Literary Artists

Sources

Ancient Roots. Although it is impossible to date the origin of literary production in West Africa, it is possible to deduce from themes, settings, and the plethora of narrative styles that West African oral literary traditions have roots as ancient as those of the people who occupy the land. Literary production in West Africa involved a trained professional class of verbal artists as well as a nonprofessional class of gifted entertainers. A professional or nonprofessional was expected to possess a good voice, to be agile and rhythmic, and to demonstrate a mastery of one’s cultural aesthetic. Both drew on an extensive cultural and historical repertoire of themes, images, metaphors, and styles. From present-day Mauritania to Cameroon, the literature of West Africa is a vast store of complex mythical and historical narratives. Most of these works are part of oral traditions, but others have been communicated through performance-art forms. For example, the epics of Sundiata and Ozidi are told through mime, vocal and instrumental music, dance, and poetry—all performed over a period of several days. Instruments such as the Yoruba dundun drums or the Akan Homs, both of which mimic human speech, also have a literary function.

Professional Artists. Professional artists served the ruling and ritual classes and were often responsible for maintaining regional cultural and legal histories as well as the cosmologies that legitimized the authority of their patrons. The idea that narratives were simply passed from father to son and mother to daughter obscures the fact that literary novices underwent an extensive educational process during their training to become masters of the verbal and instrumental arts. In most areas of West Africa, classes of age-related youth were (and still are) trained by teams of master teachers who were responsible for insuring that their students were proficient enough to perform publicly. Talent, natural gifts, and affinity for a given undertaking were considered in the selection of students. Training lasted from ten to thirty years depending on the ability of the student and the area of specialization. In a social system dominated by guilds, a mediocre or weak performance embarrassed the guild of master teachers as much as it did the student.

Nonprofessional Artists. The repertoires of nonprofessional literary artists came from folkloric traditions and included animal tales, fables, songs, and narratives on themes such as drought, conquest, migration, resettlement, and a spectrum of social issues. In most parts of West Africa, talented narrators rose from among local villagers and were appreciated for their vocal, mime, or instrumental abilities. Voice and mime were especially important assets. These local artists drew from a storehouse of indigenous motifs and styles for their creative presentations to members of their communities, which included a wide range of forms from lullabies to morality tales to songs of social satire. Their efforts not only entertained but often reiterated important lessons. This pedantic aspect is particularly evident in West African animal tales, where the personifications of the tortoise, hare, spider, and duiker are lightly shrouded human characteristics. Similar folkloric characters and themes can be found in all world cultures. What makes West African tales distinctly African is the teller’s narrative style, which usually involves a call-and-response engagement between performer and audience. Although there are differences throughout the region, there are many common features in all West African narrative styles.

Sources

Uchegbulam N. Abalogu, Oral Poetry in Nigeria (Lagos, Nigeria: Nigeria Magazine, 1981).

S. A. Babalola, The Content and Form ofYorubaljala (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

Diedre L. Badejo, “The Orisa Principle: Divining African Literary Aesthetics,” in Orality, Literacy and the Fictive Imagination: African and Diasporan Literatures, edited by Tom Spencer-Walters (Troy, Mich.: Bedford, 1999), pp. 45-70.

Badejo, “The Yoruba and Afro-American Trickster: A Contextual Comparison,” Presence Africaine (3rd Quarter 1988): 3-17.

Marion Kilson, ed., Royal Antelope and Spider: West African Mende Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Press of the Langdon Associates, 1976).

Isidore Okpewho, ed., The Oral Performance in Africa (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books, 1990).