Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth Finnegan

Author:Ruth Finnegan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Book Publishers CIC Ltd.

Figure 18. New and old in Africa. ‘Funky Freddy’ of The Jungle Leaders, playing hip-hop political songs and banned from Radio Sierra Leone for their protest lyrics (http://www.myspace.com/jungleleaders/photos) with the expert Yoruba oriki (praise) singer Sangowemi in the background (photo courtesy Karin Barber).

The social functions of the various types of songs mentioned here are particularly obvious, more strikingly so than most of those discussed in earlier chapters. They can be a way of exerting pressure on others, whether equals or superiors; of expressing often indirectly or in a limited and conventional manner, what could not be said directly, or through a different medium, or on just any occasion; of upholding or suggesting certain values and interests that cannot be expressed in other ways, particularly when there is no direct access to political activity. Like Dogon villagers of kalela dancers, the singers may both assert the solidarity of their own group and at the same time recognize their close relationship with others. The songs may even—as Herskovits and his followers remind us—provide a means for the psychological release of otherwise repressed enmities and tensions through a socially permissible form. But besides these obvious social functions we can point equally to the related literary roles of these songs—to the way in which such socially sanctioned occasions are used for artistic purposes, to the humour and enjoyment expressed, to the satirical, meditative, or resigned comment on the circumstances of life, and, finally, to the way in which even enmity or social pressure can be viewed with a certain detachment through the artistic and conventional medium of the song.6

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