The performance of Somali oral poetry on the Horn of Africa is not limited to formal presentations to defined audiences. Many instances of the performance of verse occur in non-formal situations, often overlooked and considered culturally insignificant by scholars of the past, who have concentrated their efforts on the highly prestigious classical genres used to debate political and social issues overtly in this East African, Cushitic society. Among the powerful, which means for the most part, elder men, work songs are considered to be of low prestige, and thus study and analysis of them has been neglected by scholars, both Somali and foreign alike. In so doing, a large body of traditional lore has been overlooked, both from the point of view of aesthetics and of social interaction in very interesting contexts. Moreover, the most recent genre to develop in Somalia, called hees or heello, began its career with low prestige, because it, too, was the voice of marginal segments of the society. As an urban-based genre, heellooyin have always been composed and recited by the youth of the country and even by women. In fact, it was with this genre that public performances by women became socially acceptable.

This chapter describes some common situations of work and illustrates how poetry is employed as an act of communication and even defiance between individuals and groups which are marginal in the power structure of Somalia and those who hold power in that country.

To focus on ‘praise’ practices, and to seize the configurations of subjects of speech posited by praise genres, is to zero in on what Amselle has described as the intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic ‘politics of the concept of person’ and of concepts of group identity (1990: 201–4). Kingship and its mode of construction have been traditionally central to this politics, and continue to facilitate insights into the management of the act of praise.

‘Praise’ does not always mean praise in the conventional sense of the word (see Barber 1991: 13). Sumanguru's praises in the Sunjata epic celebrate what may be described as Sumanguru's violence and cruelty — his dressing himself in human skin. What praise discourses postulate is their capacity to seize upon the ‘truth’ of the praisee's being, and to activate it and generate acknowledgement of it by the praisee's private self and by the public at large. To achieve this, praise operates on ‘the individual’ not as if on an entity primarily defined by its boundedness, but rather as if on one whose singularity is constituted precisely by its participation in what lies beyond its boundaries. In this perspective, the ‘person’ is a swirling forcefield which is widely responsive to other force fields (Hampaté Ba 1973: 181, 191; Beattie 1980: 316–7; Barber 1991: 36–7, 75).

Avudwene satirical songs are performed in the Nzema annual Kundum festival. The festival is celebrated by the Ahanta and Nzema people of south-west Ghana (Agovi 1979), who occupy a contiguous coastal strip of land from Sekondi-Takoradi to Half-Assini in the Western Region of Ghana. They are members of the Bia language group (Kropp-Dakubu 1988: 50–76) and share the same Kundum festival as a common cultural event.

Since the early seventeenth century when the festival was first recorded in European records (Bosman 1967: 158), writers have always drawn attention to its dominant religious focus and links with other festivals in Ghana (Rattray 1924: 151–5). On the other hand, its singular feature of satirical songs significantly reveals a concern with secular issues. It deals exclusively with historical, political and socio-economic developments in Ahanta—Nzema society. For this essay, the socio-political concerns of the songs have been isolated for analysis.

Several writers have drawn attention to the close relationship between African orature, politics and the traditional state. According to Ruth Finnegan (1970: 82), the patronage of poets in centralised political systems in the past led to the creation of a ‘poetry of profound political significance as a means of political propaganda, pressure or communication’; such poetry includes songs of insult, challenge or satirical comment used as ‘politically effective weapons’ (1970: 172).

If we may make general statements about the nature of West African tales or, more particularly, about the tales of the Bambara—Malinké group, we can say that they carry rather simple explicit ideological messages which conform to prevailing social norms. They show in most cases a protagonist acting against established laws of society and who will be punished accordingly. In fact the most productive narrative pattern found in the Bambara—Malinké corpus is based on misdeed followed by retribution, the latter being as serious as was the misdeed. An inventory of misdeeds occurring in the tales reveals the major internal conflicts that arise between members of the group. The degree of retribution inflicted upon those who transgress social norms is an indicator of the more or less coercive character of the norms concerned, as well as of the degree of tolerance with which they are enforced. However large the disparities may be, Bambara—Malinké tales are always about the confirmation and inculcation of the system of law, exemplifying for the narrator and his audience that anti-social conduct necessarily leads to the ruin of the transgressor.

It is worth mentioning here that the ideological messages carried by European tales, though similarly simple and conformist as to social norms, are differently formulated, since they are much more often conveyed by the positive hero.

The power of the artist manifest in his or her use of language constitutes the focus of this chapter, and this is then set in a wider framework of the relations between different oral and written genres in Hausa seen as representing dominant and marginal cultural forms. While the bulk of the discussion draws on oral genres, I make no apology for moving into discussion of written genres, where questions of self-definition or perceptions of ‘dominant’ and ‘marginal’ require it. I find it difficult to think of ‘the written as against the oral’ as a useful boundary in Hausa where contrast and parallel repeatedly refer one backwards and forwards between genres across this ‘line’.

THE GENRES OF HAUSA LITERATURE/ORATURE

A brief introductory résumé of the genres of Hausa literature/orature is as follows (see also Skinner 1980; Pilaszewicz 1985). A number of prose forms are usually distinguished — among prose narratives labari and tatsuniya contrast as ‘presumed real’ and ‘fictive’ respectively. While the term tatsuniya is predominantly therefore ‘traditional tale’, it is sometimes also used to denote a conundrum or riddle, more often referred to as ka cinci ka cinci, ‘pick up pick up’ which acts both as name conveying the interactive nature of the genre and as introductory formula.

Song texts by major Ewe oral poets reveal the poets as loners, frequently celebrated and even envied but marginalised individuals, expressing their opinions from beyond the mainstream of their communities though eternally engaged with issues central to communal life. This persistent theme of the poet's ultimate loneliness points to a context of ambiguities and paradoxes in which society celebrates poetry but tends to ignore or even threaten the poet, a context in which the poet often laments the gift of song as a social handicap but then boasts about the power of song to transpose society's achievements and failures into monuments that may outlast material and social prestige. A close critique of the politics of song in Ewe oral tradition suggests that, at least in certain cases, the dominance of images of loneliness may be an essentially artistic, symbolic projection that need not reflect actual circumstances of the poet's life and social standing:

These lines originally from Akpalu Vinoko and incorporated into the poem ‘Songs of sorrow’ by Kofi Awoonor, underscore the Ewe poet's view of himself as a loner, an often celebrated, even envied, but marginalised individual.

Three hundred and fifty years have passed since Richard Jobson's vivid encounter with the jeliw, the hereditary professional musicians of the Manding peoples of West Africa. Though the kings have long since gone, the jeliw are still a conspicuous part of Manding culture, and their behaviour has not changed significantly. Their flamboyant performance style, their fine music and their ambivalent social status have been the subject of much comment from the fourteenth century onwards. Travellers, explorers, scholars and journalists have documented the multi-faceted roles of jeliw as praise singers, dancers, public orators, interpreters, historians, genealogists, mediators, and political and social advisers. What remains largely unwritten, however, is the story of female jeliw — the jelimuso (pl: jelimusow).

The jeliw are part of the nyamakala, a caste of hereditary endogamous craftsmen, which includes smiths, leatherworkers and Koranic reciters and praisers.

In a recent guide to anthropological research practice in relation to oral traditions and the verbal arts, Ruth Finnegan, a founder figure in the field of African oral literature, points to the interest that has developed, in anthropology as in many other fields, in local processes of negotiating meaning, the agency of artistic creativity and its relation to social action:

This represents a move towards an appreciation of the role that oral literature plays as a dynamic discourse about society and about the relationships between individuals, groups and classes in society.

Often in the discussion of forms of culture certain art forms and certain manifestations of culture are privileged while others tend to be pushed out and marginalised. This process is invariably related to power: the forms that are the expression of those who are in a position of dominance are foregrounded. They, in turn, tend to be selected and discussed by those both inside and outside the culture. In the process there is often a further distortion and the art forms that express the dominant discourse of power envelop, muffle or disguise the other expressive forms. These in some cases become so marginalised in the focus of interest and debate that they become almost silent, almost invisible. The dominant forms become at one level the only forms. The others may continue to flourish within the culture itself but in the scholarly or academic discourse that has seen only the dominant forms they are reduced to whispers and footnotes.

This model which relates to selection and distortion, and forms that flourish unrecognised and undebated outside what becomes seen as ‘official culture’, can be used for an analysis of the relation between high culture and popular culture, or what Bakhtin (1984) calls ‘unofficial culture’ (see also Barber 1986).

In 1923 the Native Commissioner of Potgietersrus, who was involved in an ongoing feud with Chief Alfred Masibi of Zebediela, wrote to his adversary. ‘I do not as a rule,’ he said, ‘take verbal messages — you must get your secretary to write when transacting government business.’ A few years later a new chief, Abel Kekana, took office, but in no time the Native Commissioner was at loggerheads with him too. In May 1929 the Native Commissioner wrote to the Secretary for Native Affairs complaining about Kekana's behaviour:

This chapter is a comparative discussion of imagery, meaning and function in Shona traditional praises and modern songs by popular Shona bands, with particular reference to gender politics in the widest possible context of the extended family. Selected examples drawn from three sub-genres of love poetry and from Afropop recordings are used to show that, in many cases, traditional praises and modern lyrics are quite similar in terms of imagery and symbolism, as well as in terms of socialisation for complementary role-relationships. This, of course, has wider implications outside the family and in effect this situation tends to support the status quo in gender politics at the national level.

In a way, Afropop music has taken over from love poetry as one of the strongest conservative influences that psychologically condition the young in particular to conform to traditionally prescribed norms in order to be socially acceptable individuals. Part of the power and impact of both love poems and love songs derives from symbolism and beliefs that are related to sexuality, procreation and the spirit world. Many of the Afropop songs recorded in Shona are in fact love songs, because perhaps ‘Love-making, in one form or another, is one of the major interests in life’ (Hodza and Fortune 1979: 289).

The Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria are well known to history and the social sciences for the democratic and republican character of their social organisation (see Basden 1921; Leith-Ross 1939; Green 1948; Ejiofor 1981). The saying, Ìgbò énwē ézè ‘the Igbo have no kings’, which appears in the title of this chapter, epitomises this ethos. The saying is perhaps not a denial of the presence of ‘kings’ (ézè) or types of leaders who go by that title in the Igbo social system, now or in the past. Indeed, the linguistic, literary and archaeological evidence before us suggests very strongly that both the institution and the title of ézè have been part of the Igbo experience from remote antiquity and that, despite what appears to have been a far-reaching transformation of the institution and title over the years in favour of a democratic ethos, royalty (in the sense of the majesty of the king as an embodiment of sovereign power) has remained one of the most highly cherished values in Igbo thought in a situation in which monarchy (in the sense of the monopoly of power by one man or one family) is viewed as anathema. It would, therefore, appear that the saying, Ìgbò énwē ézè, is better translated as ‘The Igbo abhor monarchical power’.