NGANO: Journal Of Eastern African Oral Literature

A Socio-Cultural Discourse Representation of Women in Bukusu and Gusii Proverbs

Margaret Nasambu Barasa, Isaac Nilson Opande, Vicky Khasandi Telewa — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 08:15:55 +0000

This paper examines the main attributions attached to women in Bukusu and Gusii

proverbs. Specifically, the paper reports on how women are represented in proverbs in

these cultures; which aspects of their lives are highlighted and how such

representations define the social fabric of the society. Data of the study comprised

thirty-three (33) Bukusu and Gusii proverbs related to the portrayal of women

encapsulated in proverbs. Ethnography was used to collect the proverbs; the data

analysis focused on the examination of the respective proverbs as a semiotic system of

signification grounded within an African social cultural approach to discourse analysis

and in the Africana Womanism framework. The findings reveal that women are

expected to promote morality, good conduct, fidelity, respect, productivity, nurturance

and beauty which are pillars on which the family as a social unit is anchored as

opposed to misconduct, and arguments/gossiping which are vices that may easily break

the social fabric of a society. The paper thus concludes that women should embrace the

indigenous values in word and deed for a sustainable social growth while also

advancing our understanding of the persistence of alternative and resistant gender

identities in contexts of domination.

The African Presence in Barbara Kimenye’s Young Adult Literature: A Reading of Kalasanda

Christine Namayi, Felix Orina — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 08:34:36 +0000

Barbara Kimenye is recognized as one of East Africa's infuential writers with her
novels and novellas focusing on concerns and styles drawn from her immediate context:
East Africa. Through her works, it is not only possible to bring out the flexibility and
elasticity of oral traditions but also ways in which the European tradition of the novel
and African modes of expression complement each other. Kimenye’s Kalasanda fuses
the two traditions to achieve a specific intended effect on and reaction from the reader
she targets. The present study, therefore, is not only an attempt to reveal the universal
credentials of the oral traditions but also to show how specific oral tradition features
may be determined by both context and the author’s aspirations.

The Use of Orality to Invoke Setting and Thematic Aspects in Children’s Stories

Colomba Kaburi Muriungi — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 08:51:21 +0000

This study aims at examining how orality is utilized in children’s stories. The study
argues that orality as a stylistic device in children’s texts not only helps in creating the
narrative structure but it also helps in revealing the setting and themes of children's
stories. The essay uses close textual reading to examine how orality interacts with the
written form in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s children’s text Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus. I
argue that the amalgamation of oral features like songs, poems, proverbs and other
oral art forms from oral tradition, into the text situates the narrative in specific set ups,
and to bring out cultural identity, among other themes visible in the narrative. Inclusion
of such oral features in stories for children in the twenty first century, not only helps
children to think about the rich African oral tradition, but these oral features also help
in shaping the imagination of young readers.

(E)Merging of the Old with(in) the New: Continuity of Children’s Play Songs and Rhymes in East African Hip Hop Culture

Godfrey Ikahu Kariuki — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 08:59:01 +0000

Recording music and disco is not very old in Africa. However, this does not mean that

there was an absence of musical performances for public consumption. Hip Hop music,

coming from the disco background where the Disc Jockey (DJ) would acknowledge the

audience and introduce the singers, was never originally meant to be recorded. The

DJs interrupted with rap commentaries to inject immediacy in an otherwise old

recording, thus enlivening up the audience. The chorus in Hip Hop songs not only acted

as an interlude but was also used by artists to create a specific atmosphere; either for

excitement or to charge up the audience’s emotions or summarise the theme of the song.

This was an intentional move by the artist to induce memorability of the song to his/her

audience. Hip-hop has created newer forms of popular music culture within Africa. Hip

Hop artists, as new African cultural practitioners, have innovatively harnessed these

new forms of technology in a manner that not only serves to retain the old genres of

African literature but also blends them more effectively, bringing out new conventions

and new genres that are specific to African popular culture. Amongst the new

conventions and lending is that which includes African songs, especially, children play

songs and verses infused into Hip Hop. Notably, Hip Hop’s origin is in its reliance on

beats and chorus of well-known /popular songs in the community. This incorporation of

the popular beats and chorus are those that also borrow from children’s play songs and

verses. By doing so, today`s Hip-Hop rappers rely and borrow renowned beats and

combine with original rap composition sections which thus gives a continuity and

merging of the old and the new, an African past with that of the Western/ American new.

This paper thus interrogates the role of children play songs and verses as an old genre

in African Orality and the contemporary interaction with Hip Hop music, the creativity,

the discourses of formations, re-formation and the transformations that goes beyond

entertainment, to include the blending of the unfamiliar with the familiar. It also

interrogates the insertion of the old to the new as a way of negotiation, re-negotiations

and newer forms of instruction in the all manner of African Cultural Practices and

Orality.

The De-Tribalized Generation: The East Africa Hip-Hop Artist

Kimingichi Wabende — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 09:05:49 +0000

The East African urban setting has produced a generation that lives within cultural

grey areas that have no clear ethnic leanings. The youth who inhabit these urban

spaces are caught in a world with forces that pull them in different directions. Their

domestic space consists of parents from an older generation with strong affiliation to

their ethnic groups, yet they still live among neighbors with different ethnic affiliation.

They also live in a country that calls for national unity but is daily bombarded with

ethnic rhetoric from politicians. The artists of this new generation are thus confronted

with problems unique to an environment faced with many ambiguities such as lack of

clear ethnic affiliations. They therefore seek to give identity and meaning to their

existence, and to define their world as urbanites against the background of their ethnic

origins. This paper examines the cosmopolitan thinking that has extended beyond

ethnic and national boundaries among Kenyan hip-hop musicians. It explores the

artistic demolition of ethnic and national boundaries by these hip-hop musicians.

The Translator as Co-Author: Wangũi Goro’s (Re)Writing of Gender Relations in Matigari

Nicholas Kamau Goro — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 10:57:59 +0000

Translation has conventionally been seen as a practice concerned with the techniques

of representing texts written in one language in another language. This article, however,

claims that since the act of literary creation inevitably starts within a culture,

translation is a more encompassing practice that takes into its ambit not just the

transposition of language but of a whole culture. This is particularly so in the

postcolonial context where translation is a one-way process in which African language

texts are translated into the already dominant Western languages. In this context

translation poses challenges regarding the translatability of local cultures and

languages into European languages. This article examines Wangũi Goro’s translation

of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Matigari Ma Njirũũngi into English. I argue that that in

translating the novel, Wangũi Goro, emerges as a free agent who claims as much

creative leeway as the author. This is evident, I show, in the way the translator

proactively intervenes to redress gendered inequalities both in the Gĩkũyũ language

and in the representation of nationalism in African literature where the nationalist

project has often been presented as a male project.

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

June Chebet Chelule — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:02:52 +0000

Joe Khamisi’s first publication The Politics of Betrayal is a memoir and the second

Dash Before Dusk is an autobiography. They both contain a personal and a group

identity narration capturing a period in the Kenyan nation’s history. This paper

discusses the use of folklore for sociopolitical identity in the two texts. This is a

qualitative research study. Close reading has been done followed by interpretation of

the selected works based on the study objectives. The specific objectives are to identify

integration of folklore in the selected works, and to interrogate how the author uses

folklore to signal sociopolitical identity. Tenets from the postcolonial and

autobiographical theories provide a study guide. The selected works are a good record

of Kenya’s immediate history from 2002 to 2007 and the colonial period to the present

especially from 1943 up to 2007 when the author lost his Bahari constituency seat.

Mainstreaming Verbal Abuse as Therapeutic Orality: A Tripartite Psychological Approach

Joseph Muleka — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:08:43 +0000

This paper attempts to evaluate verbal abuse/insults as artistic communication that may
yield therapeutic results for both the abuser and the abused. The paper which restricts
itself to verbal abuse – also synonymously referred to as verbal insults – views it as an
art that involves creativity. The paper argues that the very composition of the content
and lexis of verbal abuse, accompanied by the mechanics of articulating the abuse, all
call for an appreciable degree of creativity if the abuse will achieve the intended effect.
As a form of communication, verbal abuse has a structure which involves a speaker as
the encoder of the insult and a hearer as the recipient and decoder, capable of
converting the messages into painful intents. Pursuing Aristotle’s cathartic principle of
emotional arousal and release, this paper attempts to put forward verbal abuse as a
catharsis that yields therapeutic end results. Since verbal abuse involves formulation
and articulation of intentional messages, it is treated in this paper as a performance
that here draws on the theory of performance. The paper results from one-on-one
interviews with respondents who had engaged in verbal abuse, whether light or intense;
either as recipients of the abuse or as perpetrators. Soliciting for the reactions to the
act of verbal abuse from both sides of the action and analyzing the reactions using
Sigmund Freud’s tripartite psychological approach of the “Id, Ego and Superego”, this
paper concludes that verbal abuse is a performance that not only always leads to toxic
results, but may also elicit therapeutic feelings, resulting from cathartic arousal and
release of emotions, not only for the abuser, but the abused as well.

“The Thing of Foul Mouth”: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of the Hyena Lore in the Borana Oral Tradition

Fugich Wako — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:14:27 +0000

No wild animal, other than perhaps the jackal, has caught the imagination of

traditional and cultural Borana life than the hyena. This is expressed profoundly in a

significant number of folktales, proverbs, and superstitions. In nocturnal darkness the

hyena induces fear and its name rarely mentioned and tabooed; only indirectly called

‘the thing of foul mouth’. A protagonist or an antagonist in many stories, it has been

contrastingly portrayed as foolish, greedy and witty. For those who understand its

‘language’ the hyena ‘speaks’ to people through ‘laughter’ and the howling noise it

makes, warning people of impending peril or forecasting good fortunes. Through the

oral narratives, the hyena is imbued with human characteristics by man. In this sense

the hyena represents man and his follies. This paper explores some of the oral

traditional narratives among the Borana in which the hyena is the subject and teases

out their psychological significance. By making an interpretative reading of the hyena

narrative and what it signifies, the paper concludes that the Borana project their

anxieties and wishes and express them through an animal they consider appropriate to

bear their unconscious.

Gender Power Contestations: Man the Ogre, the Weaker Sex; Images of Men in Kikuyu Oral Narratives

Njogu Waita — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:20:13 +0000

This paper explores the representation of the male in the oral narratives of the Kikuyu

people of Central Kenya. The paper analyses a sample of seven folktales recorded from

female artists from Kirinyaga County. The folktales were recorded in the original

Kikuyu dialect and translated into English for analysis. The narratives were analysed

using a gender studies approach where gender representations are the central category

of analysis. In the analysis, man, the male character emerges as a negative persona,

represented by the negative binary. The male is embellished in the image of the ogre or

a villain archetype in the narrative. The male character is depicted as potential violator

of girls and as a glutton who would annihilate the society through his uncontrolled

greed. Symbolically, the male can only be controlled by the older woman or the

younger male who has been apprenticed by the older woman. The paper concludes that

the narratives have an overwhelming feminine focus that foregrounds female power in

the traditional contestation of gender power. This focus has developed over the years as

women’s reaction to patriarchal power and male dominance. Women being the main

storytellers in this community have used the folktale as an instrument of exercising

female power.

Reading the Silences of the Text: Illustrations from Contemporary Luo Ohangla and Benga Performance

Joseph Basil Okong’o — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:28:04 +0000

This paper is a reflection on the alternative readings that popular cultural and oral

texts invite. Illustrations are drawn from the analysis of song texts of contemporary Luo

Ohangla and Benga music. Considering Derrida’s (1966) concept of ‘presence,

absence and play of meaning’ Clifford Geertz’s (1973) notion of ‘Thick description’,

and Bakhtin’s (1982) theory of the ‘dialogic of the text’, this study describes the

relationship and significance of what the oral text ‘says’ and ‘what it does not say’; and

how this affects the kinds of data that we collect and how we read it. In interpreting

these song texts, we included responses from several fans of the two musicians who

were selected through snowball and purposive sampling. By engaging in focus group

discussions with these readers we showed how oral texts invite us not only to read the

obvious but also to interrogate the silences and the contradictory voices in the rendition.

The aim of this paper is therefore to explain why in the study of oral texts we need to

take into account, not only the aspects and issues explicitly expressed but also those

elements that are merely implied or even denied.

African Oral Traditions and the Art of Writing: Threads and Continuities

Rose A. Opondo — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 11:33:46 +0000