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Traditionally, Africans have revered good
stories and storytellers, as have
most past and present peoples around the world who are rooted in oral cultures and
traditions. Ancient writing traditions do exist on the African
continent, but most Africans today, as in the past, are primarily
oral peoples, and their art forms are oral rather than literary.
In contrast to written "literature," African
"orature" (to use Kenyan novelist and critic Ngugi wa
Thiong’o's term) is orally composed and transmitted, and
often created to be verbally and communally performed as an
integral part of dance and music. The Oral Arts of Africa are
rich and varied, developing with the beginnings of African
cultures, and they remain living traditions that continue to
evolve and flourish today.
Every human culture in the world seems to create
stories (narratives) as a way of making sense of the world.
Some familiar features of the folktale, a
common kind of story around the world, for example, can be discerned in
Tortoise and the Birds, an Igbo folktale recounted in ch. 11
(pp. 68-70) of Chinua
Achebe’s acclaimed 1958 novel
Things
Fall Apart:
- "’Once upon a time,’ she began,
all the birds were invited to a feast in the
sky,’" as Achebe renders the traditional Igbo
folktale opening into English.
- The story explains a cause, origin, or reason for
something--gives an "etiological explanation...at
the end" (Obiechina,
"Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel")--in
this case, for why the tortoise shell is "'not
smooth.'"
- The story dramatizes a moral: greedy Tortoise,
'"full of cunning,'" manages to trick the birds
out of all the food at the feast, but for his selfishness
he is punished. Tortoise falls from the sky and
"’His shell broke into pieces.’"
- In folktale worlds, such "naughty," but
not "irredeemably" wicked characters, as Achebe
describes Tortoise
(qtd.
in Baker and Draper 22), are
often restored and/or reintegrated back into society: in
this case, "'a great medicine-man in the
neighbourhood'" patches Tortoise’s shell
together again.
Despite these universal features, however, the
particular narrative meanings, themes, genres, and styles of story telling
around the world differ from culture to culture.
Thus, while many features of traditional
African storytelling may seem familiar and make sense to U.S. students, many
others may seem very foreign and strange. To more fully understand and
appreciate African storytelling traditions, one needs to study them in the
context of the cultures which produce the stories.
African proverbs and stories draw upon
the collective wisdom of oral peoples, express their
"structures of meaning, feeling, thought, and
expression," and thus serve important social and ethical
purposes: "The story itself is
a primary form of the oral tradition, primary as a mode of conveying culture,
experience, and values and as a means of transmitting knowledge, wisdom,
feelings, and attitudes in oral societies"; a central position is thus "given
to the story in the oral tradition…by African writers in the shaping of their
literary world and works…" (Obiechina, "Narrative Proverbs in the
African Novel").
One cannot study African literatures
without studying the particular cultures and oratures on which
African writers draw...for their themes
and values, for their narrative structures and plots, for their
rhythms and styles, for their images and metaphors, for their
artistic and ethical principles. As Solomon Iyasere puts it in
"Oral Tradition in the Criticism of African
Literature":
"...the
modern African writer is to his indigenous oral tradition
as a
snail is to its shell. Even in a foreign habitat,
a snail never
leaves its shell behind" (107).
African novelists like Chinua Achebe often introduce
oral stories— such as narrative proverbs, song-tales, myths,
folktales, fairy tales, animal fables, anecdotes, and
ballads—into literature. One of many examples from Things
Fall Apart is Ikemefuna’s song, a
condensed version of an Igbo folktale, according to Emmanuel
Obiechina:
"Eze elina, elina!
Sala
Eze ilikwa ya
lkwaba akwa oligholi
Ebe Danda nechi eze
Ebe Uzuzu nete egwu
Sala"
[Things Fall Apart
Ch. 7,
p. 42]
Here is a translation into English offered by
Obiechina:
[the singer calls:]
King, do not eat [it], do not eat!
Sala [the
audience responds]
King, if you eat it
You will weep for the abomination
Where Danda [white ant] installs king
Where Uzuzu [Dust] dances to the drums
Sala [the
audience responds]
Even with the English translation--which Achebe does
not give in Things Fall Apart--it
is difficult for U.S. readers to make sense of this song-proverb
without learning more about the cultural context of Igbo beliefs
and the folktale on which Ikemefuna’s song is based. The
full tale is the story of a perverse, headstrong king who breaks
a sacred taboo by eating roast yam (perhaps the first fruits of
the harvest) which is reserved for and offered in sacrifice to
the gods. "The song is an attempt by the people to warn the
king not to commit an action that would compromise himself...his
high office," and the continued prosperity of his people (Obiechina, "Narrative Proverbs in the
African Novel"). So a line-by-line
interpretation might go like this:
- The king is warned not to eat [not to break the
taboo—"the abomination"]
- If he does, he will regret it ["You will
weep for the abomination"]
- The price he will pay is death, a dishonorable
death without proper burial rites...
- "Where Danda [White Ant] installs a
king" and
- "Where Uzuzu [Dust] dances to
the-drums." In death, only white ants and dust will
claim this headstrong king, as Obiechina explains. For
breaking such a serious sacred taboo, after his human
death the king will be denied reunion with his ancestors
and his clan, and will be forever alienated from the
community—believed to encompass all the past,
present, and future members of his people.
In the context of Achebe’s novel, this
untranslated song-proverb might suggest to a reader who knows
Igbo language (like translator Emmanuel Obiechina) that the
protagonist Okonkwo is being indirectly warned against breaking
another serious taboo. Like the king in Ikemefuna’s song,
Okonkwo is on the verge of committing an
"abomination"—the killing of a child who has lived
with him for three years and called him father. This is the
"’kind of action,’" his friend Obierika
points out, "’for which the goddess wipes out whole
families’" (Things Fall Apart,
Ch. 8, p. 46).
"Nnabe and Chineke"
("The Tortoise and the Lord") is another traditional
Igbo folktale like "Tortoise and the Birds," but it
presents a different explanation of why the tortoise has a
cracked shell. Why the variations?
For
starters, even traditional oral "texts" are not static
or unchanging—there is no reverence for a single,
"definitive" text committed to writing and shelved in a
library, a Western concept foreign to traditional African oral
performance arts. Oratures, like the cultures that produce them,
constantly evolve and change across time, culture, place and
regional style, performer, and audience for a variety of reasons.
For example, if a story loses its relevance because of changing
values and social conditions, it is discarded or modified, and
new stories are born. As scholars and transcribers attest, even
the same gifted African oral storyteller does not simply memorize
and repeat the same story the same way each time. Griots will
alternate between set text and improvisation. Within open-ended
narrative and poetic formulas, the bard creates, embellishes,
adapts to the occasion, and plays to the needs and interests of
particular audiences.
Another reason for folktale variation might lie in
differences of language/dialect and culture. Language is a
primary means of learning and transmitting one’s culture,
and it is used to help define and distinguish different ethnic
groups and cultures. Consider the fact that more than 450
languages are spoken in modern Nigeria, one region in which the
Igbo peoples are concentrated. As Chinua Achebe has explained,
spoken "Igbo exists in numerous dialects, differing from
village to village"
(qtd. in
Gallagher). There is no standardized
formal written or oral Igbo language that all Igbo accept and use
in Western Africa, though Christian missionaries tried to create
and impose one [called "Union Igbo"] in order to
translate the Bible and speed up religious conversion in the late
19th century
(cited in Gallagher).
This situation is not so different for many other oral cultures
and peoples of Africa. It is perhaps even more understandable
that oral traditions carried by African descendents to other
parts of the world would change and vary. The translated
performance of "Nnabe and Chineke"
that we will recite
in class was recorded on Wadmalaw Island, one of the Sea Islands
off the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas in the U.S. where many
Igbo slaves were forceably and brutally transported during the
Atlantic Slave Trade of the 18th
and 19th centuries
(Jackson-Jones).
Tortoise and the Birds and "Nnabe and
Chineke" are examples of Igbo folktales that explain how
animals got their physical characteristics—a genre common in
many cultures around the world. (Can you think of any similar
folktales told in your culture?) Animal stories have many
variations and abound in the oral traditions of Africa and the
African Diaspora. In animal stories of West African origins,
smaller, physically weak, and seemingly vulnerable
creatures—like Tortoise in these stories, or Spider in the
Anancy stories--are often endowed with special intelligence and
human characteristics, and are answerable only to God (called
Chineke in Igbo cosmology). Ironically, large, powerful animals
like the lion, elephant, and leopard are often duped in such
animal stories, often through what are considered their centers
of thought: the stomach and the heart
(See
Badejo and Jackson-Jones).
Both stories feature Tortoise, a
trickster figure in African folklore (called Nnabe in Igbo
cultures, Ijapa in
Yoruban cultures, Fudugazi
in Zulu cultures, for example). Tortoise is physically slow but
quick witted, lives a long time and has a long memory, and gains
wisdom by studying fellow creatures in society. But
like trickster figures in the folklore of many world cultures,
Tortoise sometimes misuses his knowledge. Tortoise can be cunning and malicious, and
may dupe or trick others (like Tortoise tricks the birds in
Things
Fall Apart, Ch. 11) for his own
greed or selfish gain. (Of course even Tortoise cannot get the better of
God, as seen in "Nnabe and Chineke.")
Chinua Achebe explains that the trickster
Tortoise is a favorite in Igbo children's stories,
for he "is a character that children can relate to. He is a rogue, but he is
a nice kind of rogue. I think that children don't trust him, but they like
to hear that he is around, because they know that he is going to do
something unexpected and generally he will be punished too. This is the
moral side of it. He's not allowed to get away with murder. He does
something and he is punished, but he still lives to appear again....Tortoise
is wicked, but he is not irredeemably so. Tortoise is not evil. He's just
naughty" (qtd. in Baker and
Draper 22. For a complete picture of evil, says Achebe, the Igbo
might instead point to "Something That Doesn't Even Wear a
Necklace"; a thing so completely alone that it "doesn't
even have a necklace to keep it company" [qtd. in Baker and
Draper 23]).
According to Deidre Badejo's interpretation, the
African tricksters like the Yoruba Ijapa
perceive, remember, and study others’ weaknesses in order to
use this knowledge for the trickster’s own self-interest or
amusement, or to escape social responsibilities. Tricksters exist
on the peripheries of the social order ("liminal"
figures at the boundaries of society). Their individualistic
non-conformist behavior creates havoc and disharmony in society,
and can threaten the survival of the community. (Contrast this
attitude to the positive ways we, in the U.S., value
individualism.) Secular tricksters like Tortoise often project
the kinds of evil forces and bad behaviors against which the
human community must contend to survive and which must be kept in
check. This goal is rehearsed and achieved in communal
performances of African proverbs and folktales, wherein the
trickster’s bad anti-social behaviors are usually punished,
and the evil forces unleashed are controlled or defeated. Thus,
for example, recounting Tortoise stories in African communities
can function to reaffirm the priority and wisdom of the
community, reassure its members that balance and harmony can and
should be restored, and that the community will survive and
prevail. (See also Ugorji).
Chinua Achebe himself explains that a story
"'does many things. It entertains, it informs, it instructs."
"If you look at these stories carefully,
you will find they support and reinforce the basic tenets of the culture.
The storytellers worked out what is right and what is wrong, what is
courageous and what is cowardly, and they translate this into stories"
(qtd.
in Baker and Draper 22). We can learn
much about a culture by learning its stories.
Oral African storytelling is essentially a
communal participatory experience. Everyone in
most traditional African societies participate in formal and
informal storytelling as interactive oral performance—such
participation is an essential part of traditional African
communal life, and basic training in a particular culture’s
oral arts and skills is an essential part of children’s
traditional indigenous education on their way to initiation into
full humanness.
To get some sense of African storytelling as a
participatory communal experience in Hum 211, we try an
interactive "call-and-response" performance of
"Nnabe and Chineke," as transcribed from an actual oral
story telling performance
in Igbo
language given by Samuel Onunwa, Bartholomew Amaugo, Kevin
Chiedusie, and Francis Mbah;
and then translated into English
by Victor C. Ihejetoh
(rpt. in Jackson-Jones.
Again,
even with an English translation, this story will probably seem
stranger and harder to interpret to non-Igbo audiences than
Tortoise and the Birds without a mediator like Chinua Achebe or
Emmanuel Obiechina to explain it; but we can use what we have
learned about Igbo culture from the background readings to make
the attempt).
Call and response
forms, found seemingly
everywhere in Africa, entail a caller
or soloist who "raises the song," as the Kpelle say,
and the community chorus who respond,
or "agree underneath the song"
(Mutere, "African Oral Aesthetic").
In the
case of the Igbo stories, the storyteller
"calls" out the story in lines; the audience or chorus
"responds" at regular intervals to the
storyteller’s "calls" with a "sala" (the
chorus’ response). The Igbo "sala" used in
"Nnabe and Chineke" is "amanye," roughly
equivalent to American English expressions of agreement like
"amen" or "right on!" (Ihejetoh,
qtd. in Jackson-Jones).
Traditional African societies have developed
high aesthetic and ethical standards for participating in and judging
accomplished oral storytelling performances—and
audience members often feel free to interrupt less talented or respected
secular performers to suggest improvements or voice criticisms. . (Bear in
mind that aesthetic standards of what constitutes "good art" in a particular
society are learned and culturally-determined. Thus, Western learned
concepts of what constitutes a good story or great music can differ
significantly from the aesthetic ideals of the African cultures.)
In many of these cultures, storytelling arts
are professionalized: the most accomplished storytellers are
initiates (griots, or bards), who
have mastered many complex verbal, musical, and memory skills
after years of specialized training. This training often includes
a strong spiritual and ethical dimension required to control the
special forces believed to be released by the spoken/sung word in
oral performances. These occult powers and primal energies of
creation and destruction are called nyama by Mande peoples of
Western Africa, for example, and their jeli,
or griots, are a subgroup of the artisan professions that the
Mande designate nyamakalaw,
or "nyama-handlers"(see, for example, discussions in Johnson et al;
and Hale). This sense of special powers
of the spoken word--as expressed in the following Bambara praise
poem--has largely been lost in literate-based societies of the
West:
Praise of the Word
The word is total:
it cuts, excoriates
forms, modulates
perturbs, maddens
cures or directly kills
amplifies or reduces
According to intention
It excites or calms souls.
--Praise song of a bard of the Bambara Komo society
(qtd. in Louis-Vincent Thomas and Rene Luneau,
Les
Religions d’Afrique noire, textes et traditions sacres;
as cited in Gleason xxxvii)
Following a traditional griot performance of a
spiritually-charged oral epic like Sundjiata, a Malian audience
might ritualistically chant, "Ka nyama
bo!" (which could be translated
something like, "May the powers of nyama
safely disperse!").
I hope some of the recorded professional performances
that we listen to in class will demonstrate that African
storytelling and orature are highly skilled performance arts.
These living traditions continue to survive and adapt to the
challenges of modernization facing Africa today, and have fused,
in uniquely African ways, with newer creative forms and
influences to enrich the global human experience and its creative
expressions.
Works Cited and Sources for
Further Reading
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Expanded edition
with notes. London: Heinemann, 1996.
Afigbo, Adiele E. Ropes of Sand: Studies
in Igbo History and Culture. Ibadan: Oxford UP, 1981.
Asante, Molefi Kete, and Abu S. Abarry, ed.
African Intellectual Heritage: A Book of Sources.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.
Awoonor, Kofi. The Breast of the Earth:
A Survey of the History, Culture, Literature of Africa South
of the Sahara. 1975. Doubleday, 1976. NOK, 1983.
Badejo, Deidre. "The Yoruba and
Afro-American Trickster: A Contextual Comparison." Presence
Africaine 147 (1988): 3-17.
Baker, Rob, and Ellen Draper. "If One
Thing Stands, Another Will Stand Beside It: An Interview with
Chinua Achebe." Parabola 17.3(Fall 1992):
19-27. Abstract: "Nigerian
novelist Chinua Achebe discusses the importance of
storytelling and the oral tradition in the education of
children. Achebe tells a story of Tortoise, the trickster in
Igbo tradition, and describes aspects of the traditional Igbo
world view. Gender roles among the Igbo and the role of the
griots, professional storytellers, are also discussed" (Infotrac 2000 Expanded
Academic ASAP Article A12603141).
Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, and Ihechukwu
Madubuike. Towards the Decolonization of African
Literature. Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1980.
Diallo, Yaya, and Mitchell Hall. The
Healing Drum: African Wisdom Teachings. Rochester, VT:
Destiny Books, 1989.
Egudu, R. N. "Achebe and the Igbo
Narrative Tradition." Research in African Literatures
12.1 (1981): 43-54.
Foley, John M. Oral Tradition in
Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1986.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. "Race,"
Writing, and Difference. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.
Gleason, Judith, ed. Leaf and Bone:
African Praise-Poems. New York: Penguin, 1994.
Hale, Thomas C. Scribe, Griot, and
Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire
followed by the Epic of Askia Mohammed recounted by Nouhou
Malio. Gainesville: U of Florida P-Center for
African Studies, 1990.
Gititi, Gitahi. "African Theory and
Criticism." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary
Theory and Criticism. Eds. Michael Groden and Martin
Kreiswirth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994. 5-9.
Iyasere, Solomon O. "Oral Tradition in
the Criticism of African Literature." The Journal of
Modern African Studies 13.1 (1975): 107.
Jackson-Jones, Patricia. When Roots
Die: Endangered Traditions on the Sea Islands. Athens:
Univ. of Georgia Press, 1987.
JanMohamed, Abdul.
"Sophisticated Primitivism: Syncretism of Oral and
Literate Modes in Achebe's Things Fall Apart." ARIEL
15.4 (1984): 19-39.
Johnson, John William, Thomas A. Hale, and
Stephen Belcher, eds. Oral Epics from Africa: Vibrant
Voices from a Vast Continent. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.
Press, 1997.
Jones, Eldred Durosimi, Eustace Palmer, and
Marjorie Jones, ed. Orature in African Literature Today: A
Review. Trenton, NJ: Africa World P, 1992.
Julien, Eileen. "African
Literature." In Africa. 3rd ed. Eds.
Phyllis M. Martin and Patrick O’Meara. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1995. 295-312.
Lindfors, Bernth. Folklore in Nigerian
Literature. New York: Africana Publishing, 1973.
Mbiti, John S. Introduction to African
Religion. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann,
1991.
[COCC Library has the first edition, 1975: BL2400 .M383
1975]
Mutere, Malaika. [African Studies, Howard
University.] "Introduction to African History and
Cultural Life: An African Historical Framework," including the section "African Oral Aesthetic."
Available:
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/aoi/history/ao-guide.html
Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Decolonising
the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986.
Nketia, J.H. Kwabena. The Music of
Africa. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1979.
Obiechina, Emmanuel. "Narrative
Proverbs in the African Novel. (Special Issue in Memory of
Josaphat Bekunuru Kubayanda) Research in African
Literatures 24.4(Winter 1993):123(18pgs). Full Text
Available at COCC Library: Infotrac 2000 Expanded Academic
ASAP Article A14706083.
Abstract: "'Things Fall Apart' by Chinua Achebe
exemplifies the use of narrative proverbs in the African
novel, reflecting the synthesis of oral and written
traditions. Narrative proverbs are stories or other forms
derived from the oral tradition which are embedded within the
novels and perform the function of proverbs. Achebe's novel
incorporates nine embedded narratives, seven of which are
folktales or myths. Narratives discussed in relation to the
novel include the quarrel between Earth and Sky, the locust
myth, Ikemefuna's song, the mosquito myth, the tale of the
tortoise and the birds, the Abame story and the kite
myth."
Ogede, Ode S. "Oral Performance as
Instruction: Aesthetic Strategies in Children's Play Songs
from a Nigerian Community." Children's Literature
Association Quarterly 14.3(1994): 113-117.
Ong, Walter J. Orality & Literacy:
the Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge, 1982.
Rowell, Charles H. "An Interview with
Chinua Achebe." Callaloo 13.1 (1990).
Achebe discusses the African
storyteller as griot in this interview: "the role of the
writer, the modern writer, is closer to that of the griot,
the historian and poet, than any other practitioner of the
arts" (18).
Scheub, Harold. The Tongue Is Fire:
South African Storytellers and Apartheid. Madison: Univ.
of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
Schmidt, Nancy. "Nigerian Fiction and
the African Oral Tradition." Journal of the
New African Literature and the Arts 5/6 (1968): 10-19.
Shelton, Austin J. "The 'Palm-oil' of
Language: Proverbs in Chinua Achebe's Novels." Modern
Language Quarterly 30.1 (1969): 89-111.
Soyinka, Wole. 1978. Myth, Literature
and the African World. 1978. Canto ed. Cambridge &
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. [COCC Library:
PL8010 .S64 1990]
Ugorji, Okechukwu K. The Adventures of
Torti: Tales from West Africa. Trenton, NJ: African World
Press, 1991.
Valade, Roger M., III. The Essential
Black Literature Guide. (Published in assn. With the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.) Detroit:
Visible Ink Press, 1996.
Wilkinson, Jane, ed. Talking with
African Writers : Interviews With African Poets, Playwrights
& Novelists. London : J. Currey ; Portsmouth, N.H. :
Heinemann, 1992. [COCC Library: PR9340 .T35 1992]
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