The World and the Word: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral Tradition

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION Storytellers have always been innovative, and they have always been imitative . This need not be seen as a contradiction. Oral performers have routinely relied on tradition, as they have typically worked within two realms, the world of the immediately perceptible and the world of the imagination. The latter is the link to the past-a grandly mythicized past, the journey to its essence essayed by generations of estimable artists. The genius of the storyteller is to be discovered in her ability to work within the tradition, the imitative part of her art, as she simultaneously gives her audiences new insights into ancient images by using them to give form to their contemporary world, the innovative part of her performances. Every age has surely produced its masters, storytellers who have moved the tradition into new areas, always within contexts inherited from those who have come before. The materials and methods of composition have remained constant through the centuries-images from past and present, representations of fantasy and reality, worked together and artfully crafted into rich metaphorical parallels in performances that enlist the emotions of the members of audiences. The storytelling tradition has kept the members of the society in harmony with an antiquity that only vaguely resembles fact. That past, the paradigm of the culture, continues to exert its influence on the shaping of the present, giving it a mythic heart, a traditional context, and a nascent form. 1 "These are the storyteller's materials ," Mrs. Zenani contended: "the world and the word." This combination of the real world and the imaginative word controls the narrative performance and streams unerringly to the essence of a culture. The stories have a predictability and a familiarity that enable the members of the audience to enter them with facility and without confusion. The performer then proceeds to manipulate the members of the audience, as they are willingly and pleasurably made a part of the dynamics of metaphor, which is the basis of all storytelling. "When those of us in my generation awakened to earliest consciousness ," Mrs. Zenani told me, "we were born into a tradition that was already flourishing. Narratives were being composed by adults in a tradition that had been established long before we were born."2 She was refer1 . Stories in the oral tradition were never meant to be memorized, Mrs. Zenani argued, nor were they meant to be frozen in time. The storyteller is constantly in the process of linking the present and the past: it is therefore crucial that the images be flexible, that their union be evanescent. 2. A San storyteller, Ilkabbo, says, "... J sit in the sun, sitting and listening to the stories that come from out there, stories that come from a distance. Then Jcatch hold of a story that floats out from the distant place-when the sun feels warm and when [ feel that J must visit 3 Copyrighted Material 4 Introduction ring to an oral tradition that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary, composed of images from the past and the present.3 Mrs. Zenani has her home on the slope of a ridge some thirty miles from the Indian Ocean on the southeastern coast of Africa. For as long as she can remember, she has been a creator of Xhosa iintsomi, oral narratives. This tall, erect woman, regal in her bearing and her face a mask of disdain, is seemingly indifferent to, even contemptuous of, the members of her audience. She pulls her red ochre cape around her, ignores the audience and its banter, and proceeds to detail the colorful world of the intsomi. At times, her body movement is brightly flamboyant, but she is not always given to broad dramatic gesticulation, and one is apt to miss the extraverbal character of her production if one is not attentive, an attitude that she fully expects. One might also fail to discern the developing and warming intimacy between the artist and her audience during the process of the performance, and overlook the skill with which Mrs. Zenani exploits the considerable tension that arises between her and its members. Slowly and smoothly, she moves into the narrative, usually a lengthy one, pronouncing the opening formula in a casual manner that conceals the seriousness with which she is about to evoke her images. She provides motivation for the crisis that lies in the future, avoiding the eyes of those in her audience, seeking beyond them ancient motifs, employing the creative tools that will conspire to create her...