Read e-book online Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature PDF

By Graham Furniss, Dr Liz Gunner

African oral literature, like other kinds of pop culture, isn't in basic terms a kind of leisure yet a medium for commenting on modern social and political occasions. it will probably even be an important agent of switch in a position to directing, scary, combating, overturning, and recasting social truth. The participants to this assortment are anthropologists, linguists, historians, and ethnomusicologists, who current clean fabric on oral literature to color a full of life photo of present genuine existence events in Africa.

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Sample text

Similarly, if a letter went from the Commissioner to the chief, it could be written in English, translated into Sesotho and read out in translation in Sindebele. All of this was extremely time-consuming and often formed a source of annoyance to officials. In its response to the tactics of performance politics, the Native Commissioner's office often behaved as one would expect of a literate bureaucracy. Much of its energy went into trying to promote the kind of literacy that it believed would make people governable.

Numerous problems, however, have also confronted the attempts to promote oral art in Africa. A lack of direction is one major problem. Reflecting their economic and political chaos, African culture is barely understood by African governments (Asante and Asante 1985). More than twenty years of independence have not produced defined cultural policies for most African governments. Some of the many problems relating to oral art include lack of resources, an over-emphasis on foreign art at the expense of indigenous oral art and the commoditisation of art.

On the face of it, it can be said that Tanzania has scored a great success in popularising oral art. From a colonial history of disregard for indigenous art forms, these same are now widely popular and recognised as representative of Tanzanian identity. It can also be argued that oral art has played a significant role in bringing about political unity in the country. One example of this is the way in which oral art was used to mobilise national support, military, material and moral, for the war against Idi Amin of Uganda in 1978-9.

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