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- There are some 550 languages in Nigeria, i.e. nearly 30% of all those
in Africa. Cf. Atlas of Nigerian languages online
- Of these, at least 200 are severely endangered
- Despite its vast university system (60+ tertiary institutions) and oil
wealth, the description and documentation of minority (and even major
languages) is both scanty and often very shoddy
- Ethnomusicological studies are nearly non-existent
- Archiving facilities are rarely present and conditions for audiovisual
materials unacceptable
- Internet access (or even electricity) not present except in larger
settlements
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- Despite this, there is unparalleled enthusiasm at the community level
for language development (in parallel with cultural development)
- This is largely unexploited by the academic community; despite the
immense amount of concerned brow-furrowing in relation to endangered
languages
- However, religious groups are actively involved
- Outside any structured encouragement,
there has been an intriguing growth of commercial and community
videos using minority languages
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- However, the rise of fundamentalist Islam represents a major threat to
musical and oral genres in the northern parts of the country
- The Kanuri and the Hausa had long, complex ‘beggar’s epics’ which were
recited by travelling storytellers who went from market to market n the
dry season
- The texts were highly transgressive and manifestly unislamic and the
performers have been suppressed by the authorities. They have never
been properly documented or published
- A general anti-music ethos has been adopted in many areas of the north,
destroying a rich repertoire.
- Though strangely this does not apply to imitations of songs from Indian
musicals
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- There is no shortage of commercially published collections of folktales
and proverbs. Without exception these tend to be travesties of the real
thing, altering the text for moralising purposes
- Recent years have also seen the rise of publications (in Hausa and
English) purporting to recount oral history. These are great for
anthropologists but completely unreliable as historical texts as they
are simply restructured to respond to current political exigencies and
have no genuine text behind them
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- The Nupe are a Niger-Congo speaking people in west-Central Nigeria
- There probably a million
speakers, so the language is not endangered
- They were made famous (to
anthropologists) in a monograph by S.F. Nadel published in 1941 but
researched in the early 1930s.
- This monograph, ‘Black
Byzantium’ expressed rather well the complex religious and political
system of Nupeland
- It used to be a fixture on anthropology reading lists, although not in
recent times
- A mixture of British social anthropology and German ethnology
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- The Nupe are Muslims, but they have a strong background of traditional
religion, particularly in some villages, and a reputation for
witchcraft among other Nigerian ethnic groups
- Traditionalists have tended to become Christians, and a marked rural
Christian/urban Muslim opposition has developed in recent years
- In the 19th and early twentieth centuries, Nupe culture was
strongly influenced by Hausa Muslim practice, but this has been waning
in recent times
- These divisions are also strongly reflected in the genres of oral
literature
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- Nupe is the most important language in a Volta-Niger subgroup called
Nupoid, which also includes, Gbari, Gade and Ebira
- It is a highly tonal language with three level tones and numerous
glides, making it appear similar to many SE Asian mainland languages
- Basic vocabulary consists almost entirely of short morphemes, CV and
CVN, only distinguished by tone
- As a consequence, the tones of speech have a high functional load and
thus affect strongly, for example, musical practice, such as song
melodies and speech surrogates
- Nupe was written in Arabic script in the nineteenth century using the
conventions of Hausa Ajami, but its tonal nature made this material
(mostly poems) hard to read
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- Nupe language was first studied by Bishop Crowther in the 1860s, but
significant information was first gathered by Banfield, who was a
missionary for the SUM from 1905 onwards.
- Banfield analysed the tone system almost completely correctly, which
was highly unusual at that period, and produced a grammar (1915) and a
dictionary (1914-1916) which still remain significant works of
reference.
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- However, Arabic script material is a highly specialised sub-genre and
has almost disappeared today
- Before the first World War the
German ethnologist Leo Frobenius also spent some time in Bida. Although
he took a great interest in African Marchen, he only summarises or
retells a few Nupe stories and left no text transcriptions
- S.F. Nadel also took a slight interest in Nupe song-texts (curious
because he was by training a musicologist) and published a translation
of a Nupe song. Nonetheless, he took no serious interest in oral
literature
- There are some locally published collections of proverbs, but otherwise
new material is very slight. Nupe ‘poetry’ has been published by
individual Nupe, but it is entirely written in modern literary genres
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- My own intensive period of fieldwork among the Nupe was 1979-1982 with
periodic subsequent visits up to 2008
- During this period, the spread of recorded music and greater mobility,
has led to a precipitous decline in, for example, storytelling by
adults to children. My impression is also that the use of complex
idioms and proverbs in speech is in decline, thought this would be hard
to prove.
- Masquerading and the ritual speech associated with it is definitely in
retreat
- However, what remains vibrant is anything associated with the
traditional political system and the social hierarchy; indeed the
growth in wealth due to oil in this period probably has given it a
boost if anything
- Nupe nationalism and the sense of escaping the influence of Hausa
culture has also grown as it has throughout the Middle Belt.
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- A simple division in Nupe oral literature genres can be made between
sung (or musically performed) and spoken, though this is not a division
Nupe would make
- Roughly corresponding to our ‘music’ is the word enyà, which also means
‘drum’ and ‘dance’ (a not uncommon polysemy in African languages). Nupe
also use the word ení ‘song’ for songs with standard texts
- This could be translated ‘performance’ except that all types of ritual
performance, both Islamic chanting and songs associated with
traditional religion would not fall in this category
- Importantly, also, instrumental performance is characterised as a type
of speech because this is seen as the potential of instruments, to
imitate speech tones and thus ‘say’ things.
- So when people hear drums, they ask ‘What is it saying?’ not ‘What is
the drummer playing?’
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- Spoken genres, gã̀gã,̀ are as follows;
- Proverbs. These are usually known as gàmǎgà, which also applies to
‘story’, ‘allegory’, ‘idiom’ and sometimes also ‘riddle’.
- A typical Nupe proverb;
- Giama gà ánìkĩ̂, zũ̀yě ásũ Sòkó
- When a chameleon stumbles, God is put to shame
- The capacity to weave proverbs into oratory was traditionally seen as
part of the quality of a good speaker, although this is becoming less
so, as the proverbs themselves become more obscure.
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- Riddles. The usual term is ècĩ̀. Riddles were probably
originally part of the currency of adult speech, but they seem to be
confined to children today.
- A typical Nupe riddle is;
- ǹnã́kó ʃì kata tàkò o, enyî u bé dê
- Grandmother is sitting in the back of the room, but her hair is
trailing outside
- Answer: smoke
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- Stories. Nupe have two types of story, folktales, gàmǎgà, and
historical narratives, làbǎrì, a word also meaning ‘news’ and
borrowed from Hausa.
- The typical folktale involves the doings of animals, with tortoise, duku,
and hare, kárigì, typical protagonists. Stories are interspersed with
short songs, and usually begin with a call and response with the
audience.
- Nupe historical traditions are usually told in quite an informal way,
and concern the culture hero of the Nupe, Tsoede, or Edegi, or else the
founding of the modern Muslim kingdoms by Mallam Dendo. Banfield’s
‘Story of Eti Abunu’ may be the first Nupe narrative of this sort
recorded
- These traditions are variable from one region to another and tend to
reflect local traditions of authority. There are no formal oral
historians to preserve the particular features of a narrative
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- Nupe musical genres falling into the general category of ení can be
divided into a significant number of subtypes;
- enyã̀ko. The most
important type of performance socially, consisting of drummers with
women singers and sometimes the flute kpànsã́nã́gi . These
performances are usually for wealthy patrons, or even the Etsu Nupe
and consist of praises, titles and other proverbial expressions. Most
singers consdier these texts ‘traditional’ but as Nadel pointed out in
the 1930s, since they also include references to recent political
events (such as the introduction of the motor-car) they must in fact
be composed.
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- To the Nupe people, in particular Tomasi Gana and the people of Piciko
village
- To Kay Williamson Educational Foundation for supporting the fieldwork
and my presence at this meeting
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