Vimbuza The Healing Dance of Northern Malawi

4. Style in Vimbuza Songs

   ϭϭϲ Chapter 4: Style in Vimbuza Songs "Style is the utilization of the language of current communication in order to transmit a message responding to a ‘literary’ intention, that is to say supporting aesthetic preoccupations. Each literature uses for that processes determined by the language and the culture which has produced it, that’s why the study of texts should not be conducted except through them." 1 The analysis of Vimbuza songs appears, in this sense, incomplete from the moment when one does not force oneself to apprehend the manner in which the different texts are structured. As our study has a bearing on a relatively restricted sample (130 songs), we cannot attempt an exhaustive presentation of the totality of stylistic procedures which one can uncover through all the Vimbuza songs. Nevertheless, we should be able to formulate the primary foundations necessary for any new approach. The choice was made on the basis of the study of linguistic and prosodic structures, and this for two reasons: firstly; these are the structures which are most frequently encountered secondly; they are verifiable in other genres of oral literatures We have utilized all the material that we had at our disposal. It seemed to us necessary to start from the texts themselves in order to understand their mechanism. The characteristic aspects of Vimbuza songs are: repetition meaningless syllables parallelism digression ideophones onomatopoeia synecdoche borrowings from English gestures  1 Geneviève Calame-Griaule, "Pour une étude ethnolinguistic des literatures orales Africaines", Languages, no. 18, 1970, p. 40.    ϭϭϳ On another level, we have observed the existence of a technique which we have christened the “camouflage technique” or the hidden meaning. We are going to approach it in the first place; for it seems to us to serve as a superstructure in the majority of texts analyzed. Preliminary Remarks Melody in Vimbuza Songs Conscious of the necessity of speaking of the musical aspect in the songs that we were studying,2 we had these last analyzed by some musicologists, notably Madame Annick Préaubert.3 Two observations come out of this analysis. On the one hand, the melody does not correspond to the Western mould, on the other, it is difficult to write this music; for there exist, in reality, several melodies in the same song. A song is presented in fact as a superposition of several rhythms marked by different percussions, drums, handclaps, bells and whistles while the voices criss-cross in order to provide the melodic base. Finally, it is fitting to point out that the songs are grouped under three rhythmic categories, these last correspond to three types of possession. The six songs are distributed thus: Vimbuza: Chiwayawaya (no. 33), Bulangeti (no. 38), Ine lero namtengwa (no. 40) Virombo: Rondo (no. 76), Waziroya (no. 58) Vyanusi: Uthwasile (no. 106) Nevertheless, within each category the melody can vary. The “Camouflage Technique” in Vimbuza Songs The stylistic aspect which we call the “camouflage technique” is perhaps the most important in the songs we are examining. The procedure consists  2 Musicology is an area we are not familiar with. 3 Annick Préaubert, Teacher of music in the Ministry of Education, Paris.    ϭϭϴ in presenting the message in an enigmatic form, hiding the true sense of the song,4 especially when they are allusive. According to our own observation, this tendency not to reveal what one wants to say in reality is an ancient tradition. We have been able to observe its diffusion in other literary traditions of this region, especially in the tale and the proverb. Studies undertaken on Chewa poetry (songs of Gule Wamkulu for example) have shown that there, too, exists this particular technique. According to Sam Mchombo, the linguistic analysis of a song would not be coherent if one did not take into account the hidden sense of the text.5 This technique would be close to linguistic procedures such as metaphor, metonymy, polysemy and synecdoche. Now, this procedure which he calls cryptic meaning refers to the entirety of the text one studies. Put otherwise, the analysis demands that one decodes the message carried in this type of songs. To resort to the “hidden sense” seems to serve as self-censorship. There are a certain number of things that one would not mention in public, especially all that concerns sexual relations. This creates a special vocabulary. The Ngoni-Tumbuka have a very strict moral code. The special language is used especially when...