| Description |
1 online resource |
| Series |
African Histories and Modernities |
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African histories and modernities.
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| Contents |
Intro -- About the Book -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Works Cited and References -- Part I: African Origins -- Chapter 2: Battle by All Means: Udje as Oral Poetry and Performance -- Works Cited and References -- Chapter 3: Halo: The Ewe Battle Tradition of Music, Songs, and Performance -- Introduction -- Hypotheses -- Adja-Ewe Concept of Music and Dance -- Halo: Songs and Dance Performance Among the Adja-Ewes -- Halo: Dramatization of Music Text Through Song and Dance Performance Among the Adja-Ewes -- Target of Halo |
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Causes -- Types of Insult -- Methods of Embellishment -- Social Roles -- Religion -- Editing and Performing Procedure -- Features of Halo and Social Problematic -- Halo: Positive and Negative Aspects -- Lobalo and Hama: Heritage of Halo in Modern Adja-Ewe Society -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 4: Poetry and Ping-Pong: Auto/Biographical Verbal Duels in Yoruba Polygamous Households -- Works Cited -- Chapter 5: Shairi and Malumbano: The Tradition of Verbal Warfare in Swahili Literature -- Works Cited |
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Chapter 6: Moral Authority of Shona Women's Battlesongs: Revising Customary Law in the Context of Performance Within African Indigenous Knowledge System -- Introduction: The Creativity of Battlesongs of Abuse and Rebuke -- Research Questions -- Statement of the Problem -- Methodologies of the Study -- Theorizing the Moral Authority of Women-Centred Songs -- Institutionalized Forms of Rebuke and Insult -- From the Oral Tradition to the Modern Colonial Culture -- Shona Women's Songs that Deride Control of Female Sexualities in Colonial Rhodesia |
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Songs that Recentre Images of Powerful Shona Women During Zimbabwe's Armed Liberation Struggle -- Political Satire, and Women's Songs that Rebuke Personality Cult in Post-Independence Zimbabwe -- Conclusion -- References -- Part II: Diaspora Manifestations -- Chapter 7: Battles, Raps, Cappin', The Dozens: African-American Oral Traditions of Insult -- Introduction -- History -- The Dozens as Social Regulation -- The Dozens as a Methodology for Survival -- Poverty and Material Conditions of the Impoverished -- Anti-Blackness -- Misogyny -- The Dozens: Shifting Regionally and Adapting to the Times |
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Regional Analogues for Playing "The Dozens" -- Hip-Hop as the Adaptive "Dozens" -- Inequality, Dynamics of Power, and Oppressive Institutions -- Poverty and Effects of Marginalization -- The Dozens: Back to Its Roots and Out to the Global Masses -- Works Cited -- Chapter 8: Black Greek Step Shows -- Introduction -- The Divine Nine: Fraternities -- The Divine Nine: Sororities -- Black Greek Step Shows: Shimmying, Cutting, and Cracking -- Strolls/Party Walks, Chants, Group Identity -- Stepping as a Global Movement -- Works Cited |
| Summary |
This book explores the battles of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise. Tanure Ojaide is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. Educated at Ibadan and Syracuse, Tanure Ojaide has published twenty-one collections of poetry, as well as novels, short stories, memoirs, and scholarly work. He has won the ANA Poetry Prize four times: 1988, 1994, 2003, and 2011. His other awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region, the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry, and the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award. In 2016 he won both the African Literature Associations Folon-Nichols Award for Excellence in Writing and the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award for the Humanities. In 2018 he co-won the Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. He has won the National Endowment for the Arts grant, twice the Fulbright, and twice the Carnegie African Diaspora Program fellowship |
| Notes |
Includes index |
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Print version record |
| Subject |
African poetry -- History and criticism
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African languages -- Rhetoric
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Songs -- Africa
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Exhortation (Rhetoric)
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African diaspora.
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African diaspora
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African poetry
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Exhortation (Rhetoric)
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Songs
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Africa
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| Author |
Ojaide, Tanure, 1948-
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| ISBN |
303115617X |
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9783031156175 |
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