African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 828
The natural world that cultural beings inhabit is one of sound. Noise is natural; it is
silence that must be created. Humans are genetically programmed to speak and to hear.
Normally, people cannot not speak; therefore, to choose silence is a significant act of
humanness. The cessation of sound, the stopping of speech, the choice of silence, this is
always noteworthy. This condition is generally understood to be one of respect and
wisdom among African, as well as traditional American and Asian cultures. As the
Bamana say: “If speech burned your mouth, silence will heal you.”
References
Alberts, Ethel M. 1972. Culture Patterning of Speech Behavior in Burundi. In Directions in
Sociolinguistics, ed. D.Hymes and J. Gumperz. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Boone, Sylvia A. 1986. Radiance from the Waters: Ideals and Feminine Beauty in Mende Art. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Hunter, Linda. 1982. Silence Is Also Language: Hausa Attitudes about Speech and Language.
Anthropological Linguistics 24, no. 4: 389–409.
Klassen, Doreen. 1999. You Can’t Have Silence with Your Palms Up: Ideophones, Gesture, and
Iconicity in Zimbabwean Shona Women’s Ngano (Storysong) Performance. Ph.D. dissertation,
Indiana University.
Lienhardt, Godfrey. 1985. Self, public, private. Some African representations. In The Category of
the Person, edited by M. Carrithers, S.Lukes, and S.Collins. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Peek, Philip M. 1981. The Power of Words in African Verbal Arts. Journal of American Folklore
94, no. 371:19–43.
——. 1994. The Sounds of Silence: Cross-World Communication and the Auditory Arts in African
Societies. American Ethnologist 21, no. 3:474–494.
——. 2000. Re-Sounding Silences. In Sound, ed. P.Kruth and H.Stobart. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press.
Samarin, William J. 1965. Language of Silence. Practical Anthropology 12, no. 2:155–119.
Tannen, Deborah, and M. Saville-Troike, eds. 1985. Perspectives on Silence. Norwood, N.J.:
Ablex.
PHILIP M.PEEK
See also Animals in African Folklore; Divination; Gesture in African Oral
Narrative; Ideophones; Performance
SIYAR: NORTH AFRICAN EPICS
While the epic is absent from classical Arabic literature, the genre, although long ignored
by academia, plays an important role in popular culture throughout a vast area of
Northern Africa.