Oral Literature and Transculturality: A Study of Contemporary Cameroonian Songs

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-64
Author(s):  
Anne Obono Essomba
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Culture Shock ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Hybrid Product ◽  
The Way

Globalization led by Europe has spread so-called 'universal' values across the globe, which seems to have cultural intermingling as its backdrop. All human endeavors are based on a culture that has become multidimensional. All the time, in their diversity, cultures try to complement and absorb each other. However, in this meeting of cultural giving and receiving, it takes on a new face, the culture shock.  This encounter causes major changes in our modern societies, giving way to a loss of cultural identity and internal imbalance. This article aims to analyze the way in which contemporary Cameroonian musicians use cultural and linguistic facts for communication purposes and other arguments. The aim of our work is to show how the various songwriters have found, through song, a new mode of resistance so that African traditions escape sedimentation. In this way, they reconcile the elements of oral tradition and the contributions of modernity to create a hybrid product. To illustrate our point, we have chosen oral texts from different regions of Cameroon.  In order to better understand the transcultural reality in the texts, we will highlight the marks of traditional and modern aesthetics, then show that the transcultural is seen as a space of symbiosis between the traditional and the modern.

NILAI-NILAI KEARIFAN LOKAL DALAM TRADISI LISAN WARAG-WARAH DAN RINGGOK-RINGGOK SUKU KOMERING, SUMATERA SELATAN (VALUES OF LOCAL WISDOM IN ORAL TRADITION OF WARAH WARAH AND RINGGOK-RINGGOK OF KOMERING TRIBE, SOUTH SUMATRA)

ALAYASASTRA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Ery Agus Kurnianto
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Real Effort ◽  
Descriptive Method

The focus of the problem in this study is the values of local wisdom within two oral traditions of Warag-Warah and Ringgok-Ringgok of Komering Tribe, South Sumatra. This study aimed to identify and to describe elements of local wisdom within those oral traditions. In addition, this study was established as a real effort to explore, to inventorize, and to document the oral traditions of Komering society. A descriptive method was applied in this study. The data were analyzed by applying qualitative approach on ethnographic elements to demonstrate and explain the value of local wisdom within those oral traditions. The theory applied in this study were oral literature and local wisdom. The conclusion from the analysis proved that there was a concept of social relations among individuals, among individuals and society, among social groups, and among individuals and their God. The value of local wisdom that had been identified were: 1) belief in God, 2) deliberation, 3) responsibility and 4) helping each other. The actualization of the value of local wisdom within the oral traditions of Warag-Warah and Ringgok-Ringgok was in form of behaving in ways that help each other, solving problems by means of deliberation and responsibility. Keywords: Oral tradition, warah-warah, ringgok-ringgok, local wisdom values.

scholarly journals Studying Characteristic and Identity through Oral Literature in Malaynese

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasnim Lubis
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Way

In oral literature, the moment that people remember most is could be the way the performer in performing it, the intonation, the history beyond, the particular sayings, or the performer itself. It depends on the listeners’ background about how they achieved. Among of them, oral literature has important role in sharing information among a speech community because the listeners are able to get the message directly without any interpretation. Consequenty, the study of oral literature is not merely study the language as principal but also language use because it is related to the character and identity. In addition, the study tends to have information from native view because it is related to their concept in mind. This study discussed about the concept of oral literature, the role of oral literature of Malaynese in building character and identity, and the role of Antropolinguistik as interdisipliner to analize oral literature in Malaynese.

scholarly journals Oral Tradition of Dusun Bangko Community Merangin District Jambi Province

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-76
Author(s):  
Janiko Janiko ◽  
Atmazaki Atmazaki ◽  
Novia Juita
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Delivery Method ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
The People ◽  
Descriptive Approach ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Questionnaire Research

This study aims to describe the form, function and meaning of oral literary sayings that exist in the people of Dusun Bangko in Jambi Province. Theories used in this study are oral traditions, functions of oral traditions, oral literature, and folklore. This type of research is a qualitative research with a descriptive approach. Data collection techniques are interviews, observation, documentation, and questionnaire research questions. Data analysis techniques are data reduction, presenting data, and conclusions. Based on data obtained in the field, the forms of oral traditions that developed in Dusun Bangko are petatah petitih, seloko and rhymes. All three oral traditions were once developed. However, at this time the Seloko has begun to be rarely used. While rhymes and petatah petitih very much used by the community. The function of oral tradition is as a reference for oneself and society so that it does not deviate from ethics, morals, and religion. Another goal is to cultivate human morals be better in order to give meaning to life. Furthermore, as a guide for a better way of life future. The meaning of oral traditions that develop in the community is very much. For example the meaning when doing immoral acts is different from stealing and the delivery method is also different. His sayings lead to destruction if life is not in accordance with the demands of the Qur'an and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad SAW.

Musical Exegesis in the Transylvanian Style, Composed by Dimitrie Cuntanu, at Our Lord’s Birth Catavasia

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-216
Author(s):  
Daniel Mocanu
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Musical Heritage ◽  
The Way

"The Orthodox religious music in Transylvanian tradition has a unique history. It gained an important place in the Romanian musical heritage, by the way it managed to adapt to Romanian, in its own style, the psaltic musical repertoire, of Byzantine tradition. Build from the oral tradition, which, in its turn blended with folklore, cult music, and the other co-existing cults, and from psaltic tradition, Dimitrie Cuntanu’s work fairly represents, the first Transylvanian religious musical monument of Romanian root. The Byzantine musical origin of this paper can be detected, together with other works, from the musical structures of the first Katavasia established by Cuntanu, at Lord’s Birth Feast. Transformed to Romanian by different anonymous protagonists of the Transylvanian music, the Lord’s Birth Catavasia represents a Hrysantic exegesis reference of Byzantine music, in a Transylvanian style. Keywords: Catavasia, Byzantine music, Anton Pann, Cuntanu, Romanian adaptation "

The Articulating-Self Inside Out

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Somayeh Noori Shirazi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Iranian Woman ◽  
Inside Out ◽  
The Way

This chapter maps the different ways with which an Iranian woman artist, Katayoun Karami, critically responds to the stereotypes about the depiction of cultural identity in the artworks of female artists with a Middle Eastern background. The key point of Karami's response is the way she applies her self–portrait to articulate the self and her subjectivity, which is analysed in this chapter by examining one of her works named the Other Side. In this installation, the artist demonstrates the construction of gender identity in today's Iran through her personal perception of veiling. Working within the frameworks of feminist and Orientalist discourses, this chapter aims to explore how Karami's lived experience as a continual activity of becoming has been formed through the experience of veiling, and what strategies are deployed by her to interrogate the presumptions about the image of the veiled body in Western and Iranian contexts.

scholarly journals Bury my bones but keep my words: The interface between oral tradition and contemporary African writing

Literator ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
M.J. Cloete
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Bessie Head ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
School Curricula

The contention in this article is that African oral tradition should be reexamined in view of its perceived new importance in the work of African novelists. This article investigates the nature and definition of oral tradition, as well as the use of oral tradition as a cultural tool. The increasing inclusion of oral literature as part of the African literature component within university and school curricula is discussed. Finally, the pronounced role of oral tradition in fiction is examined, using as exemplars some seminal works of Bessie Head (1978, 1990 and 1995 ) and Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1965, 1977, 1981, and 1982).

scholarly journals The Arab Invasion of Kashgar in a.d. 715

1922 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. A. R. Gibb
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
The Other ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

Nothing is more disconcerting to the student of early Muslim history than the way in which Tabarī and the other historians alternate between detailed and comprehensive narrative and jottings of the most meagre and involved nature, filled out, in some cases, by picturesque but obviously legendary tales. These faults, which are to a large degree inherent in the method of compilation from oral tradition, come out most clearly in the narrative of the brilliant series of campaigns by which the Arab general Qutayba ibn Muslim conquered and annexed the lands eastward from Herāt and the Oxus to the Pamīr, during the reign of the Umayyad Caliph Walīd I (a.d. 705–15). Thus we are given a fairly sufficient account of the long drawn out operations against Bukhārā, but none of the actual conquest and colonization of the city : much 'of the expeditions against various princes subject to the kingdom of Tukhāristān, but practically nothing of the annexation of Tukhāristān itself.

The Light of the Flame

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Bintsi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This chapter presents a study of light, in particular light produced by flame, by investigating the most representative lighting devices used in preindustrial Greece. The symbolism of lighting devices in traditional Greek society, used either out of necessity or in ritual ceremonies and customs as well as in representations in art and in social discourse, is examined to reveal aspects of that society, its common beliefs, and its social differentiation. The oral literature, the myths and sayings still in use in Greek language, are studied as cognitive instruments, as forms of thought, to understand the way people interpret the world and act within it. Finally, the oil lamp, and its ceremonial use in Modern Greek society, which is closely connected to the Orthodox Christian rituals, is interpreted as a symbol that represents national and cultural identities.

Orality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Niles
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Communication ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Audio Recordings ◽  
Art Forms ◽  
Video And Audio ◽  
Oral Communications ◽  
The Voice

The human capacity for oral communication is superbly well developed. While other animals produce meaningful sounds, most linguists agree that only human beings are possessed of true language, with its complex grammar. Moreover, only humans have the ability to tell stories, with their contrary-to-fact capabilities. This fact has momentous implications for the complexity of the oral communications that humans can produce, not just in conversation but also in a wide array of artistic genres. It is likewise true that only human beings enjoy the benefits of literacy; that is, only humans have developed technologies that enable the sounds of speech to be made visible and construed through one or another type of graphemic representation. Although orality is as innate to the human condition as is breathing or walking, competence in literacy requires training, and it has traditionally been the accomplishment of an educated elite. Correspondingly, the transmutation of oral art forms into writing—that is, the production of what can be called “oral literature”—is a relatively rare and special phenomenon compared with the ease with which people cultivate those art forms themselves. All the same, a large amount of the world’s recorded literature appears to be closely related to oral art forms, deriving directly from them in some instances. Literature of this kind is an oral/literary hybrid. It can fittingly be called “literature of the third domain,” for while it differs in character from literature produced in writing by well-educated people, the fact that it exists in writing distinguishes it from oral communication, even though it may closely resemble oral art forms in its stylized patterning. Understanding the nature of that hybridity requires an engagement not just with the dynamics of oral tradition but also with the processes by which written records of oral art forms are produced. In former days, this was through the cooperative efforts of speakers, scribes, and editors. Since the early 20th century, innovative technologies have opened up new possibilities of representation, not just through print but also through video and audio recordings that preserve a facsimile of the voice. Nevertheless, problems relating to the representation of oral art forms via other media are endemic to the category of oral literature and practically define it as such.

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