Theory and Practice in African Orature

Books Discussed:

My Mother' s Poem & Other Songs .Micere M. G. Mugo. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1994.

African Orature and Human Rights. Micere M. G. Mugo. Lesotho: Institute of Southern African Studies, National University of Lesotho, 1991.

Micere Mugo's two most recent books bring together the diverse practice and criticism of African orature—"the creative and imaginative art of composition that relies on verbal art for communication and that culminates in performance." Her "theory" book, African Orature and Human Rights, uses an "aesthetic production" analysis of the narrative arts of the Ndia people of Kirinyaga District of Kenya to describe the relationship of arts and rights in an orate society. In the "practice" book, My Mother's Poem, Mugo adapts, in English (a "literate" and national language), the "righting" spirit of orature for her own poetry.

In the "theory" book, Mugo argues that orature partakes fully in the social production and reproduction processes of precolonial African communities. The dynamics of composition, subject matter, and performance (or distribution) show that orature contributes to the society's perpetuation of itself. The verbal arts express both the society's negative and positive qualities, its strengths and challenges, its justice and injustices, its realities and ideals. The productions and performances advocate in various ways both the people's "basic" rights (of the rule of law, fair play, justice, etc.) and those that pertain to subsistence and material survival (work, fair compensation, freedom from want, healthy living, etc.). Nonetheless, orature, Mugo says, does not serve the different social strata equally: each unit composes and circulates "texts" in ways that will ensure that its yearnings, aspirations, and dissatisfaction are well transmitted. In Ndia society, partisan advocacy in the arts is fully respected because the community believes that doing so serves its cosmic health.

Mugo embeds her "production" overview of orature in what she calls an "onion structure theory." She proposes that Ndia life thrives around a set of core values around which constitutive layers form and fall off, and says, "All the layers of 'human onion structure' must harmonize or the world will step out of measured rhythm and cause chaos. An individual can fully be if he or she is a part of the collective group" (13). This underlying belief is reflected in orature directly. For example, "among the Agikuyu, the greetings are not casual, automatic exchanges between people, assuming monosyllabic, linear forms. They are full, rounded and repeated with variations, to ensure solidness in the world enquired about" (13). This summation would, ordinarily, be conventional.

But with the "production" overview that she applies to Ndia society, Mugo presents orature texts in new perspectives. What we have traditionally called common interests she represents as features of the particular political economy. The orature artist is not just a metaphysical visionary but a defender of "human rights." Under the aegis of communal health, the performer in Ndia society protects and pursues partisan stakes and causes. These adversarial stances cannot but be so because in the patriarchal Ndia political economy, children have very little power, boys are raised to become warriors and governing elders, and girls are trained to develop into wives and mothers. In Ndia society, men had more power than women, elders more than youths, and natives more than strangers. In the orature of this kind of society, the rights demanded, the injustice protested, the restitution sought, and the ethos promoted should be expected to be closely tied to gender, age grade, and social station. Proverbs, for example, are the forte of elders because the truth of the sayings are deemed to be very enduring and timeless. The satire and caricature of the hyena and ogre tales belong to groups that are more susceptible to maltreatment. Generally, forms that are designed to either point out errors or transmit shared values in clear terms predominate. Songs that do not criticize, mock, satirize, chastise, denounce, or ridicule will counsel, teach, commemorate, and inspire. As Ndia...