Oral Poetry Research Articles

Distributed cognition in oral poetry improvisation: a semiosis-centered approach

Abstract We propose a semiotic externalist approach that takes cognition as semiosis, gives central importance to the notion of temporal distribution, describes the elements of distributed cognitive systems (DCSs) as signs, and identifies the DCS itself as a system that enacts a sign. This is a semiosis-centered, and thus a non-agent-centered account of DCSs. In order to develop and illustrate our argument, we describe an example of DCS – the Brazilian verbo-musical improvisational tradition of repente – considering it first as embodiment of the formal structure of a cognitive task, and then as embodiment of a semiotic process. The latter corresponds to a semiotization of the description of repente sessions as DCSs, that focuses on how the DCS can embody a meta semiotic process, semiosis that supervenes on, and determines, distinct types of smaller-scale semiotic process.

Indigenous Feminism in the Yakthung/Limbu Tribe

The paper deals with the tenets of feminism immanent within the oral narratives, rhetorical traditions, folklores, folktale and culture of the Yakthung/Limbu tribe inhabiting the Himalayan belt, defying the dichotomy of sexes in Western narratives of the society at a universal level. Yakthung/Limbu tribe is an indigenous tribe of Eastern Nepal, Sikkim and West Bengal who are animist and shamanist in nature. Feminism, the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes, although largely originating in the West as a properly structured and well-known theory, the paper endeavors to bring out the tenets of Feminism imbibed within the aforementioned aspects, prior to the inception of Feminism at a Global level. The paper analyzes the excerpts from the Yakthung/Limbu Mundhum, the oral religious scripture of the Yakthung/Limbu tribe wherein the two sexes are made to be at par with each other. The Yakthung/Limbu Mundhum consists of legends, folklores, prehistoric accounts, sermons and moral or philosophical exhortations in poetic language, generically which can be deemed as narrative oral poetry. These are the sources of information, directives, enlightenment for the Limbu’s that exercises an enormous influence in their way of life, customs, rites and rituals. The Yakthung/Limbu Mundhum is transmitted, narrated, recited and possessed by Yakthung/Limbu shamans known as “Peli-Phangsam” or “Murabangs”. The Yakthung/Limbu tribal societies have been practicing and following feminism as a matter of habit and culture that has come down from generations to generations. They do not follow it out of fear, compassion, rational enlightenment, education or compulsion, it is a necessity that comes quite naturally to them. It has been spontaneous and indigenous immanent within their culture and day to day practices. The paper in a way aims to deconstruct the Western narratives of the stature of women that is hitherto taken as ubiquitous and kindle the emergence of a paradigm contrary to the western.

Echoes of Tradition: Reclaiming the Oral Art of Poetry in Digital Embedded Courses

This paper investigates the integration of oral traditions with digital technologies in poetry education, proposing a comprehensive framework aimed at enhancing pedagogical effectiveness and cultural enrichment. Through a review of both historical and contemporary teaching methods, this paper emphasizes the distinct advantages of oral recitation in fostering deeper cognitive, emotional, and social engagement, which are qualities that digital tools frequently fail to replicate. Advocating for a balanced approach, the study leverages the sensory richness of oral traditions alongside the accessibility and innovation of digital platforms. The paper presents a pedagogical model rooted in experiential and multimodal learning theories to forge immersive, sensory-rich educational environments that preserve the depth of traditional oral poetry while harnessing modern technological advancements. The paper explores the implications of this hybrid approach for educational practices, cultural preservation, and policy, arguing that such integration not only enhances learning outcomes but also sustains cultural heritage within a digital educational framework. Additionally, it outlines future research directions to validate the framework’s efficacy, broaden its disciplinary applications, and evaluate its long-term educational impacts, contributing to a richer discourse on the harmonization of traditional methods and digital innovation in education.

Sources and development of the Kalevala as an example for the quantitative analysis of literary editions and sources

This paper describes ongoing work to quantitatively analyse the development of the Finnish national epic Kalevala. The analysis targets both the oral poetry sources used and the development of the final edition through multiple preparatory publications and manuscripts. In terms of methodological development, the paper relates to prior research on how to visualise relations between texts. However, the particular nature of oral poetry and the editing process at play here precludes using the established methods directly, leading instead to the development of complementary approaches.

Text Clustering of Icelandic Post-Medieval Þulur

This article explores the possibilities of applying Runoregi – a user interface for browsing automatically computed textual similarity, originally designed for studying the Finnic oral tradition – in the research of Icelandic post-medieval þulur. Along with challenges common to oral poetry collections, the latter corpus presents some peculiar issues related to the specificity of the genre, as well as to the difference between Icelandic and the Finnic languages. Preliminary results show that the automatic poem clustering featured in Runoregi corresponds well to an existing scholarly analysis, while features such as dendrograms, side-by-side alignments or similar passage search are useful in exploratory research.

Runoregi

This demonstration presents the user interface Runoregi used for exploring text similarity inlarge collections of Finnic oral poetry. We showcase the different views of the interface and their applications in folkloristic research.

(Re) Examining the Functions of Dùndún Talking Drum in the Inter-Cultural Music Process of Africa and the African Diaspora

Whenever the hourglass-shaped drum 'Dùndún' is mentioned, minds of music scholars readily go to the hourglass-talking drum of the Yorùbá-speaking people of West Africa. However, this does not mean that this musical instrument is peculiar to the Yorùbá as its distribution- in its varied forms- across West Africa is general; covering an area stretching roughly from Senegal to the Cameroun Republic1. This talking drum's compositional and performance techniques have become highly specialized and standardized because of its high usage in both the social and religious celebrations of the Yorùbá. This paper focuses on the use of Dùndún to perform other sonic functions beyond Yorùbá speech melodies and oral poetry. Intercultural music theory, being used in this study has shown that the prospect of Dùndún talking drum usage within the context of diasporic music performances proffers greater potential for the instrument as it has been favourably utilized by internationally renowned musicians in contemporary popular music both within and outside the shores of Africa. Furthermore, that interested musicians in the diaspora will find this instrument useful for their subsequent compositions and performances will help redefine the socio-cultural worldview of the music of Africa.

Jamaican-Canadian ‘Poetics of Relations’: Dub Poetry, Musical Rhythm, and Flows of Transnational Black Consciousness

The article places dub poetry in the context of traveling sounds of music and oral poetry between the Caribbean, Canada, and England. Looking at dub poetry from a hemispheric and transnational perspective and through the lens of Glissant’s ‘poetics of Relations,’ the article puts focus on Canadian dub poetry and relates it to Jamaican beginnings and diasporic extensions in Britain. As the article shows, dub poetry plays a key role as transnational and transgeneric sound archive (Antwi) and as poetic form of yearning for completion, thus adding new narratives to a larger discourse of Black transnationalism that is by no means limited or necessarily linked to “pan-Africanism or other kinds of Black-isms”. Instead, dub poetry also responds to all kinds of international movements such as anti-colonialism, socialism and feminism to create transnational imaginaries and historiographies of diasporic Black cultures.

Folk Theatres, Oral Poetry and Cultural Artifacts along the Border Regions of North Bengal

Folk Theatres, Oral Poetry and Cultural Artifacts along the Border Regions of North Bengal

ONEGIN AND MANAS, VALIKHANOV AND BELINSKY; RUSSIAN LITERARY CRITICISM AND KYRGYZ ORAL POETRY

This paper examines the original context of the words ‘encyclopaedia’ and ‘epic’ concerning Manas. A New Historicism approach to the origin of this association, an 1861 Russian-language publication by Chokan Valikhanov, illuminates his likely use of a formulation - both verbal and conceptual - of literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, and placing Valikhanov’s interest in epics in pan-European (and Russian) early-nineteenth century socio-political context. Valikhanov’s comments display the placing of an interpretative framework from Russian literary criticism onto Kyrgyz oral poetry. This paper questions the continued use of the terminology related to nineteenth-century Russian colonialism and its significant impact on the Manas interpretation and valueing.

"THE NIBELUNGENLIED" IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN EPIC TRADITION

The article considers the German heroic epic "The Nibelungenlied" in the context of the Western European epic (on the example of "Beowulf" and "Song of Roland") and Old Russian byline epic. It is emphasised that the researched epics are characterised by commonality at the plot and thematic level. It is about historical convention; about the opposition of grief and joy, good and evil; about the motives of snake-fighting, betrayal and revenge; about the presence of difficult trials, which the hero is helped to overcome by strength, courage and honour; about material benefits and the hero's attitude to fate, as well as about the hero's death. The author concludes that these features are associated with the presence of elements of oral poetry in the epic genre, which are born from the synthesis of heathen and Christian worldviews. As a result, along with typological similarities, the differences were revealed, connected, on the one hand, with the specificity of culture, and, on the other hand, with the personality of the author of the epic, in particular "The Nibelungenlied".

The Fann, a Genre of Oral Poetry in Antiochian Arabic: Remarks on Form and Performance Practice

Abstract The fann is a genre of oral poetry in the vernacular Arabic of the Alawi community in the Antioch/Hatay province of Turkey. Until recently, it has hardly been mentioned in academic literature. Poetic form and rhythm structure are largely fixed in this genre and it is almost always performed in a similar way; when it comes to the quality of the voice, including a more or less clear melodic shape, there is more left up to the performer. During performances, the rhythmical element dominates the essence of melodic aspects. A preliminary comparison with related genres in the region demonstrates that both the form and performance practice of fann resemble genres in neighbouring Arab countries. Comparison also finds that there is hardly any connection with any Turkish and Kurdish singer-poem tradition as practised in nearby regions. Only recent changes indicate influences from contemporary Turkish music.

Blake Wilson, Singing to the lyre in Renaissance Italy. Memory, performance, and oral poetry

Blake Wilson, Singing to the lyre in Renaissance Italy. Memory, performance, and oral poetry

Любовь, богатство, власть и греховность в «текстах желаний»: особенности бурятских заговоров

This article delves into the examination of “wish texts,” specifically Buryat conspiracies centered around the topics of love, wealth, and power. One of the earliest forms of oral poetry, conspiracies hold great significance within the traditional ritual folklore of the Buryats and were widely utilized in their magical practices. There are special Buryat conspiracies aiming to possess magical abilities, achieve material advantage, or possess a beloved person. These conspiracies are of particular interest since they reflect the ideas of the Buryats about sin, the traditional values of Buryat society. The sinful nature of conspiracies was not so much determined by their goals but rather by the methods employed to achieve them. The depiction of sinfulness is particularly evident in the text of the love plot origins, which explicitly portrays the fundamental spiritual values of the Buryats that the petitioner is willing to forsake in pursuit of their desires. The analysis indicates the existence of a unique category of social conspiracies within the Buryat, Yakut, and Tuvinian texts, primarily involving male individuals as perpetrators. The majority of these individuals were considered outsiders, who, for unclear reasons, were willing to defy societal norms and regulations, including both the impoverished and solitary individuals, as well as the wealthy and those who had fallen out of favor with authorities.

Lake Mekrijärvi and the Karelian Heartland

This article discusses the Mekrijärvi boreal lake system in North Karelia, Finland, and the Koitajoki river. It traces historico-cultural interactions with the lake, from its role as an epicenter of Karelian rune singing and traditional practices, to the natural and cultural disruptions caused by large-scale natural resource extraction that shattered forests, peatlands, and waterbodies, and on into a new era of restoration. In the 2000s a community-driven NGO began to document oral histories and scientific evidence of the lake’s condition. In the 2020s, this effort evolved into a landscape-scale eco-cultural revitalization effort. Habitat for endangered whitefish and degraded peatlands are being restored and traditional knowledge has become a central force in rebuilding and re-imagining traditional northern societies. Snippets of personal memories and oral poetry offer a window into a unique boreal world which, though once thought to be lost, is in a state of re-discovery and healing.

Reforming oral tradition by Elias Lönnrot and Otto Manninen

Collecting, editing, publishing, and re-writing folklore was an essential part of Romanticism and Romantic Nationalism. The increased interest towards folklore and oral poetry was related to the aim of creating elite cultures and literatures. In this process, questions such as what was included in the folklore publications and literature and what was ignored and hidden are of importance. The focus of the article is on the methods of textualization and genetic criticism in the making of national heritage and literature in nineteenth-century Finland. Textualization theory emphasizes the practical-technical process whereby oral/written texts are transformed, interpreted, represented, and published, whereas genetic criticism focuses more on the study of writing processes of literary works in the context of linguistic and aesthetic analysis. However, these two approaches deal with the similar questions of textual processes and variants involved in text-making, particularly variation in the process of creating nationally recognized literature.

The Berber Question And (Re)Imagining The Nation In Contemporary Morocco

This paper aims to emphasize that the French colonial intervention in Morocco represents a metamorphic historical turning point that should not be bracketed from the general process of revisiting the teleological assumptions about what constitutes the contemporary Moroccan Identity. It sets the challenge of problematizing the Nationalists’ cultural agenda whose insistence on a fetishized continuity with the precolonial history has eclipsed the disruptive effects of the colonial configurations and symbolic struggles of groups who were cast aside though they were at the center of anti-colonial resistance. Telling Morocco’s colonial history from a third perspective would bring hitherto neglected and silenced actors, in our case the Berber tribal groups under the spotlight, and draw together both elite and not elite actors into the scope of analysis. The premise behind analyzing the Berber oral poetry which was composed and sung on the eve of colonial expansion, is to understand the standpoint of these “peripheral groups” over matters of political allegiance and Jihad, away from the totalizing narratives of the official historiography. These artistic outlets are primary sources of a significant importance because they provide unexplored details of how Berber groups endured living at the center of the struggle between the colonial administration and the Arabophone nationalist elite. They demonstrate also the complex adjustments and inter/ intra- tribal negotiations these groups have to go through to reconfigure those mechanisms of power that sought to annihilate their subjectivities as agents of change

The Poetics of Borderlands: Reflections on Oral Folk Poetry from Assam’s Barak Valley during Bangladesh Liberation War

In 1971, the civil war in the Pakistani state and consequent genocide in present Bangladesh (erstwhile East Pakistan) led to a great influx of refugees who were desperately crossing the porous borderlands of the eastern states of India. Despite the abject living conditions in the saturated refugee camps and the stringent regimentation of the youth camps and muktijoddhā (Liberation Warrior) training sectors in West Bengal, Tripura and Assam borderlands, the space inhabited by the refugees was charged with powerful national imaginaries laced with an eclectic blend of emotions – resistance, hope, nostalgia, desire, aspiration. Drawing on ethnographic and anthropological research, the essay aims to explore various folk forms of poetry which emerged out of these refugee camps and guerrilla army training sectors during the war, such as kabigān (a form of lyrical oral poetry where the poet spontaneously composes verses to be performed at a public gathering) or hāture kabitā (poems to be read aloud in the middle of a hāt or marketplace) written and performed by refugees from Assam’s Barak Valley in North-East India, and later collected by Bangladeshi historian Shahid Quader Chowdhury. Besides problematising aesthetic practices and their relationship to the idea of border-crossing, refugeehood and national identities, to what extent do these poems – loka kabitā or oral folk poetry, open up a discursive space where shared cultures, histories and memories play a momentous role in political mobilisation and in the creation of a radical alterity within the “national” culture and history? To what extent do these aesthetic registers succeed in combating the irrepresentability of violence, injustice and trauma? These are primarily the questions that this essay aims to ask and resolve.

The Origin and Spiritual Distribution of Zamfara Drummers and Singers

This paper explores the rich tradition of singing in Hausa culture, shedding light on its meaning, importance, and diverse manifestations. The study delves into the significant role of traditional singers, known as ‘makaɗan Hausa,’ who compose songs for various individuals and groups. It highlights the historical context in which singing played a pivotal role. The impact of singing during pre-colonial wars is explored, revealing how oral poetry and chants motivated warriors and eased the burden of handwork. Singing also played a crucial role in fostering cultural exchange, with Hausa praise singers finding themselves in non-Hausa environments, such as Ghana. Additionally, the paper sheds light on the significance of singing in the political realm. It generally provides a comprehensive exploration of singing in Hausa culture, examining its cultural, social, and political dimensions. It showcases the importance of singing in energizing individuals, celebrating professions, facilitating cultural exchange, and entertaining rulers. Through its findings, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the rich musical traditions within the Hausa community.

IMPORTANT THEMES OF BALOCHI CLASSIC POETRY

Apart from other poetic elements, themes, and motifs play a vital role in poetry. It offers the readers a window into the social, psychological, and cultural tendencies of a certain nation. Through, classical poetry, the Baloch poets of yore not only expressed their feelings and emotions but the latter also serves as a significant document concerning Baloch's history. It gives an obvious picture of the ancient Baloch society which was established on tribal footings. The social and cultural norms and traditions, whether human-friendly or otherwise, prevalent in that tribal society are amongst the recurrent themes of Balochi classical poetry. Balochi Classical poetry, which has its roots in oral poetry, has maintained a wide majority of the themes which appeared in Balochi oral poetry.