Term Paper IC

8/2/2019 Term Paper IC

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TERMPAPER

LITERATURES OFAFRICA-I

SCRIBE,MOVEON!-REPETITION,DIGRESSIONANDASSOCIATIONIN

THESONGSOFTHEMWINDOEPIC

SAMBUDDHAGHOSH

PG-II,ROLLNO.37DEPARTMENTOFENGLISH

JADAVPURUNIVERSITY


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SCRIBE, MOVE ON!-REPETITION,DIGRESSION

AND ASSOCIATION IN THE SONGS OF THEMWINDO

EPIC

The psychodynamics of orality, as they were called by Walter J. Ong 1, were identified at the

beginning of the last century due the pioneering work of scholars such as Parry and Lord, Jack

Goody, Ruth Finnegan and many such others (not to exclude Ong himself). These patterns, in

which the mind of a member of an oral community is accustomed to work, have been seen as

different from the workings of a mind exposed to varying degrees of literacy across cultures.

Yet, there is a further problem of oversimplifying matters by presupposing such radical

differences between the workings of an oral and literate consciousness. Jack Goody and Ian

Watt, while searching for a model culture to demonstrate the irrevocable consequences of

literacy found that initially they had to reject any dichotomy based upon the assumption of

radical differences between the mental attributes of literate and non-literate peoples2. As both

Finnegan and Bruce A. Rosenberg3 argue, there has been an inherent continuity, not a

dichotomy, between oral and literate cultures for thousands of years:

They shade into each other both in the present and over many centuries of historical

development, and there are innumerable cases of poetry which has both oral and written

1

Walter J.Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word(New York: Routledge), reprint, 2003, p. 31.

2Jack Goody and Ian Watt (ed.),Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1968,

p. 44.

3Bruce A. Rosenberg, The Complexity of Oral Tradition, Oral Tradition, Vol. 2, No.1, 1987, pp. 73-90. I am

particularly indebted to the influential Oral Traditionjournal, all 25 years of which are now available online at

http://journal.oraltradition.org.
http://journal.oraltradition.org/http://journal.oraltradition.org/http://journal.oraltradition.org/


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elements. The idea of pure and uncontaminated oral culture as the primary reference point for

the discussion of oral poetry is a myth.4

What Finnegan argued seemed at variance with enthusiasts like Parry-Lord and Ong, but even if

we accept that purely oral folk can nowhere be identified today or studied, a fair amount of

inductive reasoning can be used to arrive at what would have been the features of a model,

supposedly uncorrupted orality.

The object of the present paper is a study of The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga (erstwhile

Congo Republic, now Zaire), edited and translated by Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo C.

Mateene

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, in order to examine some of its most prominent features that would help us ascertainthe oral nature of its composition. I have surmised that there are three features in the epic which

are most extensive, these being repetition, digression and association. The examples chosen from

the text to illustrate each of these features are not so prominently distinct or watertight, so as to

illustrate each of the features discretely in each case and there are many occasions where they

will overlap. Sometimes repetition leads to digression and digression to association, but this is

not a fixed order which can be demonstrated in entirety throughout the text. For economys sake

I have kept myself limited to the songs of the epic, for these, to me are most illustrative of these

features. However, this is not to say that they do not occur at other parts of the prose narrative.

Also, the examples chosen here are only illustrative and by no means exhaustive. Finally, I

intend to proceed to an analysis of what functions these features can perform at the level of

narrative.

The Mwindo Epic, as performed by the griot Mr. Sh-kr isi Candi Rureke could be classified as a

krisi-text or an epic narrative. As in other Nyanga epics, the central hero here is Mwindo and

the events narrated are mostly his diverse exploits, displays of bravado and courage. Mwindo is a

Nyanga name for a male child who is born after a number of girls. There is also a relationship

4Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1977, p. 24

5Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene (ed.), The Mwindo Epic (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of

California Press), 1971. All further references to the text of the epic are to this edition and have been given

parenthetically within the text.


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between Mwindo and the Nyanga verb uindo (to fell a tree) which displays his physical strength.

However, Biebuyck also states that it is a rarely so that the Mwindo epic is ever recited in its

entirety for all performative purposes:

The interesting point is that the narrator would never recite the entire story in immediate

sequence, but would intermittently perform various select passages of it. Mr. Rureke, whose epic

is presented here, repeatedly asserted that never before had he performed the whole story within

a continuous span of days.6 (p. 14).

The themes of the epic and its incidents are traditional to the Nyanga who use them freely as the

property of the community. The traditional themes are dealt with in many new ways by differentgriots, but by the time Biebuyck was doing his fieldwork in the Nyanga country, there were not

many who were as competent and well-versed as Rureke.

I. REPETITIONRepetition is a recurring feature ofThe Mwindo Epic, both at the level of epithets or formulaic

phrases and at the level of narrative progression. However, this feature is most succinctly

observable in the songs of the epic. There are, for instance a number of stock phrases used as

epithets for various dramatis personae. Mwindo is designated by the Nyanga epithet Kbutwa-

knda (the Little-one-just-born-he-walked), which also brings out his identity as a small

creature, a child by the use of the ka-diminutive prefix. This is the epithet repeated the most

number of times to describe Mwindo, possibly to a degree that irritates the reader. Mukiti, the

water serpent, who marries Mwindos paternal aunt Iyangura is called min-mriba(master of

the unfathomable) and wbme uker byra (a man, who has his nails cut). As in other

epics, epithets and stereotyped expressions are attached to important figures and these are

repeated, churned out and re-used by the griot while narrating similar situations and episodes.

6Daniel Biebuyck, The Mwindo Epic, Introduction.


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However, the most prominent examples of repetition are elsewhere. An important episode in the

epic is the imprisonment of Mwindo within a drum by his father Shemwindo, which is thrown

into the river to ensure Mwindos death by drowning. However, the miraculous powers of the

Nyanga hero ensure that he is able to swim across the river, being within the sealed drum. It is

here that he launches into song:

Scribe, move on!

I am saying farewell to Shemwindo!


I shall die, oh! BiraMy little father threw me into the drum!

I shall die, Mwindo!

The counselors abandoned Shemwindo;

The counselors will become dried leaves.

The counselors of Shemwindo,


The counselors have failed (in their) counseling! (p. 62)

A similar song is repeated two pages later (p. 64), and is followed by another song Mwindo sings

during his underwater journey to the realm of Mukiti:

Mungai, get out of my way!

For Ikukuhi shall I go out of my way?

You are impotent against Mwindo,

Mwindo is the Little-one-just-born-he-walked

I am going to meet Iyangura.

For Kabusa, shall I go out of my way?

You are helpless against Mwindo,

For Mwindo is the Little-one-just-born-he-walked.


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Canta, get out of my way!

Canta, you are impotent against Mwindo. (p. 65)

The song is a very long one and I have quoted only a small section of it. But the prose narrative

which begins at the end of the song explains,

Each time Mwindo arrived in a place where an aquatic animal was, he said that it should get out

of the way for him, that they were powerless against him (p.66)

One line of prose suffices to explain all that Mwindo has to say as he meets the aquatic animals

on his way. Why would then the narrator take the pains of cataloguing the individual cases ofvarious aquatic animals in their encounter with Mwindo? Several reasons can be accounted for

this.

Firstly, an epic-text such as Mwindo is performative in all its aspects, accompanied by song,

instruments and dance. Therefore it is essential that songs be developed to recount certain

episodes. The act of repetition provides similar contexts for the griot to display his skills as

verse-maker in his act of oration. Metrically speaking, the qualitative elements (e.g. rhyme) and

the quantitative elements (e.g. the number of words) vary themselves as little as possible in case

of two similar (and repeated phrases). But there are places where they do vary in bits, and it is

the test of the griots verse-making to select a suitable stock phrase or clich to meet the

demands of rhythmic verse. This is usually done from a repository of such stock-phrases which

the griot has been trained to memorize over the years of his training. For example, Ikukuhi is

described as impotent against Mwindo while Kabusa is helpless. This fact could perhaps have

been further and better illustrated if Nyanga versification could have been understood and

studied, which sadly, is beyond the scope of this paper. However, the basic point is that lines of

verse are repeated to serve a definite purpose.

Secondly, as Isidore Okpewhopoints out, repetition is also employed, sometimes profusely, to

mark a feeling of excitement or agitation, whether in the sense of utmost delight or deepest


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anxiety and fear7. In the quoted lines repetition conveys to the reader a vivid sense of

immediateness combined with rapid motion in recounting for the audience Mwindos underwater

journey and his encounter with various fishes.

Sometimes, repetition can also be used as an effective way of improvisation by the griot. The

rapidity of performance means the griot has to improvise instantly and yet maintain both rhyme

and effective expression. In the first quoted song, the lines I am sayin g farewell to

Shemwindo!and The counselors of Shemwindo are repeated twice simply to ensure that the

griot has time, either to catch his breath or to think about a suitable stock-phrase for his next line.

The act of narration or the flow of it must never stop however; an effective griot must never

sacrifice fluency, fulsomeness and volubility at the cost of anything else. Therefore, rhetoricianswere later to call it the copia,8 which evolved as an integral part of oration and was even

encouraged in times of contingency.

The psychological need for repetition is explainable by the trait of redundancy or copiousness

which Ong explores in his book Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word. While

discussing this trait, Ong establishes that writing establishes in the text, a line of continuity

outside the mind, to which a return (even if an occasional one) is always possible in case of

distraction or obliteration of the context from the mind. This process is called backlooping, and

in case of writing, it is purely ad hoc.9 However, in the oral discourse, the scenario is different

because there is nothing to backloop into outside the mind, for the oral utterance has vanished

as soon as it is uttered. It is also relevant here, according to Ong, to conceive of an oral culture

as conversing only through sound utterance, which is an action laid across the axis of time.

Hence, it is also an event, one in which when a part of the utterance is over, we can only proceed

to the remaining part but never get back to that which has bygone. When, for example, our

present griot recites Mwindo is the Little-one-just-born-he-walked, by the time he has reached

the word Little , the first part of the utterance Mwindo is the is an act of the past. Therefore,

7Isidore Okpewho,African Oral Literature (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press), 1992, p. 72.

8Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 39-40

9Ibid, pp. 38-39.


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to return to it and impress upon the audience such phrases and formulaic expressions which the

griot thinks are essential to his recital, repetition is indispensable.

This will lead us to our fourth point about repetition. As an act of recital, the griot always has to

ensure that his audience can grasp his words and phrases. Even supposing that the audience were

to understand every word the narrator recites or sings (which is impracticable from all possible

perspectives), acoustic problems are sure to disrupt part of the aud ibility of the narrators words.

Therefore, redundancy is always favoured by the audience, especially in case of a performance,

where modes of expression other than pure speech are used.

Repetition can also help to bring out the griots encyclopedic knowledge regarding the customs,culture, values and beliefs of the community. Such knowledge is emphasized and highly admired

among the Nyanga folk. I shall demonstrate through two examples how repetition works in such

cases. The first is Mwindos song on his way to Tubondo with aunt Iyangura:

The pastes that are in Tubondo,

May the pastes join Mwindo,

Mwindo, the Little-one-just-born-he-walked

The animals that are in Tubondo,

May the animals join Mwindo.

The meats that Shemwindo stores,

May the meats join Mwindo Mboru,

For Mwindo is the Little-one-just-born-he-walked (p.84)

This catalogue of fires, waters, jars, clothes, wooden dishes, beds, wicker plates, chickens and a

seemingly never-ending list of belongings go on following the same redundant format of

repetition. According to the accompanying note to this song, it offers a short inventory of some

of the most significant items in the diet and technology of the Nyanga. (p. 85) . A similar

catalogue is given in the scene of the resuscitation of Tubondo and his people after Mwindo


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emerges victorious in battle against his father. The resuscitation is achieved by the hero with the

help of his conga-sceptre and is quoted as follows:

each one who died in pregnancy resuscitated with her pregnancy;

each one who died in labor resuscitated being in labor;

each one who was preparing paste resuscitated stirring paste;

each one who died defecating resuscitated defecating;

each one who died setting up traps resuscitated trapping;

each one who died copulating resuscitated copulating;

each one who died forging resuscitated forging

each one who died cultivating resuscitated cultivating;each one who died making pots and jars resuscitated shaping;

each one who died carving dishes resuscitated carving;

each one who died quarreling with a partner resuscitated quarreling. (p.119)

It is needless to say that the only aim of such cataloguing is to impress upon the audience the

extensive nature of Mwindos powers. However, this could also be regarded as a classic case of

an empty fullness which the critic Babalola calls the great noise of an empty barrel, the

effusion of a shallow-minded ijala artist who makes light of the adage that quality is more

important than quantity and who erroneously thinks that the merit of his ijala consists solely in

its length.10

But it is also essential to remember that any form of repetition, if made in an oral culture, is

eventually a form of explanation, the aim of which is either to clarify or to interpret. Ong draws

attention to this phenomenon in an essay titled Before Textuality: Orality and Interpretation. In

this essay Ong examines the traditional study of hermeneutics or exegesis by questioning the

teleological authority of chirographic and printed texts in providing interpretation. He writes

that,

10S.A. Babalola, The Content and Form of Yoruba Ijala (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1966 quoted in Okpewho,

African Oral Literature, p. 76


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The idea of nature as something out there like a text of a booka kind of visible thing to

be read and interpreted runs back at least to the Middle Ages. But he proceeds, following David

Olson, to a more specific point concerning orality and textuality. The very idea of interpretation

as an activity separate from other kinds of statement depends on the existence of writing.

Interpretation of the text that is the world would be something of a different order than the text

itself if the world is like a text. Before writing, there is no functional or effective distinction

between a statement and an interpretation of a statement.11 Ong here points towards a shift in

paradigm through which exegesis or interpretation could be approached:

Asked to repeat a statement and an interpretation of a statement that he or she has made, aperson from an oral culture commonly gives not a word-for-word repetition of what he or she has

said, but an interpretationand with good reason, I would suggest, since the request to repeat the

statement establishes a new context for the statement (one which, moreover, suggests that the

original wording was not understood). Since the oral mind is holistic, it adapts to the new context

with a wording that presumably fits the new context, not the original context, a wording which

we would regard as interpretative but which to the oral mind represents in the new context

essentially what the original statement represented in the original context. What is the point of

repeating verbatim a statement that is unclear enough to elicit a request to repeat it? 12

In The Mwindo Epic, many of the repetitions found in the songs of Mwindo perform precisely

this function. The quoted lines will illustrate this fact:

The counselors abandoned Shemwindo;

The counselors will become dried leaves.



The counselors have failed (in their) counseling! (p. 62)

11Walter J. Ong, Before Textuality: Orality and Interpretation, Oral Tradition, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1988, p. 259.

12Ibid, p. 260.


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If we study the last four lines within this quoted portion, it is easy to see that the last lines merely

explicates whythe counselors will become dried leaves, while the third and fourth lines help to

intensify the suspense before the answer is provided to the question. It is easy for us now to

rephrase this section in prose by joining the second and the last lines:

The counselors will become dried leaves becausethey have failed (in their) counseling

In other words, what appeared merely as a recurring, redundant mode of expression has now

become an interpretive tool.

II.DIGRESSIONThe Mwindo Epic is replete with many forms of digression, but the chief of these is the Mukiti-

Iyangura interlude after Shemwindos formal announcement to his seven wives of punishing the

one who gives birth to a male child. Biebuyck tells us in his introduction,

The action takes place both in the village of Tubondo (courtship, marriage negotiations, gift

exchanges, transfer of valuables) and in the village of the Water Serpent (expos of marriage

plans, accumulation of matrimonial goods, actual marriage ceremony). This very beautiful and

poetic interlude, which is absent from many other versions of the epic, gives a fairly accurate

description of marriage customs, and strongly emphasizes the basic Nyanga values of generosity,

hospitality and refinement in social relationships. (pg, 23, Introduction)

However the Mukiti-Iyangura interlude does have a number of important narrative functions.

Firstly, it sets the scene of future action in Mukitis water-realm. It paves the way for Mwindos

underwater journey to his mentor and mother-figure, aunt Iyangura. It also justifies Iyanguras

special position of power and status as Mukitis ritual-wife. Living in isolation from her husband,

Iyangura can also exercise a certain degree of autonomy than an ordinary wife would be able to.


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The Mwindo Epic traditionally deals with stereotyped themes of the exploits of Mwindo.

However, griots freely incorporate other elements and motifs. These topical elements are

intrinsically homeostatic13 in nature, which will mean that they will always try to superimpose

the present over the past. One of Mwindos songs, sung in reply to Iyanguras apprehension

about the possible consequences of Mwindos act of rebellion against his father goes:

Ntiriri-liana has become mubanga-rope,

And musara-liana has become a mukendo-bag.

Scribe, march!

I am going over there in Tubondo;

I shall fight over there in Tubondo,Even though Tubondo has seven entries.

We are saying, oh Bira!

Aunt, give me advice

To fight with the people downstream;

They carry spears and shields,

In Ithimbi where dwelt Birori,

I shall die (today), Mushumo.

On Ntsuri-hill where dwelt Ruronga,

In Munongo where dwelt Shecara,

Bitumbi-hill of Shemene Ndura,

And the old ones fight because of a wind.

On Mbare-hill where dwelt Karai,

He was the one who gives much tribute of words.

Mbare-hill is together with Irimwe-hill, his kinsman.

Tunkundu-hill is together with Nteko-hill, his kinsman.

May I mention Mabura Banyore,

13The homeostatic nature of oral societies were extensively researched by Jack Goody and Ian Watt among the Tiv

people in Nigeria and the Gonja in Ghana. Goody and Watt called what they saw among the Gonja people of Ghana

a case of structural amnesia whereby the past is forgotten to ensure the stability and the security of the present.

This feature is particularly relevant during the handing on of genealogies.


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Homeland of my mothers,

Kabotoyo Munyangoro

Nyabuke Kamwikoti. (p. 79)

Most parts of the song are excellent examples of narrative digression. The present, personal

recollections of the griot are easily juxtaposed along with the mythic narrative of the hero. While

the main narrative deals with Mwindos impending journey to Tubondo, the narrator takes liberty

to interpolate personal recollection and memory within the song. The place of the narrators

origin is Ithimbi, and he also describes the characters he met there or whose fame was well

established. (p.79). He also talks about Birori, the diviner or the courageous Karai. This is

followed by a complex set of double-names or quid pro quos, as Biebuyck calls them. Forexample, Kabotoyo Munyangoro, Nyabuke Kamwikoti could be the double names of two

individuals, a male and female or it could mean Kabotoyo of the Nyangoro group. (p.80). As

we progress more and more towards the end of the song, the narrator becomes more and more

personal and humorous. He begins to complain that he has not eaten anything extra-ordinary.

What he means is that he has had to eat with several others, which also means he did not receive

any special hospitality gift as an esteemed griot.

For the Nyanga-folk the epic or krisi overlaps with most other know literary forms, being by far

the broadest of them. Apart from accommodating rigidly stereotyped clichs, proverbs,

improvised reflections, riddles, songs, prayers and blessings, the text is also a broad compendium

of entire Nyanga culture. As a repository of cultural heritage the krisi is particularly significant

because it is thought to be filled with traditional wisdom, explaining the causes and effects of

natural and psychosocial phenomena, imparting local values and morals as well as interpreting

present customs; the epic form is functionallypaideic for the community. Hence, when the griot

recites and performs the krisi, he is also acting as a transmitter of traditional wisdom which has

an epistemic function. Digression serves as the most useful tool through which he can transmit

such knowledge.


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III. ASSOCIATIONThe Nyanga form of association is by far the most interesting of its oral techniques. The roots of

this form of association can be traced back to Nyanga ritual and is perhaps an integral part of the

conditioning of the Bantu griot. Here, the feats of the epic hero Mwindo are likened to the

arduous task of performance that the griot has undertaken. Songs sung during the performance of

the epic manifest this form of dynamic identification between the epic hero Mwindo and the

present griot who is recounting his heroic exploits. This will be made clearer with the help of

examples.

Let us get back to the first song of Mwindo that I used to illustrate repetition. For convenience I

am quoting a relevant part of it again:

Scribe, move on!



I shall die, oh! Bira

My little father threw me into the drum!

I shall die, Mwindo!

Within the text, this song is clearly described as having sung by Mwindo. However, it begins

with the energetic exclamation of the narrator, who encourages and tries to hasten up his scribe

as well as his compatriots within the performance. Biebuyck writes,

The exclamation made by the narrator must be considered in the light of the general

circumstances under which he sang the epic. We were sitting with him and patiently writing

down the words that he sang and chanted. The encouragement is directed towards the assistant

singers and percussionists as much as myself. At the very start of a song or dance, there is a

moment of disorganization or hesitation, a searching for exact rhythms and words. During such

moments, even in important initiatory situations, all kinds of improvised sentences may be


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sung. (p. 62). The feeling of oneness with the hero Mwindo alters the grammar of narration,

with the narrator slipping frequently into the first person from the third quite freely, without any

need to account for reasons. Ong writes that in the intensity of performance ofThe Mwindo Epic,

it so happens that in the sensibility of the narrator and his audience, the hero of the oral

performance assimilates into the oral world even the transcribers who are de-oralizing the text.14

Such improvised words of encouragement are given frequently within the epic. Mwindos song

during his underwater journey through Mukitis realm is very revealing:

I am going to my Aunt Iyangura,

Iyangura, sister of Shemwindo.Kabarebare and Ntabare-mountain,

Where the husband of my senior sister sets byoo-traps.

And a girl who is nice is a lady,

And a nice young man is a kakoma-pole.

We are telling the story

That the Babuya have told [long ago]

We are telling the story.

Kasengeri is dancing (wagging his) tail;

And you see! (this) tail ofnderema-fibres.

. . . . .

If I am at a loss for words in the great song,

If it dies out, may it not die out for me there.

I cannot flirt with I-have-no-name;

They are accustomed to speak to Mukiti (with) bells.

The tunes that we are singing,

The uninitiated-ones cannot know them. (pp.70-71)

14Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 46-47.


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I have deliberately written parts of the song in bold letters to differentiate between the parts of

the song where the narrator speaks on behalf of Mwindo and where he speaks as himself. The

lines in bold letters represent parts of the song which are related immediately to the present

performance. The narrator for example, is expected to dance while singing the song, waving an

amulet of dried banana-fibres on his arm. He compares his dancing with Kasingeri, the name of

an animal sometimes given to designate a good dancer (p. 71). This is an example of self-praise

which the narrator indulges in, asking the audience to observe the movements of his arms

adorned with the fibre-amulets. And by doing so, he also silently slips into Mwindos shoe, who

also indulges in much self-praise and boasting, owing to his great powers. The implicit invitation

to both audience and reader is to compare between the griot and epic hero Mwindo whom the

former identifies with.

The lines, We are telling the story/That the Babuya have told [long ago] are also reminiscent

of the griot Candi Rurekes descent. Though Biebuyck had met Rureke in the village of Bese in

the Nyanga country, the origins of the griot were in Ithimbi, in the village of Koutu. However, it

would be improper to think of Rureke as a stranger in Bese , since his maternal uncles (the

Baheri ) and his in-laws (the Baba people) were based in Bese. Therefore, he alludes to the

origins of his version of the epic, which became assimilated into Nyanga lore. Further, the last

two lines of the quoted portion of Mwindos song explicitly allude to the initiation and training

of a professional bard who recites the epic. It should be remembered that The Mwindo Epic is a

form of the krisi-text. In such a text, the identification between the griot and the hero

Mwindo occurs at the level of narration but is deeply rooted in the Nyanga ritual of initiation.

Daniel Biebuyck writes in his introduction,

Krisiis the generic term for the long epic narratives which celebrate Mwindos featsbut for

a small group of performers, Krisi is also a male spirit. When asked why he learned the epic, a

Nyanga bard replies that he did so as the result of a compulsory message received in dreams

from Kri siYoung men who are agnatic relatives, affines and/or blood friends of the

accomplished bard learn the epic in an informal way by accompanying him as helpers wherever


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he goes to recite. (pp. 11-12)

In case the learners fall prey to any kind of misfortunes during their period of

accompaniment with the bard, or learn the epic too slowly, the oracles declare his

misfortunes owing to Krisis wrath, who has then to be appeased by following either a number

of rituals or learning the epic very fast. Similarly, the Sh-krisi or bard believes that a

successfully recital of the epic means that,

Krisi , deified, wanted him to learn the epic; to perform the drama adequately makes the

narrator strong, protects him against disease and death. The narrator believes he will find in his

songs the force that Mwindo himself, the hero of the epic derives from them. (p.12)

More examples can follow. Mwindos song of joy when he reaches Iyangura is also embedded in

such forms of self-reflexive identification. In this song, Iyangura urges Mwindo to dance, in

order to test whether he is invulnerable to the traps planted by Kasiyembe, and as a form of

mimetic delivery, the narrator too begins dancing:

Kasiyembe said: Let us dance together.

Shirungu, give us a morceau!

If we die, we will die for you.

Kasengeri is dancing with his conga-sceptre,

Conga-sceptre ofnderemafibres. (p. 74)

While at the level of narrative, this song is sung by Mwindo to provoke Kasiyembe, at the level

of performance the narrator calls out to one of the percussionists, Shirungu to play a particular

tune. He also emphasizes how difficult it is for him (and his co-performers) to go over the entire

performance but he promises to accomplish the same if his audience would be satisfied.

The continual process of identification is carried on throughout the narrative and it is indeed

unnecessary for me to quote all such songs. But towards the end of the epic, when Mwindo is


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already the King of Tubondo, an incident takes place which gives rise to a set of songs wherein

there is an analogy in action between both the narrator and Mwindo. After, Mwindo kills Kirimu,

the Dragon and roasts its eyeballs; his friend and ally Nkuba smells of the roasting and decides to

carry him to away from Tubondo to the ethereal spheres. Accustomed to boasting, Mwindo

slights Nkubas powers to carry him and breaks into song:

Eh! Nkuba, you are helpless against Mwindo Mboru

. . . . .

Oh, scribe you,

You see that I am already going;

My mother who carried me,You see that I am already going. (p. 135)

Finally, when the narrator is worn out by the weight of the performance, Mwindo returns to

Tubondo learning many new things from the ethereal spheres. He is warned against killing any

animals (or choose death) and has learnt his lesson of humility while being away from his

kingdom. The song goes:

Oh Mwindo, never try again!

From now on may you refuse meat.

Nkuba said:

Never try again

. . . . .

My little father, my dearest one,

My little father threw me into palavers.

Substitute, replace me now!

My father believed I would faint away;

He threw me into palavers. (p.140)


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There is a three-way association at work here. The first two are related to the main story while

the third is not. Nkubas warning of death to Mwindo against killing any animal of the forest is

mentally associable for him [Mwindo] to the near-death experience at the beginning of his life

when his little father threw me [him] into palavers, with the qualification that while the first

was one he got away from, the second is likely not to be so. The third form of association works

between the narrator and Mwindo. Just as the child Mwindo, in course of his struggle against his

father was in danger of fainting away (more so in an air-tight drum), so the narrator, struggling

with the long narrative, is now in danger of fainting. He therefore, urges one of his substitutes to

replace him and finish the story on his behalf for the audience.

The oral mind is intrinsically trained to work in an associative rather than an analytic way,because it is always acculturated to work within a given context. A.R. Luria in his book

Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations (1976)15 shows the findings of his

fieldwork conducted in the remoter areas of Uzbekistan with illiterate and semi-literate persons

to conclude that association and situational thinking were the keys to the understanding of

completely illiterate (but those who were aware of a script culture) folk, while even semi-

literates had appropriated many of the modes of analytic thought which had evolved with

literacy.

It should also be remembered that an oral culture is in itself empathetic to other members of the

community and keen on participating in all kinds of communal gatherings, feasts or

performances. Nyanga folk are no exception. It is the overt context of communal participation

which makes the griot Candi Rureke allude to his co-performers and disseminate traditional

wisdom to his audience. It is the same impulse which makes him feel at one with the figure of

the epic hero, Mwindo. The reason behind this is simply that it is not possible in a primary oral

culture to distance the knower from what is known. Indeed, one can never reach the object of

ones knowledge without being empathetically close to it. Mwindo, the object of the narrators

15Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations, translated by Martin

Lopez-Morillas and Lynn Solotaroff (Cambridge, Mass.& London : Harvard University Press). Luria found among

the oral subjects he interviewed a strong propensity to understand via association. For example, he found that these

subjects identified geometrical figures by assigning them the name of objects, viz. circles could be called as plates or

squares as mirrors and so on.


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knowledge has to be empathized with by the knower (the narrator, in this case) in order that he

fully understands him and successfully narrate his heroic feats to the audience. Havelocks

work16 on the pre-Socratic Greeks is particularly helpful in this context. He explores how, with

the reworking of the Greek alphabet from around 700-650 B.C., an objective distance between

the knower and the known begins to creep in. This, for Havelock, is the main conflict which

troubles Plato. Despite his distrust of writing as a new, emerging mode of disseminating

knowledge in the Phaedrus, Plato later becomes aware of the philosophical implications of

writing which were to restructure consciousness forever. Platos distrust of poetry in The

Republic, writes Havelock, stems from this precise point of the audience identifying with the

joys and sorrows of Achilles or Odysseus. With the restructuring of consciousness that came

with writing, Plato was early to realize that it would be an effective tool of analytic rather thanaggregative thinking, which to him was a necessary step towards the technologizing of the

modes of philosophical speculation.

Repetition, digression and association are therefore all stylistic qualities of the pre-literate

consciousness. For the Nyanga, who had already been well-accustomed to chirographic and

script cultures by the time Biebuyck conducted his fieldwork, the survival of these oral methods

of conceptualization in performances were essentially the remnants of a fast-vanishing primary

orality. However, even with the advent of writing, the influence of orality on these epic

performances are undeniable, largely owing to the weight of tradition and the mode of training of

new griots which had been going on throughout Nyanga history. It is therefore quite fitting to

conclude that however much a newer version of this epic might be steeped in literacy; certain

remnants of primary orality will always remain. And it is these remnants which could turn out to

be the threads of connection between the past and the present, celebrating the cradles of the epic

to posterity. Well might a new griot repeat words akin to Candi Rurekes when he sings about

the feats of the Nyanga hero Mwindo (p.142):

A Mubuya (today) rainmaker

Formerly did not like to remove dew-

16Eric A. Hevelock, Preface to Plato ( Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 1963


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Remover of oil dew,

In Ithimbi, in our country, it is fine:

From it came out an epic.

_________


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Azuonye, Chukwuma. "Oral Literary Criticism and the Performance of the Igbo Epic."Oral Tradition 9, no. 1 (1994): 136-161.

2. Daniel Biebuyck and Kahombo C. Mateene, ed. The Mwindo Epic. Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1971.

3. Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.

. Oral Poetry: It's Nature, Significance and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1977.

4. Harvilahti, Lauri. "Folklore and Oral Tradition." Oral Tradition 18, no. 2 (2003): 200-02.

5. Havelock, Eric A. Origins of Western Literacy. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in

Education, 1976.

. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,

1963.

6. Heinge, David. "Oral, but Oral What? The Nomenclatures of Orality and Their

Implications." Oral Tradition 3, no. 1-2 (1988): 229-38.

7. Hymes, Dell. "Ethnopoetics, Oral Formulaic Theory and Editing Texts." Oral Tradition9, no. 2 (1994): 330-70.

8. Jack Goody and Ian Watt, ed.Literacy in Traditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge


9. Katz, Joshua T. "Oral Tradition in Linguistics." Oral Tradition 18, no. 2 (2003): 261-62.

10.Kuiper, Koenraad. "On the Linguistic Properties of Formulaic Speech." Oral Tradition

15, no. 2 (2000): 279-305.

11.Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960.

12.Luria, A.R. Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations. Cambridge,

Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1976.

13.Okpewho, Isidore.African Oral Literature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana



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14.Okpewho, Isidore. "Performance and Plot in The Ozidi Saga." Oral Tradition 19, no. 1

(2004): 63-95.

15.Ong, Walter J. "Before Textuality: Orality and Interpretation." Oral Tradition 3, no. 3

(1988): 259-269.

. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge, 1982,

reprint 2003.

16.Rosenberg, Bruce A. "The Complexity of Oral Traditon." Oral Tradition 2, no. 1 (1987):

73-90.

17.Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition as History. Madison, Wisconsin & London: University of

Wisconsin Press, 1985.


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