working on oral traditions and that I found his songs very interesting and relevant to my research. ...... is the first critical approach to the life and realities of Hausa women with an attempt ...... 96 'Diya maza in mutu ba ni goya 'dan shege ba;.
Individual Talent in Contemporary Hausa Oral Poetry
by
Chaibou ELHADJI OUMAROU
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (African Languages and Literature)
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
1996
i
Individual Talent in Contemporary Hausa Oral Poetry
Chaibou Elhadji Oumarou
Under the supervision of Associate Professor Linda Hunter University of Wisconsin-Madison
Abstract: This dissertation focuses on the dynamic role and place of the oral artist in Hausa society in particular, in Africa in general. Through an interdisciplinary approach, it demonstrates how the Parry-Lord theory of oral composition fails to account for many aspects of the artistic and cultural material under scrutiny. The Parry-Lord theory relies heavily on medieval and anthropological theories which deny the individuality of the oral artists and stress their conformity as simple vessels of unchanging communal values. The denial of the oral poets' artistic individuality or authority is the result of the medieval conception of poetry as inspired by either the Muses, gods or God. This conception of the poetic process makes the oral poets look more like seers than artists. Chapter One is a theoretical overview of the most recent perspectives on the literature on oral traditions and the Parry-Lord formulaic theory. Chapter Two examines the songs of Zabia Hussei, a female singer whose personal marital problems have led her to champion the cause of Hausa women. In these songs she emerges as a talented artist with a subjective voice and a literary authority. Chapter Three analyzes the songs of Ali na Maliki, a court singer who criticizes the misuse of power. Ali's attempt to maintain and value the customs of the non-Muslim Anna is a courageous move in a society shaped by Islamic ideals. He also emerges as a talented artist with a personal message.
ii Chapter Four critically re-examines the theoretical foundation of the Parry-Lord oral poetics in light of the styles of Ali and Zabia and suggests new directions for research on oral poetry in Africa. The conclusion draws attention to the neglect of female singers in oral tradition scholarship. Having compared and contrasted a female and a male oral poet, I have come to realize some gender-related differences in their styles and philosophies. I suggest that morefocus is needed on female oral singers and/or more comparative studies regarding male and female oral poets. This approach will bring new insights to and help re-evaluate the current theories of oral literature and critical scholarship.
iii Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the support I received from many people at various levels of the administration during my research in Niger. I owe a debt of gratitude to all of these people. I certainly cannot mention all of them here, but some deserve special thanks. In Zinder I thank Chaibou Chékaraou from ORTN for his collaboration in the recording of the songs. In Maradi I thank Habou Magagi, Chief Administrator for the University branch of the Institute for Research in Human Sciences--IRSH-- for accepting to go with me to visit the King's Palace. His expertise in oral tradition data gathering and his fame as a historian of the Department of Maradi as well as his contacts with the royal family were helpful for my meeting with the King and his entourage. In Niamey I thank Dr. Diouldé‚ Laya, Acting Director for the Center for Linguistic and Historical Studies Through Oral Tradition (CELHTO in French); Dr. Mahaman Garba, Acting National Director for the Center for Training and Promotion of Music (CFPM in French) and Mr. Abdou Majinguini, Acting Secretary General for the Permanent Secretariat for the Reform in Education in National Languages at INDRAP. Finally here in America, my thanks go to all my professors and especially to Professors Scheub and Songolo who helped to shape this project. Special thanks to Professor Hunter, my mentor and adviser, for her continuous support, encouragement and advice. If it is true that I had always wanted to do "something" about Hausa language and culture, a project this big might have never come to be without her nagging encouragement. So to her personally and to everybody who contributed to it I humbly say: Na gode. Allah Shi maida da alheri.
iv Table of Contents:
Abstract........................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements....................................................................................iv Introduction.................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Background.........................................................................12 Chapter Two: Zabia Hussei: A Conformist?.............................................28 I. The Complexity of Hausa Society...............................................28 II. Bori and the Hausa Woman in the Republic of Niger ..............40 III. Zabia Hussei: The Oral Artist and the Social Predicament ......49 Chapter Three: Ali na Maliki: The Poet as an (Unconscious) Iconoclast? .....................................86 I. Faces of Faith in Hausa Oral Poetry ................................87 II. The Mawa'ka in Hausa Society ....................................122 III. The Court and the Mawa'ka in Hausa Society ............127 Chapter Four: Style in Hausa Oral Poetry: The Case of Ali na Maliki and Zabia Hussei ...........146
Conclusion .............................................................................................180 Appendices ............................................................................................185 I. Transcription of the Songs by Zabia Hussei ............................185 II. Translation of the Songs by Zabia Hussei ..............................204 III. Transcription of Ali na Maliki's Songs .................................224 IV. Translation of Ali na Maliki's Songs ....................................257 Bibliography ..........................................................................................289
Introduction The newer things appear to be, the older they really are-Niyi Osundare.
I carried out fieldwork in the Republic of Niger, West Africa, from September 1994 to August 1995. Initially I intended to work with three singers: Balla na Gojé who was a court singer at the King's Palace in Maradi; Dan Allalo, also a court singer at the King's Palace in Zinder; and Chtima Ganga from the court of the King in Diffa. But Ganga died before I left the United States, na Goj just a week after my arrival in Niger and I found Dan Allalo in very bad health. I realized I would have to drastically revise my plan. I had never met him before, but I had heard of Alhaji Ali na Maliki, a singer who criticizes princes, chiefs and kings, not to mention wealthy patrons. Before going to visit him, I went to the National Office of Radio and Television (ORTN) at its studio in Zinder, Southeastern Niger. There I was introduced to Chaibou Chkaraou, the technical agent in charge of recording and programming. He gave me copies of all the songs by Ali na Maliki and some by traditional women singers as well. I first interviewed Alhaji Ali na Maliki early in December 1995. When I introduced myself before the interview, I assured him that I was not sent by any government official. I made it clear that I was a simple student from the University working on oral traditions and that I found his songs very interesting and relevant to my research. He was very pleased to hear that I had gone out of my way to visit him at home and to interview him on his work. 1
Aged between 60 and 70 years, Alhaji Ali is the father of twenty and has been married to thirty two wives. I travelled about 350 km to reach Ali's village. About 100 km of this is a sandy path going through plateaux and precipices. I stayed at his house for two days and I was lucky to find him at home because he travels a lot if he is not with his cattle away from the village. He in fact told me during the interview that he still lives like a nomad, going wherever he must to feed his countless cattle. All in all, we had about six hours of recorded interview. I had brought along his songs which had been recorded in Zinder and their transcriptions. With my notebook open and the cassettes playing on tape, I proceeded to ask him for explanations of words or expressions I did not understand and he was glad to help me fill in the gaps. While the news about my interview was being broken to his family and the whole village, I was soon made to feel like a member of the family. After the traditional water and food especially cooked for me, he ordered one of his sons to quickly bring me fresh milk and high quality cheese from his dairy farm. Meanwhile, others started making a fire for tea which we drank all night long while our conversation and interview progressed. Since it was during the Harmattan period in December, the fire was also needed to keep out the cold! During the interview, I played Ali's songs on one tape recorder while recording everything, including the songs being played, on another tape recorder. I found the method very interesting because I did not have to have the artist perform just for me, a practice which often takes away the spontaneity and naturalness of the performance (see also Okpewho 1992: 67). To be recorded is already a measure of success and popularity because many performers do not make it to the recording studios. It is also
2
a fact that recording is fast replacing the traditional face-to-face encounter between the performer and the audience. In addition, recordings broaden the scope of the audience for the performers. They become exposed to a wider audience in time and space. Zumthor (1990:191) argues that transistors individualize performance, giving the owner the option of listening to a song when and where he or she desires. Because the transistors do not show the performance, they alter what Zumthor calls the external form of the oral poetry that is transmitted to us. By external form I mean body language or corporeal movements, clothing and colors. Scheub (1970, 1971, 1975a, 1975b, 1977a, 1977b, 1985, 1987) has demonstrated how important the external form can be in oral performance in general, in story-telling in particular. Important as this external form can be, I do think that one can apply my method and still be able to preserve the essence of the performance in oral poetry. Moreover, just like a play script has to be adjusted to a stage performance, an oral performance has to be modified as it is being fixed in writing (Fine 1984). In either case there are some aspects that will have to be kept out (such as the body language mentioned above) and others to be added (for example a descriptive analysis to further contextualize the songs for the readers) as the result of the passage from one mode of representation to another; in this case from live performances to texts through recordings. Discussing the changes that have to be made during the passage from an oral tale to a written tale in the French oral tradition, Dany Hadjadj writes:
3
En effet l'exigence de cohrence est lie au passage du dire l'criture. Dans le conte dit, le conteur procde gnralement par simple juxtaposition de traits-- peu d'lments syntaxiques de liaison, peu d'indications notant les changements de lieu ou de point de vue-- sans que cela nuise la comprhension, puisque une intonation, un silence, une mimique suffisent assurer la continuit du rcit.
Indeed the demand for coherence is linked to the passage from orality to writing. In an oral tale the storyteller generally proceeds by simple juxtaposition of features--few syntactic elements for coordination, few indications registering the changes of place or of point of view-without hindrance to comprehension because an intonation, a silence, a mimicking are sufficient to assure the continuity of the narrative (in Frontire du conte, 1982: 62; my translation).
What is important in storytelling in terms of external appearance during a performance is not necessarily so with oral poetry as a performance. Changes have to be made from the performance in oral poetry to recording. The primacy of the voice in the oral poetry performance minimizes the loss in external appearance during the recording process. Musical accompaniment, if used by the performer, is important in the sense that it adds to the rhythm of the songs. Note also the fact that with modern technology the oral singer does not always have to go to a recording studio. Most of the songs I brought from Zinder were recorded by professional journalists for the
4
national cultural and musical archives. Recordings might be made during the annual youth festivals which were gatherings of national artists who performed to compete with others. They might also be on other occasions where the artists were invited to perform either for private patrons or for some officials. On rare occasions, the artists were asked to perform in studios for the archives. I applied the same method to interview Zabia Hussei, one of the female singers suggested by Chkaraou. I travelled about 500 km to her village, Dessam Magaji, in the region of Galmi, in Tahoua. About 100 km of the road is also a dangerous road meandering between high plateaux and ravines. Unlike my visit to Ali, I was not lucky to find her at home. She had gone to Tahoua, the capital city of the same state, to see her mother. As I came to Dessa at dusk, I spent the night with her family where her husband and sons made me feel comfortable. By early morning her son and I had agreed to go to Tahoua to meet her. We arrived at Tahoua around 4 p.m. on 12 January 1995. Because I was not looking for a performance, I asked her if it was possible to start the interview right away. The presence of her own son with me was already an assurance to her, but I did introduce myself and explain the reason why I was there. As she agreed to do the interview at my convenience, we started right away in a room made ready for the occasion. There were three of us: Zabia Hussei, her son Kadri and me. We finished the interview around 9 p.m. Chapter One of the present work is the theoretical background. It traces the genesis of this dissertation while giving an overview of the most recent perspectives on the literature on oral traditions and formulaic theory.
5
Chapter Two is an analysis of the work of Zabia Hussei. Between 50 and 60 years old, she is a singer who finds some traditions of her community stifling. Special attention will be paid to how her unhappiness has led her to adopt a critical attitude towards her environment as well as how the attitude is expressed artistically through a personal poetic metalanguage. In the process I hope to be able to show not only her conflict with her society, but also how her own individuality has gradually emerged as a consequence. It is this individuality which shows her not just as a talented oral singer fully aware of her role but also as a female artist evolving among both female and male singers. Most of her songs are based on her own personal experience, as a young girl and then as a married woman in a world where parents and males have more than their share of authority. She appears to be a conformist at first glance, but closer scrutiny uncovers an explosive and rebellious character beneath the stereotyped formulas she uses. Chapter Three is devoted to the singer Ali na Maliki, now a court singer who originally sang only for the Anna or Maguzawa commonly referred to as "Pagans". Despite the prevailing influence of Islam, he still sings for the few remaining Anna in addition to chiefs and wealthy patrons. Ali criticizes princes, chiefs and wealthy patrons alike. Rumor has it that there was a time when a chief ordered him not to even cross his territory as the result of Ali's criticism of the chief. The singer denied this charge when I asked him indirectly. In his dissertation on the Hausa music of Niger, Mahaman Garba (1992) notes that during the first Republic, that is during the Diori government which was the first
6
after independence, traditional singers were used by politicians who exploited their knowledge of oral traditions for political purposes. Those singers who refused to collaborate were sent to jail while others took to the road of exile. He thus concludes that the griot can be and is often used as an agent of (national) development or the opposite: e.g justification of autocratic rule. I have chosen Ali and Zabia because of their daring and often unorthodox compositions in their respective communities. As with Zabia, I demonstrate that Ali has a personality of his own which distinguishes him from his peers. Although he is not as popular as Alhaji Maman Shata of Nigeria, Alhaji Ali resembles him in the content of his songs. In fact, like Shata, Ali's songs often lack the typical moralistic tone of Hausa written poetry. His pagan ego seems to survive his religious faith, at least in his songs. Chapter Four is an analysis of the styles (salo or fasaha) of both Ali and Zabia. For the purpose of this dissertation, an individual talent is an oral artist (ma'kerin baka; fem. ma'keriyar baka) who, as it will appear more clearly in the next pages, takes a critical stance toward his or her culture and society, not just to assert their own interests against the group's, community's or society's, but to speak to either of them in order to engage in a positive and constructive dialogue for the benefit of all. Hausa poetry (wa'ka; pl. wa'koki) is both oral and written. Dalhatu Muhammad (1979) rightly claims that Hausa oral poetry (wa'kar baka) is not as Islamic in spirit and content as the written poetry (wa'kar takarda) which treats topics Islamic in attitude (Hiskett 1975). In terms structure, written poetry is influenced by the Arabic
7
metric system (Greenberg 1949; Galadanci 1975; Hiskett 1975; Zaria 1978). Isma'il Junaidu (1981) describes its patterns as traditionally based on the patterns of classical Arabic poetry, its regular meter and rhyming schemes. Oral poetry, on the other hand, is indigenous to Hausaland. In addition to being more secular in content and spirit, the oral poetry lacks features such as regular meter and rhyming schemes. Muhammad describes the characteristics of Hausa oral poetry as follows: it sometimes involves group composition and its performance is a) oral; b) typically in public; c) most often in groups with a solo performer or chorus and d) it may be musically accompanied. He also identifies areas of interaction between the two genres. The written poetry influences the oral poetry on the levels of theme and attitude as when a singer eulogizes (yin yabo or wa'ke) the Prophet or other Islamic icons of great importance. Occasionally the influence is felt in the prosody as in cases where blind singers imitate Arabic metrics in their oral composition. The influence of oral poetry on written poetry is in relation to the areas of performance and structure. Muhammad notes some examples of literate Muslims performing in groups with solos or choruses in religious brotherhoods such as the Qadriyya and Tijjaniya sufi sects, in children's Islamiyya school poetry and in political election campaign poetry. Sometimes the performance is characterized by a rudimentary musical accompaniment in the form of hand-clapping. At the level of structure, oral poetry can be seen to influence written poetry when poets such as Akilu Aliyu and Aliyu na Mangi claim to have modelled some of their poems on the songs of women pounding millet. Zabia Hussei and Ali na Maliki are illiterate oral artists. They both perform
8
with choruses. Ali has a musical accompaniment in addition to the chorus.
Notes on the Performers and Transcription: Each transcription in the analysis is followed by a literal translation and then by a free translation. To facilitate reference, Zabia's songs are numbered by line because she does not name them. Reference is made to Ali's songs by the name of the song under analysis. The Kano dialect has been officially adopted as Standard Hausa in both the Federal Republic of Nigeria and in the Republic of Niger. I have chosen non-standard spelling where necessary to reflect actual pronunciation and dialect variation. I have used 'b, 'd 'k, ts and 'y for the glottalized consonants. I have not indicated tone or vowel length. For stylistic reasons I have shown the dialectical differences which I consider as part of the styles of the performers. The chorus from Zabia's poetry has not been transcribed because it repeats the same thing throughout the songs. It consists of iye-iye-iye-e-e, na-na-iye, ai-iye-iye-naiye. Although this has no lexical meaning that can add to the understanding of the transcribed and translated songs, the chorus contributes towards balancing the rhythm of the songs. Its presence also adds some prestige to the oral performance as well as to the lead singer herself. Zabia started singing when she was a budurwa (an unmarried girl) between 12 and 16 years old. The line-breaks correspond to her pauses for breathing. The lines of Ali's chorus have been transcribed because they contribute to the performance by adding their own thoughts to it. The line-breaks reflect pauses.
9
Chapter One: Background
Interprter et (est) moderniser les classiques To interpret and (is) to modernize the ClassicsAndrian Marino.
When I first decided to embark on the study of Hausa oral poetry, my main concern was to test it against the Parry-Lord Theory of oral composition. According to their theory, the use of formulas and/or formulaic expressions as well as the absence of literary devices such as enjambment is the proof of orality par excellence. In The Singer of Tales (1976), Lord quotes Parry's definition of the formula as " `a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given idea' " (4). In his efforts to make the theory more accommodating, Lord also includes formulaic expressions which he defines as "a line or half-line constructed on the pattern of the formula" (4). According to Lord, "The most stable formulas will be those for the most common ideas of the poetry. They will express the names of the actors, the main actions, time, and place. Thus in the line, vino pije kraljevicu Marko, "Kraljevic Marko is drinking wine," Kraljevic Marko presents the hero in a complete second-halfline formula. Kraljevic, properly a title, "king's son," or "prince", is treated as a patronymic. In another line, Sultan Selim rataotvorio, "Sultan Selim declared war," the title, "Sultan" makes it possible to name Selim in a four-syllable initial formula" (Lord 1981: 34).
10
But since the publication of The Singer of Tales, the formulaic theory has come under severe scrutiny and attack. As a result of the interest it generated, scholars and students of oral traditions have conducted fieldwork in different corners of the world. They have come to the conclusion that the most important contribution of formulaic theory is the study of oral style and the manner of oral composition. However they have found faults with formulaic theory in its lack of interest in the meaning of oral poetry and in its neglect of oral artists as individual members of their societies capable of influencing and shaping their respective social, political and cultural institutions. This is because, as J. M. Foley (1981) forcefully argues, Lord's hypothesis is based on the "manuscript texts" of Homer applied to the South Slavic living tradition of long epic narratives. This argument meets with Lord's approval in The Singer Resumes the Tale (1995) when he states that "because the study of oral traditional literature has so concentrated on epic, the application of the oral theory to other kinds of oral poetry may lead to difficulty. The ballad has presented one thorny problem, and short forms in general another" (167). Many scholars have followed Lord's theory without examining whether or not a theory based on long epic narratives can be applied unchanged to any oral narratives regardless of context and length. The result has been that in the formulation of their theories about oral traditional literature and its composition, they have forgotten to heed Lord's advice to respect the integrity of genres. By this he means that an epic or a tale or a riddle belong to different categories. Foley subscribes to the theory by warning that kind should be compared with kind; that is to say an epic must be compared with an epic, not with a riddle or a tale.
11
There is no question that a cross-cultural comparison of oral poetry as well as a comparison of genres such as epic, proverbs or tales is needed. But the comparison between genres seems more relevant only in what Foley calls the diachronic aspect of the study of oral tradition. By diachronic aspects one should read the cultural similarities and relationships among genres across cultural frontiers. Foley also suggests that like any literary text, orally-derived texts cannot and should not be taken out of context. This is because tradition has its webs of cultural connections which reach back into its pre-textual (that is pre-recorded or pre-written) history and which inform the present avatar of its identity. These connections are the equivalent of the modern term of intertextuality as defined by Michael Riffaterre (1980:4). In the light of these observations it is imperative for a student of African oral traditional literature to be cautious in the handling of oral materials. For if, as Alfred Joanroy (1973) rightly argues, the study of the orally-derived texts of Dante and Petrarch has led to the discovery of the Troubadours and their art of oral composition in medieval Europe, it is nonetheless unlikely that the study of the Homeric texts as well as the South Slavic ones lead to the discovery of the African bards and their art of oral composition. In other words, it is good to know about the oral traditional literatures of other cultures as a background, but to simply transpose all the lessons and conclusions drawn from that knowledge to the text under analysis is a mistake. It is also Foley who warns comparatists who are eager to apply the Parry-Lord theory to orally-derived texts coming from different contexts and cultures. He argues in essence that " as long as scholars commit the egregious sin of importing models and definitions directly from ancient Greek to other poetries without taking account of
12
necessary differences in prosody and versification, nothing can be proved". In fact, he believes that the formulaic test "as it has been carried out proves nothing except the extent the compared work can be measured to the Homeric one" (Foley 1981:126; his emphasis). Unlike in Europe where critical studies on individual poets such as Homer or the South Slavic Guslar abound, works on specific oral performers are very few in Africa, a situation which continues to do injustice to the many talented oral artists who are condemned to live in the frame of anonymity designed and imposed by structural anthropology and folkloristics. In fact according to Zumthor (1990: 167) folklore means anonymity and impersonal traditions. "Calling on the anonymity of a text," Zumthor adds, "indicates not the simple absence of a name but rather an insurmountable lack of knowledge about it. For this reason performance itself is never anonymous" (169). The lack of knowledge about the name of a performer or an oral artist is not insurmountable however. A few scholars have found individual artists and have attempted to deny their anonymity by focusing on their literary or artistic individuality as opposed to Western materialistic individualism. Two of the scholars are Harold Scheub (1975, 1992) with his work with Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, a Xhosa performer from Southern Africa and Dandatti Abdulkadir (1975) with Alhaji Maman Shata, the famous Hausa singer and oral poet from Nigeria. Both Scheub (folk-tales) and Abdulkadir (oral poetry) have dealt with compositions in the form of narratives, of songs or poems. Both consider that the form, meaning, and function of oral poetry and narratives deserve equal emphasis.
13
Lord himself has recognized the limitations of his method and has made some concessions as a result. In his paper (1990), "Perspectives on Recent Works on the Oral Traditional Formula," he admits the relevance and importance of new models of poetic traditions emerging from fieldwork in many parts of the world. Furthermore, he concedes in a different paper (1990) on "Perspectives on Recent Work on Oral Literature" that although he has "spoken almost exclusively of stylistic matters, because it is through style that we have tried to identify and characterize oral literature, one should not forget the many other aspects of oral literature, above all its function and meaning" (53). This is a different Lord from the one in The Singer of Tales. In this important book, the dogmatic Lord also firmly believes that oral traditional literature is very conservative. His argument is rooted in his conviction that "it is of the necessary nature of tradition that it seek and maintain stability, that it preserve itself. [...] The traditional oral singer is not an artist; he is a seer. The patterns of thought that he has inherited came into being to serve not art but religion in its most basic sense" ( in DeLavan Foley 1981: 78). Lord is not alone in believing that oral societies are in general conservative. As a matter of fact, many a medievalist believes so because of philological preoccupations with manuscripts written in the Middle Ages. It is therefore not surprising if those orally-derived texts show some degree of conservatism because in the Middle Ages the individuality of the empirical "I" (Spitzer's name for literary authority) is less important compared to the Word of the Book (see also Regalado 1981; Minnis 1984). It is indeed Spitzer's firm conviction that it is the medieval tendency to worship
14
all books as deriving from the Book of Books (i.e. the Bible) that made the empirical "I" (that is the literary authority or the artistic individuality) secondary compared to the community or society. In other words, the writer or the oral performer is denied the authority of his or her ideas which are considered as coming from God. When a performer tries to assert that authority as the author of his or her ideas, he or she is considered as lacking in humility or modesty. E. R. Curtus backs up both Lord and Spitzer by bringing an additional element from Greek tradition. Thus it is believed that in Greek epic tradition the poet has little relevance as an individual artist/performer " because [he] merely reproduces what the Muses have told him concerning ancient things " (W. Kroll quoted in Curtus 1953: 515). Whether it is the Muse or Christianity, one has to wonder if all medieval or Greek artists studied so far are Christian or inspired by the Muses. The fact is that this perception of the medieval artist as a religious vessel has so pervaded all the medieval-anthropologically inspired theories of oral literature that even in Africa one senses the power of the Muses, of Christianity or Islam in almost every song or poem. But be it in Africa or elsewhere, in the absence of clear and irrefutable evidence on the lives of those artists one has room to doubt the medievalanthropological models of interpretations. For as Nicolaisen (1995) rightly observes, just because we do not know the names of medieval authors " does not diminish their personal role in such acts; nor does it argue for communal creation and re-creation of such items." In addition, even if there were collective works, it is "the gifted individuals or
15
the appointed or accepted, often hereditary, guardians and curators of tradition who are the preservers and transmitters of the content of the group's, community's cultural lore in its multifaceted actualization of the traditional models" (Nicolaisen 1995: 4). In the light of all these changes in research and scholarship in oral literature, one can only appreciate the courage with which Lord has critically reconsidered his assumptions and theories. Except for the stylistic aspect where he still believes that no change in basic metric or poetic structure is needed, he concedes that oral tradition is not " a rigidly monolithic nor static body of story or song. It contains within itself much that is subject to change, though at differing rates, from one period to another... [...] Dangerous as it may be, the new wine could be put into old wineskins" (Nicolaisen 1995:8; emphasis added). The focus of the present work is to show how new wine is (being) put into old Hausa wineskins, despite some claims to the contrary. I intend to analyze how two Hausa oral artists, Zabia Hussei and Alhaji Ali na Maliki often get drunk with wine out of old bottles. In other words, my emphasis will be not on their manner of composition but rather on their individualities as talented artists who often challenge tradition to alter its course. In fact, the role and place of the artist in the traditional African context have not always had the attention they deserve. It has been suggested that, as an individual, the artist identifies with and reaffirms social conventions and institutions without serious criticism and innovation. The Cameroonian critic, Thomas Melone (1970), says that
16
le peuple de l'Afrique traditionnelle a toujours excerc sur les productions artistiques et littraires un contrle troit et une influence fconde (20)
The people of traditional Africa have always exercised a tight control and a fruitful influence on the literary and artistic creations.
Later, Melone goes even further to suggest that the artist brings nothing personal at all because everything belongs to the public. But as Songolo (1981) argues, if it is almost impossible to determine when and how the artist is compelled to go against the norms, as Bernadette Cailler suggests, or to determine the dynamic of literary creation, it is perhaps reasonable to say that "elle fait toujours dj partie intgrante de tout systme social" (it is always already part and parcel of any social system) (21). Within that social system, the oral or traditional artist has the possibility to create something original and even subversive. This is because, as Songolo suggests,
L'oeuvre orale...n'est fige que dans la mesure o elle est virtuelle, c'est--dire comme simple potentialit dans la conscience collective ou individuelle; elle devient dynamique, changeante, avec chaque nouvelle performance [Songolo's italics] qui, au lieu d'tre une simple rptition des gestes et de mots...constitue une nouvelle actualisation matrielle de l'oeuvre, jamais pareille la
17
prcdente, la contestant mme parfois, et faisant violence la fixit du contenu, et celle de la forme (21) (c'est moi qui souligne).
The oral work...is fixed only when it is considered as virtual, that is to say, as a simple potentiality in the collective and individual conscience. It becomes dynamic, changing with each new performance [Songolo's italics] which, instead of being a mere repetition of gestures and words...constitutes a new material actualization of the work, never identical to the previous one, sometimes even challenging it while doing violence to the fixity of content and to that of form (emphasis added).
It follows that the oral artist is not a passive vessel or mediator that carries unchanged values from one generation to another. Artistically or otherwise, Apter (n.d.) and Opland (1980) have found that the oral artist has a certain freedom to create and criticize as he or she deems right. Harold Scheub (1975, 1992) has taken the case a step further by demonstrating how Nogenile Masithathu Zenani, the southern African performer he worked with, uses "expansible image" and "core-clich/ core-image" for artistic creativity during oral performances. As an image that can be expanded as often as the performer wishes, the expandable image is most useful in repetition where it helps to achieve aesthetic and thematic force. As for the core-image, Scheub says, it is composed of the core-clich and allied details. It is the key structural element in the artistic production of the Ntsomi performances. It is clear by now that change is part and parcel of oral tradition. Even the once
18
unconditional opponent of the idea, Lord (1995) himself, has come to the realization that
the more we learn about oral traditional style and about oral tradition itself, the more we are aware that traditional singers can and do have a great deal of freedom and sometimes bend the parameters of the verse and even create new words. Oral traditional literature is dynamic. While it preserves older stories, it also engenders new ones from older materials or by analogy with the traditional narrative element. Tradition is always changing within the parameters of the traditional society and its traditional media [...] New ideas that cannot fit into the traditional patterns, yet which must be expressed may lead to the creation of new, non-traditional literature (quoted in Nicolaisen: 16; Lord's emphasis).
The non-traditional literature of which Lord speaks is in reality the oral singers' individual contribution to the group's or community's cultural heritage as the result of his or her conscious and personal endeavor to express his or her vision of life. Of the embattled notion of conservatism in oral societies we are now left only with Songolo's perceived difficulty in determining how far we should go in the past or history in order to establish the emergence of the artistic or literary self. But since the notion of individual oral artist has gained some ground (Curtus 1953; Dronke 1986, 1994; Lee 1990; Nicolaissen 1995), I would rather focus on Songolo's point concerning the dynamism of oral societies.
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His argument is that the dynamic of literary creation has always existed and whether or not it is perceived as subversive or conservative depends on the artist or the critic. With regard to the critics, R. Lemarchand (1981) criticizes those who reduce clientelism and oral traditions in general to an "organicist concept" born and nurtured by the conservative soil of structural anthropology. By focusing on a vision of society as a whole, this concept, I think after Lemarchand, excludes "conflict situations" which show individuals in conflict with some form of their traditions; therefore excluding their individual contributions to the resolution of those conflicts and their efforts to help their societies. In that respect, M. a M. Ngal (1977) rejects the conservatism and conformism beneath stereotyped formulas and remarks that there is a true labor of creativity which is rather the product of the active dynamism of the individual genius. "Since tradition is a communal reservoir from which everybody can draw something, creativity is the active reaction of the artist who re-expresses that given in his/her own fashion. For it is this `fashion' that truly constitutes literary creation" (343). It is also that fashion which creates literary individuality and/or authority. This overview of past and recent perspectives on oral traditions of Africa clearly shows that for a long time many a student of African oral traditional literatures has been comfortable believing that the oral artist has no business expressing his or her individuality in a socio-cultural environment where conformity and collective actions are the norms. Such a view of the oral artist in Africa is the result of a methodological distortion of some realities by the humanist evolutionism resulting, as Emilio Jorge Rodriguez (1994) argues, in a disregard of certain crucial aspects of the
20
cultural material under scrutiny. Important as they are to any serious analysis of African verbal art, the literary-artistic values of the African folk-tradition; the demarcation and identification of the role played by the bard, story-teller, or griot have simply been obscured by the theory of collective creation. But in the seventies the methodology began to change under the influence of some researchers such as Ruth Finnegan, H. T. Norris, Harold Scheub, and Daniel P. Kunene (Rodriguez 1994). Since then a generation of African researchers, sensitive to the need to correct and adjust the Eurocentric angles of inquiry, has emerged and it continues to grow. As a product of my research on that generation, the present work is an attempt to further problematize that Eurocentric line of investigation. In so doing, I will try, as much as possible, to avoid following what Mary Louise Lord (1995) calls "the theories and analyses that hover high in the stratosphere without ever descending to the terra firma of the poet's own words" (xi; emphasis added). So in what follows I will carry out a close textual analysis. This promises to be an exciting and challenging task because Hausa oral poetry is still relatively unexplored. In fact, as far as I know, there are few works in the line of the ones done by Scheub and Abdulkadir. In addition, most of the other studies on the Hausa oral poetry are general in nature and are scattered in monographs. The only exceptions are Bettina Haeussler's MA thesis, "A Poet of the People: Orality and Music in the Songs of Alhaji Maman Shata" (1987) and Beverly Mack's dissertation, "Wakokin Mata: Hausa Women's Oral Poetry" (1981). Dandatti Abdulkadir's dissertation is the third full-length study to date. Of these three works, Haeussler's and Abdulkadir's treat the famous oral poet,
21
Alhaji Maman Shata, as an individual talent and literary authority. This means that he expresses his own vision of life even though it does not always reflect the wishes of the status quo. In this case Shata is not a vessel carrying unchanged received ideas. Mack has also shown how some Hausa women oral poets try to articulate their personal concerns despite some limitations coming from traditions and Islam. By and large, the three works are the first to have focused on the role and place of the oral artist in the traditional Hausa society. This work combines the insight of these earlier studies with fresh perspectives from other cultures. The aim is to challenge the formulaic theory and the literary criticism that has resulted from their application to oral traditions and oral literature all over the world. In doing so the work further draws attention to the role and place of the oral poet and poetry while focusing on the dynamism of Hausa oral society. As the first work addressing the Hausa oral poetry of Niger, it also brings an additional experience and insight to the cultures and literatures of the world. My approach to this Hausa oral poetry departs from the traditional one. Because of the latter's roots in ethnographic, folkloristic and anthropological methods, the traditional approach to African oral literature in general has tended to put emphasis on how the environment, especially the social environment, influenced the oral artist's work. This is also the conclusion reached by Isidore Okpewho in African Oral Literature: Background, Character, and Continuity (1992). Okpewho goes on to point out the lack of interest in the evidence of individual skills which are signs of the artist's identity and personality. The interest in literary or stylistic aspects, what Okpewho has called the individual skills and techniques, is of prime importance for
22
me as a student of literature. Finally, my approach is concerned with the theoretical aspects of (Hausa) oral poetry in particular and of oral literature in general. The Hausa oral poetry dealt with in this dissertation provides a fertile ground for the exploration of these different yet interconnected avenues for a more comprehensive critical theory of African oral poetry.
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Chapter Two Zabia Hussei: A Conformist? I The Complexity of Hausa Society
Hausa society is very dynamic and complex (Hama 1967; Nicolas 1965, 1975). Historical contacts (Al-Hajj 1968; Hamani 1975, 1989; Leroux 1948; Urvoy 1955) with different languages and cultures across West and North Africa have contributed to enriching Hausa language and culture and to making Hausa society one of the most diverse in Africa. Mahdi Adamu, in The Hausa Factor in West Africa (1978), has analyzed the dynamics of Hausa culture. As a cultural historian, he has demonstrated how minority groups have been Hausanized owing to the influence of the Hausa language as a lingua franca in West Africa and to the centuries-old trading activities of the Hausa people. The spread of the Hausa language as a lingua franca is illustrative of the nature of the cultural exchange which has followed the contacts between the Hausa and the other peoples in West and North Africa. Even though a lingua franca can be imposed as the result of a conquest (for example French and English in Africa), language historians such as John H. Fisher have also argued that clear linguistic frontiers are sometimes the result of war and politics. This is because, I think, without peace and trust between people, it is almost impossible for any multi-ethnic society to develop and to have a strong metalinguistic situation conducive to the emergence of a lingua franca.
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In The Emergence of Standard English (1996), language historian John H. Fisher examines the metalinguistic situation and how standard English has emerged in England. On the larger scale of continental Europe, he analyzes how Italy, France and Spain have developed national languages. He also demonstrates how their experiences have influenced England in the development of its national language and cultural characteristics. After the analysis of the cultural experiences of these four nations over centuries in terms of the dynamics of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic relationships, Fisher comes to the conclusion that "areas with uninterrupted cultural development have blurred linguistic frontiers" (66). In his article about animism and Islam in the region of Maradi around 1944, the French colonial anthropologist H. Leroux (1948) notes the numerous migrations, invasions and multiple contacts which have characterized the inhabitants of the region. He analyzes the interaction between Islam and the Hausa traditional religion (bori) as practiced by the Gobirawa (from Gobir) and the Katsinawa (from Maradi). After an attempt to classify the many gods from both Gobir and Maradi, Leroux correctly writes, agreeing with Fisher, that
les migrations, les invasions et les contacts multiples ont rendu ces diffrences ethniques floues et il est peu prs impossible de faire une distinction sur cette base.
The migrations, invasions and multiple contacts have made those ethnic differences blurred and it is almost impossible to make a distinction on
25
this basis (608).
Leroux's attempt to classify the gods of the Gobirawa and Katsinawa on an ethnic basis is the result of the claim by historians and by the Gobirawa themselves that they (the Gobirawa) have come from Turkey or from Egypt. But Leroux's analysis of their beliefs shows only a very small difference in the name of a few gods the great majority of which are found among the Katsinawa of Maradi. Furthermore, the Gobirawa and the Katsinawa are in a joking relationship with each other as I will show in Chapter Three. Also as Leroux has noted, they often practice their sacrifices together as is the case with bu'din daji, the annual ritual of the opening of the forest which precedes the hunting season. It is also the moment when the future of the new year is revealed. Leroux notes that even the Islamized Hausa join in the final phase of the ritual when the future is going to be foreseen. In terms of inter-ethnic contacts, John E. Lavers (1980) has pointed out what could be a sign of long historical contacts between the Hausa and the Songhai. Lavers notes that the Songhai chronicler Abdal-Rahman Al-Sa'idi's "maternal grandfather was apparently of Hausa origin for he was named Al-Hassan Al-Hawsiya" (114), that is, Hassan the Hausa man. Likewise, Yves Urvoy has also described similar contacts between the Hausa people and their neighbors in L'art dans le territoire du Niger (1955), a collection of his field observations and personal reflections as a colonial administrator. He was working with the then Institut Franais d'Afrique Noire (IFAN), French Institute for Black Africa. The book was actually published after his untimely death. Urvoy was interested in three major groups: the Tuareg, the Peuls (Fulani), and
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the `Sudanese': the Hausa, the Songhai, the Zarma and the Kanouri or Beri-Beri. According to him, "Ces trois groupes ont depuis longtemps d'troits rapports et vivent en grande partie mlangs." (8) [`These three groups have for a long time close relationships and live for the most part mixed together']. Nobody has yet established conclusively who the "original" Hausa are in Maradi or elsewhere. According to Leroux, even the most influential personalities in the bori religion do not point to any ancestry linking them to either the Katsinawa or the Gobirawa. But it seems that the terms they use to call themselves, according to Leroux's work, trace their origin to present day Nigeria. It is my opinion that Leroux is ignorant of the significance of these names partly because he did not go to British Nigeria to verify their meanings and partly because of his inability to read English. Finally, the state of research on the Hausa people has changed since then even though the mystery surrounding their origin has not. The only certainty is concerning their centuries-old contacts with the Arabs and the Mediterranean Civilization (see Hamani 1989; Jabbur 1995: 475 and passim). The terms Anna and Maguzawa, as we will see later, do not refer to the origin of the Hausa people. Djibo Hamani (1975, 1989) in his contribution to the history of the Hausa people has brought some light on the distinction between the terms Anne and Bamaguje. The term Azne (pl. Azna) is used in the Hausa of the West among the Arawa (Dogon Doutchi), Gobirawa (Gobir), Kabawa (Kebi), and Adarawa (Ader/Tahoua). As for the term Anne or Arne (pl. Arna), it is used mainly by the Hausa of the East: Kano and Katsina. Hamani adds that in the North of Nigeria, the term Anne is used to designate any person who is neither Muslim nor Christian. He
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specifies that the term Azne is the authentic Hausa term for designating an animist as opposed to the term Maguzawa which has an Arabic origin as it will be seen below. With regard to origin, recent research indicates that the Azna have migrated from the North in the Sahel region. Hamani (1975, 1989) is of the opinion that they have lived there long before the Tuareg. It was the combined impact of Tuareg warfare and the drought in the Sahara desert that was responsible for the Azna's migration to the south towards present day Nigeria. Whereas the Gobirawa apparently migrated to present day Gobir in one single block, as Hamani argues, most of the other Azna came in small groups to different locations between Ar and the North of Nigeria. Almost all the groups claim that they originally came from the East: Beaucoup de ces peuples se disent d'ailleurs originaires d'un lieu situ au-del de l'Ar, l'Est, parfois la Mecque, ce qui n'est pas pour surprendre dans une rgion influence depuis des sicles par l'Islam. Many of these peoples consider themselves as originally coming from a place located "beyond Ar", "to the East", sometimes "from Mecca"; this should not come as a surprise in a region influenced by Islam for centuries (Hamani 1975: 28) Other ethnic groups such as the Songhai and the Zarma also consider themselves as having come from the East (Mounkala 1989; Gado 1980, Gado 1993). Because of the diversity of Hausa cultural fabric and the potential of the Hausa language for expansion and change, Jerome Barkow (1973) has wisely suggested using
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the term "Hausa civilization" to show the contributions of the different sub-groups using Hausa as a lingua franca. Thus the term "Hausa civilization" has the advantage of broadening our perspective because it includes diversity as well as unity. Barkow has forcefully argued that Hausa civilization incorporates too much diversity to allow easy generalizations. This cautious remark should be borne in mind when dealing with traditional artists in Hausa society. In this respect, about two decades ago Alan P. Merriam and Roy Sieber, in their preface to The Traditional Artist in African Societies (1973), argued that the challenge facing social scientists was to find out new approaches that would fully address African societies and cultures as integrated entities. Within the context of African societies and cultures, the role of the artist as a creative member in his or her society has often been neglected. Researchers in the field should focus on the long-neglected question of the artist as a creative member of his or her society. For when it comes to criticism of oral poetry, Olabiyi Yai (1989) is right in asserting that the oral poet is usually degraded from his status of creator to that of an informant. Yai's assertion is based on his experience as a Professor of Yoruba language and literature at the University of Ife where oral poets are invited to come and teach their arts at the university level. The ideal is to bring both the students of oral literature and the oral poets in the same environment so that they can educate each other. But as Yai points out, it is the oral poet, that is, the creator, who comes to the students and not the other way around. The students must also go to the oral artists in their traditional environments in order to ensure a two-way communication and to maintain cultural dynamics. The interrelationships of arts and cultures must be studied as aspects of the
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larger study of cultural dynamics. Warren L. d'Azevedo (1973) states that most of the Western approaches to non-Western arts had been to appreciate songs without the singers, tales without the tellers, and sculpture without the sculptors. One might also add the appreciation of singers without enough support from their works, of storytellers without sufficient contextual analysis of their tales, and of sculptors without proper identification of their artifacts. In this respect, Kwame Anthony Appiah (1991; 1993) has also pointed out that in many exhibitions African art is presented as the property of ethnic groups. No piece is identified in the checklists by the names of individual artists, even though the exhibit may be about twentieth century works. Appiah's argument is well illustrated in Werner Gillon's A Short History of African Art (1984). In spite of the hostility in modern Africa to the term `tribalism', Gillon believes that the African art is tribal (33; his emphasis). Gillon's concern is the identification of the geographical and ethnic location of sculptural styles in the African context. Hausa society has not been an exception to this Western approach, especially in the field of oral literature. Until quite recently, the great majority of fieldwork on Hausa oral literature and/or traditions was carried out in the English speaking nations of Nigeria, Ghana and, to some extent, Cameroon ( Callaway 1987, 1994). What is more, most of the researchers are from Britain or America. Similarly, in his analysis of traditional carnivals and other cultural manifestations in his native Morocco, Abdellah Hammoudi (1988) has also pointed out that anthropological and ethnographical research in French speaking countries of Africa has been conducted almost exclusively by the French researchers. He has seen in this attitude a reflection
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of the ideological and political concerns behind most anthropological and ethnological research during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Africa. He rightly asserts that the object of English anthropology has been the former British colonies. The French speaking Maghreb, among others, "est chu la France," `is left to France' (46). Whether it is French or English anthropology and ethnology, Hammoudi is correct in claiming that they all share the same concern with heavy emphasis on the relics of the past while neglecting the manifestations of actuality or the present. It comes as no surprise that a comparison of works by English and American researchers such as Callaway and some French researchers (G. Nicolas 1965, 1975; J. M. Nicolas 1967, 1972) has shown that significant cultural differences emerge when one analyzes several Hausa communities in their respective contexts. With respect to Hausa women, for instance, Callaway has demonstrated how Hausa women in Ghana, where they constitute a Muslim minority, differ from women living in Kano, Northern Nigeria, who are predominantly Muslim. She has also exposed a difference between women in Nigeria in contrast to women in the neighboring Republic of Niger (1987) and Senegal (Callaway and Creevey 1994), both French speaking countries. My own analysis of marriage, tradition and womanhood in Hausa society (Ufahamu 1994) shows that seclusion and the use of veil, for instance, are not widespread as far as Niger Republic is concerned. But this difference goes beyond religion and Hausa cultural dynamics in terms of assimilation (Adamu) of different ethnic groups for whom the Hausa language has become a lingua franca. In fact, difference in colonial experience is also a major component. Its impact on Hausa women in the Republic of Niger and Nigeria is yet to be fully investigated in its own right.
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It goes without saying that, given the interrelationships of arts and cultures, the study of Hausa oral artists must relate their songs to their respective sub-cultures (Barkow 1973). Only in this manner can one avoid facile generalizations (Finnegan 1977, 1991) to the detriment of Hausa cultural and artistic dynamics. In this respect, the work of David W. Ames (1973) with the Hausa of Nigeria is perhaps an example of Western minds appreciating non-Western arts and cultures in a positive light. Ames has been singled out here because he does employ a sociocultural view of Hausa arts and places emphasis on the artists as individual contributors to their societies. Generally speaking, Ames' review of Hausa artistic activities does reflect a certain reality that cuts across Hausa cultural diversity. Such is the case with his characterization of the Hausa plastic and graphic arts which excel in finely executed abstract geometric designs due to Islamic influence. With regard to oral performance, however, many of his remarks are not totally accurate. He states, for instance, that moods such as melancholy are not expressed in Hausa music and arts. But as we will see later, Zabia's songs do not corroborate his statement. Ames admirably grants that the Hausa people resemble many Euro-American societies in placing a high value on musical and artistic originality. Thus a Hausa musician is an artist if he is an especially effective individual or a clever improviser "who is unusually effective in stimulating intellectual interest or emotional response in his Hausa audience" (Ames 1973:145). How he has reached this conclusion is less clear considering his statement that an immediate response to an artistic performance is not obvious because a Hausa audience internalizes its emotions. But Barkow has pointed out that the Nigerian sub-group of Maguzawa (sing. Bamaguje) do not hide or
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internalize their emotions, even though they do not differ very much from their Muslim brothers and sisters. This claim validates the necessity for more research relating to individual artists. Famous Hausa oral artists, says Ames, are distinguished by their ability to create interest, to titillate, and to arouse emotion in their audiences. Textual analysis of their songs reveals that the locus of their appeal is the lyrics of their songs. Ames says that "The tune of a song, though less important, should be original if composed by a great artist....The strong appeal of the lyrics appears...to stem from interesting content, power to evoke emotions, and clever wording" (147). He concludes that what attracts the Hausa audience is less the content than the artful way in which it is said (his emphasis). In light of this observation, he believes that the law of Sean O'Casey (1965: 50) applies to the Hausa appreciation of art: "`We do not want merely an excerpt from reality, it is the imaginative transformation of reality, as it is seen through the eyes of the poet, that we desire'" (147). As the passage suggests, Ames is not advocating art for art's sake in the critical appreciation of Hausa arts. Textual analyses (Haeussler 1987; Abdulkadir 1975) of famous Hausa oral performers such as Maman Shata of Nigeria have already illustrated Ames' suggestion. My own analysis of Ali na Maliki in Chapter Three points in the same direction. This analysis shows how Ali transforms Hausa reality through creative imagination into poetry. Another interesting point I am making to that effect is my analysis of Zabia Hussei in this chapter. Her personal take of concrete problems relating to her life illustrates her ability to transform reality while still appealing to her audience.
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Writing about Hausa culture in general, anthropologist William F. S. Miles (1993) has complained that the only (elderly) female voice prominent in Hausa literature remains the autobiographical voice of Baba of Karo in Baba of Karo: A Woman of the Muslim Hausa (1981). In this chapter I will give William Miles reasons to believe that many more voices are available to be considered and heard, all as good as Baba's. Furthermore, Baba of Karo and Zabia speak of different colonial and cultural experiences that demonstrate at least two possible forms of artistic transformation within Hausa culture. I believe that art is a profession as well as a way of life and that it is part and parcel of the Hausa cultural and artistic dynamic. As such, any woman can also find in it a way to fulfill herself, gain full independence and serve her society at the same time. But research on Hausa women in the Republic of Niger has tended to put more emphasis on the relation of bori to women's emancipation. There is a need to explore that relationship before I start analyzing the songs of Zabia Hussei as an artist. Zabia or mawa'kiya is the name given to any female oral poet or artist.
II Bori and The Hausa Woman in the Republic of Niger
`Les juments des dieux': rites de possession et condition fminine en pays hausa (valle de Maradi, Niger) is based on field-work interviews conducted prior to 1967 by Jacqueline Monfouga Nicolas, a French anthropologist, in the region of Maradi in the south of Niger Republic. Published in 1967, it has since become a
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reference book for many researchers working on the relationships between bori and Hausa women in Niger Republic. The book is a commentary on and an interpretation of Nicolas' observations of Hausa `bori-women' in particular. Commonly referred to as spirit possession, bori is a Hausa traditional religious practice associated with the Anna or Maguzawa who live in the region of Maradi and elsewhere in Hausaland (Besmer 1983; King 1966, 1967; Leroux 1948; Tremearne 1914). The term Maguzawa, according to Barkow (1973), is a possible derivation from the Arabic word magus, meaning an adept in Zoroastrianism. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1971) defines magus (pl. magi) as a derivation from the Greek term magos: a member of a hereditary priestly class among the ancient Medes and Persians whose doctrine included belief in astrology, that is, a Zoroastrian priest. This priest is said to be one of the traditional three wise men from the East who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, paid homage to the infant Jesus. In a study of Christianity and the image of the Other in the former Belgian colonies in Africa, Martin Kalulambi Pongo (1993) has remarked that the term paen (pagan) is the result of a semantic shift:
timologiquement, le terme latin paganus signifie habitant du village. Transpos dans le contexte de l'irruption du christianisme, il dsignait l'individu qui n'avait pas encore reu le message de Dieu venu de la civilisation occidentale et qui se fourvoyait dans des croyances et des pratiques traditionnelles juges paennes, et donc diaboliques, par le christianisme.
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Etymologically, the Latin term paganus means inhabitant of a village. Transposed into the context of the irruption of Christianity, it meant the individual who had not received God's message introduced with Western civilization and who accepted traditional beliefs and practices considered as pagan, and therefore diabolic, by Christianity (283).
Whether in the Christian or the Islamic context, the terms pagans (paens) or Maguzawa reveal the way both Christianity and Islam see the Other who does not embrace them. That Maguzawa are referred to as bush people (Barkow 1973) who lack civility in the Islamic sense shows the ideological content of the term itself. One important point to be remembered here is that both Islam and Christianity were predominantly urban religions, especially in their early manifestations. It took them centuries of contacts and expansion through commerce, missionary activities, and conquests, to spread in rural areas all over the world. This is why both are usually associated with urban civilizations in contradistinction with rural life and its "backwardness." Therefore it comes as no surprise that the terms pagans and magi are used to designate those unbelievers who live in rural areas. However, this does not mean that Islam, in the Hausa context, cannot co-exist with bori, the ancient religion of the Maguzawa. To become a 'dan bori (`son of the bori': a male initiate) or `yab bori/`yar bori (`daughter of the bori': a female initiate), one has to go through girka (the initiation rite) which happens when a spirit (iska; pl. iskoki) is supposed to `descend
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onto' human subjects and `ride' them as one rides a horse. Once this has occurred, the human subject becomes the spirit's doki (horse) or godiya (mare), depending on whether the human receptacle is male or female. Finally, the subject enters a state of trance or possession after which he or she will remain in connection to the spirit-god. One of Nicolas' major arguments is that women practice bori more than men, an argument not shared by Leroux (1948) and Tremearne (1914) although the time period of their research may be significant. Nicholas also suggests that bori is a medium which gives more power and independence to women in a society with Islamic ideals. While her argument is appealing, there are significant problems related to her method and probably to some misunderstanding and/or misinterpretation of certain key words or concepts. She carried out a great part of her interviews in the city of Maradi with karuwai (prostitutes; sing. karuwa). The word karuwai is a source of problems because Nicolas has used it to include divorcees (jawaru; sing. jawara), widows, and single women who are not considered prostitutes in Hausa society. What is true, however, is that some rural women may flee their husbands or families for various reasons. In order to escape their parents' attempts to take them back, they usually go to a city such as Maradi or elsewhere where they can easily hide themselves. But since they are new in the towns, they become easy prey for any Magajiya (title for any leader/chief of female prostitutes) or of more experienced prostitutes who will give them food and shelter to start their lives as prostitutes. Later these divorcees, or rather run-aways, may choose to stay with their hosts or leave them to become independent after they have become acquainted with city life. So it is only logical that many prostitutes told
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Nicolas that they were divorcees or widows as her statistics show in Ambivalence et culte de possession (1972). In the two above-mentioned books, Nicolas seems to suggest that independent Hausa women get their independence mainly from bori. O'Brien considers it as a domain of female influence to counter marginalization under Islamic rule. It is a fact that in Maradi city, there are bori-women who are also prostitutes, but this does not mean that every prostitute is a bori-woman, that every bori-woman is a prostitute or that only prostitutes and/or bori-women are independent. In addition, there are prostitutes and bori-women alike who hardly make both ends meet. In light of this, I find it unwise and inaccurate to substitute bori for prostitution or to suggest a parallel between prostitution and the practice of bori, as Lewis Wall has done in Hausa Medicine (1988). This aspect of Wall's thesis and its defense by scholars like O'Brien is an attempt to glorify prostitution in Hausa society by pretending that it has a different meaning from the one it has in the West. The approach of these scholars clearly reinforces and validates negative stereotypes about the Maguzawa and it reveals that their treatment of the gathered data was naive or uncritical. Certainly bori-women and/or prostitutes enjoy a greater freedom of movement as well as financial independence and, like their counterparts around the world, the latter are also exposed to various risks. On the other hand, it is also true that whether in cities or in the countryside, there are Hausa women who enjoy great freedom of movement and financial independence, as business-women, for instance. So linking women's freedom and independence only to bori is simply misleading, not to mention that it does a great
38
injustice to the dynamic structure of Hausa society. For the last decade researchers around the world have increasingly paid attention to Hausa women (Callaway 1987, 1994; Bivins 1994; Mack 1981). Recently, a group of American and Hausa scholars published a provocative book, Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century (1991), which is the first critical approach to the life and realities of Hausa women with an attempt to go beyond stereotypical generalizations. As a pioneer in the study of Hausa women, Nicolas started her research with the classic assumptions that African women in general are excessively obedient, have very insignificant social functions, and above all, are reduced to a second class citizenship:
Cepandant nous avons t amene introduire des nuances dans ce strotype et nous avons montr que bien des structures informelles prouvaient une certaine indpendence, relle ou avoue. Les rapports conjugaux, notamment, ne sont pas toujours l'avantage du mari....Par ailleurs, la femme hausa, habile commerante, gre au mieux ses biens matriels et finit parfois par tre plus riche que son mari. D'autre part, toute valorisation sociale ne lui est pas refuse.
However we have been compelled to introduce nuances into this stereotype and we have shown many informal structures proved the presence of a certain form of independence. For instance, a husband does not always have the advantage of conjugal relationships....What is
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more, the Hausa woman, a skillful trader, manages her material belongings well and sometimes she ends up being richer than her husband. On the other hand, there is no limitation to how she can fulfill herself in the society (Nicolas 1972: 338).
As she states elsewhere in the same book, Hausa women in general are masterful businesswomen. To emphasize her point it is worth pointing out the often cited example of the women "dont une grve aurait paralys le march de Douala au Cameroun." (Nicolas 1967: 97) [`whose strike is said to have paralyzed the market of Douala in Cameroon']. In fact from an early age, boys and girls are encouraged to learn how to trade and make money, each according to his or her parents' means and orientations, so that despite the influence of Islam, a Hausa girl
mne elle aussi une vie panouie. Les ennuis ne commenceront vraiment qu'au moment du mariage [...]. La priode pr-matrimoniale demeure, dans la vie de la femme hausa, l'image de la vie libre et heureuse
also lives a full life. Real problems will start only at the time of marriage [...] The pre-marital period remains, in the life of a Hausa woman, the image of a free and happy life (Nicolas 1972: 258-259).
In `Les juments des dieux', Nicolas has made another insightful remark which
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further illustrates that bori is not the only source from which Hausa women get or should get their independent spirit as well as their will to empower themselves:
Les femmes de la valle de Maradi ne sont pas des pouses excessivement soumises et passives. Nous les avons vues parfois plus riches que leur mari prenant trs souvent l'initiative du divorce, et si la "femme-bori" possde une personnalit trs affirme, trs indpendante et aimant se mettre en valeur, il faut y voir, en la comparant avec les autres femmes, non pas une diffrence de nature mais surtout une diffrence de degr. D'ailleurs la femme haoussa peut se raliser sur des modes varis qui la valorisent et la rendent plus autonome.
Women of the valley of Maradi are not excessively obedient and passive spouses. We saw them sometimes richer than their husbands, very often taking the initiative of divorce. If the "bori-woman" has a very assertive personality, is very independent and loves to bring out the best of herself, one should see in that, while comparing her with other women, not a difference in kind but mainly a difference in degree. Besides, the Hausa woman can fulfil herself in different ways which give her personal satisfaction and make her more autonomous (55).
Hausa society has always been dynamic, as I have shown thus far. As such,
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bori can be considered only as one of the main factors which have made women active participants in the development of the country. In fact Islam, which is not against commerce and profit-making as long as it is morally sound, is also a significant factor in the economic life of the Hausa regions. In terms of the dynamic structure of Hausa society, one can find Hausa people who can be independent and yet be neither bori-persons nor from Maradi. One such example is Zabia Hussei from the region of Tahoua in north-central Niger: she is an artist who dares speak her mind in her songs. The result has been fame and financial independence.
III Zabia Hussei: The Oral Artist and the Social Predicament
Zabia Hussei sings first about her personal problems. They are centered around her relationship with her father who emerges as a dominant figure in her family. The more one listens to her songs or reads them in transcription or translation, the more one senses personal feelings and individual subjectivity. She uses her personal experience to launch social criticism. Zabia has created a particular language to hide her anger and bitterness, or to address her comrades in suffering and/or rebellion. Throughout all the songs she uses her interactive style to demarcate various interlocutors from her audience. Sometimes she talks to the whole community, sometimes she singles out a target according to the message to be conveyed. In the following passage she first addresses her girlfriends, telling them that her concerns and aspirations are also theirs:
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Kul ba dan ta duniya da uwaye, 'yan mata ta Maigari nika tsoro; baba na Allah, baban Kande.
Ai duniya kul kun zo ku gaida sarkin Konni, haba Hassan sarkin Konni sai ka ban motar ka, in ini, in maraita, in kon Gwanja. Ni sai na gano ruwa da ido na, duniya ba dai ta ba zabia ta Gadaje.
Because of world and parents, girls ta Maigari I fear; father of God, father of Kande.
Oh world if you arrive you greet chief of Konni, come on Hassan chief of Konni you give me car of you. I walk in the morning, I walk in the afternoon, I spend night in Gwanja, I must see water with eyes mine; world not same Zabia of Gadaje.
Line.1 Because of the world and of parents, 2 girls, I am afraid of my mother, kin of Maigari;
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3 and of dad, father of Kande.
4 Greetings to Hassane, chief of Konni, 5 Hassane give me your car. 6 I must go to Abidjan, 7 to see the Ocean with my eyes. 8 For the world is not the same everywhere.
The word Kul is used to suggest a strong warning, in this case coming from two sources: the world (duniya), implying her community and her parents (uwaye). What Zabia is really telling her girlfriends ('yan mata) and the rest of the world is her suffering as the result of a conflict of interest: her personal interest consisting in going as far as Abidjan in order to see the Ocean with her own eyes which is in conflict with the fear (tsoro) of her parents, especially her father who would rather see her stay at home. For Zabia, going to Abidjan is a metaphor of travelling in the world in order to sing and make money for herself. It implies greater freedom and independence for the singer. It also means learning new things from other peoples' experiences, hence her admonition that the world is not the same everywhere. When travelling a voyager is not always certain of what may happen to him or her during the journey. In other words, to set out for a new place is really facing the unknown. Zabia's parents may thus be justified in their opposition to her travel to Abidjan, a symbol to them of moral corruption and cultural alienation. Although for migrant workers coming from rural regions, big cities like Abidjan have the gleam of
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opportunity, as places where dreams can come true, Zabia has warned that Abidjan can also be a deadly mirage:
Don Gwanja da lahira take tare. In ta so mutun ta ba shi sulala, ko ta ka kin shi sai ta ba shi kuraje.
Because Gwanja with place of the dead she together. If she likes person she gives him money, or she not likes him then she gives sores.
Line.230 Because Abidjan can be a murderous city. 231 If she likes a person, she can make him rich; 232 if not, she can make him sick.
As this song relates to the current situation, one can say that even when the migrant has been lucky and has managed to return home safely, there is still a danger that he or she may carry along new experiences or ideas which may set a new tone for change in the rural community. In addition, the migrants usually come back with new things such as clothes, cameras, tape recorders and other modern gadgets whose intrusion into the rural way of life may produce a positive or negative change. One example of a negative impact of such a voyage is the spread of AIDS in Zabia's region. A government study has indicated that the region has the highest rate of HIV
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infection in the country because most of its male population migrates to Abidjan or to other big cities to look for jobs during the dry season. The positive aspect of it, however, is the flow of cash funds sent by the migrant workers to their families. The mirage of such big cities was so tempting that even Zabia herself had trouble with it. In my interview with her she did confirm that since she started singing at an early age, many people in her community believed that she would not stay at home as a married woman, because marriage would deprive her of the freedom and independence which she had acquired as a rising star in traditional singing. To make things even worse, her father was about to marry her off to one of her cousins against her will. But contrary to everybody's expectations, she agreed to marry her cousin. To prove how serious she was, she promised her father that she would never deceive him or refuse to fulfil his wishes and demands. She even stopped singing to better take care of her new family. It did not take long before her father realized how serious she was in fulfilling her promises. He called to tell her how honored her compliance had made him feel and he gave her his blessings. To express his gratitude, he told his daughter that from that time on she could resume her singing and was free to go anywhere to perform. In return, she promised again that she would never break her covenant linking her destiny to the man she never loved. Until her father's death, she assured me, he kept thanking her for her compliance. To this day those promises still haunt her conscience. The first eight lines quoted above are the key to all her songs, to the understanding of her life--private as well as public--and also to my analysis of her entire work. All her songs are in essence an elaboration on this incident which is no
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doubt the most significant and dramatic event in her life. But the incident contains within itself all the germs of rebellion scattered in various forms in themes developed in other songs. Such themes include oppression, mostly of women, under the burden of the stifling aspects of her tradition, the trauma of having to live up to one's promises; the feelings of betrayal in contrast to the values of friendship; true love as opposed to forced marriage; and the complexities of family relationships in the traditional context. The complexities of family relationships are also depicted in various themes. Thus, as the first eight lines suggest, the singer is literally paralyzed by the fear of her father who has somehow eclipsed the presence of the mother. In the passage below, sung before her marriage, Zabia tells her audience why she is fearful of not complying with her parents's demands and wishes. She therefore implores God to help her avoid anything that will bring the anger of her parents on herself:
Ubangiji na mai ne, Ka daukake ni ga baki bakin diya da uwaye, shina ni kai ma tsoro. Da gobara shi ke tare, har ya hi maye zamba to wai maye shina ta ragawa; baki ba ya yi ragi ba.
God mine Owner of me,
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You honor me to mouth, mouth of children and parents, it is me head afraid of. With incendiary fire it comes, even it outpasses sorcerer harm, well it is said sorcerer he not eat all; mouth not it make left over.
Line.180 God Almighty help me. 181 Owner of my life: 182 save me from a curse, 183 the curse of children and parents 184 which I fear the most: 185 it moves with fire, 186 and one may escape from a sorcerer, 187 but not from a curse.
It is indeed believed in Hausa tradition that disrespect of one's parents may lead the parents to curse their children. Yin baki, `do mouth', is defined in Bargery's Hausa-English dictionary as a curse by a chief, father, mother or mallam which is supposed always to take effect sooner or later. As a Hausa, Zabia has certainly internalized that aspect of traditional education. She stated during our interview that she was afraid her father might not accept her as his daughter in the next world if she
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let him down in this world. That explains why she implores God (Ubangiji) to raise her to a position of honor and glory by protecting her from any curse by her parents or children. Zabia also mentions children cursing parents. This kind of curse takes effect only under certain circumstances. If a parent does not take care of his or her children and if something bad happens to the children, then the latter's curse can bring wrath on the guilty parent. So by imploring God to help her avoid committing such a thing Zabia shows her real concern and attachment to her family in general and to her children in particular. But behind that personal commitment there is also a personal traumatic dilemma well expressed in the song below, sung after her marriage:
Zamman alwashi cikkar rabo shika sawa; alwashin kara a sha shi da danye.
State of boastful-promise fulfillment of destiny/luck it causes; boastful-promise of stalks is drink them when young.
Line.50 Trying to fulfill a boastful promise can change the course of one's life; 51 sugary-stalks are best when they are fresh.
The key word here is alwashi the original meaning of which was, according to
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Bargery (1934), "a serious undertaking given to do doughty deeds in war. Failure to make good gave rise to the expression "alwashi ba ya'ki ba" (boastful-promise not war), to promise to fight is not necessarily to carry it out. The word is now used to express any boastful promise or undertaking." I took the liberty to quote Bargery in order to use the etymology of the word itself to illustrate the fact that these two related yet different meanings of alwashi demonstrate that when Zabia is using the word she is describing her own situation in metapphoric terms. Time is another key element which has seemingly worked against Zabia's strategic plan. In a plan like this one, time can favor one party to the detriment of the other. In this case, Zabia has failed to outsmart her father and avoid staying with cousin-husband. No wonder that, out of bitterness, she says that na tuna da yau da gobe na ban sabo (I remember today and tomorrow give familiarity), I remember that time breeds habit. In the Hausa notion of time yau da gobe (today and tomorrow) suggests the passage or the flow of time. Bargery defines sabo as "becoming acquainted with, or accustomed to, a person or thing." In Zabia's case, time has compelled her to stay with her husband. Given the fact that girls are married at an early age in Hausa society, it is possible that the young Zabia has been talked into changing her mind and staying with her husband. In this respect, there is a saying also quoted by Bargery which says that "sabo turken wawa," familiarity is the tethering post of the fool. Bargery's rendering is "familiarity with, long residence in, a place prevents a fool from leaving it, even in poverty, in order to earn a livelihood elsewhere." It is possible that Zabia's immaturity and the flow of time have combined to make a fool out of her.
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Since sabo also means new, it may be suggested that the passage of time has become a metaphor of change, a change for the worst with regard to Zabia, a change from an unmarried to a married woman with all the responsibilities of womanhood. But most importantly, a change from the freedom of unmarried Hausa girls to restriction in the sense that she has lost the war against her family, after she has failed to make good her boastful promise. Artistically speaking, the use of sabo as a sound image is very poetic because, as Dalhatu Muhammad (1978) has put it, such usage "foregrounds the tense interrelationship between sound and sense in poetry which is itself the supreme example of the relationship of expression and impression, between meaning and style in literary language in general" (89). Against this background, one should first keep in mind that Zabia's promises to her now deceased father are hanging over her head in addition to her love for her family. Zamman alwashi (state of boastful-promise) refers to those promises which she is now bound to carry out as she says repeatedly. But the irony and drama of the situation is that just as the promise of fighting a war does not mean carrying it out, Zabia's promises are not irreversible and should not have to be carried out. They have become so only because after her marriage she quickly got pregnant. This is why she says that "zamman alwashi cikkar rabo shi ka sawa" (state of boastful-promise fulfillment of luck/destiny it makes). In fact, while rabo means luck or destiny, cika alwashi means to fulfill one's promise and cikar rabo means the fulfillment of destiny. Zama means condition or state. As a verb, it also implies to be, to happen or to become. Sa means to cause to happen. Thus the whole sentence can be translated as follows: to be in a condition to fulfill one's promise can result in luck or
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destiny. It follows from the sentence that it is her being in the state of having to fulfill her promises that have led to her pregnancy which can be seen as luck or destiny. But it seems to me that she might not have fulfilled those promises had she not become pregnant so early. And the next two lines of the same song support this contention:
Alwashin kara a sha shi da danye, in ya kekashe ku damre darni.
Boastful-promise of stalks is drink them when young, if they dried you make fence.
Line.51 Sugary-stalks are best when they are fresh, 52 when dried-up, they are good for fences only.
On the surface it is simple language requiring simple common sense to be understood. But on a deeper level, it carries another meaning which may be the coup de grce I have been hinting at earlier. In parallel thinking, Zabia implies that like the fresh corn-stalks, she is prettier and therefore more valuable as a young childless girl. This is the time when she can be more successful in getting the attention of suitors and of a potential husband. But as soon as she has children, her luck starts to wane and takes on the form of destiny (rabo). So cikar rabo here has a double meaning: it is the fulfillment of her husband's luck who succeeded in making her bear his children
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under the watchful eyes of her father before his death, and the fulfillment of her destiny in becoming a prisoner of her promises, of her love for her children and of her waning beauty and youth. It is her sense of responsibility more than anything else that has made her keep her promises. In the lines below, she attempts to justify the reasons why she had to comply with her father's demands. First she admits that not every person can fulfill and/or should fulfill their promises: "ba duka da ka alkawali shi cika ba" (not every son does promise fulfill), alkawali meaning promise or reliability. Then she goes on to add that she will never choose taskira against lehe; nor reject a relative for a stranger:
Ni ban ramma taskira don lehe, kuma ban ramma dan gida don bako.
I not reject taskira because of lehe, also I not reject son of house because of stranger.
Line. 38 I will not choose lehe against taskira, 39 also I will not reject a relative for a stranger.
Here again we have an idea illustrated by a parallelism of thought. Taskira is a traditional spinning basket used by women to spin thread while lehe is a small basket used for domestic work such as food preparation. The latter is more modern and may have a foreign origin as she suggested in our interview. Note that the foreign origin
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simply means that the lehe may have originated from another Hausa sub-culture or from a different ethnic group. Hence the parallelism trying to link taskira to a relative (who is likely to be her imposed husband) and lehe to a stranger (who is also likely to be her partner of choice, but not necessarily a non-Hausa). But the underlying message is actually the opposite of the surface meaning. It is my opinion that she does not really mean her choice is for tradition, here symbolized by taskira, against change or modernity, implied in lehe. This is because she wishes to have married the man of her dreams. In fact, those feelings are made even clearer in the following lines from a song she sang after her marriage, where she says that "na so sai ku ba ni wanda ka so na" (I like only you give me he who loves me), I only wish you would let me marry my love. This indicates that far from leaning toward the tradition of forced marriage, she emphasizes the notion of personal responsibility in the full sense of the word. She believes that "ko wa dauki alhaki don kai nai" (he who takes guilt because of his head), meaning anyone who is guilty should be held accountable. In other words, one should think of eventual consequences before committing to anything. The point is that she is now aware of her mistake in committing herself to her father's demands and wishes prior to calculating their possible implications in her future life. But being a responsible woman who assumes the consequences of her choices, she adds that "in na dauki alhaki don kai na" (if I take guilt because of my head), if she is guilty of anything she must be held accountable as well. She shows the same courage with respect to her family as she tells her audience in her style of parallel thinking that:
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Taro kowa adda korama a cikin nai, sai shi yi hakuri da kukan kwadi. Ashe ko wace shina da taron yara, sai dai hankuri da yayan yara. Samari ma na tuna cilishin mutum dan wa nai.
Crowd he who has river in belly his, then he makes patience with cries of frogs. Or he who says he has gathering of children, then he patient with noise of children. Boys oh I remember obligation of person son of relative his.
Line.42 Crowd, he who has a river in his belly, 43 must put up with cries of frogs. 44 He who has a gathering of children, 45 must tolerate their noises. 46 Boys, I remember one must accept one's relative.
First of all, the word korama (river) is a metaphor of fertility. In agricultural terms, a river in the arid region where Zabia lives is like an oasis in a desert. As such, it is a source of life and of joy for the people who live near it. In the case of Zabia, having a river in her belly is a metaphor of her fertility as a woman who can give
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birth to many children. In this respect, the frogs in Zabia's belly are her children whose cries she has to put up with. In fact, if one looks at the parallel structure of the lines one comes to realize that a river in one's belly corresponds to a gathering of children while the cries of the frogs become the equivalent of children's noises. Then the last line sums up the parallel thought with an admonition to support or accept one's relative. This may seem a very strong commitment to family ties and values as they are traditionally defined and accepted. But a closer analysis also shows the singer's resignation before the faits accomplis, that is the presence of her children. In Hausa rural areas, children are a source of agony for mothers many of whom would rather suffer with them than to divorce their fathers and leave them in his family. This is even more agonizing when the husband has several wives who, more often than not, refuse to take care of the motherless child(ren). In fact, with few exceptions, co-wives ill-treat children who are not theirs. In light of these reasons, one can understand Zabia's attempt to put the interest of her children and of her family before her own, despite the emotional pains involved. Occasionally, however, those emotional pains are given expression in both preand post-marriage songs, revealing the deceptive or intentionally ambiguous character of Zabia's poetic language. Thus throughout her songs, she vents her resentment at zumunta or zumunci, relationships by blood or marriage. This resentment and anger is revealed by the nature of the adjectives she uses to characterize those kinds of relationships. They are wohi, sakare or zaka, the first two mean worthless or useless, and the third refers to a religious tax payable by the well-to-do. In either case,
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zumunta is laden with negative meaning and feelings because of its worthlessness in her life experience. To further illustrate and contextualize the point let us follow her in her repeated attacks on that aspect of her tradition:
Zaka zumuntar yanzu. Tithe blood-relation now Line.164 Nowadays blood relation is worthless.
Wohi sakare zumuntar yanzu. Worthless useless blood-relation now. Line.166 Nowadays blood relation is very useless.
Wohi sakare zumuntar yanzu. Worthless useless blood-relation now. Line.198 Nowadays blood relation is very useless.
Zaka zumuntar yanzu. Tithe blood-relation now. Line.250 Nowadays blood relation is as worthy as the tithe (zaka).
I intentionally stress the adjective-intensifier very (wohi sakare) to illustrate the intensity of the accusation and the degree of emotional pain it carries. It is also an
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indicator of Zabia's skillful use of her poetic language. Her play with words is tantamount to a discourse on her poetic language. In lines 166 and 198 she uses wohi sakare to describe blood relationships. Either of the two qualifiers is enough to express the usefulness of zumunta. Thus adding a second qualifier becomes a play of words in which zumunta is personified and vilified at the same time. The fact that the lines are isolated from their context in the songs might have reduced their level of ambiguity. The lines are separated here in order to emphasize the message they convey and at the same time to reveal the singer's clever way of concealing unpleasant ideas. Poetic metalanguage is therefore defined here as Zabia's play with the properties of the Hausa language to achieve a poetic discourse characterized by concealment or ambiguity. Speaking in general terms in her Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context (1977), Ruth Finnegan has pointed out how oral performers use their songs to "pressurise authority or express and consolidate the views of minority and dissident groups" (243). Zabia does not belong to a minority group since women constitute more than half of Niger's total population. Yet in terms of power sharing and in other respects she may be considered as a member of an oppressed group. This is why she uses her position as an artist with subjective views and feelings to express that reality. In order to achieve these objectives without compromising herself and her art, she, like many other talented oral performers, has to communicate, according to Finnegan, "in an oblique but comprehensible form truth which could not be expressed in more ordinary ways...realizing a desire to grasp and express the world in beautiful
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words...; providing comfort and some means of social action for the bereaved or oppressed" (Finnegan 1977: 243). This demonstrates not only Zabia's poetic skills but also the communicative dynamism of her songs, as Graham Furniss (1989) would say. In fact in his analysis of a poem by the Nigerian poet Sa'adu Zungur, Furniss has aptly identified what he terms `a dynamic process in rhetoric'. Furniss insists that a concern with the architecture of a poem (of a song in this context) is very important as a way to emphasize and foreground certain elements within it. In this respect he sees parallelism as a rhetorical device that can be effectively used to "create links that demand interpretation between such components" (27). Thus in addition to its aesthetic function, parallelism has the properties of a clause to be interpreted in an ambiguous discourse in disguise (Karin Barber et. al 1989). One can even go further to see parallelism as part of a poetic convention among the Hausa oral poets, a convention which may apply to the reading of oral poetry in Africa in general. This is because parallelism is a rhetorical device widely used in much African oral poetry or performance ( e.g. Kunene 1971; Barber 1989) and around the world (Finnegan 1977). This need to disguise one's discourse in the form of zambo (veiled allusion), of parallelism or ambiguity does not mean that only certain oral artists have the ability to use their position as artists to openly criticize their societies. On the contrary, it shows that some oral poets are more artistic than others in their treatment of current affairs. As will be seen in the next chapter, Ali na Maliki claims to have a special hereditary right to criticize chiefs and princes, but he still has to face opposition to his harsh criticism. Perhaps that is one of the many
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reasons why he uses zambo as well. He also makes effective use of metaphor, symbolism, and parallelism to a lesser extent. Landeg White (1989) has criticized those who claim that in Africa there is a class of oral artists who have special rights to criticize or make fun of people just because of their (hereditary) status. In South Africa, for instance, White cites the works of A. . Jordan, Mafeje and Mzamane as examples which show that anyone can become an mbongi, even "`a white man'." But White adds that "If certain poets have achieved a special reputation, it is only because of the poems they have created and not because of any special privilege vested in their office. It is not the performer that is licenced but the performance" (36). White's goal is to focus on the poetic license by shifting the emphasis from the poet to the poem itself. While agreeing with the first aspect of White's claim, I think that this shift takes away the status of the oral poet as a creator. It reflects a certain tendency towards a formalist or structuralist approach which puts emphasis on the text and not on the creator. Poetic license is a mere tool, not an end in itself. As a part of the artistic or literary convention, it can be used by any one endowed with artistic excellence. Such is the case with the famous Nigerian oral singer Alhaji Maman Shata who, it should be emphasized, did not inherit his profession. It is rather his use of poetic license in a very personal style that has made him known beyond the boundaries of Nigeria. In Discourse and Its Disguises: The Interpretation of African Oral Texts (1989), Karin Barber and P. F. de Maraes Farias have urged scholars to find out new approaches that acknowledge simultaneously the historicity and the textuality of oral
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texts, that combine a sociology with a poetics of oral literature. But more importantly, they have insisted on the interest "in the properties of oral texts that make them evasive and ambiguous: their capacity not only to take on radically different significances from one historical moment to the next, but also to accommodate at the same moment incompatible significances, with an effect of dynamic ambiguity; and the possible interpretation of such effects in terms of the location of the oral production of texts within specific power structures" (1). Speaking of Hausa oral performance, Hunter (1996) suggests that artists transform language through a variety of mechanisms creating a new language which is often ambiguous. The ambiguity may not be obvious to the uninformed. Zabia's songs seem to be transparent, but those who go beyond their surface level, armed with a good knowledge of the language and the culture it carries, can detect a double entendre almost always implicit in situations such as when she injects zambo or uses parallelism. On many occasions in our interview, Zabia mentioned the necessary use of zambo to avoid public censorship or hostility. The word wada (dwarf) has been replaced by nawa (mine) to avoid having problems with a dwarf who married one of Zabia's girlfriends. So at first only those who are close to the singer can fully understand the meaning of the word nawa. And if the news spreads and reaches the real person, says Zabia, I can defend myself by arguing that I never mentioned his name in any of my songs. The tactic capitalizes on the play between sound and sense, between expression and impression which is a major characteristic of the language of poetry. Zabia offers her audiences many possibilities for interpretation due to the
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effects of the dynamic ambiguity of the songs. Until recently this dynamic ambiguity has been neglected by many theorists of oral literature in general and of oral poetry in particular. Niyi Osundare rightly observes that "the interrogative power of contemporary theories has been severely selective" (209). So selective that even in oral literary criticism (Barber 1995; Yankah 1995) the ability of the oral artists to express their individual talent has been excluded. But as shown above, Zabia is certainly an oral artist with a message and a style of her own. She told me in our interview that she did not love her husband with whom she still lived. However, that has not prevented her from saying that "Allah na mutu ba ni cin amanar wa na" (Allah I die not me eat trust of brother mine), until her death she will never betray her cousin (wa) who is her imposed husband. She does not also encourage other girls to follow her steps in that kind of suicidal decision: "alkawalin gomma ta so mai son ta" (promise of girl she loves he who loves her), the boastful promise of a girl (gomma) is and should be to love the man of her dreams. If anyone doubts the meaning of this line she adds that:
Domin na kaya ta huje salka, in don ni gomma ki so mai son ki.
Because of me thorn it pierces salka, because of me girl you love he loves you.
Line.87 A thorn has pierced the salka,
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88 Girls, love the one who loves you.
As said earlier, water is a rarity in the region where Zabia lives. Salka is a water container made out of animal hides and those who have used it are unanimous that it keeps water in a very cool condition. The poetic effect of these two lines must be weighed against this background. The fact that Zabia states that a thorn has pierced the salka shows the gravity of her intention. For if the salka is torn or simply pierced, the water it contains is likely to pour out. Otherwise it has to be mended or repaired. Stylistically speaking, this repair is a metaphor of change because the pierced salka may stand for the wounded self of the singer. It is Zabia's personal problem that has inspired her poetry. Having been through the experience of forced marriage, the poet has found in her own dissatisfaction the needed force to push for change. To express the need artistically, she has chosen among other devices parallelism which demands an effort of interpretation by way of similarity, contrast, and dynamic ambiguity. When the ambiguity is explained away, only the contrast and similarity remain in a dynamic tension and relationship between the poet's tradition and innovation. The balance between tradition and innovation has always been difficult to maintain. But the difficulty is almost always a source of inspiration for many, especially the artists (Kon 1993). Research in other cultures has shown not only the necessity for such a balance, but also its capacity to generate creativity if it is properly kept. Thus in Language and Images of Renaissance Italy (1995), Alison Brown rightly asserts that this balance had to be maintained "since both precariously co-existed as
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the source of the dynamic tension that encouraged the Renaissance explosion of artistic and literary creativity" (12). Translated into the context of Zabia's poetic metalanguage, this means that girls can go anywhere to look for their loved boys, which is a practice in Zabia's community during the pre-marital period with its great freedom. She repeated time and again in our interview that she wanted to educate people on many aspects of life, and to do so she resorts to her art as the best way to convey her messages. Singing is indeed a medium she uses to say what she cannot say otherwise. In that respect, she warns other girls not to follow her steps in binding their lives to some stifling aspects of their traditional life. She thus reminds everyone that :
Wata kau kaddara gami da mutane, ashe wata kau kaddara nuhar Allah ta.
Certain decrees with people, other decrees wish God.
Line.99 Some decrees are man-made, 100 other decrees are from God.
It is therefore crucial that one be able to distinguish a destiny (kaddara) ordained by God from the one created by self or by others. The didactic aspect of Zabia's songs is reminiscent of U Tam'si's struggle to
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educate his readers through a personal dynamic writing style. For U Tam'Si, "Fate itself may not be controllable, but to yield to a contrived destiny is to accept the prison of oppression" (Wright 1991: 93). The fact that Zabia still lives with her imposed husband does not diminish the power of this argument or the poetic beauty of her style. The power of poetry, as Szavai (1976) says paraphrasing Aristotle in the quote below, is not in the retelling of lived events but in the projection of similar events in a way that is likely to affect, in a positive manner, other people's lives in the future. In other words,
Le devoir du pote n'est pas de raconter des vnements qui se sont produits dans la ralit, mais ceux qui peuvent se produire et sont possibles par la vraisenblance ou la ncessit.
The duty of a poet is not to narrate events as they happened in reality, but those which may happen and are possible by verisimilitude or by necessity (Szavai 1976: 404). Zabia's struggle to overcome the burden of the stifling aspects of her tradition is evident and it shows in almost all her songs. She beautifully rendered the oppressive character of her community in the following lines:
Duniya jirgin dankaro, zanen sawaye. Mai gwado ya daro da mai sawaye,
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sai keya ta daddahe ga awazzai.
World tractor, cloth sawaye. He who has gwado better he who has sawaye, thorns stick to ribs.
Line.54 The world (is like) a tractor, 55 on a sawaye (bridge/road). 56 He who has gwado is more proud, 57 than he who has a sawaye: 58 it brings thorns into the ribs (body).
By likening the world (her community) to a tractor and the traditional clothes to a tarmac, she artistically depicts how tradition can be used as a tool of oppression. Note that a sawaye cloth has dye which may leave its traces or impressions on the body. So artistically speaking, the dye is a metaphor of the tarmac. But again one has to be careful here not to confuse her artistic rendition of reality with one's eagerness to see everything traditional as simply oppressive and outmoded. Aristotle reminded us in the above quote from Szavai (1976) that the power and beauty of art are not in the description of reality alone, but also in the ability of that description to set in motion possible changes in the future. And the more the description gives the illusion of reality or verisimilitude, the more power it has to
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effect such changes. In which case Zabia's image of the world as a tractor running over people dressed in traditional clothing is a powerful trope whose underlying meaning may not be obvious to those hasty to conclude that traditional society is just conservative and its artists are simple vessels of received ideas. If one considers the road construction imagery as a metaphor of life, the presence of the two different clothes also indicates the possibility of choice. Obviously, the one who has the sawaye is likely to suffer more than the other who has gwado, a local traditional dress implying less suffering and more happiness. This brings us back to her notion of personal responsibility as well. Perhaps she is trying to empower her fellow women. In fact, it seems that her interlocutors have so far been women and girls in particular. It is not a surprise since most of her songs are based on her personal experience as a young unmarried girl and then as a married woman. Of particular interest is the fact that many of her most virulent attacks on zumunta, or blood relationship, are contained in songs she composed before marriage. So they carry with them the turbulent experience and rebellion of adolescence as well. But even after marriage some of the same attacks and themes reappear in her songs which confirms her personal commitment to social change in her community. It is basically the same message of self reliance and personal responsibility that she conveys to males and boys in particular. She tells the boys:
Samari ma duk mai son gomma she armi ta kai nai. Boys oh he loves/likes girl he marries with head his.
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Line.26 Boys, he who wants his love should marry at his own expense.
The message is double: boys can and should marry the girls of their dreams. But to be able to achieve that goal, they have to have financial independence. Boys are also subject to forced marriage as long as they are not financially secure or independent. Otherwise their parents will arrange their marriages with partners who may not like each other. So what Zabia is saying to the boys of her community is to go and get money if they are willing to marry the girls they love. That also explains her popularity with almost all the young boys who leave their villages to go to coastal regions to look for money as migrant workers. The people of Tahoua are indeed well known intrepid adventurers who can go as far as the Americas to look for jobs and money. While urging only the boys to be financially independent in order to marry the girls they really love, Zabia illustrates the economic implications of marriage in Hausa society in general. Depending on the regions, Hausa marriage demands a lot of money on both parts. But it is usually the male who pays the high price because what the female will bring with her depends on how much he spends on her and her family as well. For the rich it is an occasion to show off and for the poor it usually brings painful efforts to imitate the rich. And the prettier the girl the more she may get, depending on her ability to exploit the situation. At least tradition is not that bad, even for the girls. Zabia has experienced the influence of tradition and has had her share of the problems that are present in her community, and in light of their enormity one may
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wonder if there is anything to console her much wounded self. She seems to have found some relief in friendship which she contrasts so often with blood relationship. Thus after her repeated attacks on kinship and what she perceives as its worthlessness, she calls on her girlfriend: allo na abikkiya ta ji ni (allo eh girl friend mine hear me), listen to me my friend. What she tells the friend is her personal and painful experience with blood relationship:
Abikkiya zo ciwo na, yohi sakare zumuntar yanzu.
Friend come disease mine, worthless useless blood relation now.
Line.197 Come my friend who I must care for, 198 nowadays zumunta is worthless.
In our interview Zabia did tell me that nowadays it is difficult to count on a relative. She complains about the fact that family solidarity is no more, or at least it shows only in bad situations such as when a senior beats his/her junior to show the power that tradition confers to elders on youth. So that when she is in trouble she expects more help from friends than from her relatives. Considering her seeming devotion to strengthening the family ties, this outcry is a sign of rebellion. It also shows how a subversive message may be cloaked in
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traditional dress. But friendship may also have its ups and downs. And as she told me in the interview, she did have a bad experience when she suddenly discovered that a friend she loved actually did not like her. That traumatic experience is the reason why she keeps saying: rishin sani ciwo na (lack of knowledge disease it is), ignorance is a sickness. Had she known that her alleged girlfriend was not that friendly toward her, she would not have started the friendship. Her pain was so great that she likens herself to white ants having eaten gum Arabic which prevents them from opening their mouths because of its glue. Besides ignorance, there may be a question of greed and need; for only needy ants are likely to eat gum Arabic. In any case, the image of the ants trying to open their mouths translates her moment of pause to consider the worth of friendship itself and the value of life as she sees it. Going back to her struggle with her promises and in relation to this experience, she told me that one of the things she hates most is the fact that some people would never reveal their private thoughts, even to friends. This of course has certainly contributed to her lack of trust in many things. So far everything she has said or done seems to be related to her experience as a young girl and as a married woman. She does not talk much about life with cowives, except in a few songs where she urges women to be more gentle with those cowives who are orphans. Orphans do not have someone to support them in their daily competition with co-wives so that Zabia thinks it is cowardice to compete with them. She also ridicules a woman with bad breath, saying that she will never flirt with her husband. This is certainly another of her zambo and she even warns jealous women to keep their husbands at home because ko yau ki saki ina yawo nai (even today you let
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go I walk with him), even today if they let them free she will go after them. In conclusion, one can say that Zabia Hussei is a diligent critic of her community. She uses her personal experience to enlighten her audience by dressing her subversive message in traditionally attractive attire. Her mastery of the traditional elements, especially the language, has helped her to create a personal poetic language. Her particular way of dealing with women's issues in addition to her personal involvement and commitment as well as her high sense of responsibility contribute to giving her a personality and an individuality of her own. She is no doubt an individual talent with a very strong and subjective voice that speaks louder than many in her community. In short, I see her as an artist, a poet who perhaps appears at first glance to be conformist.
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Chapter Three Ali na Maliki: The Poet as an (Unconscious) Iconoclast?
In a discussion of the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam Ali A. Mazrui writes in Cultural Forces in World Politics (1990) that "monotheism is particularly dualistic, though not uniquely so. There is a tendency in monotheism to divide the human race between believers and unbelievers, between the virtuous and the sinful, between good and evil, between `us' and `them' " (13). The duality of the Islamic paradigm is a reality in contemporary Niger where Ali na Maliki evolves as a performer or singer who places some values on Anna tradition. How does this Islamic paradigm affect his ability to perform for an audience said to be almost one hundred per cent Muslim? In order to address this question, I will do a close textual analysis of his songs in this chapter. Part I is devoted to an analysis of his attempt to maintain Anna customs while living within the dualistic thinking and behavior that is part of Islamic tradition. Part II is an analysis of the position of the oral poets in contemporary Hausa society. In Part III I analyze Ali's daring treatment of kings, chiefs, princes and wealthy patrons, whom he criticizes in order to defend the interests of the weak and the poor.
I Faces of Faith in Hausa Oral Poetry
Ali na Maliki, now a court singer living in Mayayi arrondissement, originally
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sang only for the Anna or Maguzawa. A converted Muslim, he performed several Hajj or pilgrimages to Mecca, but he still sings for the few remaining Anna. The Anna are mostly farmers who pride themselves on achievements such as dubu, the highest distinction in the community. A dubu is a festival during which the host exhibits a wealth to be distributed to the guests, especially singers such as Ali whose songs are sought after on these occasions. Dubu means a thousand and the festival received this name because of a hard working farmer's ability to produce one thousand dame (millet or sorghum bundles). The Anne who is able to produce this amount becomes a sarkin noma, master of agriculture. If the producer is a woman she is called Tambara and the name of the festival is kan kwarriya. In this case the wealth to be distributed includes locally made clothes and women's accessories. No dubu festival can take place without the presence of the singers whose songs contribute to making the festival more enjoyable. The presence of the singers also reflects on the rank and influence of the host. In the song Sarkin Noma Maji Kai (chief of farming possessor of compassion), that is a `compassionate master of agriculture', Ali reminds us that kiyan Anne ya kama noman gona a mai dubu (beauty of Anne he holds cultivation of farms they will do dubu for him), a true Anne is a great farmer who can achieve the dubu. Unlike his other songs where kingship and power are associated with particular images such as the zaki (the lion) or the dodo (the ogre), here the masters of agriculture are described with an imagery which relates more to vegetation and to animals whose food consists of trees or greenery in general. This compassionate master of agriculture is likened to giwa mai kare ma danniya baya, elephant which breaks big trees such as danniya. The
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underlying message beneath this imagery is that like the zaki who is the king of carnivorous animals, the giwa is the leader of animals which eat plants and trees. As such the giwa is well known for its gluttony in the sense that it leaves little as it passes through peasants' farms or the savannah. This likens the giwa to the great Sarkin noma as a destroyer of trees and weeds which in turn is a metaphor of farming and hard work. To be able to grow a lot of crops and achieve success culminating in a dubu, any farmer must clear vast lands and be able to till them. The above imagery reminds one of the bush-fires used to clear farms seasonally in Africa. In an agricultural society where technology is still underdeveloped, hard work is a much admired quality. Ali's artistic vision has not lost sight of that important cultural behavior. In a song to Sarkin Noma Dan Hwaru (chief of farming Dan Hwaru), he calls on mai kwarare dan Hwaru shan kwaram zo ka yi noma (possessor of long-walk Dan Hwaru drinker of noises come to cultivate), the master of agriculture Dan Hwaru, hard worker with great patience, to come and till (his) farms. In order to show the master's mastery of agriculture and the courage with which he does his work, Ali describes him as being as fast as a race-horse and as devastating as a whirlwind or as iskan bazara:
Mai noma kamar gudun doki dan dubu. In yana yin noma, kama da guguwa ta taso. Waje in ya kama noma, kama da iskan bazara. ... Kamar kare shi koro zomo.
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Owner of cultivation like running of horse son of dubu. If he is cultivating, like with whirlwind it moving. Outside if he is cultivating, like wind of bazara. ... Like dog he chasing rabbit.
When he cultivates farms, he is as fast as a race-horse. He is like a whirlwind. When he cultivates farms, he damages weeds like iskan bazara. ... (He works fast) like a dog running after a rabbit.
Iskan bazara literally means the wind that blows during the period between the harvest and the rainy season, turning the green savannah to yellow. It is such a hot wind that some call it the weed-killer-wind. To liken the natural power of the iskan bazara to the power of a sarkin noma (a master of agriculture) to clear and cultivate farms is to elevate the sarkin noma above his peers and at the same time this comparison stresses the power of his achievements. The likeness also illustrates the natural power the master of agriculture is believed to possess and also that he is held in high esteem by his society. Ali told me in an interview that true sarakin noma (masters of agriculture) have a lot of power in their respective communities, not only because of their wealth but also because of their ability to harm potential enemies at
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will. They may not know the teaching of the holy scriptures, but Ali assured me that the true Anna or sarakin noma will never harm anyone who does not deserve it. This belief helps to explain why the singer is critical of modern "Anna" who are neither true Muslims nor true Anna. This is because the "true" Muslims do not openly embrace the Anna customs and the "true" Anna cannot let go of the dubu practice altogether. Yet, because of the influence of Islam and Western traditions, the modern Anna have abandoned the dubu festival. The practice of dubu has in fact become part of history. Before the intrusion of Islam and other cultural traditions, however, success culminating in a dubu was so important that Ali thinks no Anne should get old without achieving it: Anne kar ya kai ga tsuhwan banza. Banza is worthless and tsuhwa is old age or aging as a process. So to live and be old without achieving a dubu is like having lived a worthless life; a life without history for the family of the concerned Anne. It comes as no surprise that Ali is full of praise for Sarkin Noma Maji Kai, a young master of agriculture who values his ancestral culture by supporting his father's decision to delay his pilgrimage to Mecca in order for the father to achieve his dubu:
Ali-- Wani yaro ne maji kai na kankane, ya ba uba nai milyan guda shi da uwa tai su tai Makka. Sai uban ya ce ya ki, sai ya yi dubu. Tsoho ya yi shirin dubu, za a dubu. Wanga yaro,
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'Yan Amshi-- ya dami aljima tsoho nai.
Ali--
A certain child it is he possessor of mercy from Kankane,
he gave father his million one he and mother his they go Mecca. Well father he says he refuses, he first does dubu. Old man he gets ready for dubu, they going to do dubu. This child, 'Yan Amshi--he has strengthened tradition father his.
Ali-- There is one merciful boy from Kankane. He gave a lot of money to his father and mother to go to Mecca. The father refuses to go before having a dubu. He (the father) gets ready for the dubu, it is about to be done. This boy
Chorus-- has valued the tradition of his father.
The significance of this message lies in the son's acceptance of his father's wish to achieve the dubu before going to Mecca. The message also implies that the son is probably a converted Muslim trying to convert his parents. But the father accepts the conversion only after his dubu which is a way of valuing this traditional practice. Just after this powerful plea for the survival of Anna tradition, Ali goes on to sing about
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the intrusion of foreign elements which are, alas, not as positive as he expects. He warns his audience not to indulge in gambling (tsatsa) or in taking drugs (kwaya). There is also a lighter side of his songs, when he uses zambo and comedy to entertain an audience whose ears are more and more accustomed to hearing the muezzin's calls to prayer than to listening to a singer's admonition to adhere to old and dying values. Thus, when on a certain day he assisted at the dubu of a certain Duna, Ali tells his audience that: na bi Gobirawa na tarda ba maza I followed Gobirawa I found no men I went to visit Gobirawa I did not find any man.... Ali's chorus completes this joke by adding: Sai wata macce mai gajeren baya (only a woman possessor short of back), there was only one dwarf woman. An outsider to the complexities of Hausa culture and language can easily be misled by Ali's poetic and comic metalanguage as it shows in the above lines. Ali often acts like a comedian when facing a multi-ethnic crowd. To diffuse any tension, he uses comic techniques as found in low and high comedy. The low comedy is characterized by a lack of seriousness. Its main purpose is to entertain or amuse in order to make the audience laugh, sometimes at the follies of the human condition. The high comedy, on the other hand, is meant to not only entertain but also to educate the crowd. For this reason it is more serious and thought-provoking.
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Ali makes effective use of both low and high comedy. There are moments when low comedy is used to make the crowd laugh in order to alleviate the tension that has built up following strenuous suspense or moments of thoughts. So an extra joke is introduced to ease the tension between brothers divided by ethnicity or creed, even if the division is sometimes on the surface. Using his historical knowledge of the relationships between Katsinawa (from Katsina) and Gobirawa (from Gobir), two of the seven original Hausa states or Hausa Bakwai, the singer is exploiting the joking relationship that exists between them. Joking relationships are part of Hausa institutions and way of life. They translate a social, cultural and historical reality that may help anyone better understand the intra-ethnic relations among the Hausa on the one hand; and between the Hausa and the other ethnic groups on the other hand. John N. Paden (1986) has done an insightful analysis of the joking relationships among the Hausa of Nigeria. Because it is also relevant to the context of the Republic of Niger, it has been quoted here in full: Stylized forms of joking relationships (abokan wasa) are very salient to easing inter-ethnic or inter-city rivalries or historical tensions. A common meaning of abokan wasa, which is still used, is that the sons or daughters of a brother and sister (i.e. cousins) may become "play friends," and such play friends can say humorous or funny things to each other, and "abuse" each other in good humor. A play friend may be told that he doesn't eat well, or can't afford to feed his wives, or that he is "bush" (i.e. not "civilized"), or that he is descended from slaves, on his mother's side. [Note: In Sokoto, the term for kinship joking
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relations between cousins is tobashi.] The idea of play friends is carried over to ethnic relations, especially between the fulani and the Tiv ("Munchi") and Barebari. Numerous jokes are told to emphasize the "bush" quality of the other group, which, in turn, responds with its own "bush" stories. The effect seems to be to ease tension,
and provide a whole genre of humor.
[In note 43 Paden adds:] A common Fulani "joke" about the origin of the name "Tiv," which in Hausa is called "Munchi," is that a Fulani man gave a Tiv man his cattle to keep for a year. He then came back and said, "Where are my cattle?" The Tiv man said, "We ate them!" ("Mun ci") (Note: the words mun ci, in Hausa, mean "we ate.") The Barebari [also found in Zinder and Diffa in Niger Republic] tell numerous stories about the "wickedness" of the Fulani. For example, a Borno person (Barebari) was passing by and saw a Fulani family (son/mother/father). The father was lying down very close to a well and was drowsy. The Fulani son says, "I will not say it until it happens." When the father, in deep slumber, finally falls into the well, the son says to the mother, "your husband has fallen into a well." (This is regarded by Borno people as hilarious.) The Fulani, in turn, tell a story about the Kanuri to emphasize their "cowardice." Thus, the angel of Death came to a Kanuri man and his son. He asked the father who was older so that he (Death) could take his life. The father replied, "He is my son, it is true, but he is also not a young man." (57).
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In Niger Republic, the same jokes are found between Katsinawa and Gobirawa, between Fulani and Barebari, between Zabarmawa and Tuareg (Bugaje or Buzaye), between Zabarmawa and Gobirawa, between Bugaje and Blacksmiths. Inter-ethnic jokes are found in many societies around the world. When one leaves without prior notice, the French call it "Filer l'Anglaise." The English say it is "French leave." These expressions are so familiar that I think many people do not even bother to think about their origin. As in the Hausa situation, this joke translates the historic tension between the French and the English (Fisher 1996). It also indicates the centuries-old cultural and linguistic contacts between the two ethnic groups. A scholarly study of joking relationships, whether in the European or Hausa context, can further reveal the power of language or what Hunter has called language attitudes (Hunter 1981) and their impacts on the participants' daily life (Bamgbose 1991). The study can also provide more insights into the mechanism of cultural and linguistic borrowing. Ali's eloquent use of joking relationships is one example of how language can be used to affect people's attitudes. This kind of use is illustrated by a joke that Ali makes about the king of Gobir. In recent history, a king from Tsibiri--the capital of Gobir in the province of Maradi in present day Niger Republic-- attempted to flee. He was fearing for his life as the result of the coup d'tat of 1974 which ended the Diori government and started the military regime under the late president Seyni Kountch. In the attempt, the king dressed like a woman, and when he was discovered and caught by soldiers, they could not help laughing at him. Both Kountch and the soldiers who caught the king are of the Zarma ethnic group which is in joking relationship with the people of Gobir. When
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the soldiers wired the new president about the event, he could not help laughing either. He ordered them to set the fearful king free. They did. Ali's telling his Hausa audience this story of the king of Gobir in the form of zambo, that is a veiled allusion or innuendo, is a way of achieving two things at the same time: to make them laugh in retrospect but also to remind the Gobirawa of the importance of traditional cultural practices such as the dubu festival. Furthermore, as a hereditary singer, he claims the freedom to not only criticize but also make jokes about people. This is the case in the song to Sarkin Noma Maji Kai when Ali portrays Buzaye or Bugaje busy eating and taking food with them as they leave the dubu festivals: Ali-- Duna yana rabon tuwo Duna yana rabon dawo Wani Buzu na Madigi Chorus- Dan maduguji dari ya samo. Ali-- Duna yana robon dawo Wata Buzuwar Tudun Baki sai ta yi dariya Chorus-- Ta kumshe dawo ga tsohon sayi
Ali--Duna he is distributing tuwo Duna he is distributing dawo A certain Buzu from Madigi Chorus--Dan Madurguji (big balls of tuwo) hundred he received. Ali-- Duna he is distributing tuwo
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A certain Buzuwa of Tudun Baki then she made laughter Chorus-- She wrapped dawo in an old cloth.
Ali-- Duna is distributing tuwo Duna is distributing dawo A certain Buzu from Madigi Chorus-- He received one hundred Madurguji Ali--Duna is distributing tuwo A certain Buzuwa of Tudun Baki started to laugh Chorus-- She wrapped dawo in an old cloth.
The implication of this satiric joke or zambo is that Bugaje are nomads and as such they do not normally stay in one place to farm. Food is the domain of farmers, as cattle is for the nomads. Here Ali puts the Bugaje on the spot not because he disapproves of their nomadism but because he wants to make his audience laugh. Even the Bugaje may find the joke amusing and end up laughing at it. At the end the members of the audience can all realize how dependent they are on each other. The farmer needs milk or meat to complete his diet while the nomad needs millet or other cereals to balance his own as well. But in this particular context Ali's focus is on the Anna and their disappearing dubu custom. Still elaborating on his zambo, Ali attacks not only the Anna of the village in question, but also their chief:
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Ali-- 'Yan Gidan Kaura ma su zucciyar 'yan mata. In na je gamkar Anna in dora dariya sun ki dubu. In ba ku dubu, Yan Amshi-- ko mai garin ku bai kan kwarriya.
Ali-- Sons of Gidan Kaura Owners of hearts of girls. If I went to competition of Anna I often laughed they refused to make dubu. If not you do dubu, 'Yan-Amshi--even head village of you not will make kan kwarriya.
Ali-- The Anna of Gidan Kaura are like women. They enjoy assisting at other Anna's dubu. When I am invited to Anna's competition, I laugh at them (those of Gidan Kaura) because they cannot do their own dubu. If you cannot do your own dubu,
Chorus-- even your chief will not be able to achieve a Kan Kwarriya.
The Kan Kwarriya is the women's equivalent of the dubu. Only an Anne can realistically describe the pain and shame this zambo carries with it, especially for the chief who cannot do even what brave women can achieve. Ali told me in our interview that he uses zambo to move his reluctant target into action. This manipulation of the zambo to create some effects on the audience is another clever
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way of defending this traditional culture of the Anna. For that matter, Ali stated in the interview that nowadays it is difficult to come by a true Anne because of Islamic and Western traditions which co-exist with some cultural features of the Anna. In terms of this cultural co-existence and osmosis, Ali also reminded me of some Islamized Anna who invite Malamai (pl. of Mallam) to their dubu festivals. Because of their conversion, those Anna and their Muslim guests may not drink the beer offered or eat the meat if it is given as a sacrifice during the ceremony. In this respect, Tremearne (1914) and Besmer (1983) have both reported some Muslim Hausa and Arabs taking part in the bori liturgy in North and West Africa. Tremearne claims that the effective power of the bori priests has attracted many people, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. They go to seek the priests' guidance and services. Though it is difficult to imagine a respectable mallam taking part in a dubu in present day Niger, it is none the less true that early Islam was to some extent accommodating to local cultures and traditions. Reflecting on the directions of Christian-Muslim relations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Johann Haafkens argues in Christian-Muslim Encounters (1995) that Islam was not in fact a threat to local African values in its early manifestations. As a result, Muslims lived peacefully together with adherents of African traditional religions. "To a great extent," notes Haafkens, "that seems to be due to the fact that Islam was seen through the lens of traditional African views of life. Rulers were able to become Muslims without abandoning a number of pre-Islamic customs and religious practices, which was especially convenient when many of their subjects did not become Muslims" (302). Discussing Islam and the philosophy of the Prophet in matters regarding
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economy, Ali A. Mazrui has noted Islam's ideological ambivalence and its capacity to accommodate different modes of production or economic systems. He concludes that with regard to the local cultures there is an "underlying paradox in Islam, a tendency towards syncretism" (82). However, as Haafkens has remarked, a very different tone was set with the beginning of the Islamic reform movement early in the nineteenth century. This reform movement ultimately led to the holy war commonly referred to as the Jihad. The aim of the reform was to purify Islam on the basis of its Arabic sources: the Qur'an, the Traditions (hadiths), and the Shari'a. Because the European colonization of Hausaland started during this turmoil, tensions and conflicts also emerged between the Hausa Muslims and the Christian colonizers in the Republic of Niger (Mounkala 1989; Leroux 1948). The same happened in Nigeria between the Christians in the south and the Muslims in the North (Haafkens 1995). According to Haafkens, these tensions and conflicts were directly related to the tensions in the Christian-Muslim relationship in the Mediterranean and actually involved people from outside Africa. And where relationships were harmonious this may have been due, in a large measure, to resources and circumstances within the sub-saharan African community itself which seems to make it possible for people to live together peacefully in culturally and religiously plural societies (302; emphasis added). In Ali na Maliki's case, this cultural and religious plurality is what has made it easy for the Anna to welcome the Malamai among themselves. For in contrast to the more conservative and monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam,
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polytheistic religions like those of parts of Africa and Asia are tolerant partly because they are ready to accommodate additional gods. So what is an extra god between friends? There were hardly any religious wars in Africa before the intrusion of Islam and Christianity. African traditional religions permitted different ethnic groups to have their own gods, and divine plurality was the order of the day (Mazrui 1990: 1314; emphasis added).
Around the world other scholars have also found reasons to believe that traditional belief systems are very much less conservative than organized religions. Gerd Tellenbach, in The Church in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century (1993), has argued that European pagans failed to face the challenge of Christianity because "their ethnicity prevented them [the European pagans] from becoming missionary systems of belief" (3). As for the ability of pagan people to open up for change, Tellenbach thinks that they were "probably predisposed by their polytheism not to regard the gods of other peoples as devilish" (9). Jack Goody, in The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (1987), has remarked that Greek civilization flourished all over Europe not only because Greece was on the periphery of the ancient world, but also because of its traditional beliefs and cults which gave speculation a free rein. Similarly, he argues that in Africa the multiplicity of gods and cults paved the way for changes in ideas as well as the adoption of new gods and cults due to the inability of existing shrines to live up to their believers' expectations in real life.
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This point is seemingly supported by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart in which the penetration of Christianity is shown as the result of Igbo society's belief system falling apart. It follows that, whether it is in Europe (Greece), in Asia or Africa, the nature of the polytheistic religions has a lot to do with the indigenous peoples' reception of the organized religions be it through commerce, missionary activities or conquest. For as we have learned from history, the polytheists are more receptive to changes (see also Leroux 1948). Ali na Maliki is therefore believable in his statement about some Malamai responding to the invitation of Anna for their dubu festivals. Certainly the Anna will welcome the Malamai as representatives of the same God they also believe in, that is, the Supreme Being. If the Malamai decline such invitations it may be because of the dualistic thinking and behavior which often prevail in the reformed Islamic traditions. There is controversy on whether or not Islam prohibits any kind of musical and/or artistic activity. In Niger, Mahaman Garba (1992) argues in his doctoral thesis, Islam has had a negative impact on musical performance and creativity in general. Garba also points his finger at Christianity which, in Niger as elsewhere in Africa, has not been in favor of integrating local culture and music. This is despite the fact that Christianity itself had to lose its Judaic origin and soul at the hands of the Romans, who adapted it to their local realities. Wendy James and Douglas H. Johnson (1988) remind us that the equation between Christendom and Europe (more specifically Western Europe), is new. They add that the early cradle and spread of Christianity was not Europe but Asia Minor. James' and Johnson's reminder reflects views also held by many researchers such as Peter Charanis (1978) in his article on
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the formation of the Greek people, Isnard Wilhelm Frank in A Concise History of the Medieval Church (1995), and Norbert Brox in A Concise History of the Early Church (1995). Whether Islam allows poets to dream, singers to sing, and musicians to compose depends on the interpreter of the Holy Book, the Qur'an, and its hadiths or the sayings and habits of the Prophet as written by his closest disciples and wives. Malam Moussa Souleymane of Niger has given Mahaman Garba a quote from the Holy Book which shows Islam's ambivalent attitude toward music and the arts:
Les chanteurs suivent la voie de la perdition, ils sont sur le chemin de la perdition. Est-ce que tu n'as pas vu qu'ils sont entrs dans un gouffre infernal. Ils disent ce que leur coeur n'a pas dit, brf ce qui sort de leur bouche est contraire ce que pense leur coeur. Sauf ceux qui ont cru en Dieu et ont fait de bonnes actions au nom de Dieu et ont pu gagner aprs avoir t lss dans leur droit--ceux-l leur chanson n'est pas impure (Garba 1992: 245; quoted from the Qur'an: Ch. XXVI, sourate "Shuara'i" des versets 222-226).
The equivalent of this French quote in prose form has been translated into verses by Qur'anic scholar and commentator Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1981) from Pakistan:
v.222- They descend on every
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Lying, wicked person,
v.223- (Into whose ears) they pour Hearsay vanities, and most Of them are liars
v.224- And the poetsIt is those straying in Evil, Who follow them:
v.225- Seest thou not they Wander distracted in every Valley?-
v.226- And that they say What they practice not?
v.227- Except those who believe, Work righteousness engage much
In the remembrance of Allah, And defend themselves only after
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They are unjustly attacked And soon will the unjust Assailants know what vicissitudes Their affairs will take! (973-974).
In his commentary (note 3237, p. 973), Ali warns that the meaning of the poets must be read along with the exception mentioned in verse 227. This is to say that poetry and other arts are not in themselves evil, but he adds that they have to be in the service of religious righteousness. Ali is of the opinion that "Poetry and the fine arts which are to be commanded are those which emanate from minds steeped in Faith, which try to carry out in life the fine sentiments they [the poetry and fine arts] express in their artistic work, aim at the glory of God rather than at self-glorification or the fulsome praise of men with feet of clay, and do not (as in Jihad) attack anything except aggressive evil" (note 3238; p.973). As verse 227 suggests, poetry and the fine arts are commendable if they do not incite to evil doing. For example, saying bad things about a person just for the sake of destroying him or her is evil. It is also reprehensible for the poets to create untrue stories about a person's life as a way to extort some money. This last aspect is frequently cited by modern patrons who feel cheated by unscrupulous `beggars' (maro'ka; sing. maro'ki) or oral poets (mawa'ka, sing. mawa'ki) and drummers (maka'da, sing. maka'di). Although a Muslim and a rich poet, Ali na Maliki's position vis--vis the Anna
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tradition is even more difficult for ultra-conservatives who advocate a return to the ways and values of the Prophet. As a poet, Ali's implied criticism of the dualistic behavior of the conservatives is illustrative of the early manifestations of Islam as a conquering religion. In Hausaland, Islam has been introduced as an urban religion because it has traditionally moved from the ruling class downwards. And since the economic and political power has almost always been in urban centers, the first converts have tended to look at the others as 'kauyawa (sing. Ba'kauye), meaning `bush people.' In some areas these people are called Dazawa (sing. Bagidaje). Unlike these early converts and some modern conservatives, Ali na Maliki looks at this attitude with the critical eyes of the artist. In keeping with his defense of the Anna and the tradition they represent, Ali says of another master of agriculture, in Bako Sakin Noma, that he is not a bagidaje, that is, an unsophisticated country bumpkin. This defense illustrates the nature of the relationship between the Anna who are in the minority, and the Muslims who form the majority in Niger. A hint at the tenseness of the relationship is given in the song to Tambari Gangara, a newly coronated chief whom Ali praises for his good qualities and his care for his subjects. To begin with, Ali reminds Tambari Gangara of the chiefs who ruled before him and of their misdeeds:
Ali-- Sa'ada Abdu ka iko, in ya sakka ma dangi komi: su nemi matar wannan, a kwaci kayan wannan, a ba shi kashin banza. Abdullahi sai ya shude; Maman ya rika,
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hakanan yab barsu. A zagi wannan Anne....
When Abdu was ruling, if he let relatives everything: they slept with wives of so and so, they confiscated things of so and so, they gave he beatings of nothing. Abdullahi then he died; Maman he succeeded, same he left them. They abused such and such Anne...
Ali-- When Abdu was ruling, he let his relatives do anything (they wanted): they slept with married women, they confiscated peoples' things and beat them. Abdullahi died and then Maman succeeded him. (But) he did not change the situation: they insulted that Anne....
The last line, a zagi wannan Anne, is a good example that illustrates how the Anna might have been treated in the past. Under the reign of those chiefs, Anna were insulted or abused (zagi) without any apparent reason. Tambari Gangara is praised here for having put an end to that kind of practice as well as for his efforts to unify the community as a whole. In order to encourage the new chief to be more tolerant of
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the Anna, a symbol of difference, Ali asks him to remember some of the previous chiefs who were good rulers:
Ali-- Ka tuna da ikon Allah Ka tuna da kushewar Barka Ka tuna da darajjar Rabi Ka tuna da Abdullahi Ka tuna da Abdullkadir Da Mayaki tsohon sarki Tambari dan walihi ne kai. Tun nan duniya na Abu ka hi su. Har lahira ku ke gaba dan, Yan Amshi-- kakan ka Annabi ne 'dan Kadr Lahiya na Abu, ga horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi.
Ali- You remember power of God You remember grave of Barka You remember prestige of Rabi You remember Abdullahi You remember Abdullkadir And Mayaki old of chief, Tambari son of saint you are. From here world kin of Abdu you outpass they.
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Even place of the dead you are in front because
'Yan Amshi--grandfather of you Prophet he was, son of Kadr, kin of Alhaji chief of relatives.
Ali--Remember Allah's power Remember Barka's grave Remember Rabi's prestige Remember Abdullahi Remember Abdulkadir And Mayaki the old chief Tambari you are the son of a saint. You outshine many in this world. Even in the next world you will sit in the front row because,
Chorus-- your grandfather was a Prophet, son of Kadr. Peace on you great educator, champion of unity
It is clear from this genealogical tree that Tambari Gangara and his family are Muslims. The fact that some rulers coming from the same family tree were intolerant towards non-Muslim believers such as the Anna indicates that the chief has exceptional leadership quality. It also indicates that the poet is able to praise good values and criticize bad ones. By foregrounding the rulers with good qualities and
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calling on the newly coronated chief to follow in their footsteps, Ali shows his desire to defend the weak, the poor or those discriminated against, that is, the Anna. In our interview, Ali told a story of a chief he had never liked for various reasons, despite the fact that the chief was offering him gifts whenever the occasion presented itself. Ali took the gifts but refused to sing for the chief because he had never thought that he could be a good ruler. When he realized that the chief was a good one, he started singing for him. Paul Zumthor (1990: 185), Robert C. Evans (1989) and Ruth Finnegan (1977: 243 and passim) have argued that praise poets are not outside of politics. Evans says that in England, from the Middle Ages through the eighteenth century, "A poet took political positions not in a vacuum but in a context defined by the competing interests of powerful individuals and groups. When he insinuated criticism of one prominent figure or openly praised another, he did so within a context itself shaped and permeated by competition among the powerful" (Evans 1989: 70). Such is the case of Ali na Maliki, who is not afraid of taking sides and openly expressing his views. His praise of the new chief against his predecessors and family members is a daring act which may pit him against the chief himself. In addition, Ali's open criticism of the way the Anna were treated and his implied efforts to value their tradition is a courageous move in a context shaped by Islamic ideals. Thus, Ali laughs at the "Anna" who are neither Muslim nor Anna. Addressing those of Gidan Kazuwa, he says that they are
Ba malamai ba ba Anna ba:
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ku rabe-rabe ne. In dai uban mutun Anne ne, in Anniya ta haihe shi duniya, in a ka kai shi lahira, Allah sai ya kiro ni in kai shi masabki. Yan Gidan Kazuwa, ran kwanan ku lahira,
Yan Amshi-- rannan ni ga wanda ke kai ku masabki.
Ali-- Ni ba za ni ba.
Ali--Not Muslims not Anna: you half half you are. If truly father of person Anne he is, if Anniya gave birth he world, if he taken place of dead, God must call me take he resting place. Sons of Kazuwa, day you sleep place of dead,
'Yan Amshi--that day I see who will take you resting place.
Ali--I not will go
Neither Muslims nor Anna: they are half-half. If a person's father is an Anne, if a person's mother is an Anniya (fem. of Anne),
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when that person dies God will call me to lead him to his final resting place. But people of Kazuwa when you die, Chorus--that day I will see who will take you to your final destination. Ali-- I will not go. Ali's reference to the next world is to be taken as a figurative way of expressing his ideas, which are here part of a zambo aimed at these particular Anna who are about to abandon one of the most important elements of their tradition: the dubu. Ali has never been to the Heavens to welcome any Anne. If he says that he will not be there to welcome the Anna of Gidan Kazuwa, he is mixing zambo with comedy for a double purpose: to make his audience laugh at those particular Anna while inciting everyone to give him more gifts. So far my discussion of Ali's poetry has been focused on male masters of agriculture. There are, however, a few songs for Tambarai (pl. of Tambara), female masters of agriculture. Bargery defines Tambara as an official position among a colony of Bugaje women. But the word is also used among the Hausa and has become a title for Hausa women in the region of Maradi, probably as the result of ethnic mixing and loan-words. In the song Tambara Hawa (Princess Hawa), Ali praises the Princess and wishes her good luck in spinning thread (zare). As said above, the kan 'kwarriya includes a lot of locally made clothes and other artifacts for women's adornments. A Tambara to-be can spend her leisure time manufacturing those clothes to be distributed at the festivals. Ali praises the Tambara who is spinning her thread and he seizes the opportunity to criticize some old women who have nothing to do except sow bad seeds in younger women's minds:
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Ali-- Da waccan hwarar akuyar, da waccan bakar akuyar, Yan Amshi-- duk shegantakar da ake da ku. Ali--With that white goat, with that black goat, Chorus--all problems created with you.
Ali--That white goat and that other black goat,
Chorus--you are all part of the problems. In terms of color symbolism, it is clear from these lines that both white and black are equally responsible for their common problems. As a result, each of them must make a positive contribution towards solving the problems and towards building a peaceful society. This shows, once again, that Ali is an artist capable of playing a major role such as fostering national reconciliation and unity in an ethnically diverse society. I conclude this first part of the analysis with a comically frivolous zambo. Ali advises an unidentified princess on how to sit down in a womanly fashion:
Ali-- Akwai wata Tambara ga reni, ba ta san zaman mata ba. In ta zo zaman mata, Chorus-- Wance sai ta tada kahwa tsaye. Ali-- Ai sakarai,
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Chorus-- ki kada kahwa guda....
Ali--There is certain Princess to me, she not know sitting women like. If she come to sit womanly, Chorus--she raises leg upwards. Ali--Oh bumpkin, Chorus--you wrestle down leg one.
Ali-- There is one princess, she does not know how women sit down correctly. When she sits down, Chorus--she raises one leg upwards. Ali-- You bumpkin, Chorus--bring your leg down.
Ali enacted the way she sits down which he sometimes does as a part of his performance. His actions complement his satiric, critical and often frivolous style (see also Mack 1981: 116). This style coupled with a satiric content take away the pressure of the somber and moralistic tone of Hausa written poetry and they make him more popular because both the style and the content allow him to express things that many people may not be able to say in everyday situations (Finnegan 1977). In other words, the performance is for the audience a good avenue for experiencing frivolous feelings
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and thoughts without having to break any social taboo or norm. Perhaps Ali is expressing their most repressed and private feelings. In any case, the popularity of Ali's songs illustrates the role and place of the oral poet in Hausa society.
II The Mawa'ka in Hausa society
Despite the social services that the oral singer provides to the society, Guy Nicolas (1975) and M. G. Smith (1957) have argued that the griot is feared and despised at the same time in Hausa society. Nicolas's conclusion is that the singer or the griot has no dignity whatsoever because he or she is perceived by many as a parasite, as someone who blackmails to get what he or she wants. Mahaman Garba agrees with Nicolas, but only to the extent that he also thinks that in dynastic societies such as the Hausa society, the mawa'ki has the status of an "inferior" compared to his or her royal patrons. Nicolas has based his assumption on one group of singers because Hausa (feudal) society is described as a society which cherishes strong social stratification according to an individual's profession or sana'a. Singing is also a sana'a and the patrons consider it as such. Nicolas may have in mind a specific category of singers who have inherited the profession of singing and are usually attached to specific groups such as the royal families. It is indeed an embarrassment for a prince or a chief, for instance, not to give something to a griot (or any of those mentioned above) who is praising him. This is not always true for a non-royal person: at least in modern
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days there is no obligation to give anything to the singer. In Niger the majority of modern griots (term often used abusively) have not inherited their profession. They are independent or free-lance mawa'ka (creative artists or poet), maka'da (drummers or musicians) and maro'ka (`beggars'). The maro'ka almost always go with (famous) poets or singers as helpers. They are the ones who clear the stage before the performance begins. They interrupt the performance to announce a patron's wish. The patron may ask the singer to sing for someone she or he likes or dislikes in order to provoke a competition. For example if the patron is in love with a girl he can ask the maroki to tell the singer to sing a beautiful song for her for a disclosed amount of money. Then the maroki announces both the money and the name of the girl as well as the name of the lover-challenger in public. It is now up to the mawaki to `heat up' (zuga) the atmosphere by creating a song for the girl, making it clear that the song is a challenge to other lovers. A maroki also acts as an intermediary between the Mallam who names a baby at a naming ceremony and the audience in attendance. In this case he announces loudly the name of the baby which the Mallam has whispered into his ear. Sometimes the maroki can act as a genealogist, in situations such as the naming ceremony. The expectation is that if he or she traces correctly the genealogy of a patron up to a number of generations in the past, he or she can get a reward. If the maro'ki (fem. maro'kiya) fails, then the patron is not obliged to give anything. And since many of the modern maro'ka are free-lance, very few know the correct genealogy and people use this ignorance as a reason to discredit them altogether. So generally speaking, the maro'ki is not creative in the sense of the poet (mawa'ki; fem. Mawa'kiya).
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Similarly, a maka'di (drummer) is not necessarily creative in the sense of the poet except when he uses his music (ki'di) to create a language as court musicians do (Garba 1992; Besmer 1971). Like the maro'ki, the maka'di may travel with a mawa'ki who creates songs. What happens in reality is that the mawa'ki needs both the maka'di and the maro'ki to work as a team, although there are solo artists. Some maka'da know nothing but drumming, some maro'ka nothing but ro'ko (lit. `begging'). But it is possible to find people who combine ro'ko and wa'ka (poetry), that is poetry and `begging.' The real difference is between the court singers and the free-lance singers. While the free-lance maka'da, maro'ka or mawa'ka have more freedom to move and to criticize (Zumthor 1990), the singers attached to courts expect gifts from their royal patrons who, in turn, expect praises and gratitude. Because of this give and take relation, a prince may have the feeling of superiority as the giver while the maro'ki, the maka'di or the mawa'ki may feel obliged to show some respect as the receiver. In that respect, any of these three is no more independent on his royal patron than was Voltaire or Ben Jonson to their respective royal patrons. In fact Brendan Dooley (1995) has shown that for the court poets of the Renaissance Italy, securing one's job at a palace is a top and difficult priority. For in times of economic hardships, Dooley argues, competition becomes tougher even among the best poets. This is because with fewer positions at the palaces, "the muses no longer have shelter in the palaces of the great, so that the poets have gone back to hiding among the rugged crags of Parnassus" (8). The insecurity was so high among the Renaissance court poets that Lorenzo Belline lamented that without a job he "could...become absolutely nothing...and [be]
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cast about the earth without fixed abode, disesteemed, useless, powerless" (in Dooley 1995: 8). In the Hausa context the court poets who have been attached to the same court for generations cannot lose their jobs no matter how bad the economic situation has become. It is rather the chief or the king who may have to be changed according to the rules of succession or because of changes in the political climate. In times of economic and political stability, a famous poet can become successful to the point where the court can extend its favors and powers to him. In this case, the inequality between client and patron, that is between the court and its poets, ceases to be absolute. Thus Jean LeDrew Metcalfe (1991) says of Ben Jonson that the setting of his panegyric was a place where the praised and the praiser enjoyed the same degree of authority. This is another way of saying that Jonson's notoriety paid off. In the Hausa setting of Niger, the Anna society provides an almost equal sharing of power between the praised and the (hereditary) praiser. The mawa'ki was and still is fully integrated, he "ne souffrait pas d'un prestige social infrieur comme les griots en souffrent." (Garba 1992: 239) [`did not suffer from the stigma of inferiority as did other griots']. Furthermore, Garba remarks that in that same society,
Les musiciens jouissaient d'un statut qui ne faisait d'eux ni des quemendeurs, ni des "tres infrieurs", ou des gens inutiles. Ils taient respects et certains participaient mme dans les affaires officielles.
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Musicians enjoyed a status which neither reduced them to beggars nor to `inferior beings'; or to useless persons. They were respected and some even participated in official affairs (240).
Ali na Maliki confirmed that claim when he said that on several occasions he was asked to judge important cases in courts or else to give his opinion. This complex relationship between Ali and the royal families is the main object of my analysis in Part III.
III The Court and the Mawa'ka in Hausa Society
For a poet's praise to be effective, says Robert Evans (1989) of Ben Jonson and his poetics of patronage, it has to be convincing to a wider audience. To be valuable, Evans adds, it has to seem sincere. Effectiveness and sincerity are also important concepts in understanding and analyzing Ali's attitude towards royalty in general. How effective are his songs and how sincere can he be with the royal families and other patrons? The following analysis is an attempt to answer these questions. Time and again, Ali has said that he fears no prince, no chief, no king. He even told me a story in which a chief and his army attempted to ambush and kill him, but they failed. Ali praises himself as a chief in his own right. This is because he inherited his generations old profession, the first generation having come from the old
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kingdom of Katsina in present day Nigeria. He concluded the story about the attempted ambush by saying that ba shi ya kashe zomo ba, 'dauka ce ya ke (not he who killed rabbit, taking it is he does); Ali did not kill the rabbit, he just took it, a metaphor of his inheritance. This inheritance may be one more reason why he has become so important that chiefs let him try cases in their courts or ask him about his opinion before making decisions. In any case, as Ali likes to say, the royal families have to put up with his criticism as long as he makes it while playing his kotso. The kotso is a drum with only one diaphragm to which a piece of wax is affixed and is the symbol of his profession and power. The little piece of wax varies in size according to the rank and importance of the chief who will be the object of the song. The wax is changed by the singer and Ali told me that there is one kind of wax that is used only for the king in the court to which Ali's family was originally attached. As long as he has his kotso slung under his arm-pit, Ali added, nothing in this world can stop him from saying what he wants. But as said earlier, there are some chiefs who do not accept everything he says and even wish he were dead, as he suggests in the following song:
Ali-- Bara ina Madina zama na, nan ma'kiya suna kai kawo. Sunce na mace dada wai sun huta. Ko maza, ko mata wa ya ce maku na zan babu? Na gangara ku hito, Yan-Amshi-- ku gani ga wanda ya mutu an tado shi...
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Ali-- Last year I was Madina living, here enemies they busy. They said I died therefore they rested. Men or women who told you I became nothing? Those of Gangara you come out Chorus--you see there is who died resurrected he
Ali-- Last year I was at Medina (the Holy city), here at home my enemies were busy. They claimed that I was dead; they had gotten rid of me. Who told you that I was dead? People of Gangara come out, Chorus-- to see the dead man has been resurrected...
It is not only Ali's hereditary right to sing that makes him so powerful, but also his wealth and reputation as a witty and sharp-tongued singer. He displays his knowledge of tradition by using his poetic diction or metalanguage not only to suit different occasions but also to contrast chiefs and princes according to their achievements and generosity. In this respect, a chief compared to a lion has certainly more prestige than another who is likened to any other animal because symbolically the lion is the king of all the animals. Literary critic Grard Genette, in Fiction and Diction (1993), has rightly argued
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that style is a harmony between nature and culture. What makes a great artist, I think, is her or his way of weaving natural elements to create cultural images and symbols which in turn may have an impact in shaping other peoples' views of life. Ali has a feel for this kind of harmony in his use of natural images and symbols to reflect on his culture and society. Images and symbols are carefully selected to match or describe a chief or a prince. This reflects Ali's efforts as he strives to achieve artistic excellence. The selective process leads to more elaborate and expressive metaphors, symbolism and imagery. It is the power to express through these artistic devices, rather than to describe, that distinguish a minor artist from a major one and makes poetry (waka) different from prose narrative (zube) Thus, in his songs to Sarakin Noma (`masters of agriculture') the imagery relates almost exclusively to vegetation and to animals that feed on it. But in his other songs for chiefs, kings and princes, Ali uses images and symbols relating more to power and protection, sometimes stained by the dark side of human nature. In the song Mayayi Sabo, the chief is addressed as zaki (the lion): zaki ka ci 'yan maza (lion you eat son of men), the lion, eater of brave men. As the first line of the song, it foregrounds the power of Mayayi in relation to Ali's rating or ranking of the chiefs. This is because, out of the eleven songs to different chiefs and princes, only three have been addressed as zaki (pl. zakoki or zakuna). Bargery defines "zaki" as a term of address to a ruling chief, but since the chiefs in question are all ruling at the time of the songs one may wonder why Ali does not address them all as zakoki. It is certainly because he intends to use the word artistically to express either his preference
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for a specific king or to allude to a de facto event or character. In Mayayi Sabo, the singer wants to distinguish Mayayi from other chiefs. As zaki, Mayayi Sabo is elevated to the status of the most powerful chiefs. Some of the qualities that have brought him there are reflected in nicknames and epithets used to describe him. He is a noted warrior (gagara, ginsau) and a very impressive leader (makaye) who is difficult to compete with. He is also popular: Ali--Ga taro, 'Yan Amshi--ga 'dan gidan malam Sabo Alhaji...
Ali--There is crowd, Chorus--for son of malam Sabo Alhaji...
Ali--There is popularity, Chorus--for the son of Malam Sabo Alhaji...
and generous: Ali-- Motar da mai gida na yab bani ga ta nan... Dan Ali ka raba mu da takar kayayuwa...
Ali-- Car of that owner of my house gave me here it is... Son of Ali you separated us with walk on thorns...
Ali-- The car my master gave me is here...
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Son of Ali, you spare us the pain of thorns...
This impressive, generous and commanding figure is contrasted with a comic character of a prince, probably a contender to the Mayayi chieftainship:
Ali--Wani maina, zakara mai gaban hwada. Amma ko da ya ga shaho, Yan Amshi--ya kurma kai daka.
Ali--A certain prince, cock owner of chest of fight. But as soon as he sees hawk, Chorus--he hides head in room.
Ali-- A certain prince looks like a belligerent cock. But as soon as he sees a hawk, Chorus--he runs away to hide himself.
The prince is likened to zakara, a symbol of a leader who stands out above his class. Most certainly the prince has singled himself out among the other princes because of his acts of courage. Ali says earlier in the song that mai tsoron Ubangiji shi yag gaida Annabi (possessor fear of God he greets Prophet), he who is afraid of God greets His Prophet. This is a zambo directed at the courageous prince who apparently is not on friendly terms with Ali who is the official singer for the ruling
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chief. Ali is the Prophet and his master (Ubangiji) is Mayayi Sabo himself. The comic aspect is that as soon as zakara sees shaho (the West-African hawk), he runs for shelter. Shaho is chief Mayayi whose presence zakara, the prince, cannot tolerate. In contrast to chief Mayayi, Ali presents Sarkin Balbaje as just victorious (mai nasara) and energetic (gogarma). This chief does not even come close to Sarkin Gangara Abdullahi. Abdullahi is zaki and inuwa, the shade. As such Abdullahi combines the royal aura and leadership of zaki with the protection and power implied in inuwa:
Ali--Kai inuwa ne na Garba, ka hi kiran dan mutum. Yan Amshi--Amma duk wanda ya ji rana ai ya shigo. Zaki na Garba baba hwade gaskiya.
Ali--You shade it is kin of Garba, you more than call son of person. Chorus--But all who feel sun they enter. Lion, kin of Garba father says the truth.
Ali-- You are a shade kin of Garba, you need not invite anybody to come to you.
Chorus-- But he who is threatened by the sun will come to you.
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Lion, you cherish the truth.
Then as usual Ali adds comedy to balance the seriousness and importance of the previous personality. In this case it is a horseman (barde) who is the object of the comedy. The horseman is probably from Abdullahi's retinue, for it is at the end of his song that Ali says: Wani barden mu ya ga dak'kiyare ya yi dariya. Da ga bayan shi ya ga tabshe ya yi jan gira.
A certain horseman of us he sees dak'kiyare he makes laugh. From behind of him he sees tabshe he makes pull eyes brows.
One horseman laughs at the sight of dak'kiyare (cooked millet balls). He draws his brows when he turns his back and sees tabshe (a local gravy).
To fully understand the comic aspect of the remark one has to know that in Hausa culture food and royalty do not mix in public. A prince, a chief, a king or any other dignitary is not to be seen eating food in public places. If he does, the food and the location must be "respectable." So to stain the dignitaries, Ali describes them eating in crowded places such as car stations and markets. These are places where the royal people and other dignitaries are most likely to be seen by the common people who come from diverse spheres. Eating in open places like those tarnishes the image of the dignitaries who are supposed to be cultural models and educators. Much as
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modern leaders take great care of themselves before public appearances, so too must those dignitaries in their traditional contexts. In many cases food is involved in his critique of chiefs and princes. These dignitaries are associated with the food of rural areas symbolizing the life of their rural subjects. Such food includes tabshe (gravy); tahwasa (greens found during the rainy season); guna (pumpkin); and dawo or dak'kiyare. As an artist who knows the styles of life in both urban centers and rural zones, Ali is a cultural elite who can shape some aspects of his people's life. Eisenstadt (1980) describes cultural elites in oral civilizations as major entrepreneurs who constitute "the most important linkage, first between the cultural orientation and the symbolic articulation of the major institutional spheres and second between these and the processes of change that develop within the historical societies" (850). I think that by cultural orientation Eisenstadt is referring to the direction of changes in popular culture and institutions while he refers to the rulers as the symbolic articulation of these institutional changes. As cultural elites, the oral poets are the linkers between the popular institutions and the court. Therefore for the poets and the populace, the court is not the only place where the linkages can take place. Guy Nicolas (1975) has noted the role of the market (kasuwa) as the place par excellence where people meet for cultural and educational exchange:
C'est sur les marchs que se rpandent les modes vestimentaires ou oblatives. C'est au march que les gens de la campagne acquirent des rudiments de comportement urbain....
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It is in markets that clothing and gift-giving become widespread. It is in the market that rural people acquire some rudiments of urban behavior...(169).
The common people can also have a glance at their leaders on other occasions. They include, among others, Karamar salla (Ramadan) and Babbar salla, the festival commemorating Abraham's sacrifice. As a cultural linker between the court and the people, Ali knows the social conventions for each group. Therefore he can use his knowledge to educate both the court and the people. Thus by ridiculing dignitaries whom he presents as breaking the rules of these social conventions, Ali makes his audience laugh while educating the public about life in the court. As a court singer, he knows a lot about the court's characteristics to the point of educating younger princes or even ruling chiefs and kings. But as he said in our interview, his criticism does not have to be based on facts. He can criticize a chief who does not follow the kind of behavior expected from him either to correct him or to simply tarnish his image in favor of another. The point has been made earlier that money is not always the driving factor in his criticism, since he is a wealthy person. But it would be incorrect to say that Ali does not criticize in order to make more money. However my main concern here is how he uses his poetic talent to communicate his message. For example, Ali displays the power and importance of chief Abdullahi through symbolism. The chief is shade (inuwa) which provides protection against the sun (rana). This symbolism is compelling because Niger is a sahelian country where trees
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are a rarity and sunshine is plentiful. By likening Abdullahi to shade, the artist foregrounds why he is attractive to those threatened by the sun. But there may be a price to pay by any animal that goes to the shade to rest because the shade belongs to zaki, the lion. A well-fed lion may not be bothered by the presence of other animals in his own den, but a hungry lion may have to satisfy his hunger first. In other words, the protection of a chief may not be free; and it is not as a matter of fact. Because the king's protection is not always assured, the shade may be dangerous for younger chiefs like Lawali Kashe Issa who is a gwanki (roan antelope) and jikan dodo (grandson of an ogre). This descriptive contrast shows clearly that Ali ranks his chiefs at his convenience. Prince Issa is a child (yaro) and an orphan (maraya). So he needs the protection of older and more powerful chiefs to win the chieftainship against those who came to cheat him: A[n] zo a wa yaro wayo (theycame-to-do-cheating-to-child). Competitions for the throne are often ruthless and younger claimants such as Issa need the help of sharp-tongued singers like Ali to make their cases heard. In that respect, Ali calls on the other claimants:
Ali--[...] Ku yi tausayi makiya Allah. Yan Amshi-- Diba kar ku wa dan na yasun.
Ali--You make pity enemies of God. Chorus--Look not you do son this harm.
Ali--Be pitying, you enemies.
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Chorus--So that you do not harm the young heir.
Ali-- Dan sarkin da bai yi sarki ba ko milyan dubu tara ya tara, Yan Amshi-- amma zuncciya tai na bace.
Ali-- Son of chief who not makes chief even if million thousand nine he has, Chorus-- yet heart his dirty is.
Ali-- A prince who does not become a chief even if he is too rich, Chorus-- he is not happy.
Ali also uses a judicious presentation to distinguish not only a powerful chief from a weak one, but also a chief from a prince. In my collection of his songs, Ali does not use zaki to address a prince. Instead, he has used other animals, which he often applies to less powerful chiefs as well. Sarkin Gangara Tambari Issa is a bauna ma sha dahi (buffalo drinker of poison), buffalo which resists poison. Like great chiefs, Issa is a
Gogan giwa mai cika tabki, ya ki wargi, ya wuce reni.
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Male elephant which fills a lake, he refuses joking, he beyond disrespect.
Male elephant which occupies a whole lake, he does not like joking, he commands respect.
Sometimes a singer's diction or poetic metalanguage is dictated by circumstances, not by the intrinsic qualities of the praised. A coronation ceremony is one such circumstance where several singers are invited to compete in the performance. In situations like this the singers have to use a lot of imagination, humor and wit not only to outdo each other but also to please the host and the audience. The generosity of the host is also crucial as well as his or her ranking in determining the nature of the influence. Because these varying circumstances are influential, it is difficult to theorize as to when such images or symbols are expected to be used by a singer. But in the context of Ali's songs, zaki and inuwa are such powerful images and symbols that they are not associated with every chief or prince. Next to them in importance is the dodo who incarnates fear, as shown in Hausa tales. Like zaki, the dodo is sometimes used in association with trees. These three epithets, zaki, inuwa and dodo, are selectively used to describe chiefs, princes or masters of agriculture. In the song Maman Abdullahi, Abdullahi is not only a dodo uban maza (ogrefather-of-men), fearful chief, father of brave men; he is also a gamji (a big and shady rubber tree). Furthermore, he is associated with the sun:
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Ali-- Hannu ba shi kauda hasken rana, na Ali sara ba za ya kada gamji ba.
Hand not it covers light of sun, kin of Ali cutting not will bring down gamji.
A hand cannot hide the sun, cutting will not bring a gamji down.
The sun here is used in a more positive way to show the power of the chief and his radiance in his community. Nothing can prevent the sun from shining as long as it rises, meaning that Maman Abdullahi outshines all other chiefs. Appearance is very important in the art of governing and chiefs and princes take care to increase and enhance their charisma. A very popular chief is expected to have enemies. The cutting of the rubber tree (gamji) is a metaphor of Abdullahi's enemies trying to harm or kill him. The association with a tree may suggest that the enemies are actually close to the chief, since they have to be under the tree to be able to cut it down. Ali is therefore trying to criticize their actions while bringing them to the attention of the chief at the same time. Like any person, Ali has preferences and biases. He can try to be objective in his songs, but as an artist he does not have to be. He does attempt to defend the weak, yet he also criticizes to make more profit. It is his attempt to speak to his society with
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an independent voice that makes him a talented artist. His voice is individual though it often echoes the voices of those who cannot or refuse to speak out. His defense of the Anna and their tradition is remarkable in that respect. So too is his praise of good rulers who care about their subjects or his criticism of bad rulers. Another imprint of his individuality is his use of comedy and frivolity to spice his songs so that his audience can swallow them along with his bitter criticism. His struggle to place values on certain Anna traditions is not an unconscious iconoclasm, nor does it stain his faith in the religion of Islam. On the contrary, it translates his ability to syncretize, to respect difference, and to tolerate the Other.
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Chapter Four Style in Hausa Oral Poetry: The Case of Ali na Maliki and Zabia Hussei
Ali and Zabia are individual talents who, as Daniel P. Kunene would argue in Heroic Poetry of the Basotho (1971), are artists to be judged as poets, as people who make no secret of their involvement in the situation they are talking about, of their partisanship, or the subjective nature of their creations. This chapter is an analysis of their styles. By style I mean their personal use of metalanguage for artistic creation and excellence. The point has been made that the value of any work of art is measured by the new insights it brings to the readers or listeners. These new insights should also help them discover new truths they might not have been able to foresee otherwise. As a matter of fact, the success of an artist can be estimated by how far his work has affected or moved the readers into making their own judgement and taking decisive actions. In The Poetry of Limitation: A Study of Edmund Waller (1968), Chernaik comments on the political role played by oral artists in rallying forces around groups' or national interest (see also Finnegan 1977: 243 and passim). He gives as an illustrative example the case of England where Cavaliers and Rounded-heads; Whigs and Tories each had their own poets. Thus with regard to the influence of an oral poet, Chernaik is adamant that "`No other way of correcting a prince is so efficacious as presenting, in the guise of flattery, the pattern of a really good prince. Thus do you instill virtues and remove faults in such a matter that you seem to urge the prince to the former and restrain him from the latter'" (134).
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Poetry can have this kind of power because poetry, as Okechukwu Mezu (1979) argues in a discussion of poetry and revolution in modern Africa, is a transformation process by which beauty, sorrow or joy are epitomized. In other words, it is a means by which the common is turned into the particular with a view to bringing it to the attention of those who may not pay it heed otherwise. I intend to show the extent to which Ali and Zabia have succeeded in magnifying critical social issues for their audiences to appreciate. I will also show how gender may influence the style of Hausa oral poetry by comparing and contrasting the styles of Ali and Zabia. This will be done by analyzing their choice of words, of images, of symbols and how these choices are related to gender. To complete the picture, I will investigate the role of environment in shaping a poet's stylistic efforts. As I have already argued, following the model of Genette, style is a harmonious weaving of nature and culture. Similarly, in his introduction to The World and the Word: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral Tradition by performer Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, Harold Scheub (1992) has also remarked that oral poets are tied to the conventions of their epoch (Finnegan 1977), sometimes taking their aesthetic equipment from ancient myths. Thus, their genius is in the way they bring myths, symbols and other images into new combinations, paving the way for new interpretations. As I remarked in the introduction, the style of Hausa written poetry is influenced by the Arabic metric system, using its patterns of classical poetry, its regular meter, and rhyming schemes. Oral poetry, on the other hand, is indigenous to Hausaland and it lacks features such as regular meter and rhyming schemes. As oral poets, Ali na Maliki and Zabia Hussei do not use the features of the written poetry.
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They both use metaphors, symbolism, parallelism, and other figures of speech. But Ali and Zabia differ in the way they use these figures of speech to create poetry out of their respective oral contexts. Even if Ali and Zabia draw their aesthetic equipment from a common Hausa cultural heritage, they show their talent and poetic individuality in the way they manipulate their aesthetic equipment into new and original combinations which pave the way for new interpretations. "The whole point is the uniqueness of many such views, bound in as they are with local religious beliefs, particular social experience and symbolism, local theories of psychology, and so on" (Finnegan 1977: 236). These factors result in the appeal to wide audiences. There is no limitation to the kind of audience Ali and Zabia can address: each one is free to perform in front of a mixed audience or in front of one that is composed of only males or only females. A purely male or female audience implies a special circumstance such as when a group of women organize a party and decide to have a female performer in lieu of a male one. Communal activities like helping someone to build a house may also require a male singer to encourage the brave men to work harder. In this case women prepare food, but no one will stop them if they want to work with men. The only situation where only female performers are allowed involves either wives in seclusion or in royal families (Mack 1981). Ali and Zabia sing in front of mixed audiences. There is no restriction as to the moment of the performance: they can perform at night or during the day, depending on the occasion or the patrons' wishes. In the lines below, Zabia combines ellipsis, metaphor and metonymy to depict how some aspects of her tradition can be used as
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tools of oppression:
Duniya jirgin dankaro, Zanen sawaye. Mai gwado ya daro da mai sawaye, Sai keya ta daddahe ga awazzai.
World tractor, cloth sawaye. He who has gwado better than he who has sawaye, thorns stick to ribs.
Line.54 The world (is like) a tractor, 55 on a sawaye (bridge/road). 56 He who has gwado is more proud 57 than he who has a sawaye: 58 it brings thorn into the ribs (body).
A literal translation of these lines would yield an obscure or ambiguous text because of the (elliptical) nature of the style of orally-derived texts which is based on an extreme economy of words. Paul Zumthor's Oral Poetry: An Introduction (1990) addresses various stylistic aspects of orally-derived texts and brings into focus the much needed aesthetic concerns of individual artists neglected by Milman Parry and
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Albert Lord in their theory of oral composition. Because of its theoretical ambition, Zumthor's book deals with issues related to oral poetry from around the world. Of particular relevance to this analysis is Zumthor's remark that
The space of the [oral] discourse, compacted yet overloaded with allusive values, leaves room only for the nuclear elements of the sentence, upon which elipsis [sic] and suspension confer ambiguity, if not an apparent semantic vacancy that deliciously limits the listener's interpretation. [...] Meaning emerges from a nonplace, from an unsaid, within the mind of the listener, here and now, and can be modified at each performance (104).
Instead of limiting the listeners' interpretation, I contend that the ellipsis and the suspension give them more room for free speculation as the result of the ambiguity they both create. It certainly requires linguistic and cultural competence, which the listeners are expected to possess, to be able to figure out the meaning of the allusions and find out the "unsaid" in order to fill out the "semantic vacancy". Keith Dickson (1995) specifically refers to ellipsis as a very important oral poetic device. It "reveals the truly productive depth of [oral] narration; in what is left unsaid or else merely suggested" (4). The unsaid can be productive in oral poetry because the context of the performance provides much of the descriptive information. Writers feel the necessity to provide a lot of descriptive elements because their readers are not with them at the
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moment of composition. They have to give detailed descriptions of the events or situations they create to ensure a better understanding from their readers. But with oral performance the audience is, as Zumthor argues, co-author. That is why he writes that "oral poetries, no matter where they come from, display a common ineptness at verbalizing description, be they of beings or of objects, other than by a listing of qualities that lacks perspective" (Zumthor 1990:102). It is a surprise to me that Zumthor finds the lack of description in oral poetry devoid of perspective or as being the result of the poet's inability to put things into perspective. Having acknowledged that the audience is the co-author in the oral performance, Zumthor knows that the same audience can do without a verbose description as is also the case in storytelling (Marotin 1982). This necessity for more description in prose narratives sharpens the stylistic difference between oral poetry and folktales. Allusion and expressiveness are the characteristics that further distinguish poetry from prose narrative such as folktales. To illustrate the difference between expression and description, Genette (1993) asks what is the difference between "I am suffering" and "Ow!" His answer is that "the latter expresses what the former describes" (87) and that is, I think, the difference between prose narrative and poetry. Note that Gnette's analysis is based on written materials and he is trying to establish the link between style and significance in prose fiction and poetry. In the context of oral poetry, it is only when the performance is put to writing or recording that description becomes more relevant. The interpreter (Fine 1984) or the critic who mediates between the text and its audience has now the task of putting flesh to the skeleton of the performance. This task demands a lot of descriptive analysis.
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It follows that for a field worker, a descriptive analysis is an important first step in the interpretative process of oral poetry. The interpreter must first act like a writer in providing the missing descriptive elements necessary for the understanding of the oral poetry after it has been fixed in writing. It is hard work which necessitates a linguistic and cultural competence on the part of the interpreter who has to explain the orally-derived text to foreign readers. In other words, the interpreter has to generate clear meanings for the readers who may not be able to understand some allusions to the original contexts of the performances. The task of generating meaning is easier if the audience is homogeneous. When listeners or readers share a common linguistic and cultural background, their horizon of expectations, and/or what Norris J. Lacy (1974) refers to as "the reader's [or listener's] consciousness of the genre" (108), is more likely to converge and make descriptive interpretations or explanations less relevant. Dickson rightly claims that "a felt need for explanation is often a token of distance from the presuppositions that guide a tale's [or a song's] meaning, a sure sign of some break between its original context and that of its new moment of reception. This distance is variable, a function of both the extent and also the nature of the break; consequently, the means of bridging it also vary" (5). This is true even in oral contexts such as Hausa society. The diversity of the Hausa culture calls indeed for explanations under circumstances where the audience is composed of Hausa speakers but from different sub-cultures. A performer from Filingu or Tahoua in the Republic of Niger may well be misunderstood in Kano or Zaria in the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But given the geographical and cultural
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distance, the loss can be very minimal. On the contrary, songs and tales have a life of their own after they have been fixed through writing, free from the spatial and temporal limits imposed by the occasions of their performance. But as Dickson warns, writing also poses new problems and challenges: it cuts off the narratives from their original contexts. In this case, the narratives may move from opaque to alien in the new context, making interpretations even more necessary. In lines 54 to 58 cited above, the presence of the tractor ('dan dan'karo) is an allusion to a road or a bridge which may be absent from the text, despite being alluded to. Once the necessity of a link between a tractor and a road or a bridge is established, it becomes possible to think of other allusions, for example, tarmac on the road. Likewise, awazzai (the ribs) are also used metonymically to suggest the pain the whole body has to go through as the person dressed in sawaye (which attracts thorns) is being crushed by the tractor. The word 'dan dan'karo is also suggestive of the speed of change as the poet sees it. The tractor is usually used in construction sites such as roads or in agricultural lands such as irrigation projects. Because of the nature of the work involved, the tractor's driver often drives at a very slow speed. If the 'dan dan'karo is the symbol of change or modernity, its speed suggests how the change it represents is to be implemented. Real change takes time before it gains acceptance in any given environment. Since the speed of the tractor is part of its making from the factory, it also implies that the driver cannot go beyond the speed limit without doing harm to himself or to the vehicle. In poetic terms, it means that the driver, who may be the poet herself or
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any body else, has to adapt to a certain speed lest the intended change turn into something destructive. This calls for a better adaptation of the technology to the social and cultural milieu in order to achieve a positive cultural, social, scientific, technological and economic development. Many theories of development in the so-called Third World have for long neglected the cultural aspect of the economic, technological and scientific development. Reflecting on the failure of these theories, political scientist Yosef Lapid (1996) has called for the integration of culture and science as the two faces of any serious economic development program. "In IR [International Relations]," he writes, "as elsewhere, a successful blending of culture and science requires a clear understanding of the historical context and scholarly practices that have rendered them incompatible in the first place" (9). This incompatibility leads to tensions between the local cultural traditions and the new technologies. Studies on the relationships between culture and development (Fabrizo 1983) illustrate the tensions that exist between technological innovations and cultural traditions. Very often, argues Fabrizo, technological innovators and industrial developers make their ways to the detriment of social and cultural development. L'institut Culturel Africain (ICA), `The African Cultural Institute,' in its annual final report (1983) takes a clear position in regard to this issue: while acknowledging that there are no neutral technologies, the report warns that
L'imposition brutale de technologies peut striliser le potentiel de novation, de cration et causer la destruction des structures socio-
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culturelles qui maintiennet le tissu social. Le developpement ne saurait tre rduit un processus essentiellement conomique comme le veut la socit contemporaine.
The brutal imposition of new technologies can sterilize the potential for innovation, for creativity and cause the destruction of the socio-cultural structures that hold together the social fabric. Development could not be reduced to an essentially simple economic process as the contemporary society wants it (ICA 1983: 6).
This attitude by the ICA parallels the 'dan dan'karo symbolism that illustrates the tension between tradition and change. The tractor needs a driver to move it correctly. Whoever the driver is, he must have a solid knowledge of the land. Many projects in Africa, to speak in metaphors, have failed because of the ignorance of the drivers. Metaphoric drivers must be competent in the language and culture of the Hausa people in addition to the mastery of the tractor as the symbol of modern technology. Failure in any of these is likely to have grave consequences for the lives of the intended beneficiaries. These interpretations show the richness of the oral texts despite the fact that they are made of nuclear elements only. By leaving room just for the nuclear elements of the sentence, the oral poet paves the way for individual interpretations. This is also why the meaning of a song "can be modified at each performance." (Zumthor 1990: 104) On the level of textual analysis, far from limiting the listener's interpretation or the reader's for that matter,
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Zumthor's observation echoes Aliko Songolo's and Harold Scheub's as quoted in Chapter One of this work. Both Songolo and Scheub have analyzed the productive nature of oral performance through its ability to lend itself to different contextual interpretations. The identity of views as expressed by Zumthor, Scheub and Songolo with regard to the ability of the oral poet/artist to express himself or herself with a certain degree of freedom is even more apparent when Zumthor adds that "The oral text seems to fight against its model, to hinder the extreme consequences of the principle to which it adheres" (105). This principle points to conservatism, that is, the absence of literary individuality, artistic creativity and freedom of which oral societies are accused by Lord (1987: 64) and his associates. Whether it is by expanding on images while maintaining core-clichs taken from ancient myths, as Scheub (1975) would contend in The Xhosa Ntsomi, or by turning toward the already known cultural heritage rather than toward the unheard of (or the new), as Zumthor (1990) argues in the above mentioned book, the oral artist is bound for change. This is because there are no fixed or written patterns against which her or his new combinations can be checked or contrasted, each performance being a new actualization of the old materials. Each actualization adds an extra dimension which makes oral performance a complex creative and dynamic process. Speaking of the dynamic complexities of oral tradition, Bruce A. Rosenberg (1987) has also observed that literate societies "do not and cannot alter their past as can an oral culture, or at least not in the same way" (79). The point is, I think, that literate societies have to contend with all aspects of their past, bad or good for the
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simple reason that they have been recorded and kept together for posterity. As a result, individuals can have access to differing or conflicting views as well as to every other aspect of their past for personal reflection in the privacy of their places. This has led Rosenberg to conclude that the existence of the recorded past does encourage skepticism because past and present histories and beliefs can be contrasted in retrospect, a possibility lacking in oral societies. As he speculates on how cultural heritage influences people's present behavior and on how it contributes to shaping their world-views in Cultural Forces in World Politics (1990), Mazrui echoes and elaborates on Rosenberg's thought. Mazrui also remarks that in the absence of the written word in most African cultures, "many tentative innovations or experiments of a previous era were not transmitted to the next generation. The trouble with an oral tradition is that it transmits mainly what is accepted and respected. It does not normally transmit heresies of the previous age" (140). Mazrui's remark is insightful, but it does not answer what may be considered as a heresy and from whose point of view it is a heresy. Yet Mazrui's remark does rightly fall into the current debate on the interaction between literacy and orality and the impacts each is supposed to have on both literate and oral societies. Rosalind Thomas, in Literacy and Orality (1992), has suggested that the modern identification of literacy with civilization, with progress and development is the result of the spirit of the Enlightenment. In keeping with Thomas' point of view, I can argue that what Lord and others consider as a shallow and unchanging past can be just the result of the oral tradition, "not a fundamental characteristic of oral societies" (Thomas: 7).
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Instead of taking literacy as the fundamental agent of change, of progress and development (Ong 1977, 1982), Thomas thinks that the problem is whether literacy can be accounted for as the main agent of change in the transformation process. "Or does it rather reflect and strengthen tendencies already there?" (16). Thomas also takes a bite out of the Formulaic Theory, denouncing its exaggerated equation of the formulaic style of oral composition or oral societies with the lack of progress due to conservative attitudes (Foley 1988). Thomas goes on to warn that writing is also conservative (see also Fisher 1996: 81-82; Leroux 1948: 693) because it often tends to reinforce previous customs and may even attempt to preserve and exaggerate them in the process. Thomas' argument reflects views held by other scholars such as David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance in Literacy and Orality (1991), Marcel Detienne in Les savoirs de l'criture. En Grce ancienne (1992) and A. N. Doane et al. in Vox intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages (1991), to name only a few. In the Hausa context, the following example is an illustration of how the oral artist can in fact be very creative as well as an agent of change. Ali is both as he brings together old and common materials into new combinations or metaphors. In the song Sarkin Noma Maji Kai, the young master of agriculture is giwa mai kare ma danniya baya (elephant possessor break of daniya back), elephant which breaks big trees such as danniya. For a Hausa farmer, an elephant on one's farm is usually a fatal catastrophe because this gluttonous animal eats almost everything in its way. This capacity for great damage likens giwa (the elephant) to the great master of agriculture (Sarkin Noma) as a destroyer of trees and weeds, a metaphor of farming and hard-
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work. That both Ali and Zabia are able to create their own metaphors is a mark of their genius. According to S. M. Schreiber, in An Introduction to Literary Criticism (1965), Aristotle believed that for any poet "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the only thing which cannot be learnt from others, and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity of the dissimilars" (49). Although discussed in Chapter Three, Ali's eloquent metaphoric use of the sun and the hand is worth requoting here to further stress the stylistic quality of the metaphors and Ali's ability to use them in different contexts to signify different values:
Hannu ba shi kauda hasken rana, na Ali sara ba za ya kada gamji ba.
Hand not it cover light of sun, kin of Ali cutting not will bring down gamji.
A hand cannot hide the sun, cutting will not bring a gamji down.
Both the sun (rana) and gamji (a big and shady rubber tree) are used metaphorically. Chief Abdullahi is both the sun and the gamji. Rana suggests his
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popularity and radiance among his subjects. It also implies that, just as a single hand cannot prevent the sun from shining, a single hand (standing for a single man) cannot tarnish and disempower chief Abdullahi. Ali's use of the sun first as a metaphor of suffering and weakness for certain chiefs and now as a metaphor of power and popularity shows his ability to combine known images in order to create new ones, with the possibility of new interpretations and meanings. Unlike Ali, Zabia makes an extensive use of parallelism in her songs. Kunene (1971) has distinguished three distinct forms of parallelisms: 1) Parallelism of thought through the repetition of words and phrases; 2) Parallelism of thought through the re-statement of ideas by synonyms and indirect references; 3) Parallelism of grammatical structure through the repetition of syntactical slots.
Kunene further defines aesthetic repetition as the one in which
selected words and/or phrases are repeated while additional ones are brought in as `incrementing' phrases to advance the narrative, or the syntactical order is reversed to attain emphasis, etc....In other words there is always a device included in the repetition for the purposes of `alleviation' among other things. Such repetition creates suspense, it makes for sustained curiosity through the expectation of a new or surprise element. Also, it makes for a chain-linking of ideas and thus
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unifies, sometimes by a muriform design, what might otherwise be either a discrete juxtaposition of ideas, or straight and possible dull narrative (68-69).
I use this lengthy quotation to show that a poet can be oral and literary. For an oral poet can in fact have poetic individuality. There are several instances of aesthetic repetitions, most of which belong to the second and third categories of parallelism, in the songs of Zabia. But I will limit myself to few examples to make my case. In the following lines, some of which were discussed in Chapter Two, Zabia says:
Ni\ ban\ ramma\ taskira\ don\ lehe Kuma\ ban\ ramma\ dan gida\ don\ bako
I not reject taskira because of lehe, also I not reject son of house because of stranger.
Line.38 I\ will not\ choose\ lehe\ against\ taskira 39 also I\ will not\ ridicule\ a relative\ for\ a stranger.
Then:
Domin\ na\ kaya\ ta\ huje\ salka In don\ na\ gomma\\ ki\ so\ mai son\ ki
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Because of me thorn it pierces salka, because of me girl you love he loves you.
Line.88 A thorn has pierced the salka 89 Girls, love the ones who love you.
In these two examples the second line expresses an idea which negates, trivializes or obscures the idea stated in the first line. I do not intend to go further in the semantic implications of these parallelisms because I have already done so earlier. But I should point out that in almost all instances Zabia's use of parallel thinking involves some form of ambiguity or paradox. It is left to the crowd to figure out the semantic connection between the components of the parallelism: for example between salka and lover, between a thorn and a girl, and between the two lines as a whole. This illustrates both the characteristics of oral poetry and the paradoxical nature of her position vis--vis her tradition, a paradox covered with ambiguity as a way of manipulating her convictions and beliefs so as to be accepted by her audience (see also Lacy 1974). It is a subtle way of giving her audience a possibility of choice, hoping to help the listeners build a better future. Ali hardly uses parallelism and its aesthetic repetition. But I have few examples of which the following is an illustration. In the song Tambari Gangara, as discussed in Chapter Three, Ali asks the newly coronated chief to be good with his subjects by reminding him of a number of good chiefs who ruled before him:
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Ali--
Ka tuna da ikon Allah
Ka tuna da kushewar Barka Ka tuna da darajjar Rabi (The first Queen and ruler in the royal pedegree) Ka tuna da Abdullahi Ka tuna da Abdulkadir Da Mayaki tsohon sarki Tambari dan walihi ne kai. Tun nan duniya na Abu ka hi su, Har lahira ku ke gaba dan
Yan-Amshi- Kakan ka Annabi ne dan Kadr, Lahiya na Abu, ga horo na alhaji sarkin dangi.
Ali--
You remember power of Allah
You remember grave of Barka You remember prestige of Rabi You remember Abdullahi You remember Abbdulkadir And Mayaki old of chief Tambari son of saint you are. From here world kin of Abdu you outpass they.
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Even place of dead you are in front because,
Chorus--grandfather-of-you-Prophet-he-was, son-of-Kadr, peace-kin-of-Abdu, there-is-education-kin-of-Alhaji-chief-of-relatives.
Ali--
Remember Allah's power
Remember Barka's grave Remember Rabi's prestige Remember Abdullahi Remember Abdulkadir And Mayayi the old chief Tambari you are the son of a saint. You outshine many in this world, even in the next world you will sit in the front row because
Yan-Amshi- your grandfather was a Prophet, son of Kadr. Peace on you great educator, champion of unity.
In addition to its aesthetic quality repetition may also build up to dramatic effects. It can be used to build tension and reach a climax as Ali has done in the above lines. In a discussion of Fulani poetry, Paulne Aspel (in Stolz 1976) quotes L. S. Senghor as saying that dramatic impact arises from a repetition which culminates in a leitmotiv. In the lines below, Ali uses repetition to educate the audience about
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former chiefs and their achievements. In so doing he invests his repetition with the force of a sermon which is expected to resonate in the mind of the new chief. The above example also provides an instance where Ali uses repetition to achieve aesthetic and thematic force (Scheub 1975). Another instance of aesthetic repetition is found in the song Maman Abdullahi. Unlike in the above case, here it is Ali (the lead singer) who brings in the `incrementing' phrases, which I underline below, while the chorus keeps repeating the same message almost verbatim:
Ali-- Karkarce karkacen da a kan ma tulu a sha ruwa, A ka ma rijiya ba ta juya ba. Ya Balla Jimrau na Hima sai taro, Jayaya da kai rishin kumiya ce na Rabi dan Auta. Ma hwarkacin sarauta ta Gangara: Hwarko Rabi ta yi Yanna Barka ya yi,
Yan-Amshi- Bai yi sarauta ta cin amana ba.
Ali-- Ja Saibi ya yi, Y-A-- Bai yi sarauta ta cin amana ba. Ali- Yannan Tunde ya yi, Y.A.- Bai yi sarautta ta cin amana ba.
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Ali-- Yanna Dan Mairi ya yi, Y.A.--Bai yi sarauta ta cin amana ba. ... Ali-- Yau ta zo wurin Mahamadu, Y.A.- Ba za shi cin amana ba, Maganin maza mai raba gardama uban Abdo.
Ali--Moving this way that way they do with tulu to drink water, if they do to well not it will move. Oh Balla Jirau kin of Hima only crowd. Dispute with you lack of shame it is kin of Rabi son of auta. Origin of chieftainship of Gangara: First Rabi did it, then Barka did it,
'Yan Amshi-- he did not rule eating trust. A--Ja Saibi did it, YA--he did not rule eating trust. A--Then Tunde did it, YA--he did not rule eating trust. A--Then Dan Mairi did it, YA--he did not rule eating trust. A--Today it has come place of you Mahamadu,
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YA--he will not eat trust, medicine of men dispute settler, father of Abdo.
Ali-
Drinking water out of a tulu,
is not drinking it out of a well. Like a well, only a crowd can deal with you, relative of Jimrau and Hima. To compete with you is a shameless act, Kin of Rabi. At the beginning of the Chieftainship at Gangara: There was Queen Rabi, Then came Barka
Chorus-he was a good ruler.
A- Then came Jasaibi, C- he was a good ruler. A- Then came Tunde, C- he was a good ruler. A- Then came Dan Mairi, C- he was a good ruler. A- Today is Muhamadu's turn, C- he will be a good ruler. Powerful chief, father of Abdo.
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When I asked Ali why he uses repetition in his songs, his answer was that it is a way of recalling and emphasizing a particular point, idea or character relating to the person who is the target of the praise. In other words, repetition foregrounds while showing the singer's subjective and artistic way of depicting his or her character. For both Ali and Zabia, repetition helps them bring back good deeds or actions by their patrons so that even someone who comes late will have the opportunity to know what those deeds are. It is clear from Ali's and Zabia's statement that their use of repetition is aesthetic. It is also my understanding that they rarely use formulas during their performance. As they both stated in interviews with me, they use repetition mainly to recall previous occurrences to further please their patrons and help newcomers appreciate the most important moments of the performance. Ali's and Zabia's use of repetition in their songs further illustrates the difference between repetition and the formula in oral poetry. Speaking of the difference between formula and repetition, Lord (in Foley 1990) states that "the formula helps the poet in his verse-making. It is primarily for that reason that it is repeated. The repetition, on the other hand, is a phrase repeated to call attention to a previous occurrence, for an aesthetic or other purpose. Formulas do not point to other uses of themselves; they do not recall other occurrences" (394). In Lord's earlier work (Lord 1976), he had argued that oral production is formulaic; however, this citation in which he distinguishes the formulaic from aesthetic repetition indicates he has changed his position. Repetition is characteristic of poetry, as Finnegan (1977) would argue, and in the case of Ali and Zabia it is mostly aesthetic. The examples by Ali and Zabia show that repetition is often used to achieve
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aesthetic purposes, not to ease the performance. Neither Ali nor Zabia have pointed out that they use repetition or any other device to facilitate their composition during performance. The pause that the formula is supposed to provide the singer, as he or she looks for words or ideas, is largely supplied by the chorus. Both Ali and Zabia can use this time to pause and look for words as the chorus repeats and/or adds to the performance. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that Lord's singers need the formula perhaps because they sing without choruses. What is more, their songs are very long narratives which is the reason why they need a composition device such as the formula to keep performing and facilitates memory (Finnegan 1977; Lord 1976). As Ali said in our interview, each member of his chorus is free to add their own thoughts to the song in performance. But sometimes the members of the chorus are afraid to do so because if they add a thought that does not fit, they are punished on the spot. Ali scorns the guilty apprentice if he is an adult or even beats him if he is young. But if what has been added is good and/or improves the performance, the person who added it may get a recompense. For example if a patron gives extra money as the result of the added praise or thought, the apprentice singer who added it could get the money. But the added thought does not have to come from an apprentice since some performances are rehearsed before the group goes on the stage, despite Ali's denial of this happening. In terms of composition in performance, Ali defines repetition by comparing singing to farming. He sees himself as a farmer who can work more quickly than his young children who are learning to cultivate, which for Ali is a metaphor for singing. So despite the fact that each child has a tiny kwiya (a sizable plot to cultivate), they
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often drag behind their elders who have to help them by `eating in' (cin kwiya) their plots and/or waiting for them to finish. This image shows the close connection between the artist and his or her environment. In fact, Ali chooses farming as a metaphor for singing because he is a farmer despite his wealth. He might have chosen commerce as his metaphor for singing if he were a businessman or a trader. Rather, Ali's choice of farming to describe his singing career indicates the interaction between style and the environment from which the poet selects his or her aesthetic equipment. Isidore Okpewho, in The Heritage of African Poetry (1985), has aptly observed that oral praise poetry is characterized by a vivid accumulation of praise epithets and references to exploit in order to magnify and illustrate the greatness of heroes (Finnegan 1977). Epithets are also used to praise wealthy patrons, princes, chiefs and kings. Because the epithets and other figures of speech are sung within a specific cultural background, the interaction between the singer and his or her environment is an important stylistic component. Chiefs are often associated with animals such as Dodo (the ogre), Zaki (the lion), Damusa (the leopard), 'Bauna (the buffalo) and Giwa (the elephant) that often are symbols of power, leadership and/or royalty. The chiefs' opponents, on the other hand, are associated with animals like Zomo (the rabbit) and Gwanki (the roan antelope) or birds such as Jemage (the bat), Jinjimi (the white ibis), and Muskumuri (the owl) which, in Ali's songs, symbolize negative values or attitude in sharp contrast to the chiefs. Domestic animals such as awaki are also used as a contrasting element in songs in praise of Princess Hawa. In the Hausa traditions, goats (awaki) are indeed considered as predators. As
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long as they are not tethered, the goats can become troublesome by entering rooms to eat whatever they can get or by feeding on unguarded farms and gardens. The fact that they are domestic animals does not mean that the women who are associated with them have to be at home. The point is that Hausa women in many regions raise domestic animals such as goats, sheep and cows. As I discussed in Chapter Three, Ali has in mind the goat's capacity to create problems when he makes the association between them and the old women who go around sowing bad seeds in the young women's minds. When goats are tethered, however, they cannot cause any damage. This, by implication, means that something has to be done to prevent the old women from loitering around the young women's houses. In that way the young women can be protected from their bad influence. Similarly, Ali shows the birds as dangerous to the powerful animals which stand for power. Like the goats, these birds are shown as not worthy of trust. Except for Jinjimi (the white ibis), both Jemage (the bat) and Muskumuri (the owl) are creatures of the night in Hausa folklore. Only under the cover of night do they come out of hiding to hunt. Because of this nocturnal aspect of their activities, any person associated with Jemage or Muskumuri is considered as a hypocrite. For only the hypocrite would avoid the clarity of the day in order to operate during the night. Ali consciously associates these birds of the night with the opponents to the chiefs he praises. Ali's presentation also shows that men in general are associated with hard tasks such as farming, hunting and other similar activities. However, this does not imply that women do not farm or go to war. The presence of Queens and Princesses is an indication to the contrary and there are even Queens who fought at wars before and
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during colonization (Callaway 1987; Chaibou 1994). The fact that there are few songs about women may be due to Ali's personal bias or interest. There are very few Queens left nowadays, giving him fewer opportunities to sing for them. Unlike Ali, Zabia is not a court singer. She is an itinerant singer who can perform for anybody who requires it. As shown earlier, her focus is mainly on the condition of women in her society. As a woman, her style is also tied to not only her condition but also to her environment. Most of her images, symbols, metaphors and similes evolve around family or household scenes involving children, women, husbands, girls, boys and co-wives. Like Ali, Zabia uses these elements to create a personal style. Where Ali uses animals or birds to express negative attitudes or ideas, Zabia uses reptiles such as snakes to reflect on the dark side of the human condition. She has used takwasara and its poison to express the dangerous but hidden intention of a heart which does not love. In other words, when love is met with hatred, as is the case in many forced marriages for example, one of the parties may turn out to be as dangerous as a snake. This is why she keeps urging her audience to love the person who says that he or she loves you, even if that person may not have meant it. There is a saying in Hausa which warns people to be aware of someone who has expressed hatred towards you. The message is never completely trust that person even if he or she comes back later to tell you that he/she loves you. The same is true of someone who has expressed affection and love towards you. He or she may come back later to state the opposite, but the popular belief is that that is not true because deep down the love is still there.
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But in either case, the presence of these animals, birds and reptiles indicates a clear difference not only in stylistic creation but also in the new semantic field which has resulted. The difference shows that gender does play a role in artistic creation, as most of the elements in Zabia's songs point to domestic occupations or scenes in which women, children and domestic animals are the center of interest. Except for the river (korama) which can be linked to tabki (lake) and kare (a dog), none of the elements are found in Ali's songs. Style can be a clue to a poet's cultural and natural environment. Zabia's style not only ties her to her rural environment but it also points to some cultural specificities. A camel, for instance, is more likely to be found in her region than in Ali's area. She associates the camel to marriage as the animal used to transport the bride to the conjugal house. But in Maradi or Zinder, for instance, a horse is likely to be used for that same purpose. In these regions, the horse is also a symbol of wealth, power and/or royalty. In conclusion, one has to remark how Zabia's style is filled with elements that relate to activities many of which are indoor and associated with women in general. Her language also carries more emotion which is often created and sustained by her parallelism. In contrast, Ali's style is created from elements associated not only with outdoor activities such as farming and festivals but also with power and wealth which are often shown as the domain of men. However, it may be far-fetched to see in this stylistic difference a rigid separation between men and women in the Anna society. Rather, the stylistic difference is a mark of individual talent, biological as well as social and economic differences.
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Conclusion
Many questions relating to oral poetry and to the dynamic structure of oral societies were already begging for answers in my mind by the time I came across Albert Lord's The Singer of Tales. Little did I know, then, that my reading of the book and the amount of curiosity created by those questions were about to change the direction of my research. So much so that, given the lack of sufficient studies on individual oral artists or singers in Africa, I felt the need, also expressed by many scholars in the field, to try to test the Parry-Lord Theory of oral composition against contemporary Hausa oral poetry. It was a difficult and promising project since, to my knowledge, there were and still are very few analytical studies of the kind done in Africa in general. In the light of this, I decided to embark on field-work in the Hausa-speaking regions of the Republic of Niger in West Africa. Like many field-workers, however, I had to contend with a few unexpected problems such as the sudden death of two out of the three court singers I set out to work with initially. The third was seriously ill and too old to be reliable in the best of situations, leaving me with no other choice but to cancel the project altogether. But as I indicated in the introduction, the cancellation has proved positive in the sense that I did find two very interesting singers: Zabia Hussei, an itinerant female singer and Ali na Maliki, a male court singer. They both are very talented artists whose works, as I hope to have demonstrated throughout the present study, have raised more serious questions about the formulaic theory and have further revealed
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some limitations to its applicability to various cultures and genres worldwide. It is clear from Chapter One of this study that similar fieldwork and studies about other cultures around the world have led Lord to critically reconsider his earlier assumptions on the characteristics of oral traditional literature and of oral societies. Yet my work is still important because it has brought to the field a much needed African experience which Lord has hardly addressed in his work. I also hope that this work, by challenging several points in Lord's theory, has been a modest contribution towards the re-evaluation and re-formulation of oral literature theory and criticism. Because earlier theories on oral traditional literature and oral societies have almost all maintained oral singers in the frame of anonymity, one major aspect of this dissertation has been to pull out Ali na Maliki and Zabia Hussei and to focus on their individual contributions and achievements as artists to be judged as poets, as people who make no secret of their involvement in the situation they are talking about, of their partisanship, of the subjective nature of their creations which make them capable of challenging tradition in order to alter its course. In this respect, I have shown Ali and Zabia as accomplished artists who speak to their respective communities. The dynamic structure of their respective communities has been illustrated by the ways the two artists have used traditional images, symbols and metaphors to create their personal styles and to pave the way for new interpretations, for new ideas in newly created semantic fields. By comparing and contrasting Ali and Zabia, I have also come to realize that there are some issues in oral literature scholarship which have not yet received sufficient attention. They include the role and importance of religion in the perceived
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conservatism of oral societies in general. The point has been made in this work that the perception of the oral singer not as an artist (by Lord and some of his associates) but as a seer (see also Finnegan 1977), as an unconscious iconoclast and/or simply as a vessel of unchanged communal ideas has a lot to do with methodology and with the influence of medieval studies on oral literature criticism (see also Thill 1979). The studies of medieval oral production have been mainly concerned with manuscript-texts which are permeated with the strong influence of the church at the time. In addition, I also believe that Lord's perception of the conservatism in oral traditional literature and oral societies in general is directly the result of the fact that most of his work has consisted in comparing and contrasting the Homeric work with the South Slavic epic narratives. In both cases, religion has played a major role in determining the nature of the content of the works, whether it is Christianity in the case of Homeric scholarship (see also Minnis 1984) or Islam in the case of the Yugoslav singer. Another important issue is the role and importance of female singers. As far as I know, Lord and many of his associates have based most of their studies on male oral singers. Yet, recent research, including this dissertation, have indicated a marked difference reflecting some gender-related differences. I have shown in this work that female and male singers have different styles, reflecting the ways they see the world. In Chapter Four of this study, I have shown how Ali and Zabia have used different images, symbols and metaphors to express their differing concerns and aspirations. Zabia has focused on women's problems in an environment where women, children and domestic life in general are central. As for Ali, his focus has been on
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power sharing, money and royalty with a carefully selected imagery, symbolism and metaphor to reflect them. It would be interesting to have more studies focusing on either female oral singers alone or on both male and female singers with a view to comparing and contrasting their perception of their societies as well as their handling of emergent problems. Such an approach, I think, could bring new insights to the reevaluation of the current theory of oral literature and criticism. By using her personal experience, Zabia has proved to be a diligent critic of her society. Her success resides in her use of poetic metalanguage to enlighten her audience by dressing her unorthodox message in traditionally attractive attire. This daring way of dealing with social issues, mostly women's issues, has made Zabia a voice to be reckoned with. She has also shown a strong commitment to and involvement with her family in particular, foregrounding her personality and individuality in the process. She is no doubt an individual talent with a subjective voice which speaks louder than many in her community, especially among women. Ali has also proved that he is more than a parasite or a simple nuisance within his community. Like any artist, he works to make a living. But he does also attempt to speak for the voiceless, for the weak and for the poor. It is his attempt to speak to his community with an independent voice that makes him a talented artist like Zabia. His defense of the Anna tradition in an Islamic context, his praise of good chiefs, of princes and princesses as well as his critique of bad ones are remarkable achievements. I have argued that his defense of the Anna customs in a society with Islamic ideals is not an unconscious iconoclasm. On the contrary, it is an illustration of his ability for syncretism, his willingness to respect other peoples' differences and
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of his inclination towards accommodating the Other. These achievements are no doubt signs of great minds, of wisdom and genius which distinguish both Zabia and Ali from other people.
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Appendix I:
Transcription of the Songs by Zabia Hussei
1 Kul ba dan ta duniya da uwaye, 2 'yan mata ta Maigari duniya nika tsoro, 3 baba na Allah, baban Kande.
4 Ai duniya kul kun zo ku gaida sarkin Konni, 5 haba Hassan sarkin Konni sai ka ban motar ka; 6 in ini, in maraita, in kon Gonja: 7 ni sai na gano ruwa da ido na. 8 Duniya ba 'dai ta zabia ta Gadaje.
9 Amma kur dai ban 'bace ba ban lalace ba zabia ta Gadaje, 10 sai na zo ganin gida ga watan ga. 11 Ai ku bari gannin gida riba na: 12 a yi maka 'dan zanen ka 'kwariya hamsin, 13 yannan ga mabakacin kuma ka'da; 14 samari ma yannan ga mijinka kulle ga gela.
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15 Don Allah ku ba kare massan 'kwai, 16 'diya maza da dai kun ga ci gami da iyawa. 17 Na so sai ku ba gomma mai son ta, 18 da yau kun ga shan kara da gwanewa.
19 Mai son ka ko da wargi so shi: 20 ai ma'kiyin ka bai 'ki yau ka mace ba, 21 bai 'ki takwasara ta shaniye ran ka.
22 Mai son kare shi shibka takan'da, 23 wai ko wa shibka malle ya ga takaici: 24 bai sha kare ba bai ci tumu ba, 25 Hussei bai cimma ka'idar hoge ba.
26 Sammari ma duk mai son gomma shi armi ta kai nai.
27 Na tuna 'dan kwarai bi'da tai za ni. 28 'Diya maza 'dan Gonja shi ba ni goro na Gonja; 29 goro na wairu tsamuka shi ka sawa.
30 Gonja ki gulguso da samari. 31 Gonja yo kwana, ki komo Damro. 32 A ce Makka ta wo kwana, ta komo Damro,
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33 Hussei sai na hi 'dan damo wulgawa: 34 anganci ga ra'kumi shawa na, 35 haba taki ukku ranga'di nai hamsin.
36 Duniya ba 'dai ta ba in ji kanwar Kande: 37 ba duka 'da ka alkawal shi cika ba. 38 Ni ban ramma taskira don lele, 39 kuma ban ramma 'dan gida don bako. 40 Don ko wa 'dauki alhaki don kai nai, 41 in na 'dauki alhaki don kai na.
42 Taro kowa adda korama a cikin nai, 43 sai shi yi hakuri da kukan kwa'di. 44 Ashe ko wace shina da taron yara, 45 sai dai hankuri da yayan yara. 46 Samari ma na tuna cilishin mutum 'dan wa nai.
47 Wari ba ya cin amanar wari. 48 Habba Zabia amma wagga kiya ci irnin wagga. 49 Duniya ba 'dai ta ba in ji 'kanwar Kande.
50 Zamman alwashi cikka rabo shika sawa. 51 Alwashin kara a sha shi da danye,
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52 in ya kekashe ku 'damre darni. 53 Na tuna yau da gobe na ban sabo.
54 Duniya jirgin dankaro, 55 zanen sawaye: 56 mai gwado ya 'daro da mai sawaye, 57 sai keya ta 'da'd'dahe ga awazzai. 58 Kulke kato ma kora jakkai, 59 in ka taho azuzuwa; 60 amma Dije jan malhwa ta ma su kukuma ta. 61 Diya maza ko da ha'b'bar kada abit kwashan 'kwai.
62 Ko wa tuna nashi ba shi son na mutane. 63 Ai duniya zan Dessam Magaji domin mushe, 64 mushe Buba mai gida na Magaji, 65 'dan mai gida, 'dan Ado.
66 Ni Zabia in gode da ba ku ce mini kariya; 67 na gode da ba ku ce mini mayya: 68 ni dai sai Ba'adara kuka cewa.
69 Ai ku bari gidan uwa ta Tahwa, 70 amma dai gidan uba na Dessa.
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71 Dan Dessam Magaji zan komawa, 72 domin mai samari ya min kiyauta. 73 Na gode ma mai samari na Kaka, 74 Buzu na Rabi, 75 Buzu goyon Kaka. 76 Allah jikan marigiyanya: 77 ban saba kiran maza su la'be ba.
78 Hussei kishi da mai uwa nika tsoro. 79 Ban kishin marainiya mita ta; 80 ban kishin ki mace mai 'don baki. 81 Ban yawon mijinki mis'sa gaba, 82 nai yawon mijinki kama damre. 83 Don Allah ki sa rihewa like, 84 ko yau ki saki ina yawo nai.
85 Al'kawalin gomma ta so mai son ta. 86 Domin na kaya ta huje salka, 87 in don ni gomma ki so mai son ki. 88 Don mai son ka ba shi son ka mace ba, 89 ai makiyinka bai ki yau ka mace ba.
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90 In tuna 'dan 'kwarai bi'da tai zani. 91 Wari ba shi cin anamar wari, 92 amma wagga ta ci irnin wagga. 93 Rishin sani ciwo na, 94 ya sa gara cin girrai.
95 Allah na mutu ba ni cin amanar wa na. 96 'Diya maza in mutu ba ni goya 'dan shege ba; 97 sai 'dan nan da kun ka tara mutane hak kunka yanke rago.
98 Ai Zabia wata kau 'kaddara gami da mutane. 99 Ashe wata kau kaddara nuhar Allah ta. 100 Allah Kai ka yi mu, koma kiran Ka; 101 mai samma, Ya kashe bare 'batawa. 102 In tuna cilishin mutun 'dan wa nai, 103 koko 'dan kanwa tai. 104 Ashe Delu Alele adda da'din lele. 105 Leli 'dan kanen mutun ka samo wa nai, 106 leli Sabho ka samo Hayya. 107 Diya maza ba duka 'da ka alkawal shi cika ba. 108 Bismilahi amin zan waka. 109 Domin za ni wakkak Kadodo. 110 Shina 'dan Ta Girbi da Mariama.
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111 Kado 'dan Bijaga mai kiyawo. 112 Kado radda ka tahi ka barni, 113 ban ki ruwan kuwari sun 'dauke ni; 114 koko rijiya da kumarci ne, 115 in ta shekara ta amayo ni. 116 Na tuna 'yan maza ba mata ba. 117 Kowa nashi na shi ka wa waka, 118 ko ni nawa na zan wa waka: 119 ga Sule, ga Abu Tawaye, 120 yanna ga Nuwaye kanen Waje da Halu.
121 Kur da dai Sa'ale 'diya tata, 122 da bana ba ta kwana sai lalle. 123 Wari sun baro wari daji, 124 tsara ta baro tsara daji. 125 In tuna da maza ba mata ba. 126 Wakar mai gidan bisa mai kwano, 127 tambola a biki ana murna, 128 rab biya ku taktankye huska; 129 domin mai gidana mai kiyawo sa'ale. 130 Allah yo ruwa mu yi shilalo, 131 domin mai gidan bisa mai kwano. 132 Kadri in hwada ma labari:
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133 nita ta Kali ta Mariama, 134 komi za ka ban sai ka bani. 135 Tsatsatsa ka kai mani ko buje, 136 ko 'yan zulumbu ta sha kalla sa'ale.
137 Abiki 'dauki zanen ki, 138 iye yanan ki 'dau takalmi; 139 allo na kammar itace zaki, 140 allo da can mu kwaso rairai, 141 iye mu sama bangon nawa.
142 Allo na ga nawa dai ga nawa. 143 Allo na ga hankali ga lura, allo ga gaisuwa da mutane. 144 Iye na in kagga mayya zabne, 145 allo na ka bantalle takalmi, 146 iye na dai kak ka sa masu 'kura. 147 Allo na mayya allo ka inin ku, aye sai lahiya yaron ga. 148 Iye na kuma ba ni son zabgande, 149 iye na mayan ido ta ka sa ka. 150 Allo na ta sa ka hwa'din goshi, 151 iye na Allah shi waddan sabo, 152 Allo na sabo da rai ciwo na.
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153 Iye na ni ban zuwa Sabonga, 154 allo na dan ba gari na ta ba. 155 Iye na kuma ban zuwa Gunhwara, 156 allo na don ba gari na ta ba. 157 Allo na don ban zuwa Tunhwahi, 158 iye na don ba gari na ce ba. 159 Zan Dessam Magaji domin nawa, 160 iye nawa yake da Buzu da Nomau.
161 Ashe ko da ke 'diyar tawaye daidai. 162 Iye na Allah shi barku da ran ku. 163 Iye na zakka zumuntar yanzu, 164 allo na Allah shi waddan sabo.
165 Ashe wohi sakare zumuntar yanzu, 166 iye na sai ran hwada a ka gayya. 167 Allo na a baka kashin sanda, 168 iye na don babu mai rama ma.
169 Allo na abikkiya ta ji ni. 170 Iye na Allah ubana mai ni. 171 Annabi bangon Illo. 172 Iye na 'dan Ladi jikan Dije.
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173 Allo na ku barshi shi 'kombo nai. 174 Iye na haihuwan 'kwarai ta haihwai. 175 Allo na uban 'kwarai ya haihwai.
176 Iye na rishin sani ciwo na, 177 allo na ya sa gara cin girrai. 178 Iye na har ta yi 'dabrin baki. 179 Allo na gara ki bar cin girrai.
180 Allah wahabi sarki giyara, 181 Ubangiji na mai ne. 182 Ka daukake ni ga baki; 183 bakin 'diya da uwaye. 184 Shina ni kai ma tsoro, 185 da gobara shi ke tare. 186 To wai maye shina ta ragawa; 187 baki ba ya yi ragi ba.
188 Ni Hussei 'kanwar Kande, 189 Allah wahabi sarki giyara. 190 Abikkiya ta ke ne. 191 Sabonga zan komawa, 192 domin maza na na can.
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193 Gunhware ta yi kira na, 194 domin 'diya na na can. 195 Tunhwahi ta yi kira na, 196 domin maza na Tsana.
197 Abikki zo ciwo na. 198 Yohi sakare zumuntar yanzu. 199 Ubangiji na mai ne, 200 don Ka 'daukake ni ga baki. 201 Bakin 'diya da uwaye, 202 shi na ni kaima tsoro.
203 Na baki rai na Hwati, 204 ko ba a kiyautar rai ba. 205 Kur da lahira garin da a kan zo, 206 a dawuro a yi wasa; 207 da na gano maku gomma, 'yan Wakkula 'yan Habsu.
208 Majina ciwo ta, 209 cikin gaba ta ke kwance. 210 Gasa majina sakka ni sakka ni, 211 don Allah sakkani kama cinanu.
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212 In bada wakar karriya, 213 abikki mi ak karriya? 214 Karriya mai abin rabo ka rabawa, 215 indai ke raba aje mini nawa.
216 Duniya ba 'dai ta ba, 217 in ji kanwar Kande. 218 In tuna da mai gidam mu, ba shi gazawa. 219 Na gaishe ka mai gida na Gadaje, 220 bari in gaida Zabia ta Gadaje: 221 nita ta Gare kanwar Kande. 222 Na so dai ku ba kare masak 'kwai, 223 da yau kun ga ci gami da iyawa. 224 Hussei koko ku ba gomma mai son ta, 225 da yau kun ga shan kara da gwanewa.
226 Allah kur ba dan ta duniya da uwaye, 227 in ni 'ketare ruwa sai yamma. 228 Zan Abuja, 229 Abuja ta kirai maza na Tsana; 230 don Gonja da lihira take tare. 231 In ta so mutun ta bashi sulala, 232 ko taka kin shi sai ta ba shi 'kuraje.
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233 Iccen is'kici na haniyar Gonja, 234 da 'kasa har bisar shi duk deba ta. 235 In kun zo ku sas'sako mini bai nai, 236 samari ma kun ce maganin cinai shi sawa.
237 Na tuna yau da gobe na sa sabo. 238 'Diya maza wa ka kashin kare hwarauta gobe, 239 ai ba san abinda za shi kashi ba. 240 Ai duniya na tuna 'dan 'kwarai bi'da tai zani. 241 Na so sai ku ba ni wanda ka so na, 242 in dai baku bani in ba kai na, 243 in yi na kurciya da ta wa kan ta, 244 'diya maza ta aza 'dan gijen ta tsalen gawo.
245 Samari ma don Allah ku ba ta wanda ka son ta.
246 Rishin sani ya 'dokan, 247 allo na kuritsiya ta 'dokan, 248 iye na ta sa ni armen nawa. 249 Iye na sabo da rai ciwo na, 250 allo na zakka zumuntar yanzu.
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251 Ja nononki ba budurwa ta ba, 252 sai mayan ido kamar 'kodagai. 253 Babban saniya tsaka dangonlai, 254 in ki haihu ba ni shan nonon ki.
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Appendix II:
Translation of the transcription of the songs by Zabia Hussei
1 Because of the world and of parents, 2 girls, I am afraid of my mother, kin of Maigari; 3 and of dad, father of Kande.
4 Greetings to Hassane, chief of Konni, 5 Hassane give me your car. 6 I must go to Abidjan 7 to see the Ocean with my eyes. 8 For the world is not the same everywhere.
9 If I am alive and well, me Zabia of Gadaje, 10 I will visit my family this month. 11 Since it is a good thing to go home: 12 one receives new cloth, 13 and a new mabakaci for cotton work. 14 Boys, one also trails a husband along the way.
15 For God's sake, give a dog egg-cake 16 Men, you can see how he will eat it with expertise.
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17 I wish you let a girl choose her lover, 18 you could see chewing on sugar cane with expertise.
19 Love the person who loves you, even if it is make-believe. 20 For your enemy will be content to see you die, 21 or to wish you are bitten to death by a snake.
22 He who likes sugary stalks should plant sugar-cane. 23 He who plants malle will regret it: 24 he will neither chew sugar-cane nor eat grains, 25 he will not harvest any crop.
26 Boys, he who wants his love should marry at his own expense.
27 I remember a nice man whom I am going to look for. 28 Young men, a traveller to Abidjan must give me a cola-nut from Abidjan; 29 the cola-nut from Wairu (in Nigeria) upsets the stomach.
30 Abidjan come nearby with young men. 31 Abidjan turn over and come to Damro. 32 If only Mecca could turn over and come to Damro, 33 then I would go there more than anybody: 34 like a happy camel groom,
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35 I would dance my way to show off.
36 The world is not the same everywhere, said the sister of Kande. 37 Not everybody can fulfill their promises. 38 I will not choose lehe against taskira, 39 and I will not reject a relative for a stranger. 40 Because he who hurts someone should be held accountable. 41 If I hurt someone I should be held accountable.
42 Crowd, he who has a river in his belly, 43 he must put up with the cries of frogs. 44 He who has a gathering of children, 45 he must tolerate their noises. 46 Boys, I remember one must accept one's relative.
47 A friend should not hurt a friend; 48 but one girl has betrayed her friend. 49 The world is not the same everywhere, said the sister of Kande.
50 Trying to fulfill a promise can change the course of one's life. 51 Sugary-stalks are best when they are fresh; 52 when they are dried-up, they are good for fences only. 53 I remember today and tomorrow breed habit.
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54 The world (is like) a tractor 55 (on) a sawaye (bridge/road). 56 He who has gwado is more proud 57 than he who has a sawaye: 58 it brings thorns into the ribs (body). 59 Brave smugglers on asses' backs, 60 when you are coming back home (bring) big loads: 61 but a red mat is for kukuma players, 62 Brave men, smuggle even with habar kada (a cap ).
63 A good singer remembers generous patrons. 64 I am going to Dessam Magaji because of Mushe 65 Mushe Bube, a good man, kin of Magaji, 66 my brother, son of Ado.
67 I am grateful that you do not call me a bitch. 68 I am grateful that you do not call me a sorceress: 69 you just call me Ba'adara.
70 My mother's home is in Tahoua, 71 but my father's home is in Dessa. 72 I am going back to Dessa of Magaji,
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73 because Mai Samari gave me a gift. 74 I am grateful, Mai Samari of Kaka. 75 Buzu kin of Rabi, 76 Buzu son of Kaka: 77 may peace be upon the dead, 78 brave living men never missed my call.
79 I am afraid only of a co-wife who has a living mother. 80 I will never be jealous of a co-wife who is an orphan. 81 I will not be jealous of a woman who has bad breath. 82 I do not flirt with your husband, why the enmity? 83 If I flirt with your husband, tether him at home. 84 Please keep him in a granary. 85 For if you set him free today, I will flirt with him.
86 The promise of a girl is to love her lover. 87 A thorn has pierced the salka. 88 Girls, love the ones who love you. 89 Because he who loves you will never wish you to die, 90 but your enemy will wish you to die today.
91 If I remember a good man I go to look for him. 92 A friend does not hurt a friend,
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93 but a girl has betrayed a friend. 94 Ignorance is a sickness, 95 since it pushed white ants to eat gum Arabic.
96 Until my death, I will never betray my brother. 97 Men, until my death I will not mother an illegitimate child, 98 not even a disputed child, but only a child ceremonially named.
99 Some decrees are man-made, 100 other decrees are from God. 101 God You created us, to You we shall return; 102 Almighty, You kill much less to deform, 103 I remember one's duty is to one's brother's son 104 or to one's sister's son.
105 It is nice to spoil Delu Alele. 106 Spoil a child to get his brother; 107 Spoil Sahbo to get Hayya. 108 Men, not everyone can keep promises.
109 In the name of God, I am going to sing 110 I am going to sing for Kadodo. 111 He is the son of Ta Girbi and Mariama.
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112 Kado son of Bijaga, you are handsome. 113 Kado the day you went and left me, 114 I wished a river carried me away. 115 Or a big well-snake swallowed me 116 to throw me out a year later. 117 I remember men, not women. 118 Every singer sings for his beloved, 119 I, too, am going to sing for my beloved: 120 There is Sule, there is Abdu Tawaye 121 and then there is Nuwaye, brother of Waje and Halu.
122 If Sa'ale were my daughter, 123 I would marry her this year. 124 Peers have left their peers in the bush. 125 A girl has left her friend in the bush 126 I think of men, not of women. 127 This is the song of the man with a storied-house, 128 lottery which is bought with joy 129 but unhappy is the buyer when paying, 130 that is you, my handsome storied-house owner.
131 Allah pour out rain for us to play joyfully. 132 Because of the storied-house owner.
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133 Kadri let me tell you something: 134 it is I, sister of Kali, kin of Mariama, 135 you have to give me something as usual, 136 are you going to give me tsatsatsa or buje, 137 or a zulumbu to mark my festival?
138 Girl, grab your cloth 139 then take your shoes, 140 as if you are going to fetch some wood; 141 we will bring clean sand from over there 142 to put in my room.
143 There comes my boy friend, 144 he is respectful, he greets people. 145 When passing by elderly persons, 146 take off your shoes 147 in order not to spill dust on them. 148 Greet them, they will greet you back.
149 I do not like zabagande. 150 it makes one's eyes look big. 151 It enlarges one's forefront. 152 May God curse familiarity:
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153 for familiarity breeds habit.
154 I will not go to Sabonga, 155 it is not my village. 156 I will go to Gunhwara, 157 it is not my village. 158 I will not go to Tunhwahi, 159 it is not my village. 160 I am going to Dessa of Magaji, 161 because of Buzu and Nomau.
162 I am a twin sister. 163 May God give us life together. 164 Nowadays blood relation is like a tithe 165 May God curse familiarity.
166 Nowadays blood relationship is very useless, 167 it shows only in bad time: 168 a relative can be beaten, 169 and no kinfolk will fight for him.
170 Listen to me, my girl friend. 171 God (is) my father, my owner
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172 Muhammad (is) His Prophet. 173 Dan Ladi, grandson of Dije. 174 Let him behave as he likes, 175 he is from a good family.
176 Ignorance is a sickness, 177 for it caused white ants to eat gum Arabic, 178 And to soil their mouths. 179 White ants, stop eating the gum.
180 God Almighty help me. 181 Owner of my life, 182 Save me from a curse, 183 the curse of sons and parents 184 which I fear the most: 185 it moves with fire. 186 One may escape from a sorcerer, 187 but not from a curse.
188 I Hussei, sister of Kande. 189 Help me God. 190 Listen my girl friend, 191 I am going back to Sabonga,
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192 because of my men over there. 193 Gunhware calls upon me, 194 because my children are over there. 195 Tunhwahi calls upon me, 196 because of Tsana, my man.
197 Come my dear friend, 198 Nowadays blood relation is very useless. 199 God, Owner of my life, 200 protect me from a curse. 201 The curse of sons and parents, 202 which I fear the most.
203 Hwati, I could give you my life, 204 were that to be possible. 205 If heaven were a place one could visit, 206 and come back to play, 207 I would go to see the daughter of Kalu and Habsu.
208 Phlegm is a disease. 209 It rests upon the chest. 210 Phlegm, let me free, let me be. 211 In the name of God, leave my chest and come down to my thighs.
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212 I am about to sing for a bitch. 213 My girl friend, what is a bitch? 214 A bitch gives herself out; 215 so bitch, keep me some of yourself.
216 The world is not the same everywhere, 217 said the sister of Kande. 218 I remember the head of our household, he is a brave man, 219 I greet you, the brave one of Gadaje. 220 Let me greet Zabia of Gadaje, 221 it is me, kin of Gare, sister of Kande. 222 I wish you gave some omelette to a dog, 223 you could see how he would eat it with expertise. 224 Hussei I wish you let a girl choose her lover, 225 you could see who she would choose.
226 God, if not because of the world and of parents, 227 I could sail across the sea to the West, 228 I could go to Abidjan. 229 Abidjan calls on my man Tsana. 230 because Abidjan is a murderous city, 231 if she likes a person, she can make him rich.
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232 If she does not, she can make him sick.
233 Iskici tree on the road to Abidjan, 234 from foot to top it is covered with money. 235 On your way back home, bring me some of its bark. 236 Boys, you said its bark has medicine for thighs.
237 I remember today and tomorrow breed habit. 238 Men, do not kill your dogs at the wake of a hunt. 239 For you do not know what they may catch for you. 240 World, I remember I am looking for a good guy 241 I wish you gave me the man I love. 242 If you do not, I will get him myself, 243 I will do like the Kurciya (bird) 244 which built her nest on top of a gawo tree
245 Boys, in the name of God, give her the man she loves.
246 Ignorance carries me. 247 I was also carried away by youth: 248 I married a (dwarf) relative. 249 Familiarity is a pain, 250 and nowadays the blood relation is like the tithe.
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251 A spinster is not a young girl: 252 her eyes are big like balls. 253 She is like an old cow amongst calves, 254 if she gives birth, I will not drink her milk.
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Appendix III:
Transcription of Ali na Maliki's Songs
Mayayi Sabo Ali-Zaki ka ci 'yan maza, Chorus-bai wasa na Umaru. Zaki ka ci 'yan maza, sai hwansa na Umaru. A- Gagara gako na Garba, C- ginsau 'dan Ali makaye. A- Motar da mai gida na yab bani ga tan nan. 'Dan Ali ka raba mu da takar 'kayayuwa. Ba irin motar ce ba 'balgatata, sai an gama de 'bawan kalgo, C- an yi 'dami. Zaki ka ci 'yan maza, sai hwansa na Umaru. A- Ga taro, C- ga 'dan gidan malan Sabo Alhaji. A- Ai ka ga halin na Garba, C- ginsau 'dan Ali makaye. A- Mai tsoron Ubangiji shi yag gaida Annabi.
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C- Zaki ka ci 'yan maza, sai hwansa na Umaru. A- Wani maina, zakara mai gaban hwa'da. Amma ko da ya ga shaho, C- ya 'kurma kai 'daka. Zaki ka ci 'yan maza, sai hwansa na Umaru. A- Ranan Agara a ka yo taron sarakuna.
Sarki wane ya hawo, doki ukku ne kurum: mai jaku'di da 'bawa, mai girgamin harawa; wanga 'dai waje, kishi ukku na wajan, santola bakwai ya 'dora, ya rataya haka, kai wannan ba'kin hawa, C- ko Gonda na sharki mai kura ba ya yin haka. Zaki ka ci 'yan maza, sai hwansa na Umaru.
Sarkin Balbaje A- Mai nasara da rana tai. C- Kwana lihiya malam mai nasara tsare daga. A- Wannan waka ta sarkin Garka ce.
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Sha taro gogarma mai nasara tsare daga. C- Kwana lihiya malam mai nasara tsare daga. A- Ga Allah, kwana lahiya malam mai nasara tsare daga. C- Hana 'kariya. A- Kwana lahiya malam mai nasara tsare daga.
Sarkin Gangara Abdullahi A- Kai inuwa ne na Garba, ka hi kiran 'dan mutum. C- Amma duk wanda ya ji rana ai ya shigo; zaki na Garba baba hwa'de gaskiya. A- Allah tsetsi Tambari, Tambari maganin maza. Ko da sun yi dubu ba su iya wa'ka shi ba. Mai 'kabnar ka shi ni ke 'kabna, 'Dan Maya'ki sarkin daga uban Zagi. Ni ma'kiyin ka ba ni 'kabna tai, C- ko ya na da rumbun tsinko hwari. A- Wani barden mu ya ga dak'kiyare ya yi dariya, da ga bayan shi ya ga tabshe ya yi jan gira.
Sarkin Noma Maji Kai A- Zaure mijin gida, C- giwa mai kare ma danniya baya.
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Ya yi noma Maman na Hawa sarkin noma. A- Kiyan Anne ya kama noman gona a mai dubu, C- Anne kar ya kai ga tsuhwan banza. A- Wani yaro ne ma ji 'kai na 'kan'kan ne, Ya ba uba nai milyan guda shi da uwa tai su tai Makka. Sai uban ya ce ya 'ki, sai ya yi dubu: Tsoho ya yi shirin dubu, za a dubu. Wanga yaro, C- ya 'dami aljima tsoho nai. A- Anna ina maku kadai: kashedi banda shan 'kwaya, banda shan turare. Anna kashedi banda wargin tsatsa. C- Dibi 'dan agaram za ya sa uba nai kuka. A- An ce Duna na dubu, ranan na bi Gobirawa. Na tarda ba maza, C- sai wata macce mai gajeren baya. A- Duna yana rabon tuwo, Duna yana rabon dawo, Wani Buzu na Madigi, C- 'dan madurguji 'dari yas samo. A- Duna yana rabon dawo, wata Buzuwar Tudun Ba'ki sai ta yi dariya: C- ta 'kumshe dawo ga tsohon tari.
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A- Zaure mijin gida, C- giwa mai kare ma daniya baya. A- 'Yan Gidan Kaura ma su zucciyar 'yan mata, in na je gamkar Anna in 'dora dariya sun 'ki dubu, in ba ku dubu, C- ko mai garin ku bai kan 'kwarriya. A- Kowa so ya kai ya je 'Yan Soli, shin na dan Ciya ba su son su je 'Yan Soli. C- Ya yi noma Maman na Hawa sarkin noma. A- Kowa ya 'dauki garga'din sarki nai, na 'dan badaje ba su 'dauki garga'din Mayayi ba.
Lawali Kashe Issa A- Namiji uban maza, jikan dodo, C- na Issaka gwanki sha bara. A- Ran mutuwar Kashe, na yi mamaki: 'yan sarkin Aram, ku dai da gudu, na Kawari na tsinkaye; na Gidan Kashe na 'daurare, ko wane ya sabo dogon geme, C- a zo a wa yaro wayo. A- Dangi nai da Issa ya hwa'di, na tada kai Ali nai kuka.
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Allah Wahidin Ka yi jin'kan mu, diba marayu ne ga su. In Wahidin ma na jin 'kai, amma Balla ma na ceto. Badan Balla dan Sani ba, C- da mun yi waina ba 'kullu. A- 'Dan sarkin da bai yi sarki ba, ko milyan dubu tara ya tara, C- amma zunciya tai na 'bace. A- Mai 'kabnar Kashe, ya taho murna; ma'kiyan Kashe Allah na nan. Ku yi tausayi ma'kiyan Allah, C- diba kar ku wa 'dan nan yasun. A- Balla ya ba ni mota, ya ba ni jikka 'dari ukku. Alhaji Sanda mai ikon Arlit, C- Alhaji ya gode kauta.
Hallaru Kauran Gazawa A- Sha tarayya makaye, mai cika soro. C- Lahiya, sha tarayya makaye mai cika soro. A- Na Binta mai nasara, C- baba 'dan kare mai raba riga.
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A- Dodo 'kanen Rahwa, C- dan Audu ya haye kan ma'kiya nai. A- Da Abdullai ya tahi lahira, 'Yan sarkin Gazawa a ka 'ki juna. Prepe ya tara masu garurra: Barumai ku malmatso, candidam mu sun huto. Da kan ku za ku zaben 'kaura, amma Prepe kanda ya ke ma ku: Ya ce kak ku maida yaro wuyo, C- kal ku je ku sa gobe mu dawo. A- Bana arjiki su kai, 'yan parpangandi. Sai 'barnar arjiki su kai in sun je, C- to ka ga Shi Allah bai kula da zancen ma'kiya ba. A- Mun yahe ma malamai, mun yahe ma 'yan uwa, har maka'dan cikin gari, da jinjimi da jemage, C- ku ku tashi ban yarda da ku ba. A- Wani dan sarki na Gazawa, ya ce Alhaji Ali, billahil'lazi ni ba ni 'kabnar 'kaura, kuma ba ni neman komi: Maina ba ya cin tuwo, Maina ba yan shan hura, kullun sai zaman tasha.
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'Dan sarki ko da yag ga mai tahwasa had da 'kiyahuta ta kawo; ko da ta aje sai ya 'dauki dariya: C- bari in lan'kuwashe 'kahwa in ci gumi na.
Sarkin Noma 'Dan Hwaru
A- Mai kwarare 'dan Hwaru shan kwaram zo ka yi noma. C- Mai kwarare 'dan Hwaru shan kwaram zo ka yi noma. A- Barka da rana, C- wanga 'dan gidan Jido zo ka yi noma. A- Da ku a ke 'dunkin duniya 'diyan Anna, C- Ubangiji ko da Ya wo ku duniya dan ku yi noma. A- Wagga duniya, mulkin soja mun ji da'di nai: duk mun koshi, mun yi kaya. Ina mutan 'yan Dawai, ina mutanen Konyo, ina mutanen yan Alhashimi, Annan Kanta, na 'Kiyamiri, to ku wanga duniya ba mu C- san radda za ku 'koshi da hura ba. A- Ina mutanen Konyau, ina mutanen 'dan Nomau, har na Babba'ku, har Mus'ku, ga akushin tuwo tamanin, an kai su an ruhe 'daka, an 'kiyahuto ku an sa:
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C- ban san yadda za ku yi ko da tuwo ba. A- Mai noma kamar gudun doki 'dan dubu: in yana yin noma kama da guguwa ta taso, waje in ya kama noma, kama da iskan bazara; in ya na yin noma, kamar kare shi koro zomo, Kamar C- gudun motar sauki ta wuce ta tahi Gandu. A- Ina mutanen Goce, 'yan Adankiya. Sabro ba ni yardin wannan, a je a 'damre mini su, mu kai su Gandu C- mu samu sattin mu ci 'kosai. A- Yan Gidan 'Kazuwa ba malamai ba ba Anna ba: ku rabe-rabe ne. In dai uban mutun Anne ne, in Anniya ta haihe shi duniya. In a ka kai shi lihira, Allah sai ya kiro ni in kai shi masabki. Yan Gidan 'Kazuwa, ran kwanan ku lahira, C- rannan ni ga wanda ke kai ku masabki: Ni ba zani ba. A- Barka da rana, C- wanga 'dan gidan Jido zo ka yi noma. A- Ina mutanen Mai Giwa, ina mutanen Mai Jirgi, ta zaki har ta giye, Ina mutanen Kaushi, ina mutan 'dan Tsoho, Na Tsoho na dubu,
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An ji yana rabon tuwo, C- ko wane ya taho yana ko'da ma'koshi. A- Alhaji na da'de ina gilmawa ga maguzawa, ina aza ma goga kaya, na azawa jakki, C- kwanan mu shidda bai kar'bi gida ba.
Sarkin Tassawa
A- Na Hajiya, gamda'are, uban Zagi. C- Dodo 'dan Balarabe, mai nasara uban Zagi. A- Mai raba C- gardama, tsoron ka a ake, uban Zagi. A- Hattara, gamda'C- are uban Zagi. A- Kad 'dan sarki an yi an gama, C- Mus'kumuri a bar hushi. Dodo 'dan Balarabe, mai nasara uban Zagi.
Sarkin Gangara Tambari Issa
A- 'Bauna ma sha dahi 'dan Rabi da Barka,
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C- na Ali 'dan Waddata da Kadr. Ya yi sarki, ya hidda reni. A- Yau kai a ke jira, sai wadda kace: C- abinda ka ce dole a 'dauka. A- Tambari Issa, jikan Mayaki, jikan Danda da 'Biltu, C- Gogan giwa mai cika tabki. Ya 'ki wargi, ya wuce reni. A- Kan wani maina na yawo, ya juye mai: C- a nemi 'dan magiyare a ba shi. A- 'Bauna ma sa dahi, 'dan Rabi da Kadr, C- na Ali 'dan Wasasa da Audu.
Tambara Hawa A- Allah Shi ba ki sa'a zare, C- Hawa ta yi shirin zare. A- Wata yarinya ce Gidan Ango, jikka gomiya tara tab ba ni. Shekaran jiya, 'diyar Antala da Tuni, Allah Shi ba ki sa'a zare. C- Hawa ta yi shirin zare. A- Da waccan hwarar akuyar, da waccan ba'kar akuyar: C- duk shegantakar da ake da ku.
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Hawa ta yi shirin zare. A- Ali akwai wata tambara ga reni, ba ta san zaman mata ba: in ta zo zaman mata, C- wance sai ta tada kahwa tsaye. A- Ai sakarai, C- ki kada kahwa guda. Hawa ta yi shirin zare. A- Allah Shi ba ki C- sa'a zare. Hawa ta yi shirin zare. A- Wanccan taguwa uwar zunihi, da a je Balbaje a gayawa sarkin Tarka: Sabro ka zo gidan Ango, C- shin uwar wance kar ta kashe gari. Hawa ta yi shirin zare. A- Allah Shi ba ki C- sa'a zare. Hawa ta yi shirin zare.
Maman Abdullahi A- Dodo uban maza, C- yaron Abdu mai wuyar gaba. A- Hannu ba shi kauda hasken rana,
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C- na Ali sabro mai sa maza da gabjewa. A- Maman rage hushi, C- tunda gadon Mayaki ya samu. A- Dodo uban maza, C- yaron Abdu mai wuyar gaba. A- Mahamadu da ya gaji Tambari Abdullahi, ma'kiya na ta dariya: sun ce tunda ka ci sarki, Allah ya 'ki yin ruwa nan ba za a 'kara shipka ba. 'Yan tashi ku zo gida tunda hatsi 'kasam mu ya samu, ni da na bi ka duniya, na san ni jinin C- Abdullahi ba ya ta'bewa. Maganin maza mai raba gardama uban Abdo. A- Maman da na bi ka duniya, ba duniya ba Maman har lahira ka hidda ni. C- Maganin maza mai raba gardama uban Abdo. A- Dadahwa 'yan gudun kumiya an taho gida an zamma, C- mutun guda kumiya ta hana shi komowa. A- Dodo uban maza, C- yaron Abdu mai wuyar gaba. A- Karkace karkacen da a kan ma tulu a sha ruwa, a ka ma rijiya ba ta juya ba, ya Balla Jimrau na Hima sai taro.
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Jayaya da kai rishin kumiya ce na Rabi 'dan Auta, Ma hwarkacin sarauta ta Gangara: Hwarko Rabi ta yi, yannan Barka ya yi: C- ba yi sarauta ta cin amana ba. A- Ja Saibi ya yi: C- bai yi sarauta ta cin amana ba. A- YannanTunde ya yi: C- bai yi sarauta ta cin amana ba. A- Yanna 'Dan Mairi ya yi: C- bai yi sarauta ta cin amana ba. A- Yau ta zo wurin Mahamadu: C- ba za cin amana ba, maganin maza mai raba gardama uban Abdo. A- Hannu ba shi kauda hasken rana, na Ali sara ba za ya kada gamji ba. Maman rage hushi, C- tunda gidan Maya'ki ya samu. A- Madalla Musa Yarima Alassan, na yi godiya: da na je Yamai jikan Danda na yaba ma sa, ba za ni rena hairan ba. Jayaya ta Gangara, kokowa ta Gangara, jayaya a ke da shi;
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Ali wai don sun ga shi maraye ne. Daga can samaniya Allah Ya sako mali'iku: C- in ya'ki ake su kama mai. A- Dodo uban maza, C- yaron Abdu mai wuyar gaba.
Magaji Sarkin Urahwan
A- Ya shiriya da maza mai duniya, C- toron giwa mai nasara. A- Sai wata dai, C- wannan ta wuce. A- Da'da kai da maza mai duniya. C- 'Ka'ka kai da maza mai duniya. A- Dodo sa yara C- na shawara. A- Ka shiriya C- da maza mai nasara. A- Don Allah ya ba ku hankuri, Shunawa ku bar hushi in dan ni: da na yi ki'din mai nasara, kowa ta ganin laihi na shi ke, kowa Ali zagi na shi ke,
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kar ku yarda ku gune dan uwa, sabgab C- ba ta ganin laihi ba ce, toron giwa mai nasara. A- Dodo ci C- gari zakin duniya. A- Na ji suna maka gorin duniya: sun ce sarkin 'kwace ka yi. Na yi dariya, in 'da na gadon uwa, jika gadon kaka shi ke, yau ya zamna gadon C- kaka nasa, toron giwa mai nasara. A- Sarauta ba doshe ba ce: daga Intuka ikon nan yake. Akwai wani maina Udahwan. Magaji ya aikai Kiri. Ya ce na 'ki. 'Dantaniyo, ya ce ma sarki na 'ki.... Magaji sai ya yi sake, ya yi dariya, ya ce: za'bi inda ka ke so in jiya. Sai ya yi sa'be ya yi dariya: aikin mu wajen Aji ya ke,
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C- can inda ake tabshen guna, toron giwa bai gardama. A- Ana mayya ku kashe wuta, akwai mayya Urahwan. Kai dai wani mai sajen biri, kai C- ka rumgumi shibci ka zuba, toron giwa mai nasara. A- Alkasum C- Ali godewa ya ke. A- Wata rana da naz zo da Tari, Ba'ko yana 'dan sarki. Alhaji Tari ya kai ni barga, ya ce sai na zabi doki. Saida na zabi doki danda. Wani 'dan sarki wajen mu saida na yi mai wa'ka, ya ce ya ba ni doki kiyauta. A kawo doki ya ce sai rana ta hwadi a kai ma har gida. Dokin ba geza ba wutsiya, 'ka'ka a ke doki ba witsiya, Sai ya ce C- haka Allah ya yi shi, toron giwa mai nasara. A- Ya shiriya C- da maza mai nasara.
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A- Yanzu sarauta yaro za a ba: ko wa aza geme ya shice. Wani maina an ji butun kidi, jiya ya aza C- geme ya kashe. A- Wani 'dan sarki na Urda wai cewa ya ke: Alhaji Ali ba ni 'kara baka ko tamma ta, Ashe wayo ka ke. Wani 'dan icce ne ka ke 'dumkewa, kana bugawa mu na baka ku'di. Nima na iya. Na ce to maina, nic ce wajan sarautar na saki: Rubdanci za ka yi? Ya ce mini um-um. 'Kiranci za ka yi? Ya ce mini um-um. Dillanci? Maina ya ce mini um-um. Jula za ka yi? Ya ce mini um-um. Ya ce Ali ni kai za ni bi tunda kidi dai ba gado ba ne: Hilani ma ro'ko su kai; Larabawa ma wa'ka su kai;
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Anna ma roko su ke. Wani maina na koyon ki'di: an ka'da gwatso ya raye, ya C- kama rawar mai radio. A- Da a ka na'da Magaji Tsabi, mutane ba su murna tai. Sai mu ka je kewayen 'kasa, na yi gangami yau Audu ka ikon duniya. Ku taru ku zamna lahiya, matan ku su zamna lihiya: in Audu ka ikon duniya, ba ban kashi ba badala.
Ba'ko Sarkin Noma
A- Na gode 'dan ko'do ba bagidaje ba ne ba. C- Koma gona 'dan ka'do ba bagidaje ba ne ba. A- Gaskiya ba hin so ba ce ba, C- ba irin lalata ba ne ba. A- Mahamadu kuren da, Ba'ko C- ka hana yunwa shigowa, koma gona 'dan ka'do ba bagidaje ba ne ba.
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A- Mahamadu kangin gabas, Da'koso C- ka hana yunwa shigawa, koma gona 'dan ka'do ba bidaje ba ne ba. A- Dargazau 'dan gidan Tambari, C- nomau mai dakake, koma gona 'dan ka'do ba bagidaje ba ne ba.
Tambari Gangara
A- Ma su shirin da dai gara su shiriya, C- tur'kasau na Alhaji har ya shiriya. A- Dan Garba, gagara dako, C- mai horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- Ga damusa mai kwanan reni, C- tura haushi uban Illiasu. A- Ka tuna da ikon Allah, ka tuna da kushewar Barka, ka tuna da darajjar Rabi, ka tuna da Abdullahi, ka tuna da Abdulkadir, da Mayaki tsohon sarki. Tambari 'dan walihi ne kai:
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tun nan duniya na Abu ka hi su, har lahira ku ke gaba, dan C- kakan ka Annabi ne 'dan Kadr. Lahiya na Abu, ga horo na Alhaji sarkin dagi. A- Kura a na daka an rame: kumiya ta hana ta ta je C- 'Dan Darku. Lahiya na Abu, mai horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- Sa'ada Abdu ka iko, in ya sakka ma dangi komi: su nemi matar wancan, a 'kwaci kayan wannan, a ba shi kashin banza. Abdullahi sai ya shu'de, Maman ya ri'ka, hakanan yab barsu: a zagi wannan Anne. Ikon Tambari Isaa ne, ya hana gulma, ya hana tsuta, ya hana 'kiyahucen busa haniya, C- ya hana "wance tashi ki amso goro." Lahiya na Abu, mai horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- Yan watatagai ku tare mamu kura, C- ta yi yamma da guntun sar'ka. Lahiya na Abu, mai horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- 'Dan Garba gagara dako, C- mai horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi.
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A- Bara ina Madina zama na, nan ma'kiya suna kai kawo: sun ce na mace da'da wai sun huta. Ko maza, ko mata wa ya cema ku na zan babu? Na Gangara ku hito C- ku gani, ga wanda ya mutu an tado shi. Lahiya na Abu, mai horo na Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- 'Dan sarkin ga mai kai kawo, na tarda shi Kurga ya kon. Akushi tara shi dai ya canye su, ya san da maido kwano. Da'da dare ya yi wari, a hito a koma 'daki, ya 'bata kahwahun wando: da ya tashi za shi gida nai, C- kumiya ta hana shi ya 'ballo doki.
Sarki Alhaji Sale
A- Ri'ka da 'karhin Allah, Alhaji sarkin dangi. Uban Galadima tura haushi baban Dauda. C- Shiga da 'karhin Allah, Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- Kun ga zamani ya juya, tsoho ya zama sarki uban Zagi.
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Ranar da ka yi sarauta uban Zagi, hin wasu sun yi dangwami, wasu kuka, Ali C- na Alhaji mu koshiyum mu kan gayan mu. Rika da karhin Allah, Alhaji sarkin dangi. A- Rannan na ci dariya Tasawa: 'dan sarki an yi ado Tasawa ran salla, ga wani maina mai hawan 'dan manga, Mutun yana C- bisa doki ana gwada mai haniya. A- Ga wani maina mai gajerar riga, 'Dazu da C- na hangai tsanike munahwata ce. A- Ga wani maina mai hawan bokaye, da na C- ganai busa ni tsanike Hasan boka ne.
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Appendix IV: Translation of Ali na Maliki's Songs
Mayaki Sabo Ali- The lion, eater of brave men. Chorus- He does not like jokes, relative of Umaru. The lion, eater of brave men; bitter pill for the envious. A- Powerful chief, kin of Garba, C- great warrior, son of great warriors. A- The car my master gave me is here. Son of Ali, you spare us the pain of thorns. It is not like the old car for which one needs bark C- to tie it up. Lion, eater of brave men; (you are a) bitter pill for the envious. A- There is popularity... C- to the son of Malam Sabo Alhaji. A- That shows the character of the kin of Garba. C- Great warrior, son of great warriors. A- Only he who fears God can greets His Prophet. C- The lion, eater of brave men. A- A certain prince looks like a belligerent rooster, but as soon as he sees a hawk
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C- he runs away to hide himself. The lion, eater of brave men. A- On Agara market day there was a meeting of chiefs. A certain chief was there. He had only three retainers: their horses were harnessed with straps of bark. He was carrying seven sacks slung this way. This awful retinue C- is even less than Gonda's with his tamed hyenas. The lion, eater of brave men.
Sarkin Balbaje
A- There is a need for a victorious chief. C- Peace be on you, victorious warrior. A- This song is for the chief of Garka: the courageous one, never afraid of the crowd. C- Peace be upon you, victorious chief. A- He is generous C- and pious too. Peace be on you, victorious warrior. A- He does not like lies. C- Peace be on you, victorious chief.
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Abdullahi Sarkin Gangara
A- You are shade, kin of Garba. You need not invite anybody to come under you. C- But he who is threatened by the sun will come to you. Lion, you cherish the truth. A- God help the brave prince. Your enemies cannot do anything against me. I like those who like you, son of the valiant Mayaki. I do not like your enemy, C- even if he is the richest person around. A- One chief-warrior laughs at the sight of food, he draws his brows when he sees tabshe.
Sarkin Noma Mayaki
A- Entrance-house, strategic to the household, C- elephant which breaks trees; great farmer, relative of Hawa. A- A true Anne is a great farmer who must achieve dubu: C- An Anne should not get old without a dubu. A- There is one respectful boy:
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he gave his parents a lot of money to go to Mecca. The father refuses to go before he has a dubu. He gets ready for it, it is about to be done, this boy C- has valued the tradition of his father. A- I am warning you, Anna: do not take drugs, avoid gambling. C- See how one gambler has made his father cry. A- I heard that Duna was having a dubu. That day I went to visit Gobirawa. I did not find any man... C- ...there was only one dwarf woman. A- Duna was giving out food, then one Buzuwa from Tudun Baki laughs... C- ...she wrapped food in her old clothes. A- Pillar of the household, C- elephant that breaks trees. A- The Anna of Gidan Kaura are like women: they enjoy assisting at other Anna's festivals, because they cannot do their own. If you cannot achieve your dubu, C- even your chief will not be able to achieve kan kwarriya. A- Everybody wants to go to 'Yan Soli,
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but those from Dan Ciya do not want to go there. C- He is a great farmer, relative of Hawa. A- Subjects heed their chiefs' advice, but the people of Badaje do not.
Lawali Kashe Issa
A- Brave man, grandson of a chief, C- kin of Issaka, mortar which absorbs blows. A- The day Kashe died, I saw amazing things: the chief of Aram came running; the one of Kwari was peeping into the event; the chief of Gidan Kashe was listening to it; all of them came with long beard: C- they came to cheat a young prince. A- When his brother Issa died I cried. God forgives us. Look at the orphans. If God is merciful, even Bala is generous: if not because of him, C- we would have suffered a lot. A- A prince who does not become a chief, even if he is too rich, C- he is not happy.
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A- Friends of Kashe should come to rejoice, his enemies should not forget God exists. Be pitiful, you enemies, C- so that you do not harm the young heir. A- Bala gave me a car that day. He gave me a lot of money. Alhaji Sanda the chief of Arlit, C- Alhaji Ali is grateful.
Hallaru Kauran Gazawa
A- Fearless giant who fills a soro, C- peace, generous giant. A- Victorious, relative of Binta, C- generous father. A- Chief, brother of Rahwa, C- son of Audu, he is above his enemies. A- When Abdullahi died, the princes of Gangara entered into a rude competition. The Governor called all the chiefs. They were going to choose a kaura, but the Governor warned them not to choose a very old prince:
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C- we do not want to come back soon. A- Candidates are spending a lot of money on the occasion, C- but God does not care about money. A- We pardon the malamai, we pardon the retainers, we pardon the other candidates and the local singers. So and so C- go away, we do not trust you. A- One prince from Gangara tells me that he does not like to be a kaura. He does not like to be anything royal: he does not eat tuwo, he does not drink hura, he is always at a car station. Once he sees a girl selling tahwasa he calls her, and as soon as she puts down her tray he starts laughing, saying C- let me sit more comfortably to enjoy myself!
Sarkin Noma Dan Hwaru
A- Hard worker with great patience, come to till your farms. C- Hard worker with great patience,
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come to cultivate your farms. A- Well done, C- this son of Jido. Come and cultivate your farms. A- The world was created with you, sons of Anna, C- God created you to till farms. A- We are pleased with military rule: we are well fed with nice clothes. Where are the peoples of 'Yan Dawai, of Kango, of Alhashini? Where are the Anna of Kanta and Kiyamiri? We do not know C- when you will have enough of fura. A- Where are the people of Konyau, of dan Nomau, of Babbaku and Musku? There is a lot of tuwo everywhere, and you have been called upon to eat it. The question is: C- we do not know what you are going to do with it. A- When he cultivates farms, he is as fast as a race horse. He is like a whirlwind. He damages weeds like iskan bazara. When he tills farms, he is like a dog after a rabbit, or C- like the express car going to Gandu market. A- Where are the people of Goce and Adankiya? Chief Sabro, give me the permission to have them tied
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in order to take them to the Gandu-market C- to sell them and have little money to buy bean-cake. A- The people of Kazuwa are neither Muslims nor Anna: They are half-half. If one's parents are both Anna, when one dies, God will call on me to lead one to one's final resting place. But the people of Kazuwa, when you die C- that day, I will see who will take you to your final destination. A- I will not go. A- Well done, C- this son of Jido. Come to till your farms. A- Peoples of Mai Giwa, of Mai Jiga, of Kaushi and Dan Tsoho: Na Tsoro is having a dubu, Now since you have heard he is distributing a lot of food, C- you all come hawking up your throats. A- I have been dealing with Maguzawa for a long time: putting heavy loads on brave peoples' backs. But now I put some on a donkey's back: C- boy, we spent six days before reaching our destination.
Sarkin Tasawa
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A- Kin of Hajiya, father of Zagi. C- Chief, son of Balarabe, the victorious father of Zagi. A- You settle C- disputes. Fearful father of Zagi. A- Be careful, Gamda'C- are, father of Zagi. A- The chief is already named, C- Muskumuri stop being angry. Chief, son of Balarabe.
Sarkin Gangara, Tambari Issa
A- Buffalo which resists poison, son of Rabi and of Barka. C- Relative of Ali, son of Waddata and Kadr, he has become chief, he can be proud. A- Today you are the waited upon, people do what you ask them to do: C- what you say should be carried out. A- Prince Issa, grandson of Mayaki, of Danda and Bilbo: C- male elephant which occupies a whole lake. He does not like joking, he commands respect. A- One prince has lost his mind: C- he needs some medical attention. A- Buffalo which resists poison, Son of Rabi and Kadr.
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C- Kin of Ali, son of Wasasa and Audu.
Tambara Hauwa
A- May God make you spin good thread, C- Hauwa is ready to spin. A- There is a young woman from Gidan Ango, she gave me ninety thousand francs yesterday. Daughter of Antala and Tuni, may God make you spin well. C- Hauwa is ready to spin. A- That white goat and that other black goat: C- you are all part of the problems. Hauwa is ready to spin A- There is one princess who does not know how women sit down: when she sits down, C- she raises one leg upwards. A- You bumpkin, C- bring your leg down. Hauwa is ready to spin. A- May God C- make you spin good thread. Hauwa is ready to spin.
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A- This is a dangerous she-camel: if only one can go to Balbaje to inform the chief of Tarka, Sabro, you must come to Gidan Ango C- to prevent this mother of so and so from ruining the village. Hauwa is ready to spin. A- May God make you C- spin good thread. Hauwa is ready to make thread.
Maman Abdullahi A- Great chief, father of brave men, C- son of Abdu, difficult to compete with. A- A hand cannot hide the sun, C- Maman, mosquito that makes men beat themselves. A- Maman, be less angry C- since you have become the chief. A- Father of brave men, C- son of Abdu, difficult to compete with. A- When Mahamadu inherits the throne from Abdullahi, opponents laugh. They say since you have become chief, there has been no rain to grow crops. But I say to refugees: come back home because there is now plenty of food. When I followed you in this world, I knew the blood of Abdullahi C- would never bring shameful things.
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Powerful chief, you can settle men's disputes. A- Maman, I follow you in this world, but even in the other world be my savior. C- Powerful chief, you can settle men's dispute. A- Your defeated opponents have shamefully gone back home, C- shame has prevented one opponent from returning home. A- Powerful chief, C- son of Abdu, difficult to compete with. A- Drinking water out of a tulu is not drinking it out of a well: like the well, only a crowd can deal with you, relative of Jimrau and Hima. To compete with you is a shameless act, Kin of Rabi. At the beginning of Chieftainship at Gangara there was Queen Rabi, then came Barka, C- he was a good ruler. A- Then came Jasaibi, C- he was a good ruler. A- Then came Tunde, C- he was a good ruler. A- Then came Dan Mairi, C- he was a good ruler. A- Today is Muhahamadu's turn, C- he will be a good ruler, powerful chief. A- A hand cannot hide the sun,
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cutting will not bring a gamji down. So Maman be less angry, C- since you have become the chief. A- I am grateful to Musa Yarima Alassan. When I went to 'Yamei (Niamey), I appreciated what he did for me. During the competition for the chieftainship of Gangara, every one was against Maman because he is an orphan. But God sent angels C- to help him win the competition. A- Father of brave men, C- son of Abdu, difficult to compete with.
Magaji Sarkin Urahwan
A- He is ready to face up with the world, C- victorious male elephant. A- Perhaps another time, C- for this time it is over. A- You are now alone with brave men: C- how do you manage them? A- Great chief, you make children C- consult themselves. A- You are well prepared
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C- to challenge people. A- Be patient Shunawa: do not be angry at me. When I sing for Magaji, you take it hard on yourselves. Do not be jealous of your kin, this affair C- does not call for enmity. Great, victorious male elephant. A- Chief, you can C- defeat a whole village, fearful lion. A- I heard they accused you of stealing the throne: I laughed because if a son can inherit his mother, a grandson can also inherit his grandson. So today you inherit C- your grandfather. Great, victorious male elephant. A- Chieftainship is not a forgery: it originated from Intuka. There is a prince at Udahwan. He is sent by Magaji to Kiri, but he refuses. Magaji asks him to go to Dantaniyo and again he refuses. Then Magaji takes some time to think; he laughs and says: choose where you want to be sent! The prince arranges his dress and laughs.
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Then he says he wants to go to Aji C- where there is pumpkin gravy. Great, victorious male elephant. A- Elderly persons are asked to help settle burning issues, but at Urahwan there is one elderly person with monkey-like whiskers. He C- adds dried grass to the fire. Great, victorious male elephant. A- Alkasum, C- the singer is grateful. A- One day when I came with Tari, Bako was a prince. Alhaji Tari took me to the stable and asked me to choose a horse. I chose a white-dotted horse. But when I sang for another prince, he also promised me a horse. I asked to see the horse but he said it would be brought to me at home at dusk. The horse has no mane or tail. How come there is a horse without tail? He said: C- that is how God created it! Great, victorious male elephant. A- He is well prepared C- to deal with brave men, the victorious one. A- Now the chieftainship will be given to a young man:
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everybody shave their beard off. When one prince hears about it, he C- shaves his beard he had the previous day. A- A prince from Urda always says to me that he will not give me any money any more: I (the prince) understand you are tricking us. It is a piece of wood you arrange and play it for us to give you money. I can do it also. I (the singer) say: ok prince, I excuse you with regard to royalty. Are you going to be a butcher? He says no. Are you going to do kiranci? He says no. Brokerage? No. Smuggling? No. He says: Ali, I want to follow you since singing is not hereditary!: Fulani do have maro'ka, Arabs do sing, even Anna do have maro'ka. A prince is learning how to sing, he dances modern dance, he C- dances any music (ki'di) on radio. A- When Magaji Tsabi was made chief, people did not like him. Then we went on tour together, I told them that today Audu is the ruler.
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Come together and live happily with your wives: as long as Audu is ruling, there will be no beating, no forced labor...
Sarkin Noma Bako
A- I am grateful, the son of Anne is not a bumpkin. C- Return to farming, dan jido is not a bumpkin. A- Saying the truth is not showing a preference, C- he is of a good stock. A- Mahamadu the brave man. Bako, C- you prevent famine from coming in. Return to farming, son of Anne, you are not bumpkin. A- Mahamadu the pillar of the East, hard worker, C- you have prevented famine from coming in. Return to farming, son of Anne, you are not a bumpkin. A- Brave man of Gidan Tambari, C- great farmer. Return to farming, son of Anne, you are not a pumpkin.
Tambari Gangara
A- Those who want to get ready should do so: C- the brave kin of Alhaji is already ready.
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A- Son of Garba, unsurpassed chief, C- great educator, champion of unity. A- He sleeps like a tiger, C- reliable father of Illiasu. A- Remember God's power, remember Barka's grave, Remember Rabi's rule, Remember Abdullahi, Abdulkadr and Mayaki the old chief. Tambari you are the son of a saint. You outshine many in this world, even in the next world you will sit in the front row because C- your grandfather was a prophet, son of Kadr. Peace on you great educator, champion of unity. A- Hyena is impoverished in her dent, shame prevents her from going to C- Dan Darku. Peace on you great educator, champion of unity. A- When Sa'adu was ruling, he let his relatives do anything (they wanted): they slept with married women, they confiscated peoples' things and beat them. Abdullahi died and then Maman succeeded him, but he did not change the situation: they insulted that Anne... Tambari Issa bans back-biting, bribe and corruption,
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he also bans unlawful sex, C- he bans "so and so (women) come to have cola-nut". Peace on you great educator, champion of unity. A- Inhabitants of Watatagai, help us catch one hyena C- it has run away toward the west with a bit of chain. Peace on you great educator, champion of unity. A- Son of Garba, unsurpassed chief, C- great educator, champion of unity. A- Last year I was at Madina (the holy city), but here at home my enemies were busy: they claimed I was dead therefore they had gotten rid of me. Who told you I was dead? People of Gangara come out C- to see the dead man has been resurrected. Peace on you great educator, champion of unity. A- The prince who is going and coming, I met him at Kurgai where he spent a night. He ate food to sickness: he had to get out and in of his room, with diarrhea all over his trousers. When he got ready to go home, C- shame prevented him from riding his horse.
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Sarki Alhaji Sale A- Rule with God's power, Alhaji champion of unity. Father of Galadima, reliable chief. C- Start with God's help, champion of unity. A- Time has changed: the elder has become the chief. That day some were unhappy while others were crying. But C- we were happy with you. Rule with the power of God, Alhaji champion of unity. A- The other day I laughed in Tasawa: a prince was ready for the salla, he looked awkward. There he was C- on a horse with people guiding him. A- Another prince was dressed in a very small riga. When I saw him, C- I thought it was a munahwata. A- This other prince looked like a boka, when I C- saw him, I though it was boka Hassan.
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