Oral Literature in Africa (38 page)

the leading role is … played by the cantors who may vary their styles. Sometimes they sing long sustained notes while the chorus is held in suspense; sometimes they use a recitative style, interpolating pauses in the chorus responses with calls, short phrases or shouts, while others animate the performance with occasional whistling and catcalls. Everybody lets himself go, singing at the top of his voice and with great feeling.

(Nketia 1963
b
: 110)

Are these military songs still significant? Obviously the directly military functions of warrior associations have been superseded, and in Ashanti at least, in the present century, they have not even acted as very pronounced corporate groups. Yet it seems that not only are the companies active on certain occasions (particularly in the south) and seize the opportunity to perform their own songs and music, but in some contexts they preserve their warlike and forceful spirit. As Nketia writes:

In the past, the most important context in which Asafo groups drummed and acted was during wars. Although this is no longer operative, there is always a resurgence of the war spirit during major political disputes, particularly disputes over constitutional issues in which Asafo groups act as political pressure groups. Thus in Ashanti, where Asafo companies are practically dormant, political crises often bring a temporary awakening of such groups who are kept together by drums and songs which promote the type of action required by the situation.

(Ibid.: 115)

Asafo
music also still occurs in other contexts.
¹²
In rural areas in the south,
asafo
companies are called on to perform certain communal tasks and to organize search-parties for missing persons, in the forest and at sea. Such searches create a particularly emotional atmosphere if the missing person is a member of the company, and many
asafo
songs are sung. Funerals of a member are also occasions for the performance of these songs. In the southern Akan states there are sometimes special annual ceremonies
when members renew their loyalty to their association and to the chief, in which the most important feature is the performance of music and dancing, sometimes accompanied by the firing of guns, the exhibition of the association’s standards and emblems, and the installation of new officers. Annual festivals of the community as a whole are often the most common occasions for corporate public activity by warrior companies.

In all these contexts the spirit of enjoyment as well as of emotional intensity is now evident. The military companies are distinguished by their specialized artistic conventions—the military mode of song, music, and drumming—and, in adapting to changing situations, retain the military subject-matter and warlike fervour which before was of more practical immediate relevance.
¹³

II

Hunting poetry can be discussed more briefly. It shares many of the characteristics of military poetry, particularly its association with the ideas of danger, pride, and glory, its common appearance as a more or less specialized branch of poetry, and, finally, its frequent preoccupation not just with action but with the contemplation of action, in prospect or (more often) in retrospect.

It is not surprising that hunting, with its associated hazards and heroism, is a frequent topic in the songs of many peoples. It is, for example, one of the most common themes of Bushman songs (Kirkby 1936: 245) in a way that fits their harsh struggle for existence. This is well expressed by Marshall:

Women bring the daily food, but there is nothing splendid about returning with vegetables and wood. Many of the vegetable foods, furthermore, are rather tasteless and harsh and are not very satisfying. The return of the hunters is vastly different. The intense craving for meat, the anxiety that goes with the hunt, the deep excitement of the kill, finally the eating and the satisfaction reach to the very core of the people, engaging powerful emotions. Once a young man, Qui, who was said to be the best hunter in the region, had been charged by a magnificent cock ostrich on a big open pan where there was no refuge. He knelt, facing the creature, until it was within close range and shot an arrow straight into its heart. Back in the werf, while the meat was being cut up and distributed by Qui’s wife’s brothers, he slept exhausted on the mound of black and white plumes and the women—some
of the plumes in their hair—danced a dance of praise around him. This is the role of! Kung [Bushman] hunters.

(Marshall 1965: 235)

The romance and excitement associated with hunting is vividly depicted in the Zulu song about a buffalo hunt:

Iyeyahe! Iyayayi!

A whirlwind! the buffalo!

Some leave and go home;

Some pursue and obtain;

We shoot the rising,

But leave the wounded.

Iyeyahe

(Dhlomo 1947: 6)

Perhaps the most common occasion for hunting songs is a successful kill. As in military celebrations, they often take place some time after the event. We do, it is true, occasionally hear of a solitary hunter or group of hunters bursting into more or less immediate song over some outstanding kill. Among the Akan, for instance, a hunter is expected to climb on to the body of an elephant and burst into song:

The violent shaker that shakes down living trees it by-passes [the elephant],

Duedu Akwa,

Father Duedu Duben,

Oben and Dankyira, trier-of-Death,

Father [the hunter] deserves to be congratulated.

Father has achieved something:

The hunter has done well!

(Nketia 1963
b
: 81; for a Rongo song in similar circumstances see Junod 1897: 55)

But even among the Akan, hunting songs are most frequently performed on public and festive occasions. In general the most commonly mentioned occasion is when the hunter has returned to the village: he is often welcomed and congratulated. The Ethiopian hunter returning from killing an elephant is received by a double chorus:

Among other peoples a later and more organized celebration is the usual pattern. Thus among the Limba of northern Sierra Leone, the killing of a bush cow is regarded as the occasion for a special celebration (
madonsia
).
But this never takes place on the actual occasion of the hunt. Instead, a special date is fixed, several days later. Then, in the night, the hunter comes out, accompanied and watched by others, and the special hunters’ songs and dances are performed. The occasion necessarily involves many people as participants and spectators, and is in striking contrast to the actual process of the hunt, typically pursued, among the Limba, by the solitary individual, followed only by his faithful dog.

Praise and celebration is often reserved for the killing of game considered to be particularly outstanding or dangerous. According to the area, these may be such animals as elephant, lion, leopard, or buffalo. The risks and the achievement of the hunter(s) are further magnified by the terms used to refer to these beasts—like, for example, the Yoruba ‘Elephant praisenamed He-who-uses-his-hand-as-a-trumpet, Elephant called He-who-remains-mountainous-even-when-seated’ (Babalola 1965: 51). The hunter himself also sings boastfully of his exploits and retells his heroism in poetry designed for an audience rather than for the exigencies of the hunt itself. Among the Akan he announces his return after a major kill by firing his gun on the outskirts of the village, and when people come to meet him he relates his success in recitative, a set refrain denoting the sex of the elephant killed—for example:

I am stalking an animal.

I am stalking an animal stealthily,

That I might kill it.

(Nketia 1963
b
: 84)

Such songs of triumph and recollection are common and are often mentioned as separate forms. In some societies they are particularly specialized. Hunters may be expected to undergo special training, often involving magical and artistic as well as practical skills, and are sometimes formed into organized associations with their own rules, hierarchy, and initiation. Such organizations are not uncommon in West Africa and often have their own songs. Among the Akan the professional association of hunters uses hunting songs to assert their pride and their dominance over even the political authorities—or so they wish to suggest:

Is the chief greater than the hunter?

Arrogance! Hunter? Arrogance!

The pair of beautiful things on your feet,

The sandals that you wear,

How did it all happen?

It is the hunter that killed the duyker:

The sandals are made of the hide of the duyker.

Does the chief say he is greater than the hunter?

Arrogance! Hunter? Arrogance!

The noisy train that leads you away,

The drums that precede you,

The hunter killed the elephant,

The drum head is the ear of the elephant.

Does the chief say he is greater than the hunter?

Arrogance! Hunter? Arrogance!

(Nketia 1963
b
: 76)

Hunting songs are also often sung at the funerals of skilled hunters.
¹⁴
Hunting associations also sometimes have special festivals when, for example, they admit hunters to new ranks in the hierarchy or celebrate a major kill (Ibid.
:
85ff.). At these celebrations the episodes of the hunt are often dramatically re-enacted, with the members of the association singing and declaiming the traditional hunting songs.

In some cases, hunting poems have become a specialized and independent branch of poetry, no longer related to the actual hunt at all. Yoruba
ijala
chants, for example, are sometimes associated specifically with hunting and performed at gatherings of specialist hunters. But
ijala
artists are also highly regarded by the public as general entertainers and are invited to perform on social occasions that have no specific association with hunting at all (Babalola 1966: 33). This genre of Yoruba poetry has its own conventions and themes (see Babalola 1964). It is delivered as a kind of recitative—’a type of speech utterance with rudimentary musical characteristics, rather than a species of song’ (Babalola 1966: 33)—which is accentuated by certain rhythmic and tonal devices. Often there is no very clear central theme, but the poem rambles from one topic to another in a way that distinguishes these poems from certain of the other specialist branches of Yoruba poetry and also demonstrates how far removed this species of hunting poetry is from direct involvement in action. One dominant theme is verbal salute and praise in such phrases as ‘Son of a fighter at Ilala, offspring of warriors carrying many arrows’, or ‘In my very person I have come, / Atanda He-whose-face-is-usually-cloudy-like-the-sky-before-a-storm, / He-who-fatigues-his-opponent-like-a-person-soaked-and-exhausted by rain’ (Babalola 1965: 52; 54).
¹⁵
But there are also many chants about the animals and plants of the forest, particularly about monkeys, antelopes, elephants, or the much feared buffalo. Various comments on social life are also typical and many of the poems are noted for their vitality
and humour, in particular their treatment of sex. These points can be illustrated from three
ijala
poems from Gbadamosi and Beier’s examples:

Tuku—Wild Pig

The fat one of the thick bush.

The animal that carries scissors in its mouth.

Although we do not marry his daughter

Yet he demands to be treated like our father-in-law.

(For the one who wants to shoot it

Must prostrate to it).

An animal that enlarges its nose

In order to better smell the vagina.

(Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 33)

Erin—Elephant

Elephant who brings death. Elephant, a spirit in the bush.

With his single hand he can pull two palm trees to the ground.

If he had two hands—

He would tear the heavens like an old rag.

The spirit who eats dog, the spirit who eats ram.

The spirit who eats a whole palm fruit with its thorns.

With his four mortar legs—he tramples down the grass.

Wherever he walks, the grass is forbidden to stand up again.

An elephant is not a load for an old man—

Nor for a young man either.

(Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 34)

Cassava

If you eat me and call my praises at the same time

You teach me to be dangerous.
¹⁶

Plant me like a good planter—and I will grow fat even like yam.

Throw me away—and I will still develop well.

But the one who hangs me on the branch of a tree—he is really my enemy.

I do not fight the one who holds the stick—

Only the one who holds the pot.
¹⁷

It causes the lips of the wife to swell.

It enlarges the penis of the husband.

The mouth of Lambare becomes large like a drum.

If you ask him: What is the matter?

Are you eating so much cassava?

He will reply: Oh, occasionally, occasionally,

You just wait: cassava will deal with you.

Tete Bere! Now you have dysentery!

Now you start worshipping Oshun!

This is not a matter for the gods:

Even if you pray to Obatala himself

Cassava will carry you away!

When people see you on the road they argue:

Is it a new wife? Ha, it is cassava.

See how it rubs its body with red camwood.
¹⁸

Cassava with a rough skin to its back.

(Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 34)