Read Oral Literature in Africa Online
Authors: Ruth Finnegan
These then are some of the occasions on which poems described in the sources as ‘military’ or ‘war songs’ were (or are) actually performed. It seems clear that the romantic picture of the ‘natural’ occasion for savage war songs—as mainly confined to the actual heat of battle, or its immediate prelude or aftermath—is an exaggerated one.
How over-simplified this popular picture is will emerge further from a glimpse of the military poetry of the Nguni and the Akan peoples. These peoples, in particular their sub-groups the Zulu and the Ashanti, were well known to their European opponents of sixty or seventy years ago for their military qualities. The Nguni case must be pieced together from various passing references to their military poetry in the past. For the Akan we can look at the equally interesting way in which a type of poetry regarded as military survives in the contemporary situation.
The Nguni-speaking peoples of southern Africa are famous for their military organization and warlike ethic. The best known of all are the Zulu,
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welded together into a great military system by Shaka in the early ninteenth century. But others too of this group have also been noted for the same all-pervading military spirit—the Swazi, neighbours of the Zulu, the Ndebele, and the Ngoni of Malawi who formed part of the great Nguni dispersal of peoples moving north as a result of Shaka’s expansion.
From Shaka’s time the whole nation was organized into a kind of military camp, and war was the main centre of interest (Krige 1936: 261ff.). The stress on military glory, on triumph, and on the possibility of attaining honour and position through achievement in war comes out both in the praise songs discussed in an earlier chapter, and also in the Zulu war songs (
iziqubulo, amahubo
)
:
Oye oyeye!
Seek out the cowards,
The lion-conqueror strikes.
Come, let’s march into battle;
No more the time for boastful arguments.
What, sayest thou the time for boastful argument is over?
Begone!
Who told the news that wranglings have ceased?
The house of Qolwana set we on fire.
We make no jokes, no lies tell we.
He is full of hate, full of hate.
Oyeyiya wo!
Come, see us set aflame the house of Qolwana.
On whom will you make war
If you wipe out all the nations thus?
Ho! Ho! …
You who defeat the foes
And conquer the nations.
If you wipe out the nations thus,
On whom will you make war?
Yea, what will you do?
You have subdued the kings;
You have wiped out the nations.
Where and what next, O Conqueror?
E! E! E!
(Dhlomo 1947: 6)
Under Shaka, the Zulu were reorganized into regiments of 800–1,000 strong, making up an army of perhaps 20,000, maybe more (Krige 1936: 262).
There was a centralized standing army, an unusual feature in Africa, and unlike the Nilotes and similar peoples, the Zulu showed an interest in conquest and territorial expansion as well as mere raiding for cattle and other movables. Internally there was rivalry between the different Zulu regiments, expressed in competitiveness in battle and in dancing and singing at the royal kraal. Each regiment had its own regimental songs, dress, and war-cry, which distinguished it from others, and it was only in the actual heat of battle that the national war-cry was used; before that, as they set off, only the regimental war-cries were shouted. Each regiment also often had its military kraal, separate from others and under its own captain. Even in normal conditions the men were expected to serve for at least two to three months a year, and, if there was no war, they were engaged in various communal tasks. Even in peace, the military spirit was paramount. There was stern discipline, and military dances and songs fulfilled the function of drill.
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Many of these dances were based on military manoeuvring and amounted to a kind of sham battle. The desire for glory, the excitement of war, and national and regimental pride could be instilled within the military kraals even in peacetime.
War songs were also sung on more colourful occasions. The most striking of all was the annual first fruits ceremony held in the presence of the king, when the army of the nation gathered, regiment by regiment, to display its might in public. Several of these nineteenth-century displays are described in early sources, summed up by Krige:
The most spectacular and imposing of all Zulu dancing was … that of the regiments of warriors in full regimental dress; and the annual dances at the royal kraal, just after the Feast of the First-fruits, must have presented a most brilliant and colourful sight ….
The king first of all reviewed the army, seated in his chair of state. On the occasion witnessed by Delegorgue, the regiments of young warriors came, grouped in six great masses of about 1,000 each, made a rapid charge, then became orderly again and began to dance a war chant, the ground resounding under their feet. They marched to within five paces of the king, and formed a kind of serpent which unrolled itself from three rings. Each regiment had its own particular dance and song, and each man, on passing the king, bent low and hurled him a greeting with an air of anger. These evolutions lasted many hours …
The king, on one such occasion, took his position at the head and centre of a line of several thousand men, with an equal number opposite them. They began to sing and march, reinforcing their foot movements with gestures
of the arms in all directions with wonderful uniformity. Then, chanting and dancing, the column following, the king slowly advanced and the two horns united to form a circle, the warriors finally sitting down in a ring with shields raised yet heads showing …
(Krige 1936: 342)
The excitement and pride engendered by such ceremonial displays come out too, although perhaps with rather lesser intensity, in the war songs sung before going out to battle, or in triumph after it. The desire for glory and the sense of competitiveness were incited by the stirring war songs and dances, where the words, the melody, and the movement all helped to create a warlike atmosphere. These, like other war songs, were often highly rhythmical and onomatopoeic. An example can be given from the Ngoni of Malawi, a Nguni offshoot who preserve war songs of the same types as do the more southerly Nguni groups. They are known as
imigubo
(songs for setting out to war) and, though short and onomatopoeic, mount up to a high pitch of intensity as the men dance, stamping their feet and knocking their shields:
Ee, ee, ee
What are we contending for?
What are we contending for
In this way in the sky?
Ee, ee, ee
Oyi, oyi, oyi!
The sun is setting.
Ee, ee, ee
What are we contending for?
What are we contending for
In this way in the sky?
Ee, ee, ee
Oyi, oyi, oyi!
(Read 1937: 30)
These songs, once so appropriate to the warlike spirit of Nguni society, are not totally forgotten today. In the 1930s some were still being sung in Malawi; others have been recorded more recently in South Africa by the African Music Society. However, nowadays they are used mainly for ceremonial display or, at times, to pander to romantic ideas about the savage and tribal past of the Bantu. Some of the songs are now sometimes adapted for faction fighting (Tracey 1948
b
: vii-viii), and modifications of the old military forms have been used, it is said, for political intimidation (
Afr. Music
2, 4, 1961: 117 (Southern Rhodesia)). But these survivals are of less interest than the purposeful development of military literature in the nineteenth century. These earlier Nguni war songs can only be fully appreciated in relation to
their complex and specialized military organization. They are not attached primarily to the circumstances of actual battle, but to the routine and the ceremonies of military activity, developed among a people for whom, even in peacetime, the military ethic was predominant.
The Akan peoples, with their multiplicity of specialist associations, are very different from the Nguni. The Akan have a tradition of warrior associations or ‘war companies’ that possess their own characteristic form of drumming and poetry. (Nketia 1963
b
, Ch. 9) It is true that these associations no longer flourish as in the past (the Ashanti associations, for example, were suppressed after the events of 1896–1900). But in the southern Akan area, particularly among the Fante, they are still active, and even elsewhere their poetry is still performed. There is an over-all homogeneity in their patterns of music and organization that makes it possible to generalize about their poetry.
There are two main types of Akan warrior associations: companies of the court comprising the highest war leaders under the control of the rulers, and the company of commoners,
asafo,
a term now used indiscriminately for all warrior associations. These war companies consist of all able-bodied men combined under a leader in external or internal disputes. They also act as a group for certain types of communal work and in the enthronement and deposition ceremonies of rulers. In the Fante area where these
asafo
companies are most important, there may be as many as seven or ten companies in a single town; elsewhere one village or group of villages shares one company. All these companies are highly organized bodies with their own captains, who act as intermediaries between themselves and the political rulers of the state. They are headed by the ‘captain of the host’ or war leader who is helped by various other officials, among them the
frankaatufoo
or standard-bearer who regulates the march, the
asafo kyerema,
the master drummer who calls the warriors to action, urges them on, and keeps up morale, and the
nnawutabofoo,
player of twin gongs.
Drumming plays an important part. Drums and gongs are played with a few members of the company leading the song, the rest acting as chorus. Among the most important songs are the calls. These are rousing cries to the company that, nowadays at least, precede or interrupt a cycle of songs but show clear marks of their once fully military character:
Fire!
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Fire!
Fire! Asafo Kyiremu.
8
Fire!
We are not afraid.
No, not a bit.
Asafo Kyiremu,
We are not afraid of anybody.
(Nketia 1963
b
:
107)
Different companies often have their own special calls and responses, sometimes partly ‘spoken’ by the drummer, and these mark out their identity as distinct from others and ‘engender the mass feeling that is so important in the activities of
asafo
.
(Ibid.: 108)
This feeling is further intensified by the frequent songs celebrating particular companies, combining boastfulness with insults to their enemies. Thus one song about Apente (a court company) runs:
Osee, man of Apente.
Osee, man of Apente,
We shall fight battles for our nation,
There was a battle brewing; Osee,
But the army of the enemy never arrived.
We did not feel their presence.
You are children of ghosts, and nocturnal fighters.
Night fighters,
You have laid them low.
Osee has laid you low.
The night fighter has laid you low.
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(Idem)
Another such song refers to the Ashanti wars with the British and praises the deeds of Apagya, a royal military company among the Ashanti:
Hirelings adamant to rain and scorching sun,
Members of the Apagya company,
There was a cannon mounted vainly on top of the fort.
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The cannon could not break us,
The trusted company that engages in battle.
Hail the helper!
(Idem)
The Apagya company is also exultantly praised in
He has killed the Southerners.
He has killed the Northerners,
It is Asafo Apagya,
The Umbrella tree.
The Umbrella tree has branches above and below,
The crafty Umbrella tree.
King,
Hail the helper!
(Nketia 1963
b
: 108–9)
Not all military songs explicitly glorify war, however. Some also exhibit an awareness of the dangers and cost of war. There are always casualties, for ‘battle never goes hungry’. The warrior leaves in the knowledge that he may not return but that he goes to do his duty courageously:
Kwaakwaa
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accompanies me to the front.
Man of Apagya, if I die in the morning, no-one should mourn for me.
Yes if I fall in the morning,
Okoromansa accompanies me to battle, no-one should weep on my account.
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Yes if I fall in the morning,
If I fall in the morning do not cry.
Yes if I die in the morning.
(Ibid.: 109)
Members of the association are also summoned to battle by a drum-call giving the association’s name, praise name, and other characteristic marks that distinguish it from others. One of these
Bodyguard as strong as iron,
Fire that devours the nations …
is quoted in full in Chapter 17. In another the various names associated with the company are given, then the ordinary members are stirred up for the fight:
Members of the Advance Guard, I mean you.
The leopard goes hungry
If it pounces on a tortoise.
The leopard should never be considered old and feeble.
The leopard walks in the thicket:
The thicket trembles and shakes violently.
Come hosts; come hosts; come hosts!
Come in thick numbers.
(Ibid.: 111)
There are also ‘songs for conveying a dead member to a place of burial, songs for parading in the street, songs of insult, songs of incitement and so on’. (Ibid.: 110) Besides these there are also some characteristic types belonging to particular companies or groups of companies. The No. 1 Company of Cape Coast, for example, has several styles of drumming, each used with a set of songs designed to accompany different kinds of action.
A high-spirited style accompanies a display of bravery in leap-dancing and strutting action, and a gentler style is used for normal dancing. Associations also sometimes create their own recreational music and dance as well as the more traditional types. All the regular songs are characterized by their emotional quality and by the specially stirring effect of the drumming, achieved largely by the peculiar timbre of the leading drums. Within this general spirit of the military songs