Oral Poetry from Africa
The following poem by the Xhosa imbongi, David Livingston Phakamile Yali-Manisi (1926–1999), was performed at a conference hosted by the University of Natal Oral Documentation and Research Centre (South Africa) in 1985.
The forest bird grows restless
one who always goes when sent…
I am grateful to Professor Zodwa Motsa for providing us with the following poem, the praises performed after the inauguration of King Mswati III of Eswatini (also known as Swaziland) in 1986.
Mswati the black one amongst the ashen
Warrior stick of horns who settles not in gourd-drums
But enters in the seed-bushels of the buffalos…
A previous Shona clan praise published here was of the Shumba Murambwi, whose totem is the lion. The following clan praise is of the Tembo-Shumba, the “Zebra-Lion”, a mythical totem animal that serves as the emblem of the Mutasa people, whose homestead is Manyikaland in eastern Zimbabwe.
Thank you, Zebra.
Thank you Chiwara,
Hornless beast of the wilderness,
The Well Dressed One…
The Akan peoples of Ghana include the Ashanti, Fanti, Akim, Akwapim and Asen. One distinct style of Akan oral poetry are the poems recited by the masters of ceremonies to paramount chiefs.
He is one who hates to see an enemy return victorious
He delivers old and young from the ravages of war…
A Yorùbá praise poem or Oríkì, commemorating the figure of Balógun Ìbíkúnlé, the great ruler and commander-in-chief of Ibadan forces in the nineteenth-century. Ìbíkúnlé was born in Ogbomoso, a city in Oyo State, south-western Nigeria, during the first decade of the nineteenth century. This was at a time when the Fulani jihads were beginning to make incursions into various territories within Yorùbáland.
Ìbíkúnlé, the Lord of his Quarters,
The proverbial magnificent doer…
Ngwane III is considered the first king of Swaziland, because during his reign from 1745 to 1780, he moved his people north of the Pongola River into what is today the Shiselweni district in the south-east of Swaziland, establishing his capital at Zombodze.
Angry one, of Dlamini.
Ngwane, angry at home…
