Oral Poetry from Africa
A Shona song from Zimbabwe, praising the Mbira-player for his musicianship. The Mbira, which is sometimes called a hand-piano, is described in Lines 24–29. It has two (sometimes three) keyboards, made of metal strips, which are plucked with the thumbs, and it is set in a hollow gourd to increase the resonance.
Strike the Mbira, Expert With The Rattling Shells!
It is he The Mbira-Shatterer of whom you hear nothing but praise,
Liyongo, the national hero of the Swahili people, lived in the area of the delta of the Tana River, north of Mombasa. Many of the poems praising him are said to have been composed by him, so that he is also celebrated as a poet.
Oh my child, be silent, do not cry;
Listen to the tale of the King of Bauri,
Three extracts from different versions of the Sundjata epic, which is as yet the best known and most widely admired of African epics. Sundjata is a historical figure (he died in 1255), and the Sundjata legend comes down to us from a period of turmoil in West African history when the ancient empire of Ghana was in decline.
After it had happened
That Sundjata’s mother had become pregnant,
No anthology of African oral poetry would be complete without some extracts from African epics. Yet no epic can properly be represented by an extract. The epic is by far the most ambitious of literary forms. It attempts, through the form of a long story usually concerned with a single but very special hero, to give a complete account of existence.
Five Igbo satires from eastern Nigeria. These songs are of the type performed at the funerals of prominent people by groups of singers known as Abigbo singers. The satirical sections form only a part of the performances on these occasions, but the Abigbo singers are renowned for their eloquence and outspokenness.
A message should be taken to the Council men at Aboh,
Should the ruling of this world be with guns?
A Dinka song from southern Sudan. The situation is the civil war between the Khartoum government and the Anyanya movement which began in 1958, soon after Independence. In the early stages of the war, the northern army was ruthless in responding to southern discontent.
How does the spoiling of the world come about?
Our land is closed in a prison cell!
