Oral repositories are people who have been trusted with mentally recording information constituting oral tradition within a society. They serve an important role in oral cultures and illiterate societies as repositories of their culture's traditional knowledge, values, and morals.[1][2][3][4]
Roles
People termed as "oral repositories" have been likened to "walking libraries", leading to the saying "whenever an old man dies, it is as though a library were burning down".[5][6][7] Roles vary, and can be titular, formal or informal, some professional specialists such as the Caucasianashik, or more commonly amateurs and knowledgeable generalists such as the bulaam of the Kuba people.[8]: 36–39
These people usually hold authority within their respective societies, although musicians sometimes constitute a low caste/class. They can be religious figures playing roles in rituals and ceremonies.[12] With regard to narrative traditions, they usually perform from their repertoire and apply their distinct style while innovating on a well-known tale or work, seeking to create an experience by leading, involving, and responding to the audience.[8]: 34 Some participate in improvised poetry competitions such as the Central Asian aytysh, the North African Kabyle people's amusnaw, the Spanishrepentismo [es], or the African Ewe people's halo.[13][14] In parts of the world they remain as custodians of culture despite rising literacy rates.[15]
^Amadi, Adolphe O. (January 1981). "The emergence of a library tradition in pre- and post-colonial Africa". International Library Review. 13 (1): 65–72. doi:10.1016/0020-7837(81)90029-7.
^Pimienta, Alexis Díaz (1998). Teoría de la improvisación: primeras páginas para el estudio del repentismo (in Spanish). Sendoa. ISBN978-84-89080-74-4.[page needed]
^Missihoun, Honoré (2023). "Halo: The Ewe Battle Tradition of Music, Songs, and Performance". African Battle Traditions of Insult. African Histories and Modernities. pp. 37–54. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-15617-5_3. ISBN978-3-031-15616-8.
^Farias, P. F. de Moraes (January 1992). "History and Consolation: Royal Yorùbá Bards Comment on Their Craft". History in Africa. 19: 263–297. doi:10.2307/3172001. JSTOR3172001.
^Peyron, Michael (January 2000). "Amdyaz, the wandering bard of berber poetry". Études et Documents Berbères. 18 (1): 103–110. doi:10.3917/edb.018.0103.
^GlossaryArchived 2018-11-21 at the Wayback Machine, Eritrean Print and Oral Culture, hosted on Canada Research Chair Humanities Computing Studio.
^Isaac Greenfield, "The Debtera and the education among Ethiopian Jewry until the arrival of Dr. Faitlovitch" in Menachem Waldman (ed.), Studies in the History of Ethiopian Jews, Habermann Institute of Literary Research, 2011, pp. 109-135 (Hebrew)
^Bellinger, Robert A. (2013). "The Géwël Tradition Project: Supporting A Living Tradition". African Arts. 46 (1): 62–71. doi:10.1162/AFAR_a_00045. JSTOR43306127.
^Shoup, John (2007). "The Griot Tradition in Ḥassāniyya Music: The 'Īggāwen'". Quaderni di Studi Arabi. 2: 95–102. JSTOR25803021.
^Kaschula, Russell H. (June 1999). "Imbongi and griot: toward a comparative analysis of oral poetics in Southern and West Africa*". Journal of African Cultural Studies. 12 (1): 55–76. doi:10.1080/13696819908717840.
^Podstavsky, Sviatoslav (2004). "Hausa Entertainers and their Social Status: A Reconsideration of Sociohistorical Evidence". Ethnomusicology. 48 (3): 348–377. JSTOR30046285.
^Acquaviva, Graziella (23 November 2018). "Healing and Spirituality: The mganga figure between literature, myths and beliefs". Kervan. 22. doi:10.13135/1825-263X/2872.
^Seddon, Deborah (January 2004). "Shakespeare's Orality: Solomon Plaatje's Setswana Translations". English Studies in Africa. 47 (2): 77–95. doi:10.1080/00138390408691323.
^Kgobe, D. (1995). "Oral poetry: The Poet's performance and his audience in an African context with special reference to the Northern Sotho Society". South African Journal for Folklore Studies. 6 (1).
^Brown, Ras Michael (2012). African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry. Cambridge University Press. pp. 20, 96, 97, 103, 105. ISBN978-1-139-56104-4.
^Plastow, Jane (2021). "Colonial Theatre in British East Africa: Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika". A History of East African Theatre, Volume 2. pp. 77–127. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-87731-6_2. ISBN978-3-030-87730-9.
^Van Binsbergen, Wim (1991). "Becoming a Sangoma: Religious Anthropological Field-Work in Francistown, Botswana". Journal of Religion in Africa. 21 (4): 309–344. doi:10.2307/1581194. hdl:1887/9036. JSTOR1581194.
^Chinyowa, Kennedy C (April 2001). "The Sarungano and Shona Storytelling: an African Theatrical Paradigm". Studies in Theatre and Performance. 21 (1): 18–30. doi:10.1386/stap.21.1.18 (inactive 2 December 2024).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link)
^Aluede, Charles; Ekewenu, Bruno Dafe (August 2023). "Socio-musical acculturation in Igbe and Iyayi religious movements among the Urhobo and Esan of Nigeria". Critical Research on Religion. 11 (2): 222–242. doi:10.1177/20503032231174212.
^Madlala, Ntokozo (2001). Kwasukasukela (Thesis). University of Cape Town.
^Kardaş, Canser (2019). "The Legacy of Sounds in Turkey: Âşıks and Dengbêjs". In Özdemir, Ulas; Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Greve, Martin (eds.). Diversity and Contact Among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia. Ergon Verlag. ISBN978-3-9565048-1-5.
^Shidfar, Farhad (2019). "Azerbaijani Ashiq Saz in West and East Azerbaijan Provinces of Iran". In Özdemir, Ulas; Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Greve, Martin (eds.). Diversity and Contact Among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia. Ergon Verlag. ISBN978-3-9565048-1-5.
^Norman, Kenneth Roy (2012). A Philological Approach to Buddhism: The Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai Lectures 1994. Berkeley: The Institute of Buddhist Studies. pp. 41–56. ISBN978-0-7286-0276-2.
^Piliavsky 2020, p. 147, chapter 4: The Perils of Masterless People sfn error: no target: CITEREFPiliavsky2020 (help)
^Palriwala, Rajni (1993). "Economics and Patriliny: Consumption and Authority within the Household". Social Scientist. 21 (9/11): 47–73. doi:10.2307/3520426. JSTOR3520426.
^Sedana, I Nyoman; Foley, Kathy (1993). "The Education of a Balinese Dalang". Asian Theatre Journal. 10 (1): 81–100. doi:10.2307/1124218. JSTOR1124218.
^Farooqui, Mahmood (Autumn 2011). "Dastangoi: Revival of the Mughal Art of storytelling". Context. 8 (2): 31–36. ProQuest1353087567.
^Yang, Xi (2019). "History and Organization of the Anatolian Ašuł/Âşık/Aşıq Bardic Traditions". In Özdemir, Ulas; Hamelink, Wendelmoet; Greve, Martin (eds.). Diversity and Contact Among Singer-Poet Traditions in Eastern Anatolia. Ergon Verlag. p. 20. ISBN978-3-9565048-1-5.
^The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Routledge. 2013. pp. 851–852. ISBN978-1-136-09594-8.
^"Musafir". LA Phil. Retrieved 2022-05-30. Manghaniyars, like Langas, are sedentary Muslims whose home extends over the border into Pakistan, but their patrons are mostly Hindu Rajputs (a high caste) and Hindu Charans (a caste of poets, bards, and historians).
^Kothiyal, Tanuja (2016). Nomadic narratives: a history of mobility and identity in the Great Indian Desert. Cambridge University press. p. 261. ISBN9781107080317. The Manganiyars and Langhas are Muslim musicians and are quite different from the Bhopas of Pabuji, as they do not claim to be bards but musicians in a real sense. Using instruments like rabab, kamayacha, pyaledar sarangi, chautaro, sirimandal etc., they not only sing songs of birth, marriages and death, but are also entitled to sing in the kacheris of the patrons. It is in these assemblies that they sing ballads like Dhola-Maru, Umar-Marvi, Moomal-Rano and Sassi-Punnu. Manganiyars sing classical compositions like mota git (bada khayal) and chota git (chota khayal). Some of their ragas have originated in the Thar and are not found in north Indian classical tradition.
^Bhattacharjee, Anuradha; Alam, Shadab (November 2012). "The Origin and Journey of Qawwali: From Sacred Ritual to Entertainment?". Journal of Creative Communications. 7 (3): 209–225. doi:10.1177/0973258613512439.
^Jacobi 1995, p. 467. sfn error: no target: CITEREFJacobi1995 (help)
^Heywood, Simon; Cumbers, Shonaleigh (2017). "War and the Ruby Tree. The Motif of the Unborn Generations in Jewish Women's Story-Telling". War, Myths, and Fairy Tales. pp. 219–237. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-2684-3_10. ISBN978-981-10-2683-6.
^P. Grochowski, Dziady. Rzecz o wędrownych żebrakach i ich pieśniach, Toruń 2009.
^Kononenko, Natalie O. (2019). Ukrainian epic and historical song: folklore in context. Toronto Buffalo London: University of Toronto Press. pp. 56–72. ISBN978-1-4875-0263-8.
^Tovkailo, Mykola (2023). "On the History of the Kobzar-Lirnyk Tradition". Ethnologies. 45 (1): 59. doi:10.7202/1111895ar.
^Feldman, Zev (2016). Klezmer: music, history and memory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 61–67. ISBN9780190244521.
^Crotty, Patrick (2015-11-13). "Doon Canongate: A centenary appreciation of a Scots makar". TLS. Times Literary Supplement (5876): 14–16. GaleA640002874.
^Paul C. Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree: World and Times in Early Germanic Culture, Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1982, ISBN0-87023-352-1, note 22, pp. 215–16.
^Enright, Michael J. (1998). "The Warband Context of the Unferth Episode". Speculum. 73 (2): 297–337. doi:10.2307/2887155. JSTOR2887155.
^Martin, Oba Frank; Luis, William (2012). "Palo and Paleros: An Interview with Oba Frank Martin". Afro-Hispanic Review. 31 (1): 159–168. JSTOR23617217.
^Clark, Geoffrey; Leclerc, Mathieu; Parton, Phillip; Reepmeyer, Christian; Grono, Elle; Burley, David (March 2020). "Royal funerals, ritual stones and participatory networks in the maritime Tongan state". Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 57: 101115. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2019.101115.
^Latukefu, Sione (1968). "Oral Traditions: An Appraisal of Their Value in Historical Research in Tonga". The Journal of Pacific History. 3: 135–143. doi:10.1080/00223346808572130. JSTOR25167942.
^Holmes, Lowell (1969). "Samoan oratory". Journal of American Folklore. 82 (326): 342–352. doi:10.2307/539779. JSTOR539779.
^Mahuika, Nēpia; Mahuika, Rangimārie (2020). "Wānanga as a research methodology". AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. 16 (4): 369–377. doi:10.1177/1177180120968580.