The Awakened Wind. The Oral Poetry of the Indian Tribes
In: Pacific affairs: an international review of Asia and the Pacific, Band 57, Heft 4, S. 709
ISSN: 1715-3379
In: Pacific affairs: an international review of Asia and the Pacific, Band 57, Heft 4, S. 709
ISSN: 1715-3379
In: French cultural studies, Band 20, Heft 4, S. 403-418
ISSN: 1740-2352
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.
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.
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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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In: Third world thematics: a TWQ journal, Band 2, Heft 2-3, S. 279-295
ISSN: 2379-9978
In: African studies series 32
In: The Middle East journal, Band 61, Heft 3, S. 530-531
ISSN: 0026-3141
In: The Middle East journal, Band 61, Heft 3, S. 530-531
ISSN: 0026-3141
In: Society and politics in Africa 24
In: Journal of Asian and African studies: JAAS, Band 48, Heft 1, S. 97-113
ISSN: 1745-2538
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.
In: Journal of Asian and African studies: JAAS, Band 48, Heft 1, S. 97-113
ISSN: 1745-2538
This is one of the documents submitted for the author's habilitation qualification (Habilitation à diriger des recherches) in the field of humanities, which took place 29th June 2006 at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. He traces out his research career, beginning with fieldwork undertaken in Tuareg country from 1976 to 1990. He sets out to show how he increasingly came to view anthropology as a historical science, whose concepts, intimately linked with the scriptural context in which they arise, can not be transposed without distortion or isolated without simplification. This means that anthropologists, like other social science practitioners, can only work at a fairly low level of abstraction. The author's current research, which is then described, consists first of all in the development of a general perspective on oral literature in connection with the process of writing. Within this framework, by means of a critical analysis of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, he considers the issue of Homeric authorship. He is also anxious to show how the themes of courtly poetry - whether it be of Tuareg, Arabian or Occitan origin - are closely connected to its conditions of production and reception. The author has also been concerned with first contacts between the Tuareg and the French. ; Le texte déposé ici est l'un des documents soumis en vue d'une Habilitation à diriger des recherches en lettres et sciences humaines, soutenue à l'Université Paris X-Nanterre le 29 juin 2006. Ce texte de synthèse retrace, comme c'est l'usage, la carrière du chercheur depuis ses enquêtes en pays touareg de 1976 à 1990. Avant d'aborder les recherches en cours, l'auteur fournit un résumé de ses deux principaux ouvrages, La tente dans la solitude. La société et les morts chez les Touaregs Kel-Ferwan (Paris/Cambridge, Maison des sciences de l'homme/Cambridge University Press, 1987) et Gens de parole. Langage, poésie et politique en pays touareg (Paris, La Découverte, 2000). Il entend marquer comment s'est imposé à lui, avec de plus en plus ...
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In: The Middle East journal, Band 61, Heft 3, S. 530
ISSN: 0026-3141
This is one of the documents submitted for the author's habilitation qualification (Habilitation à diriger des recherches) in the field of humanities, which took place 29th June 2006 at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. He traces out his research career, beginning with fieldwork undertaken in Tuareg country from 1976 to 1990. He sets out to show how he increasingly came to view anthropology as a historical science, whose concepts, intimately linked with the scriptural context in which they arise, can not be transposed without distortion or isolated without simplification. This means that anthropologists, like other social science practitioners, can only work at a fairly low level of abstraction. The author's current research, which is then described, consists first of all in the development of a general perspective on oral literature in connection with the process of writing. Within this framework, by means of a critical analysis of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, he considers the issue of Homeric authorship. He is also anxious to show how the themes of courtly poetry - whether it be of Tuareg, Arabian or Occitan origin - are closely connected to its conditions of production and reception. The author has also been concerned with first contacts between the Tuareg and the French. ; Le texte déposé ici est l'un des documents soumis en vue d'une Habilitation à diriger des recherches en lettres et sciences humaines, soutenue à l'Université Paris X-Nanterre le 29 juin 2006. Ce texte de synthèse retrace, comme c'est l'usage, la carrière du chercheur depuis ses enquêtes en pays touareg de 1976 à 1990. Avant d'aborder les recherches en cours, l'auteur fournit un résumé de ses deux principaux ouvrages, La tente dans la solitude. La société et les morts chez les Touaregs Kel-Ferwan (Paris/Cambridge, Maison des sciences de l'homme/Cambridge University Press, 1987) et Gens de parole. Langage, poésie et politique en pays touareg (Paris, La Découverte, 2000). Il entend marquer comment s'est imposé à lui, avec de plus en plus de force au cours des années, le fait que l'anthropologie doit être considérée comme une science historique : les concepts qu'elle utilise restent indexés sur le contexte d'écriture où ils sont apparus, et ne peuvent être transposés sans trahison ni isolés sans simplification. Ce qui suppose que l'anthropologue, tout comme les autres praticiens des sciences sociales, ne peut travailler qu'à un niveau d'abstraction assez bas. Les recherches en cours, que le texte aborde ensuite, consistent tout d'abord en une réflexion générale sur la littérature orale, dans ses rapports avec l'écriture. Dans ce cadre l'auteur a notamment abordé la question homérique, à travers une analyse critique des thèses de Milman Parry et Albert Lord. Il s'est aussi attaché à montrer comment les thèmes de la poésie courtoise - qu'elle soit touarègue, arabe ou occitane - sont liés aux conditions de sa production et de sa réception. Ces recherches ont par la suite fourni la matière d'un livre paru en 2012 à CNRS Éditions : L'aède et le troubadour. Essai sur la tradition orale (voir http://www.academia.edu/1500254/Laede_et_le_troubadour._Essai_sur_la_tradition_orale). Les recherches de l'auteur consistent par ailleurs en une réflexion sur l'histoire des premiers contacts entre Touaregs et Français. Cette réflexion a conduit l'auteur à retracer le parcours biographique de l'explorateur Henri Duveyrier (1840-1892), et de Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916). Les autres documents soumis en vue de cette habilitation étaient un recueil d'articles, dont certains, consacrés au parcours de Charles de Foucauld, ont fourni la matière à une biographie parue en 2009: Charles de Foucauld, moine et savant (voir http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00426237/fr/). À quoi s'ajoutait une biographie d'Henri Duveyrier parue en 2007 aux éditions Ibis Press sous le titre: "Henri Duveyrier. Un saint-simonien au désert".
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