Masking Sunjata: A Hermeneutical Critique

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 131-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Times

Among the rich legacy of African oral traditions, the Sunjata epic is still one of the most complex phenonema, because it undoubtedly goes back to the times of Ibn Battuta, because of the limited variety between the available text editions, and because of its present-day popularity in sub-Saharan West Africa among people of all kinds of social background. In scholarly discussion, the epic has challenged many academics since Delafosse used the Sunjata epic as evidence for his reconstruction of the Mali empire as a thirteenth-century vast centralized polity. Although his views have been criticized since then, they have become part of history lessons at primary schools in Mali, the Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea. All these countries belong to the so-called “Mande,” an area inhabited by various ethnic groups that have close similarities in language, oral tradition, and social organization.In the last decade History in Africa has given room to discuss the Sunjata epic, in particular in order to explore how data from the epic can be used as historical sources, and as what history for whom. Articles by David Conrad, Tim Geysbeek, Stephan Bühnen, Stephen Bulman, Kathryn Green, George Brooks, Ralph Austen, and myself come my mind. All these authors have treated the Sunjata epic as a text. This seems to be a logical and inevitable choice for the historian.However, this approach implies a choice that limits the range of interpretations which can be made about the Sunjata traditions as a source for African history.

Constructing a Precolonial Owan Chronology and Dating Framework

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 219-249
Author(s):  
Onaiwu W. Ogbomo
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
African History ◽  
Accurate Assessment ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Relative Chronology ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Genealogical Data

Oral tradition has been recognized by historians as a vital source for historical reconstruction of non-literate societies. However, one of its “deficienc[ies] is an inability to establish and maintain an accurate assessment of the duration of the past [it] seeks to reconstruct.” As a result of its time-lessness it has been declared ahistorical. In the same vein R.A. Sargent argues that [c]hronology is the framework for the reconstruction of the past, and is vital to the correlation of evidence, assessment of data, and the analysis of historical sources. Any construction of history [which] fails to consider or employ dating and the matrix of time to examine the order and nature of events in human experience can probably be labelled ahistorical.Basically, the concern of critics of oral tradition is that, while they are veritable sources of history, the researcher “must work and rework them with an increasing sophistication and critical sense.” Because dating is very pivotal to the historian's craft, different techniques have been adopted alone or in combination to create a relative chronology. In precolonial African history, the most commonly used have been genealogical data which include dynastic generations, genealogical generations (father-to-son succession) and the age-set generation. Also systematically charted comets, solar eclipses, and droughts have been employed by historians in dating historical events, or in calculating the various generational lengths.A dynastic generation is determined by “the time elapsing between the accession of the first member of a given generation to hold office and the accession of the first representative of the next.”

Film Comedy in Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 211-242
Author(s):  
William V. Costanzo
Keyword(s):  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Political Humor ◽  
Ousmane Sembene ◽  
Black Africa ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
The World ◽  
Djibril Diop Mambety ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Sub Saharan

The rich oral traditions of storytelling in Black Africa have evolved into cinematic forms, adapting social satire and political humor to the realities of modern life. After a brief history of the region and its early encounters with the medium of motion pictures, this chapter introduces concepts like négritude, the griot storyteller, pan-Africanism, and Afropolitanism to explain how African beliefs and sub-Saharan cinema differ from others in the world and how African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Adama Drabo, Henri Duparc and Benoît Lamy, Flores Gomes and Fanta Régina Nacro have fashioned a cinema that reflects the way Africans see themselves and their place in the world.

Oral Traditions as Sources

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Belcher
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
The Face ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
African Intellectuals ◽  
Oral Information ◽  
Creative Endeavor

The use of oral tradition is a distinctive and essential element in many fields of African studies. History must acknowledge it; literature sees it as the medium for much of the indigenous creative endeavor across African cultures; anthropology and its cousin disciplines rely upon oral information for their understanding of traditional societies. An appreciation of the value of the oral tradition as a source across disciplines involves two efforts: first, a survey of the reported oral tradition as available and documented in past periods, and second, a review of the principles and practices involved in the collection, analysis, and presentation of the oral tradition. The paucity of written records has been grounds for dismissal of the notion of African history—most notoriously in the case of Hegel, who in ignorance wrote off the home of the human species—and more recently a cause of pride among African intellectuals who have asserted the value of the oral tradition in the face of skepticism rooted in prejudice and too often in overt racism. An appreciation of the value of the oral tradition threads its path between extremes and occasional controversy. The era of the smartphone has made the documentation (and creation) of oral tradition almost too easy. Past generations made do in different ways. Their reports should not be dismissed, but studied; they are the available background to information collected in the modern era. Accurate collection and critical analysis are the essential tools for the understanding of oral tradition.

scholarly journals NANDONG: TRADISI LISAN SIMEULUE

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Sanusi Ismail ◽  
Bustami Abubakar ◽  
Hasbullah ◽  
Azhari Aiyub
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
The People ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Impact

Simeulue, located in the Indian Ocean, has attracted a lot of people’s attention after the tsunami hit the region in 2004. The low number of casualties in Simeulue compared to other affected made the island a spotlight for further research. Some people argue that some forms of oral traditions exist among the people of Simeulue have played a role in saving many lives from the impact of the disaster. Nandong is a popular oral tradition in Simeulue. This oral tradition is important and considered as local wisdom because it contains norms and values inherited by the Simeulue community from generation to generation. This article aims to explore the substance and existence of this local wisdom in the Simeulue community. This study was conducted using qualitative methods. Our research data were collected during fieldwork through interviews, participant-observation and archival reviews. This research found that nandong is a distinctive oral tradition that is different from other oral traditions exist in Simeulue such as buai, nanga-nanga, tokok-tokok and nafi-nafi. This study argues that nandong is the most influential oral tradition among the Simeulue community. Unfortunately, the future existence of nandong in Simeulue is at risk of extinction since not many people, especially the young generation, in Simeulue today eager learn the rich and profound teachings contained in nandong.

Some Reflections on the Oral Traditions of the Galinhas Country, Sierra Leone

1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Adam Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Tape Recorder ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Main Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Parts

Whenever historians of Africa write: “According to tradition…”, they evade the crucial question of what kind of oral tradition they are referring to. The assumption that oral tradition is something more or less of the same nature throughout Africa, or indeed the world, still permeates many studies on African history; and even those who have themselves collected oral material seldom pause to consider how significant this material is or how it compares with that available in other areas.The majority of studies of oral tradition have been written by people who worked with fairly formal traditions; and those who, after reading such studies, go and work in societies where such traditions do not exist are often distressed and disappointed. There is therefore still a need for localized studies of oral tradition in different parts of Africa. As far as Sierra Leone is concerned, no work specifically devoted to the nature of oral tradition has been published, despite several valuable publications on the oral literature of the Limba and Mende. The notes that follow are intended to give a rough picture of the kind of oral material I obtained in a predominantly Mende-speaking area of Sierra Leone in 1977-78 (supplemented by a smaller number of interviews conducted in 1973-75, 1980, and 1984). My main interest was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century history of what I have called the Galinhas country, the southernmost corner of Sierra Leone.I conducted nearly all of my interviews through interpreters and did not use a tape recorder more than a very few times. This was partly because the amount of baggage I could carry on foot was limited, but also because I soon found that some informants were disturbed by the tape recorder, and because it was difficult to catch on tape the contributions of all the bystanders.

Making History, Creating Gender: Some Methodological and Interpretive Questions in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions

1998 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 263-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oyeronke Oyewumi
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Cash Crops ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Good Proportion ◽  
Different Parts

Of all the things that were produced in Africa during the colonial period—cash crops, states, and tribes, to name a few—history and tradition are the least acknowledged as products of the colonial situation. This does not mean that Africans did not have history before the white man came. Rather, I am making distinctions among the following: firstly, history as lived experience; secondly, history as a record of lived experience which is coded in the oral traditions; and finally, the recently constituted written history. This last category is very much tied up with European engagements with Africa and the introduction of “history writing” as a discipline and as profession. But even then, it is important to acknowledge the fact that African history, including oral traditions, were recorded as a result of the European assault.This underscores the fact that ideological interests were at work in the making of African history, as is true of all history. As such, tradition is constantly being reinvented to reflect these interests. A. I. Asiwaju, for example, in a paper examining the political motivations and manipulations of oral tradition in the constitution of Obaship in different parts of Yorubaland during the colonial period writes: “in the era of European rule, particularly British rule, when government often based most of its decisions over local claims upon the evidence of traditional history, a good proportion of the data tended to be manipulated deliberately.” This process of manipulation produced examples of what he wittily refers to as “nouveaux rois of Yorubaland.”

What the Stranger Brings: The Social Dynamics of Fieldwork

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 335-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Lance
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
African History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Oral Evidence

A major feature of research in African history is the reliance of African historians on oral statements for much of their evidence. Vansina's pathbreaking explorations of African oral traditions and testimonies established criteria for the collection of oral evidence and ushered in the contemporary era of scholarship in African history. Although the publication ofOral Traditionsanctioned the use of oral data, it also prompted considerable reflection about the nature, strengths, and weaknesses of oral evidence. For the most part this scholarly examination of African oral traditions and testimonies has focused on their value as sources. What has not been fully addressed are the social and cultural dynamics of the research process itself: how the interaction between a foreign fieldworker and an indigenous informant involves not only the production of knowledge but the management of asymmetrical power relationships as well. Rarely do researcher and informant interact as equal partners. During the process of fieldwork, sometimes the researcher is favored, sometimes the informant. This brief paper is a reflection on the ways the attitudes of an African people about knowledge, power, and outsiders influence the kind of oral evidence the researcher collects.For much of the past two years I resided in a village in northern Ghana where I was conducting fieldwork among the Mamprusi people. I was seeking information which would embellish and provide an indigenous texture to the archival sources I had collected earlier as part of my efforts to reconstruct the social history of Mampurugu during the colonial period. It soon became apparent, however, that my quest for an indigenous expression of, and perspective on, historical process was mired in a complex host of conflicts and assumptions. As a white stranger in the Mamprusis' midst asking as many questions as I could about the Mamprusi past, I received answers which reflected not only the degree to which I had successfully or unsuccessfully established cordial and trusting relationships with my Mamprusi informants, but also Mamprusi attitudes about historical knowledge and their anxieties in regard to possible consequences if such knowledge were revealed to non-Mamprusi.

scholarly journals Orality, Memory and the new African Diaspora Poetry: Examining Tanure Ojaide's Poetics

Afrika Focus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edoama Frances Odueme
Keyword(s):  
African Diaspora ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Verbal Art ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Out Of Africa ◽  
The Rich ◽  
African Writers ◽  
Art Techniques

The influence of traditional oral poetic forms on modern African poetry has been significant. Fascinated by oral forms which their respective communities relied on (to inform, teach, and correct erring members) before the advent of literacy, modern African writers borrow from these oral traditions and blend them with the features of the written Western literary forms. This appropriation of the oral poetic techniques by modern African poets continues today, as is clearly evident in the writings of many contemporary African poets, whose scripted works are seen to have drawn much in terms of content and form from the African oral poetic tradition. Following in this trend, the new African diaspora poets have also maintained the practice of skillfully blending the rich African verbal art and the modern (written) poetic forms to articulate the experiences of their African homeland as well as those of the diaspora, in order to construct and project their identities and visions of a new life in their lived world. In order to explore how through recourse to memory, “new African diasporas” (African-descended people who migrated out of Africa, during the postcolonial era and who live and practice their art outside the African homeland) utilize African oral art techniques in their writings, this essay analyses the poetry of Tanure Ojaide. KEYWORDS: ORALITY, ORAL TRADITION, MEMORY, NEW AFRICAN DIASPORA

Anecdotes as Historical Evidence for the Principate

1980 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Saller
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
African History ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Narratives

Historians' judgements about the evidential value of anecdotes have oscillated over the past decades. In the early part of this century authors of German textbooks on historical method warned students against using anecdotes on the grounds that their form was not fixed and their contents fluctuated since the narrators exercised their imaginations to improve stories with each telling. J. Vansina, an anthropologist studying the value of oral traditions for reconstructing African history, concluded in his more recent work that the anecdote is among the least reliable types of oral tradition. Nevertheless, recent scholarly works on Roman imperial history have utilized anecdotes for the sorts of social, economic, and administrative details which the available political narratives ignore. No systematic analysis has been undertaken to justify this use. I shall attempt to fill the gap by asking three basic questions: in what social contexts were anecdotes generated and transmitted; what changes in content were likely to occur during transmission; and what are the implications for the use of anecdotes as historical evidence?

″Day was of sudden turned into night″: On the Use of Eclipses for Dating Oral History

1976 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 476-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Comparative Data ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Rich

Recently attention has been devoted to the use of apparent eclipse references in African oral traditions for dating at least a few remembered events with some certainty and precision. Unquestionably the few such references in these sources could be invaluable in charting islands of absoluteness in a sea of relativity. In fact their very importance demands that their study should, from the very beginning, be undertaken as carefully as possible, following the example set in refining the paths of African eclipses. One way in which a higher level of critical analysis can be attained is by bringing the rich comparative data to bear on the problems associated with the interpretation of historical eclipse references. This paper attempts to initiate this process by discussing some results of research into eclipse references preserved in oral historical sources and by scontemporaneous chroniclers and observers.

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