Performance of Jukun Panegyrics

Abstract Although, from extant literature, Nigeria has been noted to have a considerable number of significant panegyrics, this variety seems to exclude the Jukun, an influential ethnic stock located in southern Taraba, along Nigeria’s northeastern corridor. This article describes Jukun panegyrics against their socio-cultural context. It uses Richard Bauman’s thought on performance as shared heritage peculiar to a people’s verbal art culture to describe how the performers of Jukun panegyrics establish linkages between themselves and their audience by heavily drawing on the lore peculiar and familiar to their audience and region to drive home their performative delivery. It is essential to draw on Bauman’s thought, given that it reveals how oral imagery invokes the lore and entire cosmology common to the Jukun. In conclusion, we find that although the Jukun panegyrics performer may display skills similar to other performers across the nation in establishing connections between the audience and himself, he greatly distinguishes himself through exhuming the lore of his audience and region and through the provision of insights into the historical, social and cultural factors that might have shaped the evolution and sustenance of the Jukun panegyric, thus enriching the reader’s understanding of the traditions and identity of the Jukun people.