ORAL POETRY

Is it poetry that is composed and rendered verbally, that is, composed on the go and so delivered?
Is it a preserve of the unlettered or is it also extant amongst the lettered? Thus, can oral poetry be
written and rendered orally? Is the poetry communally composed, and preserved? And what is the
position of the poet versus their audience and society at large? Various assumptions abound
According to Ruth Finnegan, one commonly held view of the position of the poet among unlettered
peoples seems ultimately to derive from the picture of the rhapsodist of the Homeric age. The bard
is depicted as standing before the gathered lords to chant the heroic lays handed down through the
generations, rewarded with honour and rich gifts. This image of the bard delivering his rude but
stirring verses to barbaric audiences has gained a profound hold on the popular imagination from
its vivid representation in literature as well as in scholarly works inspired by the concept of ‘the
heroic age’.
Contra this, the poetry of non-literate peoples is seen as in some way arising directly and
communally from the undifferentiated folk. In this case song is its own reward and the specialized
role of the poet has not yet made its appearance.
These two views cannot hold however in the African case since some poets are associated with
royal courts and receive reward as professionals. Others depend on private enterprise, perhaps
wandering from patron to patron and living on their wits. Others gain their basic livelihood from
farming or cattle-keeping (or whatever subsistence activity), but are marked out by their expert
skill on special occasions. In some other contexts poets are not set apart from their fellows in terms
of training, reward, or position. Any of these and admixtures exist in Africa.
In fact, it is common for many different genres of poetry to be recognized simultaneously, each
with its own type of performer, reward, and occasion. No single picture can cover all these
variations and even the most cursory account of poetry in Africa must begin by insisting on the
variety before going on to discuss certain common patterns.

Court poets
Poetry is, by and large, differentiated from prose as being marked by greater specialism. The most
specialized genres of poetry occur in association with royal courts. The other familiar form of
patronage—religion—is also relevant, but in an organized form it is less significant.
In the traditional kingdoms of Africa, with their royal courts and clearly marked differences in
wealth, power, and leisure, court poetry flourished. Poets were attached to the courts of powerful
kings, to the retinues of nobles or lesser chiefs, and to all those who had pretensions to honour and
thus to poetic celebration in their society. The speciality of these court poets was, of course,
panegyric. One can cite the elaborate praise poems of the Zulu or Sotho in southern Africa, the
poems of the official singers of the ruler of Bornu, the royal praises of the Hausa emirs, the eulogies
addressed to rulers in the various kingdoms of the Congo, and many others. In all these areas the
ruling monarchs and their ancestors were glorified in poems, and real and ideal deeds were
attributed to them in lofty and effusive language. The court poets sometimes had other functions
too. Preservation of the historical record and of genealogies, for example, was often a part of their
art, and it is sometimes suggested that this was at times a distinctive activity carried on in its own
right. But in spite of repeated assertions about this, there are few details about the actual
performance or expression of historical poetry as distinct from panegyric, and we have to content
ourselves with vague generalizations. It is clear, at least, that a knowledge of accepted history in
the sense of the glorification of the great deeds of royal ancestors or present rulers was a necessary
part of the cultivation of panegyric poetry, and that praise poems are a fruitful source of the
currently authorized interpretations of certain historical events and genealogies. What we always
come back to in the productions of these court poets is the adulatory aspect, giving rise to poetry
of profound political significance as a means of political propaganda, pressure, or communication.
The actual position and duties of these court poets vary in different areas. In some cases a poet
holds a single clearly recognized office among a ruler’s entourage. This was so with the Zulu and
other Bantu kingdoms of southern Africa where not only the paramount king but also every chief
with any pretensions to political power had, wherever possible, his own imbongi or praiser. This
was an official position at the court, important enough to the rulers to have survived even the
eclipse of much of their earlier power. The imbongi’s profession was to record the praise names,
the victories, and the glorious qualities of the chief and his ancestors, and to recite these in lengthy
high-sounding verse on occasions which seemed to call for public adulation of the ruler. The poet
had two duties: to remember and to express the appropriate eulogies. Though these praises tended
to have a set and recognized form (particularly those of dead rulers), the poet’s task did not consist
of mere memorizing. The praises had no absolute verbal immutability, and emotional and dramatic
force in actual recitation was expected of a successful imbongi. These eulogies were delivered in
lofty and impressive language typical of epic poetry.
In many West African kingdoms the pattern is more complicated. A whole band of poets is often
involved, the various members making their own specialist contributions to the performance.
Musical as well as verbal elements play a part, so that the skills of many different performers are
necessary. Among the Ashanti, for instance, there were not only minstrels (kwadwumfo) to recount
the deeds of past kings whenever the living king appeared in public, but also royal horn-blowers
and a band of court drummers especially appointed as part of the ruler’s formal entourage and over
whose performances he held a kind of monopoly. On state occasions these drummers provided
both music ‘drum poems’—the drum-beats or notes of the horn being ‘heard’ as actual words,
praising the ruler and his predecessors and commemorating the glorious victories of the past.
Such performances were an essential part of state occasions: at state receptions at the palace or out
of doors; in processions to display the regalia or visit some sacred spot; and at national festivals,
state funerals, and political functions like the installations of new chiefs or the swearing of oaths
of allegiance by sub-chiefs.
In spite of differences in status and medium of expression, there are obvious similarities in the
positions of all these court poets. They all depended on royal or chiefly patronage, given them in
an official capacity and often implying exclusive rights over their services. Their performances
were public with the emphasis, it appears, on their ceremonial functions rather than their
entertainment value. And their audiences were primarily those who attended either the royal court
or state occasions in the royal capital. To some extent this type of poetry must also have filtered
down to other levels of society, with every local chief and leader attempting to follow the model
of the ruler. But it seems that it was at the centre that court poetry and music were cultivated in
their most specialized and exclusive form.
Many of these court poets seem to have been true professionals in the sense that they gained their
livelihood from their art. Their official position at court presumably gave them a share in the
greater luxury and leisure of court life, though the degree must have varied from area to area—
more marked, say, in the wealthy and specialized Hausa emirates than in the kingdoms of southern
Africa. However, the exact economic position of court poets is obscure. There is little detailed
evidence about, for instance, the relative wealth of specialized poet and ordinary subject, or how
far court poets could count on steady economic support as distinct from occasional lavish gifts.
The whole subject merits further investigation. The question of specialized training is also not very
clear. That apprenticeship in some sense was involved is obvious, but this was probably sometimes
of an informal kind, perhaps particularly when, as with the Hausa or the Yoruba, there was some
hereditary tendency. In the case of highly specialized skills, however, there must also be a certain
amount of quite formal training. This is so with Ashanti players of the speaking drums, the Fang
mvet singers, or the highly specialized bards of Rwanda.
In the highly centralized traditional kingdom of Rwanda, the royal poets had their own association
and were officially recognized as holding a privileged position within the state. They were in
charge of the delivery and preservation of the dynastic poems whose main object was to exalt the
king and other members of the royal line. This was only one branch among the three main types
of Rwanda poetry (dynastic, military, and pastoral) which corresponded to the three pivots of their
society (king, warrior, and cattle). It was in turn divided into three sub-types, different genres
through which the king’s praises could be declaimed. A court poet was known as umusizi
w’Umwami (dynastic poet of the king). This category included a number of poets, both those with
the inspiration and skill to compose original works, and those (the bards) who confined themselves
to learning and reciting the compositions of others. The court poets have always had their own
association—the Umutwe w’Abasizi, ‘band of dynastic poets’—comprising those families
officially recognized as poetic. The office of president of this band, the Intebe y’Abasizi, was
previously restricted to a member of the clan that was first traditionally associated with the
profession of poet. More recently the president has been the most conspicuous of the royal poets,
a role that has tended over the last few generations to become a hereditary one. The president had
the responsibility of organizing the poetry officially needed by the royal court for any particular
occasion, including both ceremonial affairs and discussions on points of tradition. This he was in
a position to do because of the attachment of a number of official poets to the court. Each of the
recognized families of the poetic association had to be permanently represented there, if not by a
creative poet, at least by a bard capable of reciting the poems particularly known by that group. In
the reign of Yuhi Musinga, for example, there were nine royal poets holding such official positions,
each on duty for a month. In addition there were a number of unofficial bards, also members of
poetic families, who gathered in large numbers around the court and could be called on if
necessary. Both the poets themselves and the recognized poetic families had a privileged position
in Rwanda society. They held hereditary rights like exemption from the jurisdiction of the civil
chiefs and from certain servile duties. This applied even to ordinary bards and individual
amateurs—so long as they were able to recite certain poems by heart, they were automatically
regarded as direct servants of the crown. The exact economic position of the official court poets is
not fully described; but the presentation of a poem to the king normally earned the gift of a cow—
perhaps more—and in a society in which economic, social, even political worth was measured in
terms of cattle, this was no mean reward. The poems themselves were exceedingly elaborate and
sophisticated, with a specialized mode of expression mastered only by the corporation of poets and
the intelligentsia of the society. The style was full of archaisms, obscure language, and highly
figurative forms of expression. The poems are clearly the conscious product of a learned and
specialist intellectual tradition. The skilled and separate nature of this poetry is further evident
from the existence of specialist training, particularly in the skill of recitation. Among the Rwanda,
somewhat unusually, part of the production of their oral literature was through memorization of
received versions of the poems, and the attribution of personal authorship was the rule rather than
the exception. The praise poems were often repeated by bards with little change from one occasion
to the next, and there seems to have been a conscious effort to preserve the exact words of the text.
From an early age, children of the recognized poetic families had to learn poems by heart. Though
this took place within the family, at first at least, it was under the general supervision of the
president of the association of poets who was ultimately responsible. Local representatives of the
president called frequent gatherings in the open air at which the youths of the privileged poets’
families exhibited their art in recitation. Those who showed themselves to good advantage were
given a reward by their family, perhaps In Rwanda then we see the development of a strikingly
specialized class of court poetry, one designed not for everyday recitation to the people at large,
but for performance among other members of this specialist group, and, above all, for the king
himself. The royal court was the centre of patronage—in fact in most important genres of Rwanda
poetry the court held a near monopoly—and the Rwanda assumed it to be basic to the production
of specialist poetry, being both its central stimulus and its most valued context. Clearly not all
African court poetry took so highly specialized and restricted a form. But it can serve as an extreme
instance of one important type of patronage for the poet in traditional Africa. It must be added,
however, that this particular patronage—the royal court—is in many areas increasingly a thing of
the past. This is not because of any decline of interest in poetry or in praise, for both continue to
flourish in different contexts and with new patrons. Praise poems crop up as flattery of political
leaders or party candidates, and can be heard on the radio or at political meetings; they can be seen
in written form in newspapers; and they even appear under the auspices of commercial recording
companies. But often the older royal courts with their official retinues and monopoly of the most
highly professionalized poetry have become less attractive as political and economic centres, and
many of the traditional court poets have either abandoned their art or turned to other more lucrative
patrons.

Genres of oral poetry

 a) Panegyric
In its specialized form panegyric is the type of court poetry and one of the most developed and
elaborate poetic genres of Africa. It seems to go with a particular ethos, a stress on royal or
aristocratic power, and an admiration for military achievement. It is true that praises (including
self-praises) also occur among non-centralized peoples, particularly those who lay stress on the
significance of personal achievement in war or hunting (such as the Galla or Tuareg), and also that
the use of ‘praise names’ is nearly universal. But the most specialized forms are the formalized
praises directed publicly to kings, chiefs, and leaders, composed and recited by members of a
king’s official entourage.
‘Praise names’ often form the basis of formal praise poetry. These are most often given to people
but may also describe clans, animals, or inanimate objects, and they are usually explicitly
laudatory: the Zulu king Shaka is praised in one of his names as ‘The Ever-ready-to-meet-any-
challenge’, a Hausa chief as ‘Fearful and terrible son of Jato who turns a town into ashes’, or an
Ankole warrior as ‘He who Does Not Fear Black Steel’. Such words or phrases occur frequently
within the more complex form of a complete poem. Other ‘praise’ names are derogatory or
concerned more with insight into inherent qualities than with praise. The Hausa ‘praise names’
(kirari), which in fact are often whole sentences and may refer to inanimate objects, illustrate this
well.
These generalized and derogatory ‘praise’ names seem characteristic of some West African
societies and appear in proverbs and riddles as well as conversation. They do not replace the more
laudatory comments, however, for, also among the Hausa, every celebrated man has his own praise
name which is used as a basis for prolonged praises by ‘professional flatterers’ (1913: 177).
Similarly among the Yoruba the oriki or praise names are permanent titles held by individuals,
given to them by friends or, most often, by the drummers. Some individuals have several of these
names, so that a collection of them, recited together, resembles a loosely constructed poem (also
called oriki) about the person praised.
In eastern and southern Africa cattle form a popular subject in praise poetry, and inanimate things
like divining implements or even a train or bicycle are also praised. In West Africa, apparently
unlike other areas, formal praises are addressed to supernatural beings. Hausa bori spirits for
instance, each have their own praise songs (taki, kirari). When the spirit is to be called, its praise
songs are played through one after another until it takes possession of one of its worshippers (Smith
1957: 33). The Yoruba praise poems to deities in Nigeria and Dahomey (as well as from the Yoruba
in Brazil) are particularly famous.2 Each of the many Yoruba deities (orisha) has a series of praises
expressed in figurative and obscure language, sung by the priest.
Despite these elaborate religious praises, however, the most frequent subjects for panegyric are
humans, especially kings and chiefs. Sometimes these are self-praises, like the personal recitations
of the Hima noble class of Ankole in which a man celebrates his military achievements, building
his poem on a sequence of praise names:
I Who Am Praised thus held out in battle among foreigners along with The Overthrower;
I Who Ravish Spear In Each Hand stood resplendent in my cotton cloth;
 I Who Am Quick was drawn from afar by lust for the fight…
Praises of kings are the most formal and public of all, ranging from the relatively simple Ganda
praise of the powerful nineteenth-century king Mutesa:
Thy feet are hammers,
Son of the forest [a comparison with a lion]
Great is the fear of thee; Great is thy wrath;
Great is thy peace;
Great is thy power
to the more allusive and figurative praise.
‘Praise’ poems of people frequently include derogatory remarks, veiled or otherwise, or give
advice as well as praise.
Self-praises, created and performed by the subject him or herself, are not uncommon. Among the
Sotho all individuals (or all men) are expected to have some skill in the composition and
performance of self-praises, and the composition of formalized praise poetry among the Ankole is
expected to be within the capacity of every nobleman: he must find inspiration in a particular
episode, compose a personal and topical praise poem based on it, and add it to his repertoire Again,
among the Ibo the taking of a title is sometimes followed by a string of self-praises.
A certain amount of private enterprise praising of individuals is also widespread. In northern Sierra
Leone and other parts of West Africa it is not uncommon for expert Mandingo singers, sometimes
accompanied by drummers or xylophonists, to wander through the streets or attend festivals on
their own initiative. They pick on some outstanding or reputedly wealthy individual for their
praises; and even those who refer to them contemptuously as ‘beggars’ are in fact glad to reward
them with gifts and thanks, and thus hope to send them on their way content, avoiding the
possibility of public shaming for lack of generosity. Praises by women sometimes occur too.
The most formal state praises, however, are usually made by official male bards. Thus every Zulu
king had one or more specialists who both recited the praises of previous rulers and composed new
ones to commemorate the achievements and qualities of the present king. Similarly there were
specialist praise poets, ranging from the Ashanti state drummers and singers to the Rwanda
dynastic poets described earlier. Where accompaniment is important whole teams may sometimes
be responsible for official praises; among the Hausa a District Head’s maroka (praise) team
normally contained several drummers (to play the different types of drum), eulogists, two or more
pipers, and sometimes a horn-blower. Lesser chiefs tended to have bards who were less skilled and
less specialized, modelled on the king’s but performing in a less complex and more limited way.
The style of recitation varies between the unaccompanied forms characteristic of the Southern
Bantu praises, those with fairly minimal accompaniment on some stringed instrument, and that in
which the accompaniment is stressed (usually percussion or wind). This last type is widespread in
West African states and its precise form is sometimes a significant aspect of the attribution of
status implied in the praise. Among the Hausa the amount or type of musical accompaniment is
clearly laid down for the praises of each grade of ruler in the hierarchy; wooden gongs, for instance,
may not be used to praise anyone below a certain level, and there are special instruments that can
only be used for praising kings and leading vassals. In West Africa the whole praise may take place
on the drum or on horns, without the use of the human voice at all, a particularly common form in
southern Ghana, Dahomey, and Nigeria but also recorded in some more northerly areas.
Most praise poetry seems to adopt a more or less obscure and allusive style. The language may be
archaic and lofty, there are often references to historical events or people which may need
interpretation even to local listeners, and figurative forms of expression are common. Especially
frequent are comparisons of the person praised to an animal or series of animals. His strength may
be conveyed by referring to him as a lion, a rhinoceros, or an elephant, and, particularly in Southern
Bantu praise poetry, the actions and qualities of the hero may be almost completely conveyed in
metaphorical terms, only the animals to which the hero is implicitly compared being depicted in
action. Comparisons to natural phenomena are also fairly frequent—the hero is likened to a storm,
a rock, a downpour of rain. Other figurative forms of expression occur, sometimes reaching a high
degree of complexity. Not all praise poetry takes allusion quite so far, but in general panegyric
seems to exploit allusion and imagery to a higher degree than other forms of poetry in Africa.
Praise of a person (or a thing) is not something to be expressed in bald or straightforward language.
Much panegyric is formalized, thus less variable than many other types of oral literature. Unlike
self-praises and the more informal and topical praise poems there seems to be a marked tendency
for the state praises of present (and particularly past) rulers to be handed down in a more or less
received version. Word and stanza order is, indeed, sometimes varied from recitation to recitation,
or follows the particular version approved by an individual bard (as in the case, for instance, of
Southern Bantu panegyric), but the changes seem to be minor; stress is laid on conformity to
tradition.
Praise names are used when formal address is required. Among the Southern Bantu the praise
name of an individual’s clan was used on formal occasions, while among the Yoruba praise names,
sung or drummed, are to be heard widely on festive occasions when the drummers go about the
streets formally addressing the passers-by and receiving a small reward in return. Among many
West African peoples drummers at a king’s gate play not only the king’s praise names, but
announce and honour important guests by drumming or piping their names as they enter the palace.
A man’s status is recognized and reaffirmed by the use of these formalized praise names,
particularly when, as in the announcement of visitors, this is a matter of public performance.
Among peoples to whom the concept of praise names or praise verses is common, there are many
informal occasions when praises are used in the same way as speeches or commentaries in other
contexts. Thus among the Kele of the Congo wrestling matches are often accompanied by a form
of praise on the talking drum: the contestants are saluted as they enter the ring (‘the hero, full of
pride’), there is comment and encouragement from the drums as the match continues, and at the
end praise for the victor. On festive occasions among many peoples—the Yoruba are one
example—singers and drummers often welcome those who attend with songs or chants of praise,
usually led by a soloist who improvises to suit the individual, accompanied by a chorus. The
popularity of praises means that they can be used for profit, a possibility frequently exploited by
roving poets. But they can also stir people to genuine excitement: gifts are showered on the praise
poets from enthusiasm as well as fear.
Praise poetry often plays an essential part in rites of passage: when an individual (or group) moves
from one status to another in society, the transition is celebrated by praises marking the new status
or commemorating the old. The eulogies involved in funeral dirges in a sense also fall into this
category. Self-praises by boys at initiation, as among the Sotho or the Galla, are an important
aspect of their claim to adulthood, which is heard and accepted by their audience. Among many
peoples, weddings are also an obligatory occasion for praises of bride and groom either by their
friends and relations or by professional bards. Accession to office is another common context for
praise poetry, usually in public and in the presence of those who take this opportunity to express
their loyalty. Sometimes self-praising is used on such occasions. Even when a new status is not
being formally marked, praise poetry is often relevant in the analogous situation of publicizing an
individual’s recent achievements, particularly those in battle or the hunt.
Most spectacular and public are the frequent occasions on which rulers are praised. Sometimes
this takes a very simple form—as on the bush paths in northern Liberia or Sierra Leone when a
petty chief, carried in his hammock, is accompanied by praises as he enters villages and the local
dwellers are thus instructed or reminded of his chiefly dignity. Or it may be a huge public occasion
as in the Muslim chiefdoms in Nigeria— Hausa, Nupe, Yoruba—when at the ‘Sallah’ rituals (the
Muslim festivals of Id-el-Fitr and Id-el-Kabir) the subordinate officials attend the king on
horseback, accompanied by their praise-singers. Their allegiance is shown by a cavalry charge
with drawn swords outside the palace; the official praise-singers take part in the gallop, piping and
drumming the king’s praises on horseback. Any sort of public event (the arrival of important
visitors to the ruler, the installation ceremonies of a chief, a victory in battle) may be the occasion
for praises by official bards or other experts; the ruler’s position is commented on and recognized
by the stress laid both on the dignity of the office and, more explicitly, on the achievements of its
present incumbent. Periodic praises are often obligatory. Among some of the Yoruba the praises
of the king, with the complete list of his predecessors and their praises, must be recited once a year
in public. In many Muslim kingdoms the ruler is celebrated weekly by teams of praisers (reciters,
drummers, pipers) who stand outside the palace to eulogize his office, ancestry, and power,
sometimes including at his request those of his friends or patrons. In return the ruler acknowledges
their praise by gifts or money which are often given publicly.
The manifold social significance of praise poetry is clear. It can validate status by the content of
the praise, by the number and quality of the performers, and by the public nature of the recitation.
This validation is often acknowledged by gifts. Praise poetry stresses accepted values: descent and
birth, military exploits, and admiration for modern achievement. This kind of poetry can also act
as a medium of public opinion, for up to a point praisers can withhold praise or include implicit or
explicit derogatory allusions as a kind of negative sanction on the ruler’s acts. Further social
functions are publicizing new status or achievements in a non-literate culture, flattering those in
power or drawing attention to one’s own achievements, preserving accepted versions of history
(particularly the exploits of earlier rulers), serving as an encouragement to emulation or
achievement, and, not least, providing an economically profitable activity for many of those who
engage in it. But consideration of the obvious social functions of praise poetry must not obscure
its very real literary qualities. It was also appreciated for its intellectual and aesthetic interest, and
for the fact that on some occasions it was recited purely for enjoyment.
(TAKE AWAY INDIVIDUAL CAT)Find an example from your community. Comment on its
content, themes (and motifs), structure, style, and delivery; occasions and functions. Do you
think panegyric poetry such as your example is a form of Literature? Use elements of literature
as your guide).

b) Elegiac poetry
Elegiac poetry is an exceedingly common form of expression in Africa. We hear of it from all
areas and in many different forms. However it is usually less specialized and elaborate than
panegyric poetry, and, perhaps for this reason, it has attracted less interest. More private and
normally lacking the political relevance of panegyric poetry—to which, nevertheless, it is closely
related—it tends to be performed by non-professionals (often women) rather than state officials.
It shades into ‘lyric’ poetry and in many cases cannot be treated as a distinctive genre. However,
lamentation so frequently appears in a more or less stylized and literary form in Africa.
The most obvious instances of elegiac poetry are those poems or songs performed at funeral or
memorial rites. The occasions for these laments differ from people to people. Often dirges are sung
round the corpse (or round the house in which the corpse lies) while it is being prepared for burial.
Sometimes, as among the Akan, this is followed by a period of public mourning, during which the
corpse lies in state and dirges are sung. The actual burial may or may not be accompanied by
elegies. Deaths are also often celebrated by memorial ceremonies later and these too are usually
accompanied by songs that sometimes include strictly funeral songs, and sometimes panegyric of
the dead.
On these occasions women are the most frequent singers. Among the Yoruba women lament at
funeral feasts, Akan dirges are chanted by women soloists and the zitengulo songs of Zambia are
sung by women mourners. The fact that these songs often involve wailing, sobbing, and weeping
makes them particularly suitable for women—in Africa as elsewhere such activities are considered
typically female. Also common are laments sung by a chorus of women, sometimes led by one
soloist, and often accompanied by dancing or drumming. Occasionally men too are involved.
Among the Limba, for instance, the initial mourning over the corpse is invariably by women, in
either chorus or antiphonal form; but in the case of an adult male the burial itself is by the men’s
secret society and the accompanying songs are by men. Specialists too are sometimes
conventionally mourned by their peers. Thus an expert hunter may have special songs sung at his
funeral by fellow hunters (men) who come to attend the rites. Occasionally too one hears of
professional or semi-professional singers. Thus the Yoruba sometimes invited professional
mourners to their funerals to add an extra embellishment to the usual laments of the bereaved
women.
Many of these songs are topical and ephemeral. That is, they are composed for use at the funeral
of one individual and relate to him only, though they naturally use the accepted idioms and forms.
Thus among the Ila and Tonga of Zambia, the zitengulo mourning songs are sung only once: they
are very short and composed by a woman who mourns and thinks over the life’s work of the
deceased; she bases her song on this, starts to sing little by little, and adds words and melody until
the song is complete. Other funeral songs, perhaps particularly the choral ones, seem to have a set
form repeated more or less exactly at all funerals, or all funerals of a certain category—though on
this point the evidence is often not very precise. There are also instances of songs or poems said
to have been composed initially for some other occasion but taken over for regular use at funerals.
The content of these elegies varies. At times there is no direct reference to the deceased. But often
s/he is specifically addressed, and praise is one of the most frequent motifs. Among the Yoruba
praise poetry is recited or played on drums at funerals as well as on other occasions , and in Akan
dirges the singer calls on the deceased by his praise names and lauds his great deeds and ancestry.
Occasionally the personal reference or address to the deceased is deepened by more general
allusions. We also find resignation and acceptance of the inevitable.
There is also, however, a sense in which elegiac poetry also includes poems that take death or
sorrow as their general themes without being connected with funerals or actual mourning. In this
sense, elegiac poetry in Africa does not often seem to be a distinctly recognized genre. Although
certain dirges (such as those of the Luo or the Akan) are sometimes performed in other contexts
and with other purposes, funerals remain their primary and distinctive occasions, and death is
merely one— and not apparently a very common one—of the many subjects that occur in lyric
poetry generally.
(TAKE AWAY INDIVIDUAL CAT) Find an example from your community. Comment on its
content, themes (and motifs), structure, style, and delivery; occasions and functions. Do you
think elegiac poetry such as your example is a form of Literature? Use elements of literature as
your guide).

c) Religious poetry
There is a great variety of religious poetry in Africa. There are hymns, prayers, praises, and
oracular poetry, all with their varying conventions, content, and function in different cultures. They
range from simple to specialised. There is the Arabic-influenced poetry of the Swahili in East
Africa and of Islamized peoples such as the Fulani or Hausa in the northern portions of West
Africa; the ecclesiastical poetry, associated with the Coptic Church, of the dabteras of Ethiopia;
and, from less ancient origins, hymns and lyrics arising from the recent impact of Christian
missions in many parts of the continent. In these cases it is common for a written tradition of
religious literature to coexist, and to some extent overlap, with an oral tradition.
There are three main ways in which poetry can be regarded as being religious. Firstly, the content
may be religious, as in verse about mythical actions of gods or direct religious instruction or
invocation. Secondly, the poetry may be recited by those who are regarded as religious specialists.
Thirdly, it may be performed on occasions which are generally agreed to be religious ones. These
three criteria do not always coincide. Hymns, for example, may have definite religious content and
be sung on religious occasions, but they may or may not be performed by religious experts;
oracular poetry may be recited by priests (as in Yoruba divination) but neither the content nor the
occasion be markedly religious; and didactic verse, like that of the Swahili, may have a theological
content and be recited by specialists but not, it seems, be performed on particularly religious
occasions.
The most common type of religious poetry in Africa seems to be the hymn. A common feature of
this form is that the religious content consists of invocation or supplication rather than narrative,
and is sometimes closely allied to panegyric (in praise of deities). The detailed subject-matter and
context, however, vary greatly with the differing religious beliefs and institutions of each people.
It is among certain West African peoples that hymns are developed in their most specialized form.
This is in keeping with the elaborate pantheon of divinities recognized by such peoples as the
Yoruba, Fon, or Akan. Among the Yoruba, for instance, each divinity has not only his own
specialist priests and customary forms of worship, but also his own symbolic associations, his
iconography, and his literature, including both myths and hymns.
Thus, for example, the Yoruba divinity Eshu-Elegba (the messenger deity and ‘god of mischief’)
has his own cult of worshippers with their special rituals and organization. He is represented
sculpturally in shrines according to special conventions which also appear in the insignia worn by
his worshippers and in bas-relief representations, with the recurrent motifs of a club, whistle, high
head-dress, cowries, and the colour black. The praises of Eshu chanted by his particular
worshippers and priests bring out his paradoxical nature: he is shown as big and small, youngest
and oldest, black and white, ‘one who defies boundaries and limitations with gay abandon’. His
hymns (or praises) are expressed as a series of paradoxes:
When he is angry he hits a stone until it bleeds. When he is angry he sits on the skin of an
ant. When he is angry he weeps tears of blood.
Eshu, confuser of men.
The owners of twenty slaves is sacrificing,
So that Eshu may not confuse him.
The owner of thirty ‘iwofa’ [pawns] is sacrificing,
So that Eshu may not confuse him.
Eshu confused the newly married wife
When she stole the cowries from the sacred shrine of Oya
She said she had not realized
That taking two hundred cowries was stealing.
Eshu confused the head of the queen— And she started to go naked.
 Then Eshu beat her to make her cry. Eshu, do not confuse me!
Eshu, do not confuse the load on my head…
Eshu slept in the house— But the house was too small for him.
Eshu slept on the verandah— But the verandah was too small for him.
Eshu slept in a nut— At last he could stretch himself.
Eshu walked through the groundnut farm. The tuft of his hair was just visible. If it had not
been for his huge size, He would not have been visible at all.
Having thrown a stone yesterday—he kills a bird today. Lying down, his head hits the roof.
Standing up he cannot look into the cooking pot. Eshu turns right into wrong, wrong into
right.
The obscure and poetic nature of these Yoruba hymns is concerned more with praise and allusive
imagery than with intercession.
The hymns of some other African peoples are very different from such elaborate praises of Yoruba
gods. Praise may be replaced by an emphasis on prayer, supplication, or consideration of the
relations of man to god(s). This seems to be true, for instance, of many of the hymns of the Dinka,
a people of the Nilotic group famous for its special type of monotheism, emphasis on Spirit, and,
at the same time, general lack of any developed priesthood.
When we come to the hymns of the Bushmen of southern Africa we find the aspect of supplication
taken still further. There are no priests among the Bushmen and, for certain northern groups at
least, invocations to their gods are said to take place spontaneously when the thought comes to
them. Consonant with the continual difficulties and scarcities of Bushman life, the topics of their
invocations are the day-to-day material needs with which they are preoccupied:
You have created me and given me power to walk about and hunt. Why do you lead me in
the wrong way so that I find no animals
In these examples, often characterized by a mixture of mild imprecation and pleading, the prayer
is more marked than the praise or worship often associated with ‘hymns’. The same emphasis on
praying and the demand for daily needs also comes out in the prayers of some southern Bushman
groups, where there is a conventional form into which such prayers are thrown. Each poem, or
each of its verses, opens with an invocation to the moon, sun, or stars: ‘Ho Moon lying there’ or
‘O Star coming there’, and so on. This is followed by a prayer for life (that is, a prayer for food),
made the more intense by the repetition and parallelism of the expression:
Ho Moon lying there, Let me early tomorrow see an ostrich,
As the ostrich sits on the eggs,
Let me whisk out the yolk
 With a gemsbok tail hair (brush)
Which sits together upon a little stick
Upon which the gemsbok tail sits.
The same emphasis on intercession is evident in some of the songs associated with rain ceremonies
in the central African area. Here, however, the musical and dramatic aspects are more pronounced
than in Bushman prayers. As with many antiphonal songs, the refrain is assigned to a chorus while
the verses are extemporized by a soloist according to a conventional pattern—a marked contrast
to the lengthy and specialist hymns to West African deities.
It is sometimes supposed that one of the most common forms of conventional utterance in non-
literate society is the spell or incantation—a verse or formula believed to be magically effective in
manipulating people or things. In fact the evidence from Africa does not seem to suggest that this
is often a particularly significant form of literature. It is true that magical incantations of a kind do
occur—perhaps particularly in the areas most influenced by Islam—and in some societies are
distinguished by a special term from other religious poetry such as hymns or prayers.
A further general point is that even where there is some element of what might be termed ‘magic’,
this does not necessarily lead to a definite type of ‘magical incantation’. Just as the previously
assumed distinction between ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ is now questioned by many students of African
beliefs and practices, so too it emerges that it is often not feasible to differentiate a clear-cut
category of ‘magical’ incantations, spells, and charms as distinct from ‘religious’ poetry involving
prayer, praise, invocation, or ritual announcement.
A common supposition is that with the advent of Christianity and its associated literate traditions,
the importance of oral religious utterances will necessarily diminish. The contrary, however, would
seem to be true. It is precisely in the religious sphere that there has been a marked development of
oral forms in lyrics, prayers, and testimonies, each with its own conventions and techniques. This
goes hand in hand with the great proliferation of native Christian churches and other separatist
religious movements that is so well known a feature of contemporary Africa.
Sometimes these utterances are subsequently reduced to writing or even make an early appearance
in written form: but even in these cases their spread and significance among their largely non-
literate patrons is often primarily oral. Instances could be drawn from Mau Mau hymns, from the
‘very Zulu’ modern hymns of the Church of Nazareth, and from testimonies in various separatist
churches in South Africa, which, even when ‘spontaneous’, have their own conventions and appear
as rhythmic and liturgical chants.
(How does religious poetry from your community compare to this? Find an example and provide
an exhaustive commentary).

d) Special purpose poetry: War, hunting, work, nuptial (Research these on your own)