Theory and Practice in African Orature

Abstract

Micere Mugo's two most recent books bring together the diverse and criticism of African orature?the creative and imagi? native art of composition that relies on verbal art for communica? tion and that culminates in performance. Her theory book, African Orature and Human Rights, uses an aesthetic analysis of the narrative arts of the Ndia people of Kirinyaga District of Kenya to describe the relationship of arts and rights in an orate society. In the practice book, My Mother's Poem, Mugo adapts, in English (a literate and national lan? guage), the righting spirit of orature for her own poetry. In the theory book, Mugo argues that orature partakes fully in the social and reproduction processes of precolonial African com? munities. The dynamics of composition, subject matter, and performance (or distribution) show that orature contributes to the society's perpetuation of itself. The verbal arts express both the society's negative and positive qualities, its strengths and challenges, its justice and injustices, its realities and ideals. The productions and performances advocate in various ways both the people's basic rights (of the rule of law, fair play, justice, etc.) and those that pertain to subsistence and material survival (work, fair compensation, freedom from want, healthy living, etc). Nonetheless, orature, Mugo says, does not serve the different social strata equally: each unit composes and circulates texts in ways that will ensure that its yearnings, aspirations, and dissatisfaction are well transmitted. In Ndia society, partisan advocacy in the arts is fully respected because the community believes that doing so serves its cosmic health. Mugo embeds her production overview of orature in what she calls an structure theory. She proposes that Ndia life thrives around a set of core values around which constitutive layers form and fall off, and says, All the layers of 'human onion structure' must harmonize or the world will step out of measured rhythm and cause chaos. An individual can fully beif he or she is a part ofthe collective group (13). This underlying belief is reflected in orature directly. For example, among the Agikuyu, the greetings are not casual, automatic exchanges between people, assuming