African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 629
types of tale are similar in many ways, the former often contains a song or songs and is
mostly told to children, while the latter usually does not contain songs and is most often
told to adults. The categories are familiar to the Bemba, although there is also no great
care taken to keep the classifications “pure,” in any sense of enforcement of rules of
performance or strictures against certain people telling the respective stories.
Narratives are also classified by the context in which they are performed. For example,
certain narratives focus on past kings or spirits who are important to a society. If they are
recounted at special occasions, sometimes as a part of a ritual, they may be seen to have
religious or even curative significance. Certain forms of divination, such as the Yoruba
Ifa system, include narratives or proverbs in their body of knowledge that are then linked
into the process of establishing the appropriate responses to specific cases. Some tales of
heroes or hunters may be linked to ceremonies of purification for initiation rites or
specific preventative measures, such as before a hunt or a particularly hazardous journey.
In post colonial times, these journeys may include travel to a distant town to work in
mines, industry, or agriculture, or even wayfarers going abroad for study or commercial
reasons.
Sacred or secular, the narratives often have similar plots and activities. In some cases,
the same story may take its particular value from the characters involved. In one set of
tales, the characters may be animals, and all their actions, attitudes, and accomplishments
may be simply seen as humorous and somehow removed from real human concerns. If
the same plots and actions are carried out by human characters, the tales might be seen as
more important or significant in their relationship to the world of people. Even some of
the most intricate or important tales are subject to repetition by anyone who has heard
them. In fact, the continuity of some narratives over time depends on this kind of
transmittal and repetition.
Africa is particularly replete with narratives that treat the adventures of trickster
characters. Though societies from other parts of the world sometimes produce stories
centered on trickster activities, many have inherited the stories from the African diaspora.
Trickster narratives found in the Caribbean, South America, and in the southern United
States can be identified as having African origins. There is a Native American tradition of
trickster stories, but these are often quite different from the African narratives in terms of
characteristics of the trickster and the tone and tenor of the tales. Nonetheless, African
tricksters tend to be small, clever creatures, such as Kwaku Ananse, the spider of Akan
tales; Sungura and Kalulu, the hares of East African and Zambian narratives,
respectively; Mantis, the San trickster; or the tortoise of several Nigerian traditions. The
character of the trickster, the small, clever, and, at times, amoral figure, is often diluted a
bit and found in the person of the young child who is beset by ogres or brutal villains in
other kinds of narrative.
Narrative in Africa reaches a particularly complex, highly textured form in the
performance of epic, which involves a combination of narrative, poetry, and song; the
epic is often sung or chanted to musical accompaniment. The content of these narratives
is usually historical, at least in part, and focuses on a crucial period in the society in
question’s past.