hero whose misfortune arises from the bitter politics of his time and whose moral lapses leave a pattern for the modern society to learn from. Technology is deployed to demonstrate the adaptability and continuous relevance of oral materials, (drum, songs, chant, gong, flute and myth) to achieve harmony between the past and the present. Furthermore, songs and drums become the non- human character, motivating, warning, instructing and informing humans in their interactions with one another. In all, Lasode used technology to demonstrate the adaptability and continual relevance of oral material in contemporary narratives.

Key Words: technologising, orality, narratology, aesthetics and reconstruct