scholarly journals Cultural Preservation: Rediscovering the Endangered Oral Tradition of Maluku (A Case Study on Kapata of Central Maluku)

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fathu Rahman ◽  
Prihe Slamatin Letlora

Language and culture are two aspects which interchange each other where the language is a medium to get information about the culture. As the product of language and culture, oral tradition plays a vital role in Maluku not only as the most powerful and sacred chant that regulate the life of people but also as the folk song that contains history, advice, and prayer. Kapata nowadays is assumed as the endangered oral traditions in Maluku. To rediscover the endangered oral traditions, descriptive qualitative research by using interview and library study in gaining the supporting information was implemented. Furthermore, this research was aimed (1) to figure out the history of Kapata and the way to preserve it (2) to map out the categories of Kapata and its function in social life, and (3) to elaborate the meaning of language expression conveyed in Kapata. Through this research, it is hoped that Kapata can be preserved by implementing it in formal education, art performance and framing in an advanced documentation so that all generations of Maluku are able to not only to recognize and make use it in social life as the way to preserve the Kapata as an endangered oral tradition.

Author(s):  
Agbenyega Adedze

The Amazons in general come from Greek legend and myth without any palpable historical evidence. However, there is no doubt about the historical female fighters of the erstwhile Kingdom of Dahomey (Danhome or Danxome) in West Africa, which survived until their defeat by the French colonial forces in 1893. The history of the historical Amazons of the Kingdom of Dahomey stems from vast amounts of oral tradition collected and analyzed over the years, as well as written accounts by Europeans who happened to have visited the kingdom or lived on the West African coast since Dahomey’s foundation in the 17th century to its demise in the late 19th century. These sources have been reviewed and debated by several scholars (including Amélie Degbelo, Stanley B. Alpern, Melville J. Herskovits, Hélène d’Almeida-Topor, Boniface Obichere, Edna G. Bay, Robin Law, Susan Preston Blier, Auguste Le Herisse, etc.), who may or may not agree on the narrative of the founding of the kingdom or the genesis of female fighters in the Dahomean army. Nonetheless, all scholars agree that the female forces traditionally called Ahosi/Mino did exist and fought valiantly in many of Dahomey’s battles against their neighbors (Oyo, Ouemenou, Ouidah, etc.) and France. The history of the Ahosi/Mino is intricately linked to the origins and political and social development of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Ahosi/Mino are still celebrated in the oral traditions of the Fon.


1996 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jansen

For the reconstruction of the history of the aftermath of the Mali empire, that is, the period 1500-1800, oral traditions are the only source of information. The history of this period has been reconstructed by Person and Niane. Their work has gained widespread acceptance. In this paper I will argue that these scholars made significant methodological errors—in particular, in interpreting chronology in genealogies, and their reading of stories about invasions and the seizure of power by younger brothers.My reading of the oral tradition raises questions about the nature of both sixteenth- and nineteenth-century Mande (that is the triangle Bamako-Kita-Kankan (see map), the region where the ‘Malinke’ live), and the medieval Mali empire, because I think that Mande royal genealogies have wrongly been considered to represent claims to the imperial throne of the Mali empire. In contrast, my reading of oral tradition suggests in retrospect that the organizational structure of the Mali empire may have been segmentary, and not centralized, ranking between segments under discussion, each group thereby creating a hierarchical image.The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Mali empire collapsed/disintegrated in the period from 1500 and 1800. As Person put it:Dans le triangle malinké, on ne trouvera plus au XIX siècle que des kafu, ces petites unités étatiques qui forment les cellules politiques fondamentales du monde mandingue. Certains d'entre eux savaient faire reconnaître leur hégémonie à leurs voisins, mais aucune structure politique permante n'existait à un niveau supérieur. Beaucoup d'entre eux, dont les plus puissants et les plus peuplés, seront alors commandées par des lignées Kééta qui se réclament avec quelque vraisemblance des empereurs du Mali médiéval.


Te Kaharoa ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Ka'ai-Mahuta

This paper will focus on the importance of digitally archiving waiata and haka (Māori song, chant and dance). Māori arrived in Aotearoa from their traditional homeland in the Pacific carrying with them all of the knowledge of their own ancestors, none of which was written down. This Māori oral tradition has taken on many forms, including waiata and haka. Waiata and haka are traditional mediums for the transmission of knowledge including tribal history, politics, historical landmarks, genealogy and environmental knowledge while also acting as traditional forms of expression for the articulation of anger, hatred, sadness, love and desire. Waiata and haka are examples of Māori poetry and literature and have been likened to the archives of the Māori people, preserving important historical and cultural knowledge. Therefore, waiata and haka offer an alternative view of the history of Aotearoa/New Zealand to those that are based on mainstream Eurocentric history books and archives. Waiata and haka are also important for the survival of the Māori language and culture. In this sense, they are bound to Māori identity. As a result of colonisation many of these compositions are being lost through time and with them, a knowledge base regarding the meaning behind the words. The adoption of digital technology to preserve waiata and haka provides a tool that could aid the oral tradition. Tāmata Toiere, a digital repository of waiata and haka, is a national resource which demonstrates the interface between recovering traditional knowledge and storing this through innovative technology for future generations.


Author(s):  
Hamiruddin Udu ◽  
I Nyoman Weda Kusuma ◽  
Muhamad Alifuddin

One of the impact of technology is the emergence of life crisis that neglect the human values. Other sides, oral traditions such as kangkilo that maintain social and religious piety tends to be abandoned and endangered. This study is done to outline the inheritance strategies of kangkilo oral tradition. The study used comparative method.The results showed one of the best inheritance strategy for oral tradition like kangkilo in the future is: (1) based on kangkilo oral tradition inheritance strategy undertaken in the Sultanate of Buton; (2) adopt a formal education learning system in which there are concepts of planning, implementation, and measured evaluation; (3) inheritance can used some medias as a result of advances in the development of science and technology; and (4) improve individualized epistemology inheritance that only to certain derivatives to be open, and used vertically or horizontally approaches inheritance.


Author(s):  
Muminkhujaev Abrorkhuja Muksumkhodjaevich ◽  

The article discusses the history of liberalism and the reasons why is it playing a key role in the politics of European countries. The article also analyzes the practical and vital role of liberalism in the political and social life of European countries. In particular, the positive results of the liberal approach to threats that contradict European culture, mentality, ideology (Nazism, nationalism, LGBT movement, local separatism) are illustrated with examples. Through the article the author tries to proove liberalism is the most apt way to solve political and social problems for the time being.


2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 193-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carola Lentz

The present paper deals with the settlement history of a West African agricultural society, that of the Dagara in present-day northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso. In it, I shall be particularly interested in the appropriation of space, which is ritually legitimized through the acquisition of earth-shrines, and in the conflict-ridden relationships between the in-migrating Dagara and the Sisala, who were already settled in their new habitat. My primary concern, however, is not to examine the Dagara's expansion strategies or the history of interethnic conflicts as such, but their working out in disputed oral traditions. Using the example of the controversial settlement history of Nandom (see map 1), I wish to show how Africans, both today and in the colonial past, have used oral traditions in order to conduct politics. I shall discuss the methodological implications that this mutual constitution of oral traditions and political interests has for the reconstruction of settlement history and examine the possibilities of a thorough criticism of sources to detect core elements of the historical settlement process and appropriation of space as well as the presentday confrontations with history.Oral traditions have played an important role in research into African history and societies. This is because in many places it was European missionaries and colonial masters who first introduced literacy and writing, and because we have only a few written sources—sometimes none at all—for the period up to the end of the nineteenth century.


1982 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 175-208
Author(s):  
Derek Nurse

The history of “the” Segeju has been the subject of lengthy published debate. The discussion has been based almost entirely on interpretation of oral traditions as recounted by Segeju informants to various scholars. A newcomer with a linguistic bias is struck by certain aspects of much of this debate:a] the linguistic implausibility apparently involved. Baker, for example, recording fairly literally what he was told, started the history of “the” Segeju in the Middle East: this would presumably involve a community speaking Arabic or Persian. There follows reference to “segeju” travels and sojourns in mainland northeast Africa: linguistic affiliation unknown. This period terminates with their arrival at Shungwaya, in southern Somalia: linguistic affiliation unstated. Later “they” are found on the Upper Tana River: Kamba is mentioned. Finally “they” settle in their present location on the northern Tanzanian coast, where today the language affiliations of people referring to themselves as “Segeju” are various (see below).


1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 351-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina

One wonders what Fernand Braudel and the school of the Annales have done to become a kind of Trojan Horse for the wholesale condemnation of the historical value of oral tradition. Yet they are the banner raised by W.G. Clarence-Smith in a recent article in his journal to preach jihad against its historical value. Clarence-Smith claims that the historiographical revolution effected by Annales has resulted in the definitive exclusion of oral traditions from the halls of Clio. Oral traditions are at best ambiguous “signs” about the past and are very much of the present. They lack absolute chronology and they are selective, so away with them. If they be worthy of attention at all, let anthropologists and sociologists be concerned, save in a few rare instances where a historian wants to check on some European printed source. And even then, caveat emptor. Significantly, the article is not just the expression of the views of one person; rather it is symptomatic of much of the criticism which has been leveled at oral tradition, mostly by fasionable anthropologists. And it brings this criticism to its logical conclusion.But first a word about Braudel, the Annales, and oral tradition in general. The Annales School was founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch before World War II. Fernand Braudel is its most distinguished exponent. His major theoretical pronouncements can be found in his Ecrits sur l'histoire, a collection of articles reprinted and published in 1969. This and his two major historical works should be read by those who want to know more about his views and ways of dealing with history. The basic tenets that members of the Annales School hold is that the history of events is but the spray of past developments; other time depths tell us more about the waves of the past. There is the time of the conjoncture, the trend, and the even longer time periods -- sometimes many centuries long -- the longue durée or long term. Successful history writing does not liminate the study of events, but analyzes them against the movement of these longer and deeper-running trends.


Aksara ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Titik Wijanarti ◽  
Bani Sudardi ◽  
Mahendra Wijaya ◽  
Sri Kusumo Habsari

Abstract Sansana Bandar is one of the oral traditions of the Dayak Ngaju people of Central Kalimantan in the form of a story about Bandar. This study aims to examine the narrative of the Bandar by contextualizing all aspects of the story to the socio-cultural history of the Dayak ethnic group. This study used an ethno- graphic approach. Data collection techniques used were library research, interviews, staging, recording, and transcription. The data obtained were then analyzed semiotics. The results show that Sansana Bandar is still maintained by the Dayak Ngaju community in the Kapuas Regency. The purpose of staging Sansana Bandar is so that one’s ideals can be achieved. Sansana Bandar staging requires requirements and is carried out from afternoon to morning. Sansana Bandar’s text analysis shows the in uence of cultures outside the island of Kalimantan in the life of the Ngaju Dayak community. Keywords: oral tradition, Sansana Bandar, Dayak Ngaju, Kapuas wastershed, Central Kalimantan Abstrak Sansana Bandar adalah salah satu tradisi lisan masyarakat Dayak Ngaju Kalimantan Tengah yaitu berupa cerita tentang seorang tokoh bernama Bandar. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis narasicerita Bandar melalui seluruh aspek cerita yang dikaitkan dengan konteks social historis dan social budaya suku Dayak Ngaju. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan etnogra . Teknik pengambilan data yang dilakukan adalah penelusuran pustaka, wawancara, pementasan, perekaman, dan transkripsi. Data yang diperoleh kemudian dianalisis secara semiotik. Hasil penelitian menunjuk- kan bahwa Sansana Bandar masih dipertahankan oleh masyarakat Dayak Ngaju di wilayah Kabupaten Kapuas. Tujuan pementasan Sansana Bandar bagi tuan rumah adalah supaya cita-cita berhajat dapat tercapai. Sansana Bandar dipentaskan memerlukan persyaratan dan dilakukan pada waktu sore sampai pagi hari. Analisis teks cerita Sansana Bandar menunjukkan adanya pengaruh kebudayaan luar pulau Kalimantan dalam kehidupan masyarakat Dayak Ngaju. Kata kunci: tradisi lisan, Sansana Bandar, Dayak Ngaju, DAS Kapuas, Kalimantan Tengah 


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-227
Author(s):  
Dianne Chisholm

This essay investigates how the filmmakers of Igloolik-based women’s collective Arnait Video Productions invent and combine various techniques and strategies of spectrality and survivance to create a powerful, cinematic form of Inuit cultural resistance and resilience. I borrow the concept of “survivance” from Anishnaabe literary theorist Gerald Vizenor who uses it to explain how Aboriginal literary and linguistic traditions continue to flourish in contemporary media despite and in response to colonialism’s systemic suppression of oral traditions. With this concept I analyze the way Arnait’s films re-enact and revive Inuit culture and oral tradition in the abiding voice and spirit of the dead whose creative art of living resists extinction. Arnait has to date produced three feature films: two fictional films Before Tomorrow (2009) and Uvanga (2013), and a documentary Sol (2014). I demonstrate that all three films exhibit this uncanny mix of spectrality and survivance with focus on Arnait’s debut film as a case study.


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