African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 223
formats. The most successful media adaptations of oral traditions preserve these dialogic
features.
The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) has been very successful in developing
culturally oriented children’s television. In one of its first efforts, the GBC asked the
National Theatre Company to collect folktales and adapt them for television. Characters
in the folktales were represented as masked figures on television. The programs were not
well received because audi-ences could not relate to the masked characters. Young
children were confused and frightened by the masks, while older children and adults
argued that the characters were not realistic. A new format was later developed for a
program entitled By the Fireside, using school children as actors and participants. Each
show opens with children dancing and singing traditional songs that foreshadow the
moral message of the story of the day. The program uses Akan, which is understood by
roughly 60 percent of the population, and English, which is the national language. The
studio set represents a rural village. Two storytellers occupy center stage and the children
are gathered around as the audience. Stories are based on traditional tales, but they often
interweave contemporary themes about urban life and national politics. Like traditional
oral forms of education, most of the programs are very didactic, with moralistic messages
such as do not be greedy, work together, tell the truth, and respect your elders. After a
tale is told, individual children are asked to say what they have learned, and the correct
answer is then repeated.
In Nigeria, the regional broadcasting service of Kano State (CTV) produces numerous
television dramas that build on oral traditions. One very popular situation comedy,
Kuliya, is named after the Hausa legal court. The program is in the Hausa language and it
features the conniving activities of a man named Buguzum, his wife Hajiya, and the loyal
servants who try help them out of their dilemmas. The plot structure resembles that of
trickster stories and episodes always have a clear-cut moral message. Following the
folklore tradition in which character names are metaphors that reveal personality traits,
the name Buguzum symbolizes an overbearing person who beats or thrashes others. As
with the Ghanaian television adaptations, the Kano TV dramas are not just reenactments
of traditional stories. They address contemporary problems, for example, dealers who sell
fraudulent tour packages for pilgrimage trips to Mecca or thieves who numb their victims
with drugged kola nuts.
Reciprocal Influences Between Oral Traditions and Electronic Media
The preceding examples illustrate the two-way influence between oral traditions and the
electronic media in Africa. Both the content and the style of numerous mass media genres
are greatly influenced by indigenous traditions. At the same time many indigenous
communication genres have been transformed by the presence of electronic media. In
Mali, for example, the popular broadcast of griot music on national radio has resulted in a
gradual alteration of song messages, text structures, harmonic patterns and even social
functions. Mass media introduce new possibilities for both production and reception, and
they are also caught up in different political and economic arenas. In the traditional
context, there is a hereditary bond between patron and musician, and the patron is the
central addressee of the song’s message. Radio, television, and the recording industry