Abstract
In Europe and the Americas, oral folktales are generally associated with subordinate social categories, and the ideology most often identified with such narratives is one of resistance and subversion: the clever farmer outwits the devil, the simpleton brother wins the princess, Brer Rabbit rides the fox, the slave fools the master. There, the folktale is defined as the property of the subordinate groups, set in some opposition to the normative structures and institutions of the society as a whole. The opposition of oral and written finds its equivalent in the power relations of social groups: those normative structures and institutions are defined and transmitted through writing, with a presumption of increasing reliance on reading and writing as one moves up the ladder, whereas what is oral is associated with the under-educated, the poor, and the powerless.
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Notes
Veronika Görög-Karady “Tales and Ideology: The Revolt of the Sons in Bambara-Malinké Tales,” in Graham Furniss and Liz Gunner, eds., Power, Marginality, and African Oral Literature (Johannesburg: Witswatersrand University Press, 1995), 83–91
Michael Jackson, dealing with Kuranko narratives from Sierra Leone (the Kuranko are a related Mande group), also focused upon the moral imperatives that are made quite explicit in the stories he assembles (Allegories of the Wilderness [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982]).
The bibliography on the Mande world is now quite extensive; for a basic description of social structures, see Diango Cissé, Structures malinké de Kita (Bamako: Editions populaires, 1970), 57ff
On the Nyamakala, or craft groups, see David Conrad and Barbara Frank, eds., Status and Identity in West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985)
For references to later work, see Stephen Belcher, Epic Traditions of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 64–141, with notes and bibliography.
For a general description of Mande epic traditions, see Belcher, Epic Traditions (see note 2), 64–141. Ralph Austen offers a series of studies focusing on the epic of Sunjata in his edited volume, In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature, and Performance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)
The best-known English versions would be those of Djibril Tamsir Niane, Sunjata: An Epic of Old Mali, trans. G. D. Pickett (London: Longman, 1965)
John William Johnson, ed., The Epic ofSon jara According to Fa-Digi Sisoko: A West African Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986)
There are now several new versions in print, most notably a recent text from Guinea edited by David Conrad: Sunjata, a West African Epic of the Mande Peoples (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2004).
Representative regional collections would include Gerard Meyer, Contes du pays malinke (Paris, Karthala, 1987)
Katrin Pfeiffer, Mandinka Spoken Art: Folk-Tales, Griot Accounts, and Songs (Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 1997), Michael Jackson, Allegories.
For discussions of historical epics in West Africa, see Lilyan Kesteloot and Bassirou Dieng, Les Épopées d’Afrique Noire (Paris: Karthala, 1997), 39–61, 67–92 and Belcher, Epic Traditions, 1–26.
Gordon Innes, ed. Sunjata: Three Mandinka Versions (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1974), 73, lines 723–28. It is worth observing that this performance was actually recorded at a school, and so Bamba Suso may have put on his pedagogical hat for the occasion. Also, the question of princesses and other social categories has a local resonance in the Gambia; the neighboring Sereer people, in Senegal, claim a Mande princess as founder of the royal lineage. But the princess had fled the Mande because she took a jeli as a lover.
See Stephen Belcher, African Myths of Origin (London: Penguin, 2005), 428–29.
Camara Laye, Le maître de la parole (Paris: Plon, 1978)
English translation by James Kirkup, The Guardian of the Word (New York: Aventura, 1980/1984). This novelization of the story is based on an oral account collected from Babu Condé of Fadama, in Guinea.
I am indebted to David C. Conrad for access to unpublished translations of versions of the epics of Samory. An excerpt is given in John W. Johnson, Thomas Hale, and Stephen Belcher, eds., Oral Epics from Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 68–79
For some discussion of the epic of Samory, see Jan Jansen, “The Adventures of the ‘Epic of Samori’ in 20th-century Mande Oral Tradition” in Jan Jansen and Henk M. J. Maier, eds., Epic Adventures: Heroic Narrative in Oral Performance Traditions of Four Continents (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2004), 71–80
On Kèmè Brèma, see also Ansoumane Camara, “L’image de Kèmè Bouréma dans l’épopée samorienne,” Mande Studies 3 (2001): 65–72.
The standard reference for the career of al-Hajj Umar is the work of David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); French translation: La guerre sainte d’Umar Tal (Paris: Karthala, 1988).
The works of Youssouf Cissé are largely devoted to describing the rituals and explicating the narratives (“Notes sur les sociétés de chasseurs malinké,” Journal de la Société des africanistes 34 (1964) 175–226
Youssouf Cissé La confrérie des chasseurs Malinké et Bambara: Mythes, rites, et récits initiatiques [Paris: Arsan/ Editions Nouvelles du Sud, 1994])
work by other Malian scholars such as Brahima Camara (Jägerliteratur in Manden: Gattungs-und Übersetzungsprobleme afrikanischer Oralliteratur am Beispiel von Baala Jinba Jakites Epos Bilakoro Mari (Teil 1) [Bayreuth: Schultz and Stellmacher, 1998])
N’Golo Konatè (Jägererzählungen der Bamanan: Transcription, Übersetzung und literarischer Kommentar [Bayreuth: Schultz and Stellmacher, 1998]) largely repeats Cissé’s findings. The work of Foday Tounkara is independent (La parole du serewa, Stockholm, private printing, 1993), but largely a nostalgic panegyric. A paper by Sten Hagberg, presented in 2002, documents the ways in which a hunters’ association near Bobo-Dioulasso, in Burkina Faso, is being used as an instrument of exclusion against incoming Peuls. Joseph Helweg is working on hunters’ groups in northern Côte d’Ivoire, but I have not yet seen his work.
Virtually the only skepticism of Cissé’s claims expressed by an African scholar is that of Karim Traoré, Le jeu et le sérieux (Koln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2000), 95ff.
The best-known local group is the Jakhanke (or Diakhanke); see Lamin O. Sanneh, The Jakhanke (London: International African Institute, 1979)
more generally Nehemia Levtzion’s chapter on west African Islam in Levztion and Randall Pouwels, eds., A History of Islam in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000). Their founder, Salim Souare, preached coexistence with nonbelievers and conversion by example.
The result is something of an escape from the normal limits of society. One popular example may illustrate the pattern. Salif Keita is a very popular singer in Mali, but had been subject to criticism because a member of the Keita lineage (nobles) normally should not be a public performer; that is the function of the jeli lineages. His response was to turn to hunters’ music and take on the trappings of a hunters’ singer, a sere, and the shift muted the criticism (see Cherif Keita, “A Praise Song for the Father: Family Identity in Salif Keita’s Music,” in Jan Jansen and Clemens Zobel, eds., The Younger Brother in Mande Kinship and Politics in West Africa [Leiden: Center for Non-Western Studies, 1996], 97–104).
For the Bozo version, see Shekh Tijaan Hayidara, ed. and trans., La geste de Fanta Maa (Niamey: CELHTO, 1987)
For the Gambian version, see Gordon Innes and Bakari Sidibe, eds. and trans., Hunters and Crocodiles: Narratives of a Hunters’ Bard Performed by Bakari Kamara (Sandgate: Paul Norbury/Unesco, 1990)
For the version from Baro, see Ahmadou Kouyaté, Denise Aebersold, and Dramane Keita, eds. and trans., Manden Mori Fasa: Récits de chasse (Conakry: Bibliothèque Franco-Guinéenne, 1994), vol. 2.
There are two available bilingual editions of the story in print, one by Ndugacè Samakè, from the collection of Annik Thoyer, Récits épiques des chasseurs Bamanan du Mali (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1995; first published 1978),19–69
the other by Seydou Camara, in Gerald Cashion’s dissertation, “Hunters of the Mande: A Behavioral Code and Worldview Derived from the Study of their Folklore,” 2 vols. (Indiana University, 1984), vol. 2 second appendix.
Both available versions end with a lament for the death of the hunter, which moves the recitation into what may be the more usual discourse of hunters’ singing. Cissé and others have noted that the usual occasion for a hunters’ gathering and the singing that accompanies it is the funeral of a hunter, and references to the great hunters of bygone days (with regret for their passing) are a staple of the genre. This is not unique to the Mande; see also Bade Ajuwon, Funeral Dirges of Yoruba Hunters (New York: Nok Publishers, 1982).
Annik Thoyer, ed. and trans., Nyakhalen la forgeronne… par Seyidou Kamara (n.p.,1986).
The mother’s quest for a pregnancy is almost standard in west Africa; Seydou Camara offers a parallel sequence in another recorded epic, Kambili (ed. and trans. by Charles Bird, Bourama Soumaoro, Gerald Cashion, Mamadou Kante [Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1974; Bamana text in 1976]). The prohibition of sex and rescue by the lover are not a standard tale-type. The pattern of serial refusals by family-members, culminating in rescue by the lover, corresponds to Child Ballad 95, the “Briery Bush.” There are other regional examples, discussed by Görög-Karady, “Tales and Ideology,” 87–88. One might also mention, while discussing prohibitions of sex, a story published in the N’ko writing system by Soulaymane Kante, in which a king forbids his three sons from having sex on pain of death; all three disobey, but only the youngest escapes punishment by demanding that the father admit his own guilt in the matter
The story is described and discussed in some detail by Valentin Vydrine, “Souleymane Kante, un philosophe-innovateur traditionnaliste Maninka, vu à travers ses écrits en N’Ko,” Mande Studies 3 (2001) 99–131.
I know of no general regional or continental study on the figure; for representative narratives from a variety of groups, see my African Myths of Origin. There is also an excellent collection of narratives from the Fon (of modern Benin, formerly Dahomey) in the Herskovits’ collection, Dahomeyan Narrative (Melville and Frances Herskovits, Dahomeyan Narrative [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1956]). Certain figures in Mande history, and most notably Sunjata, are credited with having been hunters before they were kings, and Seydou Camara remarks, in Kambili, that “Kings have always come from the hunters” (on 59, see note 27), but the quality of the hunter does not seem to translate well into royal power.
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© 2007 Alexandra Cuffel and Brian Britt
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Belcher, S. (2007). Hunters and Boundaries in Mande Cultures. In: Cuffel, A., Britt, B. (eds) Religion, Gender, and Culture in the Pre-Modern World. Religion/Culture/Critique. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604292_8
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