African Traditional Art Forms in Aidoo’s Anowa and Onwueme’s The Reign of Wazobia: Relevance for Contemporary Africa

Abstract

The paper highlights various African traditional art forms depicted in Ama Ata Aidoo’s ‘Anowa’ and Tess Onwueme’s ‘The Reign of  Wazobia’. The analysis of the two plays shows that traditional art forms from two different African societies – Ghana and Nigeria include  poetry, local idioms, proverbs, music, dance and masquerades. The functions of these art forms are majorly being didactic as well as  entertaining. They are used to project the theme of gender inequality in African societies as well as the rich entertainment aspect of  African culture. These are relevant to contemporary Africa whereby many aspects of the people’s traditional life are fast being eroded by  globalization. In addition the thematic pre-occupation of the two plays on gender inequality contribute to ongoing efforts in  contemporary Africa to achieve gender equality in every aspect of the society. It is therefore recommended that African playwrights make  frequent use of their rich traditional art forms as vehicles for their thematic projections.