A Note on Oral Tradition and Historical Evidence

Abstract

There are a number of assumptions about the nature of in Africa which are sometimes made by historians and others. Two of these will be discussed in this Note the assumption that oral tradition is something unitary and selfevident and that it is somehow impervious to many of the factors which historians usually take account of in critical assessment of sources. These (and other) assumptions about the nature of are generally unconscious, but perhaps because of that -they have often seriously affected its use as a source in African history. Of course not all historians make the assumptions discussed here, but they are common enough to warrant some general comment. The common assumption that oral tradition is something uniform, something that can be treated as an undifferentiated and self-evident entity, leads to the tendency of some historians' and others to speak of oral tradition generally as a source, without apparently feeling the need which would be obvious in the case of documentary sources to describe and analyze the detailed source material. In practice a number of very disparate sources have often been lumped together under the name oral tradition. Broadly one can list three main classes of tradition: recognized literary forms, generalized historical knowledge, and personal recollections. First there is what has been called oral literature. Though hard to define precisely, this class is composed of various types of both prose and poetry which correspond to literature in literate societies. Oral literature is relatively formalized, in the sense not of verbal accuracy but of genres clearly recognized in the society, and is sometimes poetry especially regarded as the product of specialist activity. A brief survey of the forms of literature follows.2 Praise poetry is one of the best known forms, occurring in most of the traditional centralized states of Africa. Since its main theme is eulogy (most often of the ruler) it is political propaganda, and we cannot expect any very direct historical information, in the sense of exact description or narration. Nevertheless, praise