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Poetry is one of the most vibrant artistic forms for socio-economic and political reconstruction of society among the Tiv of North Central Nigeria. The poets fix themselves in the forefront of arousing and propagating cultural consciousness, exposing vices, extolling virtues and personalities with such attributes, mobilizing people for unity and development, ensuring progressive change, maintaining social order and cohesion, unmasking socio-economic contradictions of class and polity, expressing the unheard voices of the voiceless in society and charting out a direction for the future of society. By reflecting the jeers, fears, aspirations, visions and general character of the society, they occupy a popular place and position in the social structure of Tiv society and their poetry is reinvigorated, in the usual popular way, in the new sensibilities of the digital technology being they dynamic in thematic exploration, traditional or modern. This article presents an exploratory overview of Tiv poetry in its changing digital forms of "secondary orality" which not only preserve the material but transform its productive, aesthetic and performance bounds to unending digital spaces creating in the wake a new character, a special effect, a new transmitting and storage pattern and the commodification of an individual's creations. The paper finally locates digi-orature, this new way of interrogating oral poets and their creations, within the ambience of postmodernity capable of attracting audiences outside the Tiv linguistic and geographical space.

In our examination of the representations of exile in Afghan popular culture, we focus in particular on popular poetry and song lyrics in Farsi, one of the national languages of Afghanistan. This article concentrates on the voices of exiles, their self-representation and their descriptions of life far from their homeland. We argue that, in addition to offering catharsis and expressing collective suffering, the verses are also used to urge return and, more recently, to voice complaints to and about host societies, as well as to critique the Afghan government for its failures.

This article discusses about the role of Oromo oral poetry in helping girls[1] and women[2]to express their idea in their social life. It also aims to illustrate the talent of girls and women in creating and poeticizing oral poetry to display their opinion on social occurrences such as marriage ceremony, birth rite and at work place. During data collection, ethnographic methods such as observation, focus group discussions and semi-structured interview were employed. I interpreted data collected from the field through these methods. The analyzed data shows that oral poetry has a crucial role to help girls and women to express their idea in pre and post marriage respectively. Before marriage, it helps girls to display their feeling, thought and emotion concerning their future life and their friend's social life. By using oral poetry, they advise their friends and show their devotion for each other. In post marriage, through oral poetry, women pray Waaqaa (Oromo God) for a woman who unable to bear child. The paper concludes that, oral poetry helps girls and women to express their opinion in every aspect of their life such as marriage, spiritual, and reproduction issues. Therefore, it helps them to make their voice heard in the community and enhances their creativity.[1] Is durba in Oromo and are unmarried virgin girl.[2] Is dubartii in Oromo and are married women.

In the preceding discussion, an attempt was made to provide a classification of Amharic oral poems and songs into several themes and genres. Accordingly, such major genres as work songs, children's poems, war chants and boasting recitals were identified and a description and analysis of selected poems and their role, particularly in local politics and administration, were provided. In their poems and songs, the peasants of East Gojjam critically express their views, attitudes and feelings either in the form of support or protest, towards the various state policies and local directives.Indeed, the Amharic oral poems and songs from the two peasant communities illustrate topics associated with the change of government, land redistribution, local authorities and their administration, as well as a variety of other contemporary issues affecting the rural society. The poems also throw some light on the understanding of the peasants' consciousness and observations comparing past and present regimes of Ethiopia, besides their power of aesthetics and creative capabilities of the peasants' poetic tradition.In fact, this can be seen from a wider perspective, considering the function and role of oral literature in an agrarian and traditional society such as the two peasant communities mentioned in this paper. The peasants' response in poetry to the diverse contemporary politics and local administration need to be studied carefully and considered appropriately in the state's future rural policies and development projects if it is intended to bring about a democratic system that leads towards a peaceful coexistence among the rural peasantry.

Medievalist Paul Zumthor, in his study of oral poetry, has identified the specificities of oral texts and analysed their inherently social function. By applying Zumthor's theories to the chanson genre, this article aims to question the traditional distinction between poetry and song by supporting instead the distinction between oral and written poetry, in order to highlight the importance of the oral and physical dimension of song. Through the analysis of the orality of chanson, this study investigates the nature of the connection established between an artist and an audience during a performance, and argues that this connection is not only an integral part of the song, in the same way that music and lyrics are, but also contains the social significance of chanson and its authors.

In the preceding discussion, an attempt was made to provide a classification of Amharic oral poems and songs into several themes and genres. Accordingly, such major genres as work songs, children's poems, war chants and boasting recitals were identified and a description and analysis of selected poems and their role, particularly in local politics and administration, were provided. In their poems and songs, the peasants of East Gojjam critically express their views, attitudes and feelings either in the form of support or protest, towards the various state policies and local directives.Indeed, the Amharic oral poems and songs from the two peasant communities illustrate topics associated with the change of government, land redistribution, local authorities and their administration, as well as a variety of other contemporary issues affecting the rural society. The poems also throw some light on the understanding of the peasants' consciousness and observations comparing past and present regimes of Ethiopia, besides their power of aesthetics and creative capabilities of the peasants' poetic tradition.In fact, this can be seen from a wider perspective, considering the function and role of oral literature in an agrarian and traditional society such as the two peasant communities mentioned in this paper. The peasants' response in poetry to the diverse contemporary politics and local administration need to be studied carefully and considered appropriately in the state's future rural policies and development projects if it is intended to bring about a democratic system that leads towards a peaceful coexistence among the rural peasantry.

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Much of Nigerian oral poetry, especially the musical genre, has been increasingly reduced to digital formats through the instrumentality of new media technologies. This transformation has, however, not been sufficiently acknowledged in oral literary researches and discourses. This alternative existence acquired by the oral forms manifests itself in digital technological modes like CDs, VCDs, DVDs, digital radio and television and the internet which assure them of longevity. This paper, therefore, engages Nigerian oral poetry and its inscription in digital processes using new media technologies. In particular, it negotiates the trajectory of transforming primary orality to secondary and tertiary orality through which oral performances like songs have acquired new modes of existence and meanings by way of recordings and digitalization using the new media. Many of these poetic forms have travelled through historical time to the postmodern moment as migrant metaphors and have become stored in digital forms thus making them new wine though preserved in the old wineskins of the poets and new media processes. Using an emergent generation of Nigerian popular poets and musical artistes, the paper problematizes the episteme of authorship. It interrogates the very idea of authorship in the contested and interstitial space of communal and individual authorship in the digital age where the term has undergone radical destabilisation. Who owns the oral forms, for instance? Is it the so-called anonymous composer in traditional society, the collector or recorder who mediates the creative process and becomes a surrogate agent, or the contemporary artist who is heir to this timeless tradition of oral intellection through performances that are digitalized and stored in retrieval systems, or is it a virtual community of authors, or a hybrid of all of these? The paper concludes that digital technologies are a means of preserving these oral forms and endowing them with vitality and enduring relevance to meet the immediacy and urgency of postmodern societal needs in Nigeria.