https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/issue/feed NGANO: Journal Of Eastern African Oral Literature 2023-09-08T11:33:46+00:00 Tobias O. Odongo tobiasotieno@yahoo.com Open Journal Systems <p>The Kenya Oral Literature Association&nbsp;<strong>(KOLA),</strong>&nbsp;which publishes&nbsp;<strong><em>Ngano</em></strong>:&nbsp;<strong>The Journal of Eastern African Oral Literature</strong>, is a professional association of writers, researchers, and scholars in Kenyan universities and oral artists from various communities in Kenya.&nbsp;</p> https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1728 A Socio-Cultural Discourse Representation of Women in Bukusu and Gusii Proverbs 2023-09-08T08:15:55+00:00 Margaret Nasambu Barasa barasamargaret@yahoo.com Isaac Nilson Opande barasamargaret@yahoo.com Vicky Khasandi Telewa barasamargaret@yahoo.com <h2><strong>This paper examines the main attributions attached to women in Bukusu and Gusii</strong></h2> <h2><strong>proverbs. Specifically, the paper reports on how women are represented in proverbs in</strong></h2> <h2><strong>these cultures; which aspects of their lives are highlighted and how such</strong></h2> <h2><strong>representations define the social fabric of the society. Data of the study comprised</strong></h2> <h2><strong>thirty-three (33) Bukusu and Gusii proverbs related to the portrayal of women</strong></h2> <h2><strong>encapsulated in proverbs. Ethnography was used to collect the proverbs; the data</strong></h2> <h2><strong>analysis focused on the examination of the respective proverbs as a semiotic system of</strong></h2> <h2><strong>signification grounded within an African social cultural approach to discourse analysis</strong></h2> <h2><strong>and in the Africana Womanism framework. The findings reveal that women are</strong></h2> <h2><strong>expected to promote morality, good conduct, fidelity, respect, productivity, nurturance</strong></h2> <h2><strong>and beauty which are pillars on which the family as a social unit is anchored as</strong></h2> <h2><strong>opposed to misconduct, and arguments/gossiping which are vices that may easily break</strong></h2> <h2><strong>the social fabric of a society. The paper thus concludes that women should embrace the</strong></h2> <h2><strong>indigenous values in word and deed for a sustainable social growth while also</strong></h2> <h2><strong>advancing our understanding of the persistence of alternative and resistant gender</strong></h2> <h2><strong>identities in contexts of domination.</strong></h2> 2023-09-08T08:15:55+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1729 The African Presence in Barbara Kimenye’s Young Adult Literature: A Reading of Kalasanda 2023-09-08T08:34:36+00:00 Christine Namayi orinafe@kibu.ac.ke Felix Orina orinafe@kibu.ac.ke <h2>Barbara Kimenye is recognized as one of East Africa's infuential writers with her<br> novels and novellas focusing on concerns and styles drawn from her immediate context:<br> East Africa. Through her works, it is not only possible to bring out the flexibility and<br> elasticity of oral traditions but also ways in which the European tradition of the novel<br> and African modes of expression complement each other. Kimenye’s Kalasanda fuses<br> the two traditions to achieve a specific intended effect on and reaction from the reader<br> she targets. The present study, therefore, is not only an attempt to reveal the universal<br> credentials of the oral traditions but also to show how specific oral tradition features<br> may be determined by both context and the author’s aspirations.</h2> 2023-09-08T08:34:36+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1730 The Use of Orality to Invoke Setting and Thematic Aspects in Children’s Stories 2023-09-08T08:51:21+00:00 Colomba Kaburi Muriungi colomba.kaburi6@gmail.com <h2>This study aims at examining how orality is utilized in children’s stories. The study<br> argues that orality as a stylistic device in children’s texts not only helps in creating the<br> narrative structure but it also helps in revealing the setting and themes of children's<br> stories. The essay uses close textual reading to examine how orality interacts with the<br> written form in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s children’s text Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus. I<br> argue that the amalgamation of oral features like songs, poems, proverbs and other<br> oral art forms from oral tradition, into the text situates the narrative in specific set ups,<br> and to bring out cultural identity, among other themes visible in the narrative. Inclusion<br> of such oral features in stories for children in the twenty first century, not only helps<br> children to think about the rich African oral tradition, but these oral features also help<br> in shaping the imagination of young readers.</h2> 2023-09-08T08:51:21+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1731 (E)Merging of the Old with(in) the New: Continuity of Children’s Play Songs and Rhymes in East African Hip Hop Culture 2023-09-08T08:59:01+00:00 Godfrey Ikahu Kariuki godfreyika@gmail.com <h3>&nbsp;</h3> <h3>&nbsp;</h3> <h3>Recording music and disco is not very old in Africa. However, this does not mean that</h3> <h3>there was an absence of musical performances for public consumption. Hip Hop music,</h3> <h3>coming from the disco background where the Disc Jockey (DJ) would acknowledge the</h3> <h3>audience and introduce the singers, was never originally meant to be recorded. The</h3> <h3>DJs interrupted with rap commentaries to inject immediacy in an otherwise old</h3> <h3>recording, thus enlivening up the audience. The chorus in Hip Hop songs not only acted</h3> <h3>as an interlude but was also used by artists to create a specific atmosphere; either for</h3> <h3>excitement or to charge up the audience’s emotions or summarise the theme of the song.</h3> <h3>This was an intentional move by the artist to induce memorability of the song to his/her</h3> <h3>audience. Hip-hop has created newer forms of popular music culture within Africa. Hip</h3> <h3>Hop artists, as new African cultural practitioners, have innovatively harnessed these</h3> <h3>new forms of technology in a manner that not only serves to retain the old genres of</h3> <h3>African literature but also blends them more effectively, bringing out new conventions</h3> <h3>and new genres that are specific to African popular culture. Amongst the new</h3> <h3>conventions and lending is that which includes African songs, especially, children play</h3> <h3>songs and verses infused into Hip Hop. Notably, Hip Hop’s origin is in its reliance on</h3> <h3>beats and chorus of well-known /popular songs in the community. This incorporation of</h3> <h3>the popular beats and chorus are those that also borrow from children’s play songs and</h3> <h3>verses. By doing so, today`s Hip-Hop rappers rely and borrow renowned beats and</h3> <h3>combine with original rap composition sections which thus gives a continuity and</h3> <h3>merging of the old and the new, an African past with that of the Western/ American new.</h3> <h3>This paper thus interrogates the role of children play songs and verses as an old genre</h3> <h3>in African Orality and the contemporary interaction with Hip Hop music, the creativity,</h3> <h3>the discourses of formations, re-formation and the transformations that goes beyond</h3> <h3>entertainment, to include the blending of the unfamiliar with the familiar. It also</h3> <h3>interrogates the insertion of the old to the new as a way of negotiation, re-negotiations</h3> <h3>and newer forms of instruction in the all manner of African Cultural Practices and</h3> <h3>Orality.</h3> <p>&nbsp;</p> 2023-09-08T08:59:01+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1732 The De-Tribalized Generation: The East Africa Hip-Hop Artist 2023-09-08T09:05:49+00:00 Kimingichi Wabende kwabende@gmail.com <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>The East African urban setting has produced a generation that lives within cultural</p> <p>grey areas that have no clear ethnic leanings. The youth who inhabit these urban</p> <p>spaces are caught in a world with forces that pull them in different directions. Their</p> <p>domestic space consists of parents from an older generation with strong affiliation to</p> <p>their ethnic groups, yet they still live among neighbors with different ethnic affiliation.</p> <p>They also live in a country that calls for national unity but is daily bombarded with</p> <p>ethnic rhetoric from politicians. The artists of this new generation are thus confronted</p> <p>with problems unique to an environment faced with many ambiguities such as lack of</p> <p>clear ethnic affiliations. They therefore seek to give identity and meaning to their</p> <p>existence, and to define their world as urbanites against the background of their ethnic</p> <p>origins. This paper examines the cosmopolitan thinking that has extended beyond</p> <p>ethnic and national boundaries among Kenyan hip-hop musicians. It explores the</p> <p>artistic demolition of ethnic and national boundaries by these hip-hop musicians.</p> 2023-09-08T09:05:49+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1735 The Translator as Co-Author: Wangũi Goro’s (Re)Writing of Gender Relations in Matigari 2023-09-08T10:57:59+00:00 Nicholas Kamau Goro nkamau@laikipia.ac.ke <p>Translation has conventionally been seen as a practice concerned with the techniques</p> <p>of representing texts written in one language in another language. This article, however,</p> <p>claims that since the act of literary creation inevitably starts within a culture,</p> <p>translation is a more encompassing practice that takes into its ambit not just the</p> <p>transposition of language but of a whole culture. This is particularly so in the</p> <p>postcolonial context where translation is a one-way process in which African language</p> <p>texts are translated into the already dominant Western languages. In this context</p> <p>translation poses challenges regarding the translatability of local cultures and</p> <p>languages into European languages. This article examines Wangũi Goro’s translation</p> <p>of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Matigari Ma Njirũũngi into English. I argue that that in</p> <p>translating the novel, Wangũi Goro, emerges as a free agent who claims as much</p> <p>creative leeway as the author. This is evident, I show, in the way the translator</p> <p>proactively intervenes to redress gendered inequalities both in the Gĩkũyũ language</p> <p>and in the representation of nationalism in African literature where the nationalist</p> <p>project has often been presented as a male project.</p> 2023-09-08T10:57:59+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1736 Folklore and Socio-Political Identity in Joe Khamisi’s The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator and Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey in Freedom 2023-09-08T11:02:52+00:00 June Chebet Chelule chebetjune5@gmail.com <p>Joe Khamisi’s first publication The Politics of Betrayal is a memoir and the second</p> <p>Dash Before Dusk is an autobiography. They both contain a personal and a group</p> <p>identity narration capturing a period in the Kenyan nation’s history. This paper</p> <p>discusses the use of folklore for sociopolitical identity in the two texts. This is a</p> <p>qualitative research study. Close reading has been done followed by interpretation of</p> <p>the selected works based on the study objectives. The specific objectives are to identify</p> <p>integration of folklore in the selected works, and to interrogate how the author uses</p> <p>folklore to signal sociopolitical identity. Tenets from the postcolonial and</p> <p>autobiographical theories provide a study guide. The selected works are a good record</p> <p>of Kenya’s immediate history from 2002 to 2007 and the colonial period to the present</p> <p>especially from 1943 up to 2007 when the author lost his Bahari constituency seat.</p> 2023-09-08T11:02:52+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1737 Mainstreaming Verbal Abuse as Therapeutic Orality: A Tripartite Psychological Approach 2023-09-08T11:08:43+00:00 Joseph Muleka muleka@uonbi.ac.ke <p>This paper attempts to evaluate verbal abuse/insults as artistic communication that may<br>yield therapeutic results for both the abuser and the abused. The paper which restricts<br>itself to verbal abuse – also synonymously referred to as verbal insults – views it as an<br>art that involves creativity. The paper argues that the very composition of the content<br>and lexis of verbal abuse, accompanied by the mechanics of articulating the abuse, all<br>call for an appreciable degree of creativity if the abuse will achieve the intended effect.<br>As a form of communication, verbal abuse has a structure which involves a speaker as<br>the encoder of the insult and a hearer as the recipient and decoder, capable of<br>converting the messages into painful intents. Pursuing Aristotle’s cathartic principle of<br>emotional arousal and release, this paper attempts to put forward verbal abuse as a<br>catharsis that yields therapeutic end results. Since verbal abuse involves formulation<br>and articulation of intentional messages, it is treated in this paper as a performance<br>that here draws on the theory of performance. The paper results from one-on-one<br>interviews with respondents who had engaged in verbal abuse, whether light or intense;<br>either as recipients of the abuse or as perpetrators. Soliciting for the reactions to the<br>act of verbal abuse from both sides of the action and analyzing the reactions using<br>Sigmund Freud’s tripartite psychological approach of the “Id, Ego and Superego”, this<br>paper concludes that verbal abuse is a performance that not only always leads to toxic<br>results, but may also elicit therapeutic feelings, resulting from cathartic arousal and<br>release of emotions, not only for the abuser, but the abused as well.</p> 2023-09-08T11:08:43+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1738 “The Thing of Foul Mouth”: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of the Hyena Lore in the Borana Oral Tradition 2023-09-08T11:14:27+00:00 Fugich Wako fwako@egerton.ac.ke <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>No wild animal, other than perhaps the jackal, has caught the imagination of</p> <p>traditional and cultural Borana life than the hyena. This is expressed profoundly in a</p> <p>significant number of folktales, proverbs, and superstitions. In nocturnal darkness the</p> <p>hyena induces fear and its name rarely mentioned and tabooed; only indirectly called</p> <p>‘the thing of foul mouth’. A protagonist or an antagonist in many stories, it has been</p> <p>contrastingly portrayed as foolish, greedy and witty. For those who understand its</p> <p>‘language’ the hyena ‘speaks’ to people through ‘laughter’ and the howling noise it</p> <p>makes, warning people of impending peril or forecasting good fortunes. Through the</p> <p>oral narratives, the hyena is imbued with human characteristics by man. In this sense</p> <p>the hyena represents man and his follies. This paper explores some of the oral</p> <p>traditional narratives among the Borana in which the hyena is the subject and teases</p> <p>out their psychological significance. By making an interpretative reading of the hyena</p> <p>narrative and what it signifies, the paper concludes that the Borana project their</p> <p>anxieties and wishes and express them through an animal they consider appropriate to</p> <p>bear their unconscious.</p> 2023-09-08T11:14:27+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1739 Gender Power Contestations: Man the Ogre, the Weaker Sex; Images of Men in Kikuyu Oral Narratives 2023-09-08T11:20:13+00:00 Njogu Waita znwaita@yahoo.com <p>This paper explores the representation of the male in the oral narratives of the Kikuyu</p> <p>people of Central Kenya. The paper analyses a sample of seven folktales recorded from</p> <p>female artists from Kirinyaga County. The folktales were recorded in the original</p> <p>Kikuyu dialect and translated into English for analysis. The narratives were analysed</p> <p>using a gender studies approach where gender representations are the central category</p> <p>of analysis. In the analysis, man, the male character emerges as a negative persona,</p> <p>represented by the negative binary. The male is embellished in the image of the ogre or</p> <p>a villain archetype in the narrative. The male character is depicted as potential violator</p> <p>of girls and as a glutton who would annihilate the society through his uncontrolled</p> <p>greed. Symbolically, the male can only be controlled by the older woman or the</p> <p>younger male who has been apprenticed by the older woman. The paper concludes that</p> <p>the narratives have an overwhelming feminine focus that foregrounds female power in</p> <p>the traditional contestation of gender power. This focus has developed over the years as</p> <p>women’s reaction to patriarchal power and male dominance. Women being the main</p> <p>storytellers in this community have used the folktale as an instrument of exercising</p> <p>female power.</p> 2023-09-08T11:20:13+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1740 Reading the Silences of the Text: Illustrations from Contemporary Luo Ohangla and Benga Performance 2023-09-08T11:28:04+00:00 Joseph Basil Okong’o ojoseph4@gmail.com <h3>This paper is a reflection on the alternative readings that popular cultural and oral</h3> <h3>texts invite. Illustrations are drawn from the analysis of song texts of contemporary Luo</h3> <h3>Ohangla and Benga music. Considering Derrida’s (1966) concept of ‘presence,</h3> <h3>absence and play of meaning’ Clifford Geertz’s (1973) notion of ‘Thick description’,</h3> <h3>and Bakhtin’s (1982) theory of the ‘dialogic of the text’, this study describes the</h3> <h3>relationship and significance of what the oral text ‘says’ and ‘what it does not say’; and</h3> <h3>how this affects the kinds of data that we collect and how we read it. In interpreting</h3> <h3>these song texts, we included responses from several fans of the two musicians who</h3> <h3>were selected through snowball and purposive sampling. By engaging in focus group</h3> <h3>discussions with these readers we showed how oral texts invite us not only to read the</h3> <h3>obvious but also to interrogate the silences and the contradictory voices in the rendition.</h3> <h3>The aim of this paper is therefore to explain why in the study of oral texts we need to</h3> <h3>take into account, not only the aspects and issues explicitly expressed but also those</h3> <h3>elements that are merely implied or even denied.</h3> 2023-09-08T11:28:04+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/joeaol/article/view/1741 African Oral Traditions and the Art of Writing: Threads and Continuities 2023-09-08T11:33:46+00:00 Rose A. Opondo rosopondo@gmail.com <h3>The writer of African literature can lead the way in African identity formations and</h3> <h3>reformations, drawing from its authentic cultural resources and determination of</h3> <h3>Africa’s legacy to the world, driven by the visualized identity. Writers should take up</h3> <h3>the challenge and task of representing African aesthetic and cultural values in written</h3> <h3>fiction where they use their writing to capture, interrogate and propagate traditional</h3> <h3>African values, mostly by borrowing from and basing on the rich repertoire of its</h3> <h3>customs, folktales, songs, proverbs, riddles and word play. Writing as a tool, must not</h3> <h3>be disruptive of value systems but become vehicles of values. This paper explores the</h3> <h3>need for deliberate dialogic platforms between researchers of African oral traditions</h3> <h3>and writers of Africa in all genres. Our writers can also draw from the traditional folk</h3> <h3>granary the same ingredients but cook the art in contemporary recipes for</h3> <h3>contemporary consumption. Further, we must rethink the integration of oral traditions</h3> <h3>into our educational systems. Our writers, for educational relevance, must write culture</h3> <h3>in both indigenous and foreign languages and within contexts both past and present. To</h3> <h3>paraphrase William Jennings Bryan, ‘The writer instead of displacing the oral artist,</h3> <h3>has given him a larger audience and enabled him to do a more extended work.’</h3> 2023-09-08T11:33:46+00:00 ##submission.copyrightStatement##