African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 748
Roberts, Allen. 1986. Social and Historical Contexts of Tabwa Art. In The Rising of a New Moon:
A Century of Tabwa Art. Ed. Allen Roberts and Evan Maurer. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Weghsteen, Joseph. 1962. Origine et dispersion des hommes d’apres les legendes tabwa. Annali del
Pontifico Museo Ethnologico Lateranensi Vaticano 26:213–219.
ALLEN F.ROBERTS
See also Dilemma Tales; Folktales; Proverbs
PROSE NARRATIVES AND
PERFORMANCE: THE TUAREG
The Tuareg are a socially stratified, seminomadic people who speak a Berber language
(Tamadheq), adhere to Islam, and predominate in the contemporary nation states of Niger
and Mali, as well as parts of Libya, Algeria, and Burkina Faso. Tuareg verbal art
specialists, although characterized by some flexibility and overlap, generally follow
inherited social stratum, age and gender categories.
Tuareg Folklore: The Roles of Specialists
Blacksmiths often provide social commentary in folktales and songs, and act as “gatekeepers,”
helping to arrange noble marriages, given their status outside nobles’ descent
system. Blacksmiths also serve as artisans and general handy persons. Their music
specialty is praise singing and percussion instrumentals, namely small drums called
acanza. They are played at rites of passage, while the tende drum is played at festivals
and female spirit possession rituals. Smiths tell animal tales illustrating human social
situations and moral points.
Young noble men, and in some regions, also women, specialize in sung poetry,
sometimes accompanied by a one-stringed, bowed lute call anzad, which is played by a
woman. Men sing poems outside villages and camps in the company of age-mates and
those with whom they share familiar joking relationships.
Young girls of diverse social origins tell origin tales of female matrilineal clan
ancestors and animal stories. Women often tell tales as they weave mats at night, inside
the maternal tent that a married woman owns, with close kinspersons present. Women
also tell tales while they are in the pastures herding their livestock. Some tales have sung
verses embedded within the plots, at intervals; these usually represent lamentations.
Messelane, or riddles, are more formalized, always told by a pair of persons, each
alternating in the rhyming couplet question and answer. Tuareg call riddles the “brother
of tales” (amadray n imayen) because they are “next to (i.e., similar to) each other.”
Children learn riddles from their mother. Old women sing songs in each other’s company
on gathering expeditions and perform Islamic liturgical music near the mosque on Islamic