Oral Literature in Africa (29 page)

Grandchild of Minta that hails from Dunkesease.

Grandchild of Obeeko Asamoa that hails from Bonkaben.

Grandchild of Obiyaa that hails from Aborodesu.

(Nketia 1955: 65)

and so on through a dozen lines or so. Even in these very simple dirges emotion is aroused through the connotations of the names introduced. Some women, however, do not consider this type to possess much appeal or depth and instead prefer type ‘D’ dirges. This type, while not possessing the dignity of the first two, has the attraction of giving more scope to the mourner’s individual emotions and reflections. The conventional themes are included but may be woven into the dirge as the individual singer wishes. ‘Grandchild of grandsire Kwaagyei’ quoted earlier is one example of this type. Another is part of a dirge sung by a Cape Coast woman for her
mother, a poem which begins lightly and gains depth as the sorrow of the mourner grows in intensity:

Mother! Mother!

Aba Yaa!

You know our plight!

Mother! you know our plight.

You know that no one has your wisdom.

Mother, you have been away long.

What of the little ones left behind?

Alas!

Who would come and restore our breath,

Unless my father Adorn himself comes?

Alas! Alas! Alas!

Quite often it is a struggle for us!

It is a long time since our people left.

Amba, descendant of the Parrot that eats palm nuts, hails from the Ancestral chamber.

I cannot find refuge anywhere.

I, Amba Adoma,

It was my grandfather that weighed gold

And the scales broke under its weight.

I am a member of Grandsire Ksse’s household:

We are at a loss where to go:

Let our people come, for we are in deep distress.

When someone is coming, let them send us something.

Yes, I am the grandchild of the Parrot that eats palm nuts

(Nketia 1955: 65)

A final example of this type illustrates how the conventional themes and stock terms of address can be woven together into an original piece by the mourner in which she can dwell at length on the deceased and her own state. It was sung for a Mass Education Officer who died in 1952, and is in the form of a continuous poem with two slight breaks after ‘father on whom I wholly depend’:

Valiant Owusu,

The stranger on whom the citizen of the town depends,

Father, allow my children and me to depend on you

So that we may all of us get something to eat,

Father on whom I wholly depend.

When father sees me, he will hardly recognize me.

He will meet me carrying an old torn mat and a horde of flies.

Father with whom I confer,

My children and I will look to you.

Father on whom I wholly depend.

Killer-of-hunger,

My saviour,

Father the slender arm full of kindness,

Father the Rover whose footprints are on all paths.

(Nketia 1955: 71)

Certain types of dirges are considered suitable for particular occasions—types ‘A’ and ‘B’, for instance, are held to be more dignified and thus appropriate for royal funerals—but at any funeral the mourner is free to sing whichever kind she prefers.

The detailed linguistic style and delivery of dirges are also discussed by Nketia (1955: Chs. 5, 7). The diction is marked by the great frequency of keywords throughout the poems, terms closely associated with the main themes already mentioned. Thus there is constant use of personal names, names of places and sources of drinking water, kinship terms and terms of address, and, finally, terms referring to an individual’s clan or paternal group. Certain verbs of identification are also particularly common, for example,
ne
(to be) and firi (to come from),
⁶
which occur in conjunction with the theme of the ancestor and of the place of domicile. Besides these keywords, all part of the mourner’s stock-in-trade from which she constructs her dirge, there are also conventional expressions used to describe someone’s attributes or express farewell or condolence. The deceased or his ancestor may be described and praised by such set phrases as ‘fount of satisfaction’, ‘the big cooking pot’, ‘large breast’, or ‘friend Adu: one on whom someone depends’. The mourner may also refer to her despair and sense of loss by using verbs which mean ‘to get dark’, ‘to be flooded’, ‘to be homesick or hungry for a person’, or nouns like ‘coolness’, ‘darkness’, or ‘empty house’.

Many conventional arrangements form part of the artistic style. These include name clusters, repetitions of key-words, and such combinations as, for instance, ‘Asim Abenaa’s grandchild-and-my-mother comes from Ahensan’, which follows the common pattern by which the term
nana
(grandchild) is combined with personal names, kinship terms, and the verb
firi
(come from). Similar conventions can be observed in the structure of sentences. Of the varying patterns, the most common is a construction with a front-placed nominal, that is, sentences opening with a name or name cluster—as in ‘Ano Yaa Kani whose kola tree bears fruit out of season’
or ‘Asim Abenaa of Ahensan, the Queen of old in whose vessels we grind millet’. This placing of names at the start of sentences is a characteristic feature of the language of Akan dirges and forms a conventional basis on which chains of reference can be built up.

Apart from these specialized syntactical forms and certain obscure names and figurative expressions, the language of dirges is relatively straightforward. Indeed the style as a whole is often simple and the main units within the dirge (the stanzas) tend to be short, in keeping with the circumstances of the performance. The compressed and allusive expression can also be connected with this; names and historical events, for example, are referred to briefly rather than described or narrated in full. By these means, in spite of the ordinary language and short span of the poem, a whole range of highly charged impressions can be conveyed.

When the prosody of Akan dirges is considered, it is clear that there is no even beat in a piece as a whole, though there is a scattered use of prosodic patterns of various kinds throughout the poem. Stress is not significant and there is no systematic use of tones or syllables. There is, however, a diffused occurrence of tonal and phonological patterns. These depend on the nature of the lines or linear units in dirges. These units are relatively easily identified through a number of phonological and grammatical forms which mark them off, such as a concluding particle (
ee, oo
), pause, or sob; parallel formation within a line; break in sequence marked by repetition or pronoun referring back; and occasional end-patterning (frequently tonal). Within linear units there is often repetition of single phonological terms (as, for instance, the
s
in the line
Osoro s
e mere
s
en a
s
a
s
e), of syllables and groups of syllables in words (e.g. Sakra
butu
onye
butu
foo
),
or of words or segments (e.g.
Y
ese
y
e
nni
nton,
y
e
nni
abusua). Repetitions of tone patterns also occur within lines; for example, in the line
odehye damfoo boo dam,
the high tone
dam
is in each case preceded by a low tone, and the repetition of the low-high sequence is noticeable. Within groups of lines similar repetitions can be observed: whole lines may be repeated, the first or second halves of succeeding lines may be identical, or there may be cross repetitions with the word or words in the end position appearing again at the beginning of the following line. This ‘prosody of repetition’, which is copiously illustrated by Nketia, fulfils some of the functions of rhythm and brings out the poetic style conventionally associated with Akan dirges.

This poetic flavour is further marked by the musical features of the dirge. It is true that, for the Akan, the
verbal
content of the dirge is paramount; Nketia quotes the remark that ‘it is not so much the beauty
of the voice as the depth of the verbal forms, in particular the range of the praise appellations that counts’.
²
However, musical aspects of form and performance also play some part in the artistry of the dirge as actually heard (Nketia 1955, esp. Ch. 7).

There are two different ways of singing dirges. The first is to adopt a type of wailing voice in which the words of the dirge are ‘spoken’ and the contours of the melody reflect the speech contours of the performer, sometimes accompanied by a few tuneful fragments. There are special musical conventions for the treatment of interjections, and this type of delivery also gives scope for the use of the sob, which is often uttered on the syllable
hi
and rapidly repeated perhaps five or six times. The other form is more purely musical. A fairly normal singing voice is used, with melodic contours resembling those of songs. However, there is a general tendency for dirge melodies to begin high and move down to a low resting point at the close. There are some traditional tunes associated with fragments of dirges, but in the main, whichever musical mode she employs, the singer makes up her own tunes as she goes along. Unlike many other types of songs, the rhythm of Akan dirges is free in the sense that there is no handclapping or percussion accompaniment to the singing, nor is it intended for dancing. This, in conjunction with the fact that the mourner herself acts as both soloist and chorus, gives the individual mourner greater scope to treat the subject in her own manner, without reference to others present, and to express her own feelings in the words and melodies she chooses.

IV

The occasions of the Akan dirge are easily described. It is a literary form expressly composed and performed for the occasion of a funeral and it takes its place alongside such other social expressions as drumming, the firing of guns, singing, wailing, and speaking. Indeed, some of Nketia’s informants were unwilling or unable to reproduce their dirges apart from the stimulation of an actual funeral; as they frequently explained, ‘they could not utter the words of the dirge without shedding tears or fasting’ (Nketia 1855: 2).

Funerals are important and memorable events among the Akan. They usually open with the preparation of the corpse, a stage at which no dirges are sung. In the second phase of public mourning, however, dirge singing is a central part of the proceedings. As Nketia describes it:

From among the confused noises will be heard the voice of many a woman mourner singing a dirge in pulsating tones in honour of the dead or his ancestors or some other person whose loss she is reminded by the present death, for ‘One mourns one’s relation during the funeral of another person’ …. The dirge is made the culminating point of the preparation for the funeral as well as the beginning of public mourning. Grief and sorrow may be personal and private, nevertheless Akan society expects that on the occasion of a funeral they should be expressed publicly through the singing of the dirge

(Nketia 1955: 8).

During this stage the women who sing the dirges pace about among those attending the funeral, pausing before the corpse or the chief mourners. Though there is no dancing to dirges, the singer makes gestures and gracefully rocks her head to add to the pathos of what she sings, and, like the chief mourners, she too is expected to fast as a sign of the sincerity of her anguish. There is great freedom as to how and what any performer sings, for dirges are not normally an organized performance, so that the individual can draw on her own resources and originality to express and evoke the emotion she is expected to feel. As the funeral ceremonies go on, the dirges tend to become fewer and fewer, partly because the singers become worn out by the physical and emotional strain of fasting, anguished lament, and pacing about the public gathering. Nevertheless, occasional dirges are heard from time to time until the end of the funeral:

The funeral dirge is heard with diminishing frequency and from fewer and fewer mourners, though it rarely ceases until the funeral is over. A sudden outburst is heard from time to time from a relation while all others may be resting. And so the funeral goes on until after the third day of the event of death when fasting and mourning cease (Nketia 1955: 15).

The funeral is sometimes followed by remembrance ceremonies some weeks after the death; some dirges are sung on these occasions, but they play a relatively minor part.

Very occasionally dirges are heard outside the context of a funeral. But funerals remain the conventional setting, and at them dirges are obligatory. In this context the dirge is, above all, a means of praising the dead person. He is honoured and mourned, and, as well, the general links between the past and present, the living and the dead, are brought out in stock themes. The sorrow felt by the mourners at the funeral is not only expressed in this conventional form, but can actually be heightened by a skilled singer who evokes the pathos of the situation through her passionate utterances. These dirges, in fact, form the mainstay of any funeral particularly at the outset; it
is only towards the later stages that the dirges of the women are reinforced and finally replaced by music and dancing.

The Akan funeral dirge is a conventional medium of expression, with its own canons of form, theme, and delivery as well as its own traditional occasion when it is performed. There are certain stock forms of phraseology which are regarded as obligatory, and errors in these are quickly corrected. Nevertheless, within these limits both variations and scope for individual creativeness are possible. Traditionally all Akan girls were expected to learn how to sing and compose dirges. They had to master the traditional themes and language, but when performing they were free to exercise their individual tastes and express their own sentiments. The dirges are thus both fixed
and
flexible. For the Akan the funeral dirge is a form recognized not only for its clear social importance but also for its aesthetic merit. Far from being random or wholly spontaneous, the Akan dirge has its own complex and sophisticated conventions, a literary tradition at the service of the individual composer.