Oral Poetry from Africa
This song was recorded by Romanus N. Egudu (n.d.) in the Udi Division of Igboland, Nigeria. The song is a pleasant game with words, but it can be taken in different ways. The boy has lost his pet rat. Everyone knows where the rat is. Is the problem that they daren’t approach the leopard’s house? Or is it implied that the leopard has eaten them all?
The boy was looking for his rat.
Nda
His rat was hiding in leopards’s house…
An Igbo prayer from eastern Nigeria. The names invoked, Agu, Okaibe, Ogbaugu and Ezenna, are the elder’s ancestors, to whom the kola nuts and the prayer are being offered.
Agu, my father, come:
Take kola and chew…
A Hausa praise poem (see also Rano), Bawa Jangwarzo was ruler (1777–1795) of Gobir, one of the seven original Hausa kingdoms. He is chiefly remembered today for sponsoring Usman dan Fodio (1754–1817), the Islamic reformer, who encouraged literacy and scholarship for both men and women, and who, after his expulsion from Gobir by Bawa’s successor, founded the city-state of Sokoto.
Causer of terror, chief of iron ore,
Son of Alasan, owner of the drum…
A Hausa example of something that happens across West Africa, but is not often recorded. A singer accosts a prominent person in public, in this case a merchant, and begins praising him. But the praises are ambiguous, and unless the singer is rewarded, they slip into savage satire.
There is no god but Allah,
this is the praise of Allah…
A Yorùbá Iwi poem from Nigeria. In a series of proverb-like metaphors, the poem comments on the advantages of variety in life.
Why do we grumble because a tree is bent
When, in our streets, there are even men who are bent?…
