“If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it…†These lines have been quoted several times, just that they never run out of taste. One of the well presented findings, but perhaps not surprising, in Performing Community is that, added to feeding love, music can feed politics—and to satisfaction.
From time memorial, Ugandan communities have used music and drums and voices, in clearly arranged patterns as a tool for mobilisation, and sending good and bitter political signals to kings and leaders. Susan Kiguli, with a doctorate in poetry, unveils these fancies and motivations when she studies the Enkuuka and Ekitobeero (music galas), which are annually organised by the Central Broadcasting Service (CBS)—a traditional radio station.
Of course, readers will ask the question, or expect the researcher to have asked whether the signals sent have ever achieved their desired objective. But that could be a different matter. All the same: oral literature—music and art feed politics too, not love a lone.
With his enthusiastic contemporary Taban Lo Liyong, one of Uganda’s celebrated authors, Okot P’ Bitek—of the classic Song of Lawino had a word battle.
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| Book: Performing Community Editor: Dominica Dipio, Lene Johannessen, Stuart Sillars Publisher: Novus Press, Norway Publication: 2008 Volume: 275 Pages Reviewer: Yusuf Serunkuma Kajura |
Taban: Uganda is a literary desert. Okot: Those who say Uganda is a literary desert suffer from acute literary deafness, a disease that afflicts those who think literature exists only in books.
Although Taban Lo Liyong exhausted his share of shame, more evidence for his malady continues to emerge as support for Okot grows. Performing Community could be appreciated as a lucid defence of Okot P’ Bitek’s scientific discovery—of literary deafness.
Sister Dominica Dipio in this spirit of defending Okot— and indeed very well—in her article Symbolic Actions and Performance explores the Madi people in northern Uganda who have a very well cultivated literature that informs their way of living. He highlights two things; performance and the word—two notable literary items—as is for drama; dialogue and action.Â
Abasi Kiyimba adds that literature is a recorder of social change. His piece; Indices of Social Change in the Oral Literature of the Baganda, argues that for so long, and always inadvertently, oral literature through the vehicle of language—similes and metaphors—carries live notations of social change—often recorded and assimilated in the people’s folklore as a summary of their wisdom and as a recording of experience.
For example, because of limited developments and the subsequent exposure to few cars, it is rare for a seventy year old to use the simile; as slow as a car in traffic jam—and quite rare too, for a 20 year old, fully bred in Kampala to use; as slow as a snail, despite the fact that the notion being explored is one of slowness.
Several unscripted notions come into play too; the kiwani (all is fake) around town, the kisanja (can I have some more, and more?) in the corridors of politics and yes, Bayuda (all are hogs)—are these notions telling of the changes that have happened to Uganda of recent?
Like in Susan Kiguli’s case, where she is shy to ask the destinations of the signals sent at the two CBS music galas, Kiyimba is dodgy too: As oral literature records social change, can it be a tool to influence this change? These would finer talking points and the authors ought to be warming up for new research.
Put together, scholars in the humanities continue to demonstrate their relevance to the world.
So true is that Uganda needs more scientists than lawyers, more mathematicians than social workers, but the subtle idiosyncrasies that make the fabric of community need not to be underestimated. Issues of justice and fairness, dignity and servitude, performances in human interaction, which sit at the core of progress, are not taught at medical or mathematics schools—they are engrained in oral literature. This is the notion in Aaron Mushengyezi’s Children Play Songs of the Baganda, Cornelius Gulere Wambi’s Riddling and Taboos and Ikoja-Odongo’s Folklore and Conservation of Traditional Wisdom among the Iteso--true to the assumption that children education commences at a mothers‘ knee, often engrained in the knowlegde of the community .
Collaborating with the University of Bergen, Norway, Makerere University professors and scholars worked hard enough and produced this book. It is wonderful collection of the so many things that we often interact with, as part of our mutual discourse but take little notice of their relevancy. Oral literature Chief Pioneer Austin Bukenya, in an interesting narrative, details the far appreciating oral literature has come at the old department. It is interesting to discover, that despite insufficient institutional help, through hard work and relentlessness, people stand up and struggle and achieve.Â
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