African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 624
Folklore and its various derivatives (folk art, folktales, folksongs, folk narrative, etc.)
form another influential cluster of terms, plentifully illustrated in this volume. Nowadays,
these substantially coincide with the field studied under the label of oral literature. For
while folklore is sometimes understood in the broad sense of all forms of orally
transmitted tradition, including material culture, its central emphasis has commonly been
on verbal genres. As such, it has long inspired the study of forms that might otherwise
have remained hidden to scholarship, resulting in colossal efforts in collecting and
analyzing narratives, poetry, song, riddles, and proverbs in much the same way as under
the head of oral literature. However, in the past, the two sets of terminology have carried
somewhat different overtones. Earlier work under the rubric of folklore was often in the
antiquarian style, amassing extensive texts with little analysis. The term occasionally still
carries echoes of its original evolutionist focus on survivals, communal creation, and/or
the rural and unlettered “folk.” Apparently, new or topical forms or those created by
individuals that had not yet “sunk into tradition” were, for a time, eschewed by those
using the folklore terminology (for example, Dorson 1972), thus making oral literature
the preferred term for those interested in such aspects of African cultures. However, these
older associations of folklore, while occasionally still surfacing, are now rejected by
leading folklorists, who normally follow a broader definition of the folk and actively
pursue questions about individual creativity, modern forms, and urban as well as rural
contexts.
Verbal art is another often-used term, summarized in Bascom’s classic article as “a
convenient and appropriate term for folktales, myths, legends, proverbs, riddles, and
other “literary forms” (1955, 245). Substantial work has been conducted under this
stimulating concept, which usually also covers songs and poems, together with verbal
processes like naming, rhetoric, or tongue twisters. It tends to highlight aesthetic aspects
and challenges the (sometimes) limited focus of oral literature on lengthy textually
articulated forms by its attention to small-scale spoken arts. It thus facilitates the
treatment of all forms of verbal art together while avoiding the loaded associations of the
term oral. The cost is the loss of parallels with literary approaches, so some researchers
still prefer oral literature, particularly for analysing “literary” genres like heroic poetry or
lengthy narratives. If taken literally, verbal art implies a limitation to words, but most
scholars using the term are now also sensitive to nonverbal aspects of performance.
“Performance” is another key concept, leading to the popularity of terms like
performed art, performed genres, performance literature, and so on. Such terms usefully
alert us to the multiplex processes by which oral literary forms are circulated and
realized, rather than focussing just on the “products” or the texts (see Okpewho 1990).
This terminology thus challenges the model of the essentially verbal, one-line, and singlevoice
basis sometimes read into the term literature, by raising questions about the other
elements—and participants—in the performance event as a whole and bringing African
practices within the nowflourishing transdisciplinary field of performance studies.
A more recently developed concept is that of “popular culture.” This raises interesting
issues. It has some advantages over arguably backward-looking terms like oral tradition,
folklore, or even oral literature, looking to new forms and technologies that are of
immediate interest to people today, not least to young people (see, for example, Barber
1996, Furniss 1996). It emphasises the new, not the old, draws attention to everyday, not
just “traditional” settings, avoids the temptations of romantic nostalgia, and widens the