Free Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth Finnegan Page B

many variations in the forms of composition (including musical composition) among different peoples see Nettl 1954 b and 1956: esp. pp. 12ff.
    5 For instances of this see the various examples in Parts II and III and in particular the discussion in Ch. 9, pp. 266ff.
    6 e.g. the solitary working songs, some herding songs, sometimes individual rehearsals for later performance, and perhaps some of the lullabies.
    7 For further details on audience participation in stories see Ch. 13, pp. 385ff.
    8 A few early observers speak of recording certain of their texts on ‘the phonograph’. See e.g. Torrend 1921 (Northern Rhodesian stories, including songs); Thomas 1910 ii (Edo); Lindblom iii, 1934: 41 (Kamba songs, recorded about 1912).
    9 For early approaches of this kind see Ch. 2.
    10 Or, better, to the readers of such original and detailed studies as e.g. Nketia 1955 etc., Babalola 1966, Kagame 1951 b .
    11 Several of them are more fully elaborated in later chapters, particularly Ch. 2.
    12 See for instance H. J. Chaytor’s pertinent comment on medieval vernacular literature: ‘In short, the history of the progress from script to print is a history of the gradual substitution of visual for auditory methods of communicating and receiving ideas … To disregard the matter and to criticise medieval literature as though it had just been issued by the nearest circulating library is a sure and certain road to a misconception of the medieval spirit’ (1945: 4). The oral aspects of manuscript culture are further discussed in McLuhan 1962.
    13 See below
    14 In particular Parts II and III.
    15 For some further discussion of the question of African oral forms as ‘literature’ see Whiteley 1964: 4ff. and references given there.

3. The Social, Linguistic, and Literary Background
----
    Social and literary background. The linguistic basis—the example of Bantu. Some literary tools. Presentation of the material. The literary complexity of African cultures .
    I
    In Africa, as elsewhere, literature is practised in a society. It is obvious that any analysis of African literature must take account of the social and historical context—and never more so than in the case of oral literature. Some aspects of this are discussed in the following chapter on poetry and patronage and in examples in later sections. Clearly a full examination of any one African literature would have to include a detailed discussion of the particularities of that single literature and historical period, and the same in turn for each other instance—a task which cannot be attempted here. Nevertheless, in view of the many prevalent myths about Africa it is worth making some general points in introduction and thus anticipating some of the more glaring over-simplifications about African society.
    A common nineteenth-century notion that still has currency today is the idea of Africa as the same in culture in all parts of the continent (or at least that part south of the Sahara); as non-literate, primitive, and pagan; and as unchanging in time throughout the centuries. Thus ‘traditional’ Africa is seen as both uniform and static, and this view still colours much of the writing about Africa.
    Such a notion is, however, no longer tenable. In the late nineteenth or earlier twentieth centuries (the period from which a number of the instances here are drawn) the culture and social forms of African societies were far from uniform. They ranged—and to some extent still do—from the small huntingbands of the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert, to the proud and independent pastoral peoples of parts of the Southern Sudan and East Africa, or the elaborate and varied kingdoms found in many parts of the continent, above all in western Africa and round the Great Lakes in the east. Such kingdoms provided a context in which court poetry and court poets could nourish, and also in some cases a well-established familiarity with Arabic literacy. Again, in the economic field, almost every