Paradigms of Social Aesthetics in Themne Oral Performance

Introduction: The Artistic Variation Imperative

The Themne belong to the Mande-speaking group of West Africa, part of the Bantu group (see Asher and Moseley 1993). They are one of the two largest of the 16 ethnic groups present in Sierra Leone, and constitute about 30 percent of Sierra Leone's total population of 5.4 million. They predominate in the northern region of the country.

Themne social and cultural traditions include "secret" societies,¹ mask devils,² and folklore practices and genres like storytelling, dirges, poetry, dances, songs, and folk theatre. As with other ethnic groups in Sierra Leone, most traditional Themne folklore is handed down by means of storytelling. In almost all communities, whether rural or urban, storytelling serves a plethora of functions: social, mythopoetic, pedagogical, recreational, artistic, and aesthetic (see also Sieber 1971, Bauman 1983, Finnegan 1992a and b, Okpewho 1990). The Themne, like other cultures in Sierra Leone and indeed throughout Africa, are a predominantly non-literate society that is gradually being exposed to audiovisual mass media forms of entertainment including the cinema, television, video, radio, and, very recently, mobile phones (see UNESCO 1990, Khan 1997a and b, also Mushengyezi 2003).³ This exposure has placed greater demands on Themne oral art practitioners to make their material and performance more attractive to their clientele, particularly to the younger generation, as has been observed elsewhere. The latter constitutes the larger part of the Themne population, and, as the school-going age group is exposed to literate media entertainment forms, it is increasingly likely to lose interest in traditional folklore practices, as has been the case with storytelling in post-war technological societies in the West (for a similar observation among the Irish-Gaelic storytelling traditions, see Delargy 1945).

Compounding this setback to increased oral art appreciation by audiences is the nature of oral art itself, which is subject to diminishing marginal returns since it is constantly being repetitively reproduced and recycled from one generation to another (Avorgbedor 1990, Agovi 1995, Ben-Amos 1984). Repetitive exposure to the same materials or their varieties often leads to monotony and lack of interest on the part of the same audiences. As a consequence, the performance of such materials and their sustained popularity with stable audiences increasingly hinges on the ability of Themne oral artists to vary their material and make it more captivating or marketable to their audiences.

However, mass non-literacy, availability of modern media, an increased youthful population, and a desire to minimize performance monotony are not the only impetus for African oral artists' craftsmanship. As this study argues, aesthetic considerations also play a critical role in their deployment of multimedia to realize creativity and achieve artistic variation. It is in this way that oral artists elaborate and improvise during oral performances, thereby continuing to engage their audiences. Specifically, I will examine the social aesthetic paradigms of sociability, the physical setting of the performance, and the belief system or worldview of the Themne, and consider the ways in which these factors engender artistic variation and creativity. I will also consider the ramifications of social aesthetics and multimedia for the audiences' appreciation and interpretation of the oral performance. My social aesthetic inquiry will not focus on an analysis of story texts per se, but on the physical setting and sociocultural conventions of Themne storytelling practices. The focus is on aspects of social aesthetics that impinge on artistic variation and creativity in storytelling and on processes of active audience participation in the delivery and interpretation of oral performances. I hope that such an analysis of the Themne oral artist's ability to exploit the aesthetic resources of the performance setting will lend weight to calls for scholars to pay due attention to the uniqueness of each performance and to capture, transcribe, and translate the "externalities" of a given performance as deployed by the oral artist.⁴

Aesthetics, Timing of Performance, and Sociability

I will begin with the social and sociability function of storytelling, which is a dominant feature of Themne social aesthetics and receptionalism. It both underpins the Themne concept of oral art practice and accounts for the...