Oral Literature in Africa (41 page)

(Tracey 1929: 100)

It is the rhythm and the melody, not the words, that are the most striking aspects of these songs. The rhythm of the work provides the fixed framework within which the song must be developed, a framework that is likely to continue for a long period of time during which the song (and the work) is repeated again and again. The importance of the rhythmical aspect is brought out further by the cases—which are beyond our scope here—where complicated percussion is the main element of interest in accompanying, the work. This sometimes takes precedence over or even altogether replaces the words, and may be by drums, hammers, or even the regular sequence of blows used by shipworkers in Dar-es-Salaam as they hammer the rust off the steel sides of the ships—’producing a pleasant effect which no doubt assists them in the performance of their monotonous task’ (Tracey 1957: 82). In the songs the words are punctuated and framed by rhythmical effort—by hauling at the net in Ewe fishing songs, strokes of the hoe or flail in Limba farming songs, paddle strokes in canoe songs. It is this that provides their main structure and conditions their style.

Figure 17. Limba women’s daily task of pounding the rice for their favourite food is often lightened by song, often heard (and learned) by the babies tied to their backs, 1961 (photo Ruth Finnegan).

Work songs stand out from others in their directly functional relationship to the activity they accompany. Occasionally they appear as a separate art form for sophisticated audiences,
²⁷
but normally they are inextricably involved with the work itself. This is particularly true of songs accompanying collective work. The joint singing co-ordinates the action and leads the workers to feel and work as part of a co-operating group, not as separate
individuals. Such co-operation may be essential to the job in hand (e.g. in hauling, paddling, and other tasks which depend on exact joint timing), but even where this is not essential, as in hoeing or road work, the rhythm of the song still encourages collaboration and control within the group, a pressure on all to take part equally within the given rhythmic framework. The function of rhythmical music in encouraging people to work harder, faster, and with more enjoyment has frequently been noted. Work songs can also comment on life in general, on local events, or on local characters, and can express ideas of love, friendship, or even obscenity (Evans-Pritchard 1929). In short, work songs lighten the labour and give an opportunity, however limited, for poetic and musical expression in the midst of work.
²⁸

Such songs seem to occur throughout Africa. Their detailed words and form, however, have not been extensively recorded by either linguists or sociologists who have tended to leave this field to musicologists.
²⁹
However, it may be that the same characteristics which have led to this partial neglect—their relatively slight verbal element, their close association with work, and their musical quality—are precisely those which encourage the continuing development of such songs so that they fit new as well as older types of work. This kind of song, probably unlike military and hunting poems, is likely to remain a continuing source for the student of oral literature.

Footnotes

1
   e.g. the songs of various Limba societies.

2
   e.g. the songs of the various associations in Dahomey, which extol their own worth and the aid they give to members (Herskovits 1938, ii: 331).

3
   e.g. Lambert 1965 (Kenya); Driberg 1932: 14–15, 29–30 (Didinga and Lango); Schulien 1965: 59ff. (Cameroons Fulani); Alnaes 1967; Dieterlen 1965, part ii; Krige 1968; Von Sicard 1943 (AA 18.645).

4
   i.e. as warriors on a cattle raid.

5
   The most convenient summary is that in Krige 1936.

6
   Similar Swazi chants to accompany military drill (still being sung) can be heard on a recording in the ‘Music of Africa’ series (GALP 1041).

7
   Sign of danger hence = alarm.

8
   The name of an association; any other such name may be substituted.

9
   Refers to the Ashanti wars with the British.

10
  The god of a certain Apagya company.

11
  As interpreted by a member of the company: ‘If I fall in the morning of my life, do not cry’.

12
  Or apparently did when Nketia was writing. His book appeared in 1963, based on field research in the 1950s.

13
  Other references on military songs include: Munonga 1952 (AA 5. 345; includes eight war songs); Cerulli 1942 (reference in
IAI Bibl. (
AA
)
Jones 1959: 33); Savard 1965; Gaden 1916; Westermann 1912: 237–8; Dahle 1927: 174–95.

14
  e.g. among the Dogon, Limba, Akan, Ambo, and many others.

15
  The last two sections of the second passage consist of three words only in the original.

16
  It is forbidden to say the
oriki
(praises) of cassava while eating it.

17
  When making gruel out of cassava flour the one holding the pot may burn his fingers.

18
  Cassava has a reddish colour like camwood. New brides rub their bodies with camwood.

19
  For further discussion and examples of
ijala
poetry, see Babalola 1966; also Collier 1953.

20
  Further references to hunting songs include Bouillon 1954 and Paulay 1952.

21
  On the conventions in different parts of Ghana, for example, see Nketia 1962: 7.

22
  Meaningless but (to the Limba) pleasing syllables.

23
  Fieldnotes, 1961.

24
  Two soloists.

25
  One soloist.

26
  Large red seeds with black spots.

27
  e.g. the Ganda paddle songs performed at court (Roscoe 1911: 37).

28
  For a further general discussion of work songs, see Brakeley 1949, also Jones 1959: 39ff. (Ewe) and Wilson 1966: 77.

29
  Musicologists have made many recordings of such songs, particularly in Central Africa; the words, however, are often not published with these recordings.

9. Lyric

Occasions. Subject Matter. Form. Composition
.

In the sense of ‘a short poem that is sung’, lyric is probably the most common form of poetry in subsaharan Africa. It is not always recognized that these songs, in which the musical element is of such obvious importance, are in fact poems. It is true that the verbal aspect sometimes appears less developed than in the lengthy poems that are delivered in spoken or recitative style, like some of the praise poems, hymns, or hunting chants that have already been described. But this should not prevent us from calling them poems. We should remember that classical Greek or Elizabethan lyrics were equally designed to be sung. Indeed, in its original form of a poem in a musical setting, lyric is one of the most important kinds of African oral literature.

So far, with a few exceptions,
¹
the poetry we have considered has mainly been associated with relatively formal events. The lyric songs discussed here are for more informal occasions. Whereas much other poetry depends on a specialist and even esoteric tradition, these involve popular participation. The verbal content of these songs tends to be short (though the actual performance may be lengthy) and is often ephemeral. There is usually plenty of improvisation. Unlike the general pattern of Western European folk-songs, the individual singer does not tend to stand out in a dominant position as against a passive audience,
²
but instead interacts with a chorus. Yet these lyric songs still provide wide scope for individual expression.

I

Songs appear in an almost unlimited number of contexts. In words that might be applied more widely than to the Ibo of whom he was writing, Osadebay speaks of the ‘wealth of culture and fine feelings which find expression in our music and poetry. We sing when we fight, we sing when we work, we sing when we love, we sing when we hate, we sing when a child is born, we sing when death takes a toll’ (Osadebay 1949: 154).

Rites de passage
are very common occasions for singing. There are songs associated with birth, with initiation and puberty, betrothal, marriage, acquiring a new title or status, and funeral and memorial celebrations. The most serious of these songs, in which the verbal element is elaborated at length, cannot be called lyrical. But often such ceremonies are in fact more an occasion for festivity, which includes song, than a solemn ritual with specially designated music, and the gatherings normal at these times are a reason for singing for its own sake.

Weddings, for example, are popular occasions for comment in song—by no means always involving praise of the newly wedded pair:

Serpent que tu es!

Chien que tu es!

Tu fais: oua-oua!

(Junod 1897: 46)

sing the bride’s friends about her husband among the Ronga, amid a series of songs cheerfully warning her of the ill-treatment she will without doubt receive at the hands of his parents. In more reflective and personal style is the Ganda song of farewell by the young girl about to be married, with the repetitions typical of this form:

Oh, I am gone,

Oh, I am gone,

Call my father that I may say farewell to him,

Oh, I am gone.

Father has already sold me,

Mother has received a high price for me,

Oh, I am gone. (Sempebwa 1948: 18)
³

It is likely that advantage will be taken of this opportunity to sing songs on many other topics.

Many of these songs are for dancing. A particular song type is sometimes inextricably tied up with a particular dance. Thus the Swahili used to have a special
gungu
song for the ‘pounding figure’ of the dance:

Give me a chair that I may sit down and hold (the guitar)

Let me sing a serenade for my Palm-daughter

Let me sing for my wife

She who takes away my grief and sorrow.

(Knappert 1966: 130; cf. Steere 1906: 47)

This occasion for song is, if anything, increasing, and many examples could be quoted like the Zulu ‘town dancing songs’ quoted by Tracey, where the words are subordinate to the dance:

This is the girl that jilted me,

The wretch of a girl that jilted me.

At Durban, the dance leaders are afraid of us!

(Tracey 1948
b
: 61)
⁴

Zululand, my home, I love you.

Goodbye, Willie I like you too.

We are the boys.

(Ibid.: 66)
⁵

The same kind of mood, of recreation and light-hearted enjoyment, is evident in many of the ‘drinking songs’. These too, for all their lightness, may express the thought in true lyric manner, with economy and grace. In a Shona drinking song, the original is only seven words in all:

Keep it dark!

Don’t tell your wife,

For your wife is a log

That is smouldering surely!

Keep it dark!

(Tracey 1933, no. 9)

There are sometimes more formalized occasions for the singing of lyrics. One could mention the recent interest in the short
balwo
lyric among the Somali
⁶
. Special
balwo
parties became fashionable in the towns. People
would recite the lyrics they knew or compose new ones, and the recitations would be interrupted for tea and conversation (Andrzejewski 1967: 11). Popular and occasional bands among the Akan also sometimes perform on specifically recreational occasions (Nketia 1962: 16–17; 1963
b
: Ch. 6). Again, in many areas the radio nowadays frequently creates opportunities for lyrics to be performed.

All over the continent it is a common pattern for stories to be interrupted from time to time by a song, usually led by the storyteller, while the audience act as his chorus.
⁷
Sometimes these songs amount to quite long poems, and are then often in recitative. Short verses are also very common, sometimes with many nonsense syllables to fill in the rhythm and tune, with repetition over and over again between leader and chorus. One Limba story, about ‘The clever cat’, has a verse of this kind:

The story is about a cat who proposes to initiate the young rat maidens into the
bondo
(women’s society). They, like all young girls, are eager to enter—but the cat’s one desire is to have a chance of eating them! The cat pretends to act in the usual way of a
bondo
senior woman. She lines them all up and leads the singing, telling them not to look round. She sings:

When we go,

Let no one look behind oh!

When the cat is free,
fo fen
.

The chorus of young rats take up the same words:

When we go,

Let no one look behind oh!

When the cat is free
, fo fen

in the way young initiates do in real life. The rhythmic and melodic song is repeated in the story perhaps eight or ten times, first by the cat (the narrator), then by the rat initiates (the audience) who have quickly picked up the tune. But while the singing is going on, what the cat is really doing is to quietly pick off the rats one by one as they sing with their backs to her. At last only one is left, still singing the song. Just in time, she looks round, and throws herself out of the way and escapes (for the full story see Finnegan 1967: 333–4).

A story like this appeals to its audience partly because of the amusing form of words and the parody of the usually very serious initiation ceremony, but perhaps most of all because of the attractive song which, in terms of the time spent repeating it over and over, took up as long as the prose
narrative. Simple as the words were in themselves, the audience all joined in enthusiastically, overlapping slightly with the leader’s last note and half dancing as they sang; they would, it seemed, have continued indefinitely had not the leader finally broken into their response to continue his narration.

The same song is sometimes repeated at different points in the story, a kind of signature tune with slight variations on the words to fit the development of the plot. The structure of the story is thus marked by the recurrence of the song in each new episode. Another Limba example can make this plain:

The plot is the intentionally fantastic and humorous one of the hero Sara and his endeavours to kill and eat a guinea-fowl he had caught without sharing it with any of his friends. But the bird is a magical one and the more Sara tries to kill and eat it, going through all the usual preparations and cooking procedures, the more it sings back at him. At last he eats it—but even in his stomach the bird sings and demands to be excreted; and in the final effort, Sara dies.

Each of the many parallel stages of the plot is marked by the same song, with variations to suit the event, the last phrase and response being repeated several times by narrator and audience with the same tune throughout. First, the guinea-fowl is discovered in the snare, and it sings:

Sara is coming to loose me,

Sara is coming to loose me.

Here he found a path, a night passed,

Here he came and put a snare for me,

The guinea-fowl,

The guinea-fowl,

Ko de ba ko naligbe
⁸

What is your name?

What is your name?

(Response)
Tambarenke, Tambarenke
.

What is your name?

Tambarenke, Tambarenke
.

What is your name?

Tambarenke, Tambarenke
…, etc.

Sara looses the bird from the noose, and brings it home to prepare for eating. Again the bird sings:

Sara is coming to pluck me,

Sara is coming to pluck me.

Here he found a path, a night passed,

Here he came and put a snare for me,

The guinea-fowl,

The guinea-fowl,

Ko de ba ko nagligbe

What is your name?

What is your name?

Tambarenke, Tambarenke
.

What is your name?

Tambarenke, Tambarenke
….

As the story continues, new first lines appear:

Sara is coming to cut me up …

Sara is coming to pound me …
⁹

Sara is coming to mould me …

Sara is coming to put me in (to the pot) …

Sara is coming to take me out …

Sara is coming to eat me …

Sara is going to lie down ….

And, finally,

Sara is going to excrete me …

(Full story in Finnegan 1967: 284–90)

The linguistic content of songs in Limba stories, as in some others, is relatively limited, and for the audience their main interest lies in the rhythm and melody and the fact that they can participate in the singing. In some other cases, however, such as some Akan stories, the words are more developed. The following is a variation on a very common theme:

Elephant and Antelope are said to have made very good friends in the forest. Elephant being the stronger and wealthier of the two was able to lay on sumptuous meals every day to which he invited Antelope. One day he expressed the desire to visit Antelope in his house. This embarrassed Antelope for he also wanted to give him a good meal. It occurred to him after failing to get any meat that Mother Antelope was the answer, so he caused her to be killed and used. When Elephant arrived he was greatly surprised by the delicious meal and asked to see Mother Antelope. But Antelope succeeded in putting this off. After the meal however, Elephant again asked for Mother Antelope and Antelope replied in a song as follows:

Elephant, please don’t worry me.

Have you ever seen a poor man

And a wealthy man exchange things equally?

Elephant Akwaa Brenkoto that commands his destiny,

Elephant that plucks the tops of trees on his right,

King of musketry, father and king,

Birefi Akuampon, mighty one to whom all stray goods are sent to be used.

Yes; let us proceed,

Mother Antelope, I have stewed her.

Yes, let us proceed.

Mother Antelope, I have used her to redeem myself. Yes, let us proceed.

(Nketia 1958
b
: 19)

II

The subjects of the many different songs sung on these various occasions include just about every topic imaginable. There are songs about wives, husbands, marriage, animals, chiefs, this year’s tax, the latest football match, a recent intrigue, the plight of a cripple dependent on his family, an amusing incident, a friend’s treachery or an enemy’s vices, the relationship between variety in the human and the natural world—and so on according to the genre of song involved, the context of performance, and the poetic inspiration of the singer.

It has frequently been remarked that African poems about nature are few and far between, and there is truth in this assertion. Certainly there seems to be little in common between most African lyrics and the romantic interest in ‘Nature’ typical of certain epochs of the English poetic tradition, and lyrics about people, events, and personal experience are more common. But observation of the natural world, especially the animal world is often significant. Take the simple little song about a brook recorded in Malawi in the nineteenth century. The effect is an imitation of the sound of the brook and it is sung ‘softly and soothingly’ in a subdued voice; the main point is to reflect the tune of the water rather than describe in words, though a picture is given of the bank of the little stream (
chiko
) and the prickly bush that grows by it (
likwanya
):

Then the two voices interchange lines twice, with the final response:

Anyanyale
.

(Macdonald i, 1882: 49)

Again, we could mention the case of Somali poetry which ‘is imbued with a consciousness of the beauties and cruelties of nature’ (Andrzejewski 1967: 9). For instance, the simple lyric ‘O Distant Lightning! Have you deceived me?’
²
gains its emotive tone from the inspiration of rain and its life-giving and beautiful results. Lightning often presages rain, and this symbolizes hope. But sometimes the hope is disappointed and the rain-clouds move away. So here the poet is writing of love, but calls the girl ‘Distant Lightning’, expressing his disappointment in love in terms of natural forces.