Abstract
Love, as a subject, has received a lot of attention in literature, particularly poetry. This is probably because poetry is traditionally seen as the creative exploration and expression of an individual’s emotion and passion. A genre of Ga oral poetry that has love as its primary subject is the adaawe songs which are sung by Ga maidens. This paper examines an aspect of Ga women’s discourse on love in the songs. Particularly, it examines how love is bemoaned. This was done based on the premise that, as a creative exploration and expression of individuals’ emotions and passions, adaawe songs contribute a unique commentary on the subject of love. Songs which were recorded and transcribed, as well as songs collected from Hamond’s (1970) Obɔade Lalai were analysed, paying attention to content and style. The analysis revealed that love is usually bemoaned when there is lack of continuous interest in a persona by the other party in a love relationship, or when there is a betrayal of love.
Highlights
In a paper entitled Celebration of love: An aspect of Ga women’s discourse on love in adaawe song- texts (See Kubi, 2017), I examined one aspect of Ga women’s discourse on love in adaawe songs
The analysis revealed that love is usually bemoaned when there is lack of continuous interest in a persona by the other party in a love relationship, or when there is a betrayal of love
This paper, as a sequel to the earlier paper which looked at the celebration of love as an aspect of Ga women’s discourse on love in adaawe songs, examined the bemoaning of love as another aspect of the discourse
Summary
In a paper entitled Celebration of love: An aspect of Ga women’s discourse on love in adaawe song- texts (See Kubi, 2017), I examined one aspect of Ga women’s discourse on love in adaawe songs. Songs performed after the intimate union of the two spouses; the dominant themes are love and sexuality); and the woyi ndëri (songs of love, homage, and appreciation composed by young girls of marriageable age and sung on moonlit nights in the centre of the village) (see Ndione & Mitsch, 1993) are all proofs of Joseph’s (1987) observation It shall be noted from the adaawe songs that there is a tradition of love songs among Ga maidens too, and these songs reveal a lot about the concept of romantic love among the Ga people. Adaawe songs are treated as literary forms, oral poetry On her part, Kropp Dakubu (2011) mentions that among the Ga people, the most widely practised forms of verbal art are probably the libation and the song. They are informed by social discourses, and one of such discourses is the discourses on love
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