Pylons of African Kushitic Spirituality: Jaarsoo Waaqoo and Geerarsa Oromo Literature
In two earlier articles we republished parts of the book "Theorizing the Present" in which the great Oromo Intellectual Asafa Dibaba analyzes sociologically the poetry of Jaarsoo Waaqoo, the leading National Oromo Poet and Mystic. To give every unspecialized, Afro-phile reader, the keys to Understanding the African Kushitic Spirituality, we re-publish in this article the third chapter of Mr. Asafa Dibaba’s pioneering contribution.
This chapter consists in the backbone of Mr. Dibaba’s book; the author describes the sociological poetics of the geerarsa genre and impacts of the genre on the works of individual Oromo oral poets, especially on Jaarsoo Waaqoo's poetry. Entitled "The Sociology of Geerarsa genre", the chapter makes available for the first time in English key excerpts of Jaarsoo Waaqoo's poetry, now accessible to international readership. We reproduce the text integrally adding the notes at the end. After the title and the subtitle, an illuminating motto – excerpt encapsulates the Great Oromo poet’s mindset and spiritual vision condensed in just a few verses.
Beyond the rich contents, the originality of the topic, and the groundbreaking methodology, Mr. Asafa Dibaba’s book greatly illuminates the terrible lacunae of the European colonial academic institutions, their intellectual barrenness, and their guilty silence.
The Sociology of Geerarsa Genre
The Dhaaduu recitative poems and Jaarsoo Waaqoo's Poetry
I have three questions:-
the first says:
do we say,
the poor is not worth praising,
or praise is not
worth to man?
do we say,
the lord speaks no lie,
or lies told by the lord
are truth?
do we say,
a cunning person makes wealth,
or a wealthy person
is cunning?
(FSG II, p49)
Introduction
This chapter aims to discuss the sociological poetics of the geerarsa genre. It also presents a discussion of the generic system of geerarsa song and the dhaaduu recitative poem. The overview of historical transformation of 'contemporary' geerarsa as national Oromo literature (Addisu 1990; 1994) presented in this chapter will also lay a foundation for the sociological analyses of Jaarsoo Waaqoo's poetry in the next chapter.
'Contemporary' geerarsa has influenced, one may also argue, the poetic style, tone and content of other emerging Oromo poetry and songs. Jaarsoo, for instance, recites (FSG II: 68):
addunyaa karaallee!
nyaaphat' dudda nu fe'aa!
ka'ii loladhu Oromoo
waarr' nu biraa raa'ate
yoona bilisoomne nu se'aa
in the last days of resistance, Oromo
there is always a challenge. advance!
or you remain ever a beast of burden!
those who have won their freedom
think that we have also won ours.
Hence, the Oromo struggle has become a theme of 'contemporary' geerarsa transformed into a protest /prison song. It follows that geerarsa now serves as a significant medium of the Oromo struggle which is part of the "sociopolitical revolution and a process of liberation [...] taking place in large parts of Northeast Africa" (Negaso 2000:x). 1
The 'originality' of the geerarsa composition lies in the creating and recreating of the themes, phrases and poetic lines or stanzas of the protest song, while the 'traditional' element of the popular song geerarsa lies in its function for the preservation of culture. Hence, the dual function of geerarsa: first, it is a political medium of articulating the political and economic suppression and cultural domination on the Oromo by the Amhara-Tigre rulers in Ethiopia. Second, as a social critique, it is a means of preserving sociocultural values and maintaining unity of purpose among the Oromo in the process of struggle for "self-determination including independence" (Negaso 1983; Addisu 1990, 1994:59).
The four-line text below in Jaarso's FSG II (p67)
'chaarterii' baananii
lama siin hibaannu:
nu ilmaan Oromoo
haa xiloo qarrru!
the charter is signed! they declare
(no democracy) no more charter! we rebel:
sons and daughters of the Oromo!
move! grind your spear!
depicts the short-lived "Peace Conference" of mid-1991 followed by the Charter signed by various liberation groups including TPLF/ EPRDF and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). 2 Similarly, the line 'having seen and not possessing it' in the two geerarsa line by Luuccaa in Addisu Tolesa's "Oromo Literature, Geerarsa, and the Liberation Struggle" (1994:159-65) implies a shared grave experience among the Oromo under the new Tigre-led government:
arganii dhabuu kanaa
nu baraari Waaqayyo!
having seen and not finding/possessing it
oh! have mercy upon us Waaqayyo/God!
The historical significance of both the song and Jaarsoo's poem is to mark the new phase and continuity of Amhara-Tigre rule in Oromiya following the short-lived charter. In Jaarsoo's poem above 'the charter is signed! they declare' also indicates the frustration of the reciter as to what would be the fate of the Oromoo under the TPLF-led neo-colonial rule. That is what the idiomatic expression "having seen and not finding / possessing it" means in the given geerarsa context. From the sociopolitical situations of the time both the song and the recitative poem are 'songs of experience' about power imbalance/relation. The choral repetition in
maddii Killee Leensaa, Killee Leensaa
dheeddi fardeenillee, fardeenillee
namuu gamtaa hinqabnee, gamtaa hinqabnee
gamtaan walii hingallee , walii hingallee
5 jetti jarreenillee , jarreenillee.
Killee Leensa, Killee Leensaa,
where rich, green grass is plentiful
there horses graze,
people without unity of purpose
organization without coherence
‘Others’ point finger at to ridicule.
comments on lack of unity of purpose among the Oromo (lines 3,4), as a result of which the "divide and rule" policy of the Amhara-Tigre domination became a reality. It is with this lack of unity and a viable organization, as it were, that colonizers attempt to justify their conquest: jetti jarreenillee (line 5). Hence, the social and cultural significance of geerarsa in the above text is to stress on the process of the preservation of culture and identity, unity of purpose and strong organization as very crucial and equally urgent (lines 3,4). Culture, in this sense, is limited to the Oromo life style: the daboo (cooperative work) which involves geerarsa and other poetic genres; the gadaa (democratic system); sense of belongingness to the community, Oromummaa (Oromoness) and accountability to one's words and actions (Gemechu 1993; Addisu 1994). 3
From the above significance of geerarsa: historical/political and social/cultural, added to its traditional aesthetic value as a means of entertainment, the study of contemporary geerarsa, one may argue, can lay fertile ground for the sociological analyses of Oromo poetry. This chapter, therefore, serves as a transition towards the analysis of Finna San Gama in Chapter 4 where the sociological analyses of the texts and description of the contexts are carried out using alternative approaches of literary and sociological interest: a combination of oral-literary theory, conflict theory and social development theory.
The Sociological Poetics of Geerarsa Genre
The study of geerarsa discourse as a work of literature constitutes its sociological poetics, i.e., in this context, the science of the study of geerarsa as ‘Oromo national literature’ (Addisu 1990, 1994). Geerarsa as a genre is usually identified as a collective noun encompassing the Oromo Oral Poetry of hunting, war and historical and political events (Cerulli 1922; Andrzejewski 1985; Baxter 1986; Sumner 1997). The recorded geerarsa as an Oromo poetic genre is traced back to the time of Philip Paulitshke (1896), one of the earliest ethnographers of the Horn. Paulitshke provided one geerarsa text referring to it as geerar, perhaps the same as the Somali version 'geerar' (Finnegan 1977:211). Later in 1922, Enrico Cerulli presented twelve geerarsa texts, which he transcribed as geeirarsa in his Folk Literature….
Cerulli argues that geerarsa is a poetic expression through which Oromo warriors are 'celebrated' by recalling their ancestors and praising their kin on both their father and mother's sides, whereas faarsaa is a praise song by an individual warrior (Cerulli p58; Mohammed 1994:12). There is no criteria of generic classification, however, which Cerulli forwards in his argument as to identify geerarsa from faarsaa (praise song). 4 What is clear, as will be discussed later in this chapter is, according to Enno Littmann, the geerarsa poetics is characterized by seven meters as in the geerarsa by a certain singer below:
harreen dudda urataa
gangalannaa ‘naleeluu
nam’ aarii garaa qabu
kolfa ‘riyyaa ‘naleeluu
a donkey with an open sore on its back
cannot roll on its back (so much so),
a man with a wounded heart
cannot (laugh with a friend), but
sighs a deep grief
The Andrzejewskian notion of 'time-free' and 'time-bound' category of Oromo oral poetry (1985) may overlap with what can be put as the 'traditional' and 'contemporary' geerarsa based on the temporal characteristics of its content and real life situation. Geerarsa can be generally put as Traditional (Append. B.I) and Contemporary (Append. B.II). One may categorize the 'traditional' 'time-free' geerarsa genre as follows:
geerarsa of war events also called historical songs (Cerulli 1922: 100; Sumner 1997: 39). Such songs labeled 'traditional' are also the 'contemporary' songs of their time. They are therefore 'time-bound' in a way since they record major events (political or otherwise) of particular time in history (see Appendix B:1).
geeraresa (hunting songs) of a successful kill of lion, rhino, leopard, elephant, buffalo, giraffe or of an enemy (see Appendix B:2 (a))
b) an unsuccessful kill (Appendix B:2 (b))
c) those who abstain from the hunting venture for
some reason (Appendix B:2 (c))
3. geerarsa of success / failure in life (Appendix B:3 (a) (b))
In addition to those typologies above, there are also songs of 'warm up' called cooka. It is sung in chorus to stimulate the singer at the start, or to let him take breath, collect himself and continue again in the middle, or to wind up his song and give the turn to another singer at the end.
In the background remarks of this chapter ‘contemporary’ geerarsa is described as a ‘protest song’, and is ‘traditionally’ also understood as the Oromo national literature. In the following sub-sections, geerarsa is discussed in terms of its subject-matter, occasion, composition and performance. Gerarsaa as a transformed oral genre and as a genre also to be recited, not just to be sung, is discussed in the sections to follow.
The Subject-matter of Geerarsa
In spite of new interests and the inevitable changes of outlook consequent on the passing of the old mode of life and mere praises, particularly self-praises, the literary form of geerarsa oral poetry still flourishes in most cases as a protest song.
In some types or sub-genres (gooba, dhaaduu, suunsuma or mirriyisa), however transformed, geerarsa still brings inspiration and a formal mode of literary expression that depicts real situation in life (Sumner 1997) among the Oromo. Speaking of the geerarsa sub-genres Baxter (p49) says, "[t]he generic name for hunting and war songs is geerarsa" (cf. Cerulli's gierarsa 1922:100). Geerarsa among the Macca Oromo, Baxter points out citing L. Bartels, is also used to refer to songs of triumph and of a war prisoner (cf. Luucca Abbaa Tuggoo, for his songs in prison). It also refers to the songs of "a man who has 'defeated' poverty" (Baxter ibid.).
Even though geerarsa as an Oromo literary genre is reported even before Cerulli’s Folk Literature...of 1922 as far back as 1896 (cf. Enno Littman), much still remains to be done. Among other such general problems is the generic transformation of geerarsa from the mere praise poetry to a protest song. The performance goals of the geerarsa singer exhibit the Oromo as a people aspiring for freedom while resisting colonial and cultural domination. The gadaa and other traditional values are also described in geerarsa as performed on such occasions like buttaa / jila (feasts), as it is adapted to the sociopolitical changes during and after colonization.
According to Ruth Finnegan, praises such as geerarsa occur among the Oromo "who lay stress on the significance of personal achievement in war or hunting" (Finnegan 1970:111). Like the Somali geerar, Finnegan writes, the Oromo geerarsa is "often in the form of a challenge, sometimes hurled between two armies" (p211 citing Chadwicks 5 1940:548-9). However, in a sociopolitical real sense of the term, geerarsa is not a genre merely limited to cataloguing exploits of war, but more than that it has paramount social, historical and political significance. On the rites of passage, the stage or age of foollee or gaammee-gurguddoo "youth-group", Addisu writes (1990), "is particularly relevant to the process of reciting, composing and singing geerarsa" (p108), more likely dhaaduu, to show that the foollee are initiated into the adult stage once they turned sixteen. The experience and reputation boys establish at this stage of foollee provides opportunities for them when they later seek election into the highly valued social position (see Asmaron 1973:54-57).
What could not be said directly or through the usual medium of communication on just any occasion is conveyed through geerarsa. Jaarsoo for instance recites thus to comment on the existing sociopolitical situation of the Oromo:
nam' adiin mal' dhahatee
yaad' dhibii nutti hinfinnee?
Goobanaan jaarsa nuu mataa
sobee beeseen nutti hinbinnee
didn't Goobana consult the white people
and conform with new tactics?
hasn't he/Goobana 6 hired our elders
and bought them with money?
(adapted from Schlee 1992, p235)
Using the words ‘beesee’ (money), ‘nam-adii’ (white man) and Gobana (Menelik’s warlord), Jaarsoo allusively refers to those Oromo natives in the OPDO 7 referred to as the proverbial quisling Goobana for cooperating with the Tigre-led government so much as Gobana unwittingly cooperated with Menelik in the 19th century long before the rise of modern Oromo nationalism.
By the same token, in the following verse the geeraraa 'singer' comments on 'jabana'/bara, i.e. change in time and the consequent worst system using traditional forms: 'yaa jabanaa' / siif safuu!, i.e. 'O time, Safuu! (interjection).
Thus he sings,
hindaaqqoo qooxii guutuu
adalli bijaa godhe!
misa garaa koo guutuu
jabanni bijaa godhe
5 siif safuu yaa jabanaa!
.................................
ilma namaa rakkiftee
misa garaatti hambifte?!
chicken full on the roost,
a wild cat crept in at night and devoured!
bravery I had full my heart
now gone by changes in time!
safuu to You the changing time!
..........................................
that You have put us in trouble
suppressed bravery in our heart?!
(Tasamma 2000:51)
The singer makes no mention of any name but, presumably, there is a general understanding between the singer and the audience that the singer as a social critic is commenting on the status quo (lines 3-7) and lamenting the worse life situation he and his people live in (line 6). He is by no means glorifying the existing system. He criticizes the present time which 'suppressed' him to succumb to the existing situation (lines 3,4,7). Such songs, i.e., geerarsa, are performed on various occasions such as the daboo (co-operative works) and wedding ceremonies.
Among the main occasions on which geerarsa is sung are those connected with hunting and heroic exploits related to war. As a protest song, however, geerarsa is sung at public gatherings, in prison and in other similar situations.
Traditionally, geerarsa as a popular form may also figure at various occasions: for rejoicing not specifically connected with hunting or war, but with such occasions as weddings or naming ceremonies. Hence, the composer/reciter is a hunter, a hero or the rebel who wants to articulate the worse situation he and his people are put in.
Composition and Performance
Under this sub-topic the composition (act of producing) and performance (act of delivering) of the geerarsa genre will be discussed. In performing geerarsa the individual singer does not tend to stand out like a soloist folk-singer in a dominant position as against a passive audience. The singer, instead, interacts with the audience who are waiting to take the turn to sing or to repeat a refrain usually sung in chorus, for example, at a wedding or gubbisa (naming-) ceremony.
Born and bred within the Oromo ‘oral tradition’, one is introduced from his childhood to the Oromo poetic world. From birth to the gubbisa (naming-) ceremony and throughout every stage of passage a Booran is exposed to some poetic acts that range from varied songs of initiation to different heroic and hunting songs. On such different occasions as homecoming after a successful kill at the amna (hunting/fighting) one also does a great deal of exercise before s/he successfully produces song or personal narrative for inclusion in the poetic repertoire at actual performances.
The geerarsa composer does the composition spontaneously: while he is on the long walk, while he is alone at work on his farm or while herding cattle, as Areeroo the Booran informant has it. Along forest paths to such a distant farm the geerarsa poem also bursts into utterances, which may be the beginning of new geerarsa composition. This happens, especially in the case of the Boorana dhaaduu according to Qararsa, the dhaaduu reciter himself and the informant referred to elsewhere in this study. Often the ‘new’ breed of geerarsa (dhaaduu) emerges when an unexpected and suppressing event such as a surprise attack of the people by the enemy occurs, generating in the singer troubling emotions, which seek a vent of one type or another.
Jaarsoo's motivation is political mobilization, for instance, when he recites to comment on the new sociopolitical situation of the Oromo under the wayyane rule (ibid. p234):
Oromoo, obboleeyyan tiyyaa!
allaattii wal nyaachisuu
isan haga har'aa hinlakkifne?
kan dhufuut' nu yaabbataa,
garbummaan gad nu hindhiifne!
Oromo, my brethren, haven't you
stopped even now from throwing
each other to the vultures?
whoever comes mounts us,
servitude has not yet left us!
The present researcher's informants are unanimous in asserting that geerarsa is the general term for all such original compositions as dhaaduu and gooba in Boorana (cf. also Baxter 1986). The two-geeraarsa sub-genres, i.e. dhaaduu and gooba, seem to be created by particular individuals (known heroes, hunters) as distinct from the anonymous traditional geerarsa handed down orally to generations. No one recites or sings the same gooba or dhaaduu for sure as sung or recited by another hunter or hero, Areeroo and Qamparre agree. 8
In evaluating the geerarsa piece, according to the informants, the first criteria is the amount of wisdom put in the song. That implies how accurate or inaccurate are the observations made by the singer/reciter about the life situation of the society, the Oromo in general and the Boorana in particular. Added to that is how humorous are the remarks made, how far does the diction of the piece consist of idiomatic expressions, words peculiar to hunters and heroes. Metaphorical turns of phrase rather than ordinary words of everyday speech also add to the aesthetic quality of the geeraarsa. Great acclaims are usually given to historical and chronological serious events such as war as well as real-life stories (cf. Sumner's concrete situation in life, 1997.) illustrating the efficacy of the thorough recitation in dhaaduu or singing in gooba.
The second criteria involve the sound of the geerarsa and some stylistic traditions or conventional poetic formulas: prosodic effects and rhythm-segments. The lines of the best improvised geerarsa pieces thus constructed, and when intoned, sound more like the traditional song sung by So and So--a well known singer in the public--or that appeals to the conventionally ascertained rules imprinted by tradition in the mind of the singer. Those rules can be prescribed by E. Littmann’s the seven-meter principle of geeraarsa as Macca Oromo sing it (in Addisu 1990). In the Boorana geerarsa genre called dhaaduu, for instance, it is conventional to repeat the refrain ‘itti deebi’e' / itti deebise’ i.e. ‘I went on to the war again’/’I beat the enemy again’ before one passes on to narrate the series of chronological events. That refrain shows the end of one battle and the beginning of another and of the recitation too, and it goes on.
The best geerarsa singer/reciter at a social gathering, the informants firmly agreed, is the one whose repertoire is the most extensive and accurate, the most balanced in themes (containing humour, just enough amusing geerarsa pieces as effective spice as in the main body of the poems), and the best sung or recited. In this respect, the eyewitnesses he mentions among his colleagues who were on the battle prove from experience the accurately rendered repertoire of a particular dhaaduu reciter. Asmarom Legesse provides an example of such a confrontation between a warrior singer and peers when he made a very vague claim in delivery of dhaaduu,
Janjamtuu/Gujii simantuu
nama kudhanii-lama
hareessa qaraa
anat' ejjeese
Gujii adults,
twelve men
in the first rush,
it’s I who killed
Then an angry mate responded: raatuu, kijibduu! Nama kudhanii-lama mukatti sii hidhanii? (you fool, you liar! Did someone tie them to a tree for you, all twelve of them?) And, Asmarom adds, in the midst of laughter then the singer told the truth that he killed only one, not twelve (Asmarom 1973:104ff).
In rendering both 'traditional' and 'contemporary' geerarsa, disjointed phrasing and halting delivery are disapproved. That is, poetical continuity and fluency of performance, especially in the dhaaduu, the Boorana speech-like poetry to be recited, are the things that are much lauded. And that is why the geerara 'singer' particularly the good dhaaduu reciter habitually controls his breathing action as well. And, that is why he is capable of consistently reciting sustained notes or poetic lines and whole sentences as units of musical phrasing.
Overall, geerarsa maintains the Oromo history and culture both as 'traditional' and 'contemporary' poetic genre through different degrees of composition and performance on various occasions. The Oromo expressed his resentments, lacks and complaints by geerarsa when forced to flee his home, his land or when put in prison. Hence, the geerarsa poetic genre is 'transformed' into a protest song (cf. Baxter 1986; Addisu 1990, 1994).
Geerarsa as a ‘transformed’/'innovated'
Poetic Genre
In Addisu Tolesa’s dissertation (1990) and in his article titled "Oromo Literature, Geerarsa …" (1994), the ‘contemporary’ geerarsa folk genre is described as serving the purpose of Oromo liberation struggle. That can be well justified by Jaarsoo's tape-recording in which he recites
Oromiyaa,
jiruu biyyee marchi lafaadhaa
gubbaat' nu dhalee, nuu kenne Waaqaa
sa'aa namaan horree ilaalaa badhaadhaa
jiruu balchumaa barbaadaa
Oromia,
that Land of abundance and fecundity
on which God created us
that Land which God blessed us with
sons and daughters of man and cattle
our rich Land that which we love
and therefore the Land
that we seek most!
(FSG IV, cf. Schlee 1992 passim; Shongolo 1996 passim)
He says that Oromia is the land which Waaqaa (God) blessed the Oromo with (lines 2,3) and therefore the Oromo seek it most. Jaarsoo reclaims Oromia as the ‘land of abundance and fecundity’ (line 2). Through the words 'love' (line 6) and 'seek most' (line 7) in the recurrent poetic lines above that Jaarsoo uses as a refrain in his tape-recording of the 1992 (FSG IV) he articulates Oromo nationalism. 8 One can also hear other Oromo individual singers/reciters whose subject matter is topical and/or political. The Arsi suunsuma (Nagesso 1994) or Luuccaa Abbaa Tuggoo’s prison songs (Addisu 1990), Sheik Bakrii Saaphaloo (M. Hassen in Baxter 1996:73), Sheik Mohammed Xaahir, and Abdaa Garaadaa's oral poems (which Dr Gemmechu Megersa recited on an interview with him) also echo, one may assert, the grievances of the Oromo nation.
Jaarsoo's poetry is referred to as the 'poetics of nationalism' based on the 'innovated' geerarsa folk genre (Schlee 1992; Shongolo in Baxter 1996), "in which men give poetic accounts of their heroic deeds--and sometimes also, like in the American blues, of their problems and grievances in life" (Shongolo p269). 10
Finnegan (1970) also says that the topical and political function of (Oral) poetry "can be an aspect of work songs, lyric, praise poetry, even…lullaby" (p272).
In her Oral Poetry (1977:159), Finnegan adds that performance of poetry designed for propagating policies/political programmes of opposition parties have been common in Africa. Various singers performed such political poetry designed by political parties to put their own case during elections, Finnegan (ibid) claims, hired by opposing political parties. Enthusiastic supporters of particular political parties, in this view, may best design to put their cause through poetry or well represent it in song.
Hence, poetry is used for what cannot be said directly and by taking the place of other sources of information: the press, the radio and publication. Such a case example is that of the Chopi People of Portuguese East Africa, during the liberation movement, Finnegan declares (1970:273), where public singing is used as a way of expressing public opinion and bringing pressure on individuals. The song,
You, Chugela, you are proud of your position, yet you are only a chief made by the white man
attacks the young chief Chugela who co-operated, according to the comment above, with the Portuguese colonizing power. Perhaps an instance of such propaganda referring to a political party is Jaarsoo's poem attacking the OPDO ('Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organisation) one of other "ethnic 'PDOs'" wayyane (Tigre) organized 'towards the end of 1989' (Mohammed 1994; Baxter 1996):
-OPDO-dhaa ati?
-eeyee
-aabboo Rabbi si haa nyaatuu, caqasi!
sidiin lafaan si barattiif
dhaab' jettee si geessitee
.......................................
haa'teef' aabbee si ajjeesifte
-are you an OPDO?
-yes
-may God ruin you, listen!
enemy made you his instrument
and you killed your own people:
....................................................
you killed your father and your mother
(FSG II, p65)
This is a means of communicating the 'hard times' in history, which is unwittingly siding the enemy against the will and whim of the people, in favour of cowards and opportunists. The poem is, one would rightly argue, the increasingly harsh and direct innuendo of an unsatisfied poet/reciter: 'enemy made you his instrument' (line 4).
There are such 'abusive Oromo songs', as Finnegan designates them, (1970, p277) as against ordinary individuals (see Tasamma Ta'a's collection 2000:50). Abusive Oromo songs are sometimes directly used as means of social pressure, enforcing the will of public opinion. Though no names are mentioned, unpopular individuals, or those who look for opportunities during such hard times as in the geerarsa song above about a bad finna in history (Tasamma, p51) are ridiculed and attacked through geerarsa.
Ruth Finnegan on Political Songs
As Finnegan claims, political songs are an accepted type of poetry by African political parties. They were often purely oral among the largely non-literate masses though at times such songs appeared "in writing, even in print" (Finnegan 1970, p 284). And written collections of party songs circulate among the public as a "powerful and flexible weapon in many types of political activity" (ibid) by their apparently innocuous nature.
The poetic genre used for secret propaganda is also the hymns used by the Mau Mau Movement in the early 1950s in Kenya of which L.S.B. Leakey in Defeating Mau Mau (1954) writes:
The leaders of the Mau Mau Movement… were quick to realise the very great opportunity which the Kikuyu love of hymn singing offered for propaganda purposes. In the first place propaganda in ‘hymn’ form and set to well-known tunes would be speedily learnt by heart and sung over again and again and thus provide a most effective method of spreading the new ideas… This was very important, for there were many who could not be reached by ordinary printed propaganda methods. (qtd in Finnegan 1970, p 285ff)
Finnegan contends that the consequent spread and tenacity of Mau Mau as a political movement was in part the result of those hymns appearing in books and in oral form during the Kenyan national liberation movement in early 1950s.
In line with this, in discussing the problem of whether or not "one type of poetry always goes with a particular form of society", as Finnegan questions in her Oral Poetry (1977:246), generalities do not seem to help much to achieve any new insight as through specific studies to understand how actually poetry functions within the society at a given level of development. The sociological tendency, however, is not the descriptions of specific historical cases but, to sociological analyses of poetry, it is the general relationships and types rather than the unique that facilitate the understanding of the function of poetry at a given level of finna/'development stage'. Some kind of poetry may seem to fit well with certain type of social order at some stage of society; this may also necessitate constructing typologies of such a kind. In this view, attempts to connect "type of poetry and stage of society" relate to the romantic and evolutionist thinkers of the 19th – century (Finnegan ibid). 11 It is worth reiterating here the point already made: there is little evidence, if any, that oral poetry always occurs in the ‘changeless’ tradition bound context.
To sum up, it has been argued that oral poetry does not occur in a ‘changeless’ context, that the poet operates, communicates, and even, on occasions, innovates his composition within the realm of the existing conventions. Geerarsa under no circumstance remains unchanged to stand as a universal and special oral style: it is therefore innovated and undergoes some transformations in the process of constant sociopolitical and cultural changes the Oromo are nationally engaged in.
A Sociology of Geerarsa Genre
Generic Theories and Methods
The need to base the study of verbal art upon an understanding of genres is one of the basic principles underlying sociological poetics. However, the study of genre is not an end in itself but rather serves as "a means toward the fuller understanding of individual works and of literature as a whole" (cf. P. Bernadi Beyond Genre in Fowler 1982, p322).
The sociological approach to genre studies has the basic tenet that "verbal art is a communication event, involving the active social interrelationship of all the participants" (Morris 1994, p160). Pam Morris confirms Bakhtin's argument in "Constructing a Sociological Poetics" saying that in the sociological analysis of the 'communication event' too often the sociological approach is only appropriate to content and to the extraverbal situations, i.e., the determining effects of external social forces upon the content. In this regard, the aesthetic form is analyzed more appropriately by a non-sociological method of analysis, since form is "intrinsic to the work itself".
In what follows here the sociological approach to the immediate determining situation of the geerarsa poetics extend to a speculation about the origin and a consideration more of interpretation and function of the genre, i.e., geerarsa, than generic classification. As regards generic classification the two-tier genre system, i.e. the dilemma of compromising local generic distinctions and conventions on the one hand and the Western-based notions of generic taxonomy on the other (Muana 1998) is another theoretical impasse of genre system. Thus I am urged to rethink the complex problem of generic classification and focus on interpretation and function based on ethnic genres for "genres should be primarily perceived as conceptual categories of communication and not classification" based on 'ethnic genres' (Ben Amos 1976: 225; Muana 1998: 48).
Origin of Genre
Nothing more than speculation is known about the origin of genres, but it is said: "…genres are as old as organized societies" (Fowler "The Formation of Genres" 1982:149). That is, the concept of literary activity seems to presuppose "there being human institutions" which govern its production also guaranteeing its relationship to human purposes.
The origin of any genre perhaps relates to its double orientation towards social reality: extrinsically, genre is determined by external conditions influencing its actualization in real time and space, e.g. the Oromo dhaaduu war poem, or the geerarsa genre. Whether a particular genre serves a public function, personal, religious or secular in those human institutions reflects its extrinsic social orientation. Intrinsically, according to Morris citing Bakhtin, the generic social orientation is determined by the thematic unity of the form. This type of generic social orientation is not understood as the reality produced by content or by the words used but by the generic structure as a whole. Baxter also argues genre is not a timeless and placeless entity. Its existence presupposes the dialogic engagement of "particular people" in "particular utterances" with one another, which M. Bakhtin had already noted "the reality of the genre and the reality accessible to the genre are organically related…genre is the aggregate of the means of collective orientation in reality" (cited in Baxter, 1991 p7).
Answering the question "where do genres come from?" T. Todorov (1993:15) writes: "Quite simply from other genres" through transformation.12 In his "The Origin of Genres" (the article first published in 1976, cited in Baxter, ibid.) Todorov argues that discourse that deals with genres "is always and necessarily constituted by speech acts" (Todorov, p16). Hence, one may conclude, there is no literature without genre, a system which undergoes constant transformation. Genre, in this regard, is "a characteristic of past literature" (Baxter, p5). According to Todorov a speech act "that has non-literary existence like prayer" becomes a genre under certain transformations, e.g. the novel based on the act of telling. He discusses three such case examples: first, 'praying', which is a speech act; 'prayer' is a genre (literary or not), "the difference is minimal", he points out. Second, 'telling' is a speech act, 'the novel' is a genre since something is being told (narrated) in the novel. Unlike the first, i.e., 'praying' and 'prayer' there is now a considerable difference. The third case: the 'sonnet', which is a literary genre. But, there is no such verbal activity as 'sonneting', he argues.
Similarly, in the Oromo oral literary tradition there is a speech act 'geeraruu', to sing a genre 'geerarsa'; there is a speech act 'dhaadachuu', to sing a genre (or sub-genre) dhaaduu. In both cases, even the names of the genres derive from the speech acts. Hence, from these few examples, it seems, among the Oromo, a genre does not differ in any way from other Oromo speech acts. However, for the geerarsa sub-genres of Arsii suunsuma war song, mirriysaa of Harar and the gooba hunting song of Boorana if there are such speech acts as 'suunsumuu', 'mirriysuu' and 'goobuu' needs a thorough investigation.
Now, let it be allowed that this may be the case: there is no verbal action as 'suunsumuu', or 'goobuu' like the 'geeraruu' or 'dhaadachuu' speech acts. It follows that unlike for 'geeraruu' and 'dhaadachuu' one does not take discursive properties as a starting point to examine the generic system of 'goobuu' or 'suunsumuu' if no such a verbal action exists as in the genre 'sonnet' for which there is no 'sonneting'.
Tzvetan Todorov's structuralist view of "The Origin of Genres" (ibid. pp13-26) and Bakhtin's 'double orientation' of genres to social reality in space and time are reviewed in this section since both relate generic origin to human interrelationships. So are the geerarsa, the dhaaduu, the gooba the suunsuma and other Oromo poetic genres determined by specific situation (intrinsic and/or extrinsic) to emerge in space and time like Jaarsoo's poetry. As generic categories they also 'represent flexible social resources' categorized on the basis of the 'situational factors' (in Muana 1998, p48). Overall, in both diachronic and synchronic terms, genres originate out of other genres and previous constituents so much as they originate in everyday human discourse in human institutions: genres are as old as organized societies!
‘Generic Classification’ or ‘Generic Interpretation’?
So far an attempt has been made to establish the origin of genres. It can be recalled that Todorov's argument has been centered on the progression of literary genres out of human verbal acts, which are non-literary in nature. Efforts have been also made to support the argument, namely, derivation of literary genres out of speech acts by exemplifying some poetic Oromo oral genres.
Generic taxonomy is no less difficult than tracing the origin of genres. Since oral poetry takes many different forms it is difficult to pin down poetic generic system under one unitary model. That is why focus in this study is more on the interpretation of the genre system than on generic classification. The purpose of this part is, however, to overview the taxonomy of Oromo oral poetry through varied theories of genres on the bases of the local generic classificatory system, but not to synchronize it with the Western literary taxonomic system. For the demarcation of genres and to perceive them as distinct verbal entities, both the text and the social context of its performance are determining factors. According to Daniel Ben-Amos (1975, p166 passim):
attempts to discover the principles of folklore communication in Africa must begin with the identification and analysis of the cognitive, expressive and social distinctive features of folklore forms (emphasis added).
The cognitive features consist of the names, taxonomy and commentary. By these features the society labels, categorizes and interprets respectively the literary forms within a wider system of discourse. These are abstract principles in the society to govern the folklore use. That is not just to abide by principles as fixed and pure monolithic canons but it involves the ability to modify rules pragmatically: hence, "the interplay between principles and necessities" (Ben-Amos, p186).
The Oromo etiquette, for example, dictates that a young Oromo has to say the politeness formula 'isiniif margi jira', 'I hold grass in respect of you. Forgive me' to utter a taboo in the presence of an older person, so much as a younger Yoruba has to say a prefatory apology just to say a proverb in presence of an older person (ibid.). The standard politeness formula can be: "I don't claim to know any proverbs in your presence you older people, but you older people have the saying…."
Expressive features include the styles, the contents and the structures of the forms by which each literary genre is characterised. The names and taxonomy of folklore genres and commentary about these genres "constitute abstract knowledge about the style, themes, structures, and uses of the forms of verbal art" (Ben-Amos ibid. p.172). In social reality it is this abstract knowledge that is used as the source of ideas to be able to generate folkloric expressions anew and to utter them in appropriate situations.
In poetry the most recognizable expressive feature is rhythmic language by which songs are distinguished from conversation. Recitations also have a pattern of accents and beats that mark them off from 'informative and informal speech'. In addition to their rhythmic effect African folklore genres, Ben-Amos (1975) declares, have basic indications which signify their meanings: e.g., the opening and closing formulas such as in the geerarsa song.
Finally, the social features: these are the constituents of the situational contexts. In this respect, the rules of folklore use and the set of behavioural perceptions and expectations constitute the social features of folklore. That is, the meaning, interpretation and understanding of songs and oral poems, tales, proverbs and riddles in their social use "are affected by the adherence to, or deviation from, these rules by the speakers" (ibid. p186). It can also be equally affected by the age, sex and status or social position of the member of the community. In this respect, Ben-Amos says ethnic genres constitute "a cultural affirmation of the communication rules that govern the expression of complex messages within cultural context" (Ben-Amos 1976:225). 12 Ben Amos generic taxonomy is based on the culturally accepted local conventions (cf. Muana 1998, p.48) , the view which Finnegan shares (1992). Finnegan claims that the preliminary survey of the field made in her Oral Poetry (1977) gives a general idea and illustrates that oral poetry is "by no means a clearly differentiated and a unitary category" (p.9). Allied with this general comment is her contention "that the whole idea of a genre is relative and ambiguous, dependent on culturally-accepted canons of differentiation rather than on universal criteria" (p.15).
The folk-genres traditionally considered as absolute and enduring entities have ceased to become fixed genres subject to the dynamics of performance and practices. That is, genres undergo transformations to meet generic expectations of performers and audience as "a resource for performance available to speakers for the realization of specific social ends in a variety of creative, emergent and even unique ways" (qtd. in Finnegan 1992, p 137). The exploration of such generic processes is believed to be particularly effective for analyzing or considering fluid and changing genre like the Oromo geerarsa.
Hence, to work on generic classification/interpretation, one better way to start with is "to use the local words" such as dhaaduu, gooba, to refer to the Boorana types of heroic song widely known by the ‘geerarsa’ generic name among the Oromo (Baxter 1986, p49). In the study of Oromo oral poetry, from the perspective of its form, rules to govern the nature, occurrence and distribution have not been established (Andrzejewski 1985, p410). Efforts made in the 1920s by Enno Littmann and in the '30s by Moreno were good beginnings. They paved the way for the study of Oromo oral poetry today, especially the geerarsa (Sumner 1997; Addisu 1994, 1990). From content and generic interpretation /classification it may well be argued that further research is needed to set reliable information and to establish operational criteria for the generic classification and interpretation of Oromo oral poetry. Andrzejewski cites Phillip Paulitchke's early attempt in Germany as far back as 1896 though the "classification does not overlap completely with any strictly defined ranges of themes" (Andrzejewski ibid. cf. Pankhurst 1976).
C. Sumner's "form, content and concrete situation in life" (1997) as the basic criteria for the generic classification and interpretation of Oromo oral poetry are seemingly limited to songs. Sumner and other researchers, including Addisu Tolesa, do not seem to have been aware of such a speech-like oral poetry as dhaaduu to exist in the (Boorana) Oromo oral poetry. In such a case one may draw a hasty conclusion that Oromo oral poetry is generally to be sung and there is none to be recited. For the purpose of the present study, therefore, adopting Sumner's "form, content and concrete situation in life" seems to be unreasonable.
Perhaps Andrzejewski’s 'time-free' and 'time-bound' model used to categorize Somali poetry is pertinent to the study of Oromo poetry, particularly geerarsa. He puts the Somali poetry within 'time-bound' and 'time-free' streams, which he adapts to the generic classification and interpretation of Oromo oral poetry (1985, pp410-15). According to Andrzejewski the Oromo oral poems of public forum, i.e., those deeply involved in the current political and social situations of their time such as Jaarsoo's are categorized as 'time-bound'. Hence, Oromo love poetry is very prominent in the 'time-free' stream.
To sum up: in literary studies it may well be argued that there is no one single model to apply to the fundamental question(s). The value/function of the genre, the origin and taxonomy of the genre, and the validity of the interpretation all call for due attention and each of such a fundamental question calls for the application of relevant model(s). This section has been treating such theoretical and pragmatic considerations of Oromo oral poetry: geerarsa and the dhaaduu recitative poetry.
Boorana Popular Genre: Geerarsa as Dhaaduu
Recitative Poetry
Among the Oromo, of whom the Booran are one, killing lion, elephant, rhino, and giraffe for trophy game is common and a successful killer is accorded great honour. Some researchers contend that such an active shedding of blood of enemies and of trophy animals by men is paralleled by the passive shedding of blood by women through menstruation and child birth. Baxter, for instance, makes the same connections in his writings on the Oromo culture (Baxter 1985, 1978, 1986) and Lambert Bartels (Bartels 1983) also demonstrates the same conceptual relationships between "killing and bearing".
The active blood shedding by men through killings and the passive blood shedding by women through child bearing and menstruation is considered to be central to the religion of the Oromo (Bartels 1983). Baxter's contention that among the Oromo "men should be active, strong and brave whereas women should be receptive, soft and fertile" (1986:45) may be frowned at as male chauvinism though traditionally shared by men. Among the Oromo the symbolic connections between copulation--in which case women are said never on the top--and 'spearing' "are close and explicit" seem to be confirmed by PTW Baxter citing Okot pBiteck (1966): "men are said to 'spear' women" (Baxter ibid.). Even more, Baxter and Fardon, guest editors to Voice, Genre, Text vol. 73, no 3 Autumn 1991 forward, citing Donna Haraway's 'sexual politics of a word', that "genre and gender are related terms" (p4). They add: "an obsolete English meaning of 'to gender' is 'to copulate" (ibid.). By Haraway's gender and generic conception 'gender' adheres to 'concepts of sex, sexuality, sexual difference, generation, engendering...' Other words close to 'gender', Haraway adds, are: kinship, race, biological taxonomy, language and nationality (p5).
Generic system also among the Oromo is gender oriented. Like the geerersa song below, there are other song texts, says a certain Gurmeessaa, which the singer uses to reinforce others to take turn to sing geerarsa or otherwise they are likened to women:
nami gaagura hiituu
nama miila tokkooti
nami hingeerarin galtu
nama cinaan tokkooti
a man who hangs a bee-hive is
a man with only one leg,
a man who does not sing today is
a man with only one testicle
Similarly, the traditional two-line geerarsa text: 'reettiin areeda hinbaaftuu / dubartiin hingeerartuu', literally, 'a she-goat never grows beard / so much so, a woman never sings geerarsa' is another gender-oriented common moral precept used in geerarsa at least for two purposes. One, to limit the art of geerarsa accompanying hunting and war only to the domain of men; two, to activate the man who is reluctant or shy to sing geerarsa by saying, ironically, only woman does not sing geerarsa.
The primary purpose of this part of the study is to examine the Boorana popular genre: the dhaaduu war poem--to be recited, not to be sung. It will also be made clear in this section that there is the influence of the dhaaduu ethnic genre on the language and the poetic style of Jaarsoo's poetry, which Jaarsoo delivers in reciting rather than in singing.
The Dhaaduu Recitative Poetry
This sub-topic aims to describe the dhaaduu recitative poetry as geerarsa sub-genre that might have influenced the poetic content and style of Jaarsoo's recital poetry. Dhaaduu is a war poem recited in nearly a speech-like tone. In discussing the formal structure of dhaaduu it is not simple to pin down its poetic form. The difficulty lies not in its composition, since the reciter recounts from his memory past events recorded and composed into poems. The difficulty rather lies in the nature of the content of the poem itself. That is, all the hardships encountered, pains of the bloody fighting fought and the victims, emotions and feelings attached to these disrupt the normal flow of the poem. So energetic and emotional as the reciter becomes at the moment of delivery and that he continuously utters the events, it is not simple to clearly tell where the line of the verse ends. However, the division into line is in most cases indicated by the reciter’s delivery: words pronounced together in the same breath, pause, words/phrases fall together in terms of sense, sometimes formalized linear units of praises. Vowel sounds are more often than not used as what Andrzejewski has called 'vowel coloured breaths' (see Schlee 1992:230).
The end of each dhaaduu poetic line is actually difficult to notice except on the basis of related sense of meaning of the ‘nodes’, i.e. a group of words which function the same semantic, syntactic or aesthetic purpose, or on the basis of repetition or parallelism. Whereas, the ends of stanzas are brought out by the lengthening of pitch of the penultimate line and the glides heard on the last word of the last line, as it seems to be the case for such recitative poems. Here is a dhaaduu by Areeroo, a renowned dhaaduu reciter:
ka Abb’ Duubaa
ka Guyyoo Duubaa
Boora ka jaartiiti
boor’ Saakora Yuubaati
5 aaddaa shaahuu Diqqooti
dhirsa Kuulaati
soddaa Kuluulaati
(I am) Abb’ Duubaa’s son
Guyyoo Duubaa’s giant
old mother’s giant
Saakoraa Yuubaa’s giant
Kuulaa’s husband
Kuluulaa’s brother–in–low
The language being so allusive and so ambiguous, the linear units being so short and made of names of kinsmen (lines 1,2,4, 6,7) and forms of expression being metaphoric (cf. giant) the poetic style of the dhaaduu poem emerges more fully when one considers the whole poetic lines coming next. Alliteration (see lines 3,4 and 6,7) is the most commonly used poetic feature in dhaaduu as one can observe in the words kuulaa/kuluula, boora/boor.
The use of special idioms and elaborated adjectives as in the above dhaaduu text (see the possessive adjs.) are a special poetic style the composer of dhaaduu poem needs to master. In the following alliterative poetic lines,
irr’ arboori dansaa
qubaallee qubeen dansaa
guutuu liilanni dansaa
mataa baalgudi dansaa,
wooden armlet on arm is nice
ring on ring-finger is nice
comb in the tuft of hair is nice
feather on the crown of head is nice,
the adjective dansa ‘nice’ is repetitive to emphasize the content of the poem, i.e., the importance of trophy and all those ‘nice’ paraphernalia for the hero's traditional costume. The items stressed by the repetitive adjective ‘dansa’ or ‘nice’: arboora, qubee, liilana, baalguda, i.e. armlet, ring, wooden comb and feather respectively are all nice for the hero to decorate himself with. In this regard, parallelism and repetitions are marked features in dhaaduu self-praise poetry as can be illustrated from the praise song provided by Galgaloo just quoted. The first and the second lines are semantically parallel since both ‘armlet’ and ‘ring’ relate to ‘hand’ or part of hand whereas the third and fourth lines refer to ‘head’ and ‘hair’. The alliterative words and phrases: ‘irr' irboorri' in the first line and ‘qubbaallee qubeen…’ in the second lines show that those ornaments 'irboora’ or ‘armlet’ and ‘qubee’ or ‘ring’ derive from names of parts of the body ‘irree’, ‘arm’ and ‘quba’ or ‘ring-finger’, named after the parts of the body they are worn on and so are dansa (nice).
The hero in dhaaduu is associated with animals (domestic or wild) to indicate the suggestion that he is too wild for his enemies to manage. The hunter also considers himself so brave and so fierce like the animal he hunts. Baxter, citing Cerulli, has this to say: "tough wild young [Booran] bachelors who hunt are indulged, because they are like "animals of the bush" bineensa hardly domesticated" (Baxter 1986:45; cf. Cerulli 1922:100). Most frequent of all, the comparison is made to a lion, a tiger, a buffalo, and an eagle in association with the animals’ bravery, wildness and fearsome appearance. An example is Areeroo's dhaaduu where he associates himself with a lion, a rhino and a leopard and uses such animal metaphors as,
neenca ta’ee goodaat’ galee
qeerramsa ta’ee baddaat’ galee
warseessa ta’ee mataa-lagaat’ galee
as a lion, in deep jungle I dwelt
as a leopard, in mountain bush I dwelt
as a rhino, in river water I waded
And, the hero praises himself and draws parallelism between himself and a series of furious and strong wild beasts. By further analogy the reciter praises himself for his strength and courage to bear up the pains and hardships such as dwelling in mountainous bushy pockets, in deep jungles and splashing about in the surf in river water, etc.
Relatively speaking, examples show that similes are fewer than metaphors in dhaaduu. However, a few occur by way of descriptions: Qaraarsa, for instance, recites thus,
lafti Booranaa dhakaa
anuu jabaa akka dhakaa
Boorana land is rocky
and so much as firm as rock I am
where the singer demonstrates his strength by using the simile 'akka dhagaa' in anuu jabaa akka dhagaa, 'and so much as firm as rock I am'. To vividly describe the tenacious situation, hyperbole appears in emotional description in dhaaduu. The fierceness of the battle may be illustrated as in the lines below:
namichi gosaan Soomale
hinwaraanne inqabe
hinajjeefne inqale
nabsee nati harkaa fuudhe
qawwee Waaqat’ harkaa na fuudhe
the person/victim is a Somali
I did not strike but caught him
I did not shoot but slew him
his soul did I conquer
and so did God his weapon.
The effect of the battle may be thus pronounced as in the dhaaduu text shown above indirectly in such a description of the general scene. In the text having five lines above, the singer depicts the picture of the battle when the victim falls, the hero catches and slays him (line 2,3), ‘disarms’ him of his soul while Waaqaa (God), literally speaking, disarms him of his weapon (lines 4 & 5).
Thus, by ordering the events chronologically and depicting a series of pictures of his own war-like qualities and deeds Qaraarsa recites.
an am' mucaa amal’ dansaa
amala Waaqat’ namaa midhaansa
Qabata abbaat’ midhaanfata
I am the son of good temper
but Waaqa is the architect of good temper
while one is the architect of his own temperance
That the alliterative and repetitive qualities of the poem sometimes serve to heighten the artistic effect of the poetry and render it some aesthetic beauty and depth of philosophy.
Dhaaduu poetry, being very much oral in composition like other praise poems it is intended to be heard not read, and delivered much faster, in a normal speech like tone as in Jaarsoo's poetry but with few pauses. As well, there are growing excitement and dramatic gestures made as dhaaduu proceeds. That is, as the poetry is more and more recited, the reciter works himself up much faster, eyes glaring, face up lifted and suddenly raised and shaken. As the researcher observed Qaraarsa, who resisted reciting such a war poem as dhaaduu now that he is a hajji, gestures during the delivery are so frequent and dramatic that the reciter would suddenly leap or move as the poems are poured from his lips. As he becomes exhausted then the flow of the spring of dhaaduu grows less and less.
Qararsa also says similar to what is quoted in Finnegan (1970) from other source related to the power of the verse and of delivery: "’a man whilst praising … can walk over thorns, which cannot pierce his flesh which has become impenetrable’" (p 138). Finnegan in her Oral Literature in Africa (1970) adds that "the composition of praise poetry was traditionally both a specialist and a universal activity" (p 139), while occasions for the composition of praise poems, particularly the dhaaduu being battle.
Summarily, the literary effect of dhaaduu does not seem to primarily depend on the reciter’s skill of providing the poem. It rather depends on the art of the poet to use those traditional formulas: figurative expressions, allusion, various stylistic devices such as parallelism, for instance, as in Jaarsoo’s recitative/narrative poetry. Those traditional forms, apart from the poet’s delivery, serve to heighten the literary effectiveness and power of the dhaaduu verse. Thus, the dhaaduu poetry is a meeting place between the geerarsa general poetics of event-based literature and the protracted finna, Oromo development phases analysed from sociological perspective in the chapter to follow.
ENDNOTES
1. See Negasso 1983; Addisu 1990, 1994 on geerarsa as a historically transformed oral genre; and Schlee in Hayward 1996, and Shongolo in Baxter 1996 on Jaarsoo Waaqoo's dhaaduu-like recitative poems. The theme of geerarsa genre nowadays has transformed into having a double-face, Janus-like: one is 'traditional' praises communicating and preserving the Oromo culture while the other is the 'contemporary' protest song articulating the Oromo struggle and aspiration to subvert the Tigre-Amhara rule in Oromia.
2. Though the purpose of this study is content analysis, in discussing the poetic style of Jaarsoo's poetry, the issue of the poet's intention seems the predominant one. The concern is more with the author's intention realized in the work which Schlee and Shongolo put thus: "His [Jaarsoo's] bias, quite legitimately, is pro-OLF and pro-Boran" (in Hayward 1996, p230). C. Sumner declares in his OWL vol. ii Songs (1997) that "[i]n Oromo songs there is a complete identification of the 'literary type' with the 'notion' or the 'theme' "(p367).
3. I draw the issue of Oromo tradition/culture as a basis for Oromo consciousness and Oromo identity upon Gemetchu Megersa's article titled "Oromumma: Tradition, Consciousness and Identity" (in Baxter 1996, pp92-102). In the excerpt from his 'framework for the understanding of Oromumma' Gemetchu argues "... Oromo tradition provides the basis for Oromo identity" and the "juxtaposition of Oromo consciousness with Oromo tradition and social experience is necessary for the understanding of the nature and content of Oromo identity" (p92). Doubtless to say 'contemporary' geerarsa is a medium of expression of that Oromo consciousness and social experience.
4. Cerulli distinguishes between geerarsa and faarsaa: the former he considers it as a ‘boasting’ song of individual warriors, whereas faarsaa, literally, 'praise poetry', is the ‘boasting’ song of the society. In this regard, the following geerarsa text is sung by an individual warrior who comes home after a successful kill (Cerulli 1922, p102):
the guchii (ostrich) loves the sun!
I have descended to the narrow valley
and I have pulled down the horsemen...
the beautiful girls will adorn my comb
my friends will kiss my mouth
the children will say to me "You have killed well!"
In any case 'geerarsa' and 'faarsa' are both popular or folk songs, and, therefore, it is not very clear if Cerulli meant by 'faarsa' minstrelsy songs or songs of traveling singers.
5. H. M. Chadwick and his wife Nora Chadwick, 1940
6. Goobana, in the "contemporary OLF discourse ... is regarded as the proverbial traitor", i.e. the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling "who in 1945 cooperated with the Nazi occupation force" (Shongolo in Baxter ibid. Footnote no. 13 p271).
7. OPDO, Mohammed Hassen writes "was created by the TPLF and is tightly controlled by the same organization" (in Baxter 1996, Footnote no. 8 p.78).
8. No hunter, however, can validly claim the authorship of geerarsa piece, according to the informants Areeroo, Caalaa and Qampharree, even if he is the first to sing it on a certain occasion. This is because the tradition is believed to be the source to which every singer refers as aadaa (culture) in which one is brought up passing through every initiation rite. Hence, the process of the composition seems to be intuitive and inspirational as if it springs from the innate talents of the artist. Certainly, there are new geerarsa pieces created by well-experienced singers on different occasions, as added to his repertoire and to the already existing 'traditional' song even though no one claims authorship.
9. See Schlee and Shongolo in Hayward 1996, p230 that Jaarsoo's poetry, "quite legitimately, is pro-OLF".
10. Speaking of Jaarsoo's poetic style, Shongolo, who claims the Boorana identity himself (in Baxter 1996, p.310), states Jaarsoo "creatively combined plain everyday language with traditional rhetoric style" (ibid. p269). The language of Boorana oral poetry, and of Jaarsoo's poetry, however, is under no way as simple as Shongolo declares it to be. I contend with what Baxter says of language of the gooba 'giraffes poetry': added to the ambiguity and obliqueness combined with "impressionistic, almost concealed meanings" are the "esoteric and archaic words" that make the task of transcription and translation of the songs difficult (1986, p48). Baxter adds that in Boorana songs "the ambiguity of language reflects the ambiguity of the experience. The implicit connection between the words, as sounds and as meanings, and their associations and ambiguities are part of the cumulative meaning of each verse"(ibid. p49) as in gooba songs, for instance. In studying Jaarsoo's poetry, but one may conclude that symbolic figures such as metaphors, similes and hyperboles are combined with what Shongolo says "features of nationalist discourses into a basically Booran idiom" (in Baxter p268) used as a 'war of words' as opposed to a war with arms" (269).
11. Such an attempt to relate certain types of society to certain types of poetry and poetic activity also relates to those heroic poetry and ‘heroic age’ society of the Oromo. The ‘Heroic Songs/Historical Songs’ in Cerulli’s Folk Literature...(1922), Sumner’s (1997) collections of Oromo Songs, and the geerarsa song texts in Addisu’s dissertation exemplify the Chadwicks' argument that 'heroic poetry' and 'heroic age societies' are related (in Finnegan ibid).
12. See in T.Todorov Genres in discourse (1990, p20); PTW Baxter and Richard Fardon Voice, Genre, Text (1991, p5). Todorov maintains, one starts with the other already constituted speech acts through a progression from a simple act to a complex one, so much as, to the historicist, the "interpretation of history is based on the present, just as that of space starts with here, and that of other people with I".
13.. I have drawn upon Dan Ben-Amos's "Taxonomy of Genres" (1975, pp168-71) in which he suggests three ways of designating the category of form:
cognitively, by naming it, pragmatically by performing it in particular contexts, and expressively by formulating it in a distinctive language which is peculiar to the genres (p168).
In the taxonomic system of verbal art that satisfies local conventions, and therefore "coherent and culturally valid", then, he concludes, the folkloric expression "must have stylistic, thematic, and contextual correlatives which will justify its inclusion in one class or another" (ibid.).
This chapter consists in the backbone of Mr. Dibaba’s book; the author describes the sociological poetics of the geerarsa genre and impacts of the genre on the works of individual Oromo oral poets, especially on Jaarsoo Waaqoo's poetry. Entitled "The Sociology of Geerarsa genre", the chapter makes available for the first time in English key excerpts of Jaarsoo Waaqoo's poetry, now accessible to international readership. We reproduce the text integrally adding the notes at the end. After the title and the subtitle, an illuminating motto – excerpt encapsulates the Great Oromo poet’s mindset and spiritual vision condensed in just a few verses.
Beyond the rich contents, the originality of the topic, and the groundbreaking methodology, Mr. Asafa Dibaba’s book greatly illuminates the terrible lacunae of the European colonial academic institutions, their intellectual barrenness, and their guilty silence.
The Sociology of Geerarsa Genre
The Dhaaduu recitative poems and Jaarsoo Waaqoo's Poetry
I have three questions:-
the first says:
do we say,
the poor is not worth praising,
or praise is not
worth to man?
do we say,
the lord speaks no lie,
or lies told by the lord
are truth?
do we say,
a cunning person makes wealth,
or a wealthy person
is cunning?
(FSG II, p49)
Introduction
This chapter aims to discuss the sociological poetics of the geerarsa genre. It also presents a discussion of the generic system of geerarsa song and the dhaaduu recitative poem. The overview of historical transformation of 'contemporary' geerarsa as national Oromo literature (Addisu 1990; 1994) presented in this chapter will also lay a foundation for the sociological analyses of Jaarsoo Waaqoo's poetry in the next chapter.
'Contemporary' geerarsa has influenced, one may also argue, the poetic style, tone and content of other emerging Oromo poetry and songs. Jaarsoo, for instance, recites (FSG II: 68):
addunyaa karaallee!
nyaaphat' dudda nu fe'aa!
ka'ii loladhu Oromoo
waarr' nu biraa raa'ate
yoona bilisoomne nu se'aa
in the last days of resistance, Oromo
there is always a challenge. advance!
or you remain ever a beast of burden!
those who have won their freedom
think that we have also won ours.
Hence, the Oromo struggle has become a theme of 'contemporary' geerarsa transformed into a protest /prison song. It follows that geerarsa now serves as a significant medium of the Oromo struggle which is part of the "sociopolitical revolution and a process of liberation [...] taking place in large parts of Northeast Africa" (Negaso 2000:x). 1
The 'originality' of the geerarsa composition lies in the creating and recreating of the themes, phrases and poetic lines or stanzas of the protest song, while the 'traditional' element of the popular song geerarsa lies in its function for the preservation of culture. Hence, the dual function of geerarsa: first, it is a political medium of articulating the political and economic suppression and cultural domination on the Oromo by the Amhara-Tigre rulers in Ethiopia. Second, as a social critique, it is a means of preserving sociocultural values and maintaining unity of purpose among the Oromo in the process of struggle for "self-determination including independence" (Negaso 1983; Addisu 1990, 1994:59).
The four-line text below in Jaarso's FSG II (p67)
'chaarterii' baananii
lama siin hibaannu:
nu ilmaan Oromoo
haa xiloo qarrru!
the charter is signed! they declare
(no democracy) no more charter! we rebel:
sons and daughters of the Oromo!
move! grind your spear!
depicts the short-lived "Peace Conference" of mid-1991 followed by the Charter signed by various liberation groups including TPLF/ EPRDF and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). 2 Similarly, the line 'having seen and not possessing it' in the two geerarsa line by Luuccaa in Addisu Tolesa's "Oromo Literature, Geerarsa, and the Liberation Struggle" (1994:159-65) implies a shared grave experience among the Oromo under the new Tigre-led government:
arganii dhabuu kanaa
nu baraari Waaqayyo!
having seen and not finding/possessing it
oh! have mercy upon us Waaqayyo/God!
The historical significance of both the song and Jaarsoo's poem is to mark the new phase and continuity of Amhara-Tigre rule in Oromiya following the short-lived charter. In Jaarsoo's poem above 'the charter is signed! they declare' also indicates the frustration of the reciter as to what would be the fate of the Oromoo under the TPLF-led neo-colonial rule. That is what the idiomatic expression "having seen and not finding / possessing it" means in the given geerarsa context. From the sociopolitical situations of the time both the song and the recitative poem are 'songs of experience' about power imbalance/relation. The choral repetition in
maddii Killee Leensaa, Killee Leensaa
dheeddi fardeenillee, fardeenillee
namuu gamtaa hinqabnee, gamtaa hinqabnee
gamtaan walii hingallee , walii hingallee
5 jetti jarreenillee , jarreenillee.
Killee Leensa, Killee Leensaa,
where rich, green grass is plentiful
there horses graze,
people without unity of purpose
organization without coherence
‘Others’ point finger at to ridicule.
comments on lack of unity of purpose among the Oromo (lines 3,4), as a result of which the "divide and rule" policy of the Amhara-Tigre domination became a reality. It is with this lack of unity and a viable organization, as it were, that colonizers attempt to justify their conquest: jetti jarreenillee (line 5). Hence, the social and cultural significance of geerarsa in the above text is to stress on the process of the preservation of culture and identity, unity of purpose and strong organization as very crucial and equally urgent (lines 3,4). Culture, in this sense, is limited to the Oromo life style: the daboo (cooperative work) which involves geerarsa and other poetic genres; the gadaa (democratic system); sense of belongingness to the community, Oromummaa (Oromoness) and accountability to one's words and actions (Gemechu 1993; Addisu 1994). 3
From the above significance of geerarsa: historical/political and social/cultural, added to its traditional aesthetic value as a means of entertainment, the study of contemporary geerarsa, one may argue, can lay fertile ground for the sociological analyses of Oromo poetry. This chapter, therefore, serves as a transition towards the analysis of Finna San Gama in Chapter 4 where the sociological analyses of the texts and description of the contexts are carried out using alternative approaches of literary and sociological interest: a combination of oral-literary theory, conflict theory and social development theory.
The Sociological Poetics of Geerarsa Genre
The study of geerarsa discourse as a work of literature constitutes its sociological poetics, i.e., in this context, the science of the study of geerarsa as ‘Oromo national literature’ (Addisu 1990, 1994). Geerarsa as a genre is usually identified as a collective noun encompassing the Oromo Oral Poetry of hunting, war and historical and political events (Cerulli 1922; Andrzejewski 1985; Baxter 1986; Sumner 1997). The recorded geerarsa as an Oromo poetic genre is traced back to the time of Philip Paulitshke (1896), one of the earliest ethnographers of the Horn. Paulitshke provided one geerarsa text referring to it as geerar, perhaps the same as the Somali version 'geerar' (Finnegan 1977:211). Later in 1922, Enrico Cerulli presented twelve geerarsa texts, which he transcribed as geeirarsa in his Folk Literature….
Cerulli argues that geerarsa is a poetic expression through which Oromo warriors are 'celebrated' by recalling their ancestors and praising their kin on both their father and mother's sides, whereas faarsaa is a praise song by an individual warrior (Cerulli p58; Mohammed 1994:12). There is no criteria of generic classification, however, which Cerulli forwards in his argument as to identify geerarsa from faarsaa (praise song). 4 What is clear, as will be discussed later in this chapter is, according to Enno Littmann, the geerarsa poetics is characterized by seven meters as in the geerarsa by a certain singer below:
harreen dudda urataa
gangalannaa ‘naleeluu
nam’ aarii garaa qabu
kolfa ‘riyyaa ‘naleeluu
a donkey with an open sore on its back
cannot roll on its back (so much so),
a man with a wounded heart
cannot (laugh with a friend), but
sighs a deep grief
The Andrzejewskian notion of 'time-free' and 'time-bound' category of Oromo oral poetry (1985) may overlap with what can be put as the 'traditional' and 'contemporary' geerarsa based on the temporal characteristics of its content and real life situation. Geerarsa can be generally put as Traditional (Append. B.I) and Contemporary (Append. B.II). One may categorize the 'traditional' 'time-free' geerarsa genre as follows:
geerarsa of war events also called historical songs (Cerulli 1922: 100; Sumner 1997: 39). Such songs labeled 'traditional' are also the 'contemporary' songs of their time. They are therefore 'time-bound' in a way since they record major events (political or otherwise) of particular time in history (see Appendix B:1).
geeraresa (hunting songs) of a successful kill of lion, rhino, leopard, elephant, buffalo, giraffe or of an enemy (see Appendix B:2 (a))
b) an unsuccessful kill (Appendix B:2 (b))
c) those who abstain from the hunting venture for
some reason (Appendix B:2 (c))
3. geerarsa of success / failure in life (Appendix B:3 (a) (b))
In addition to those typologies above, there are also songs of 'warm up' called cooka. It is sung in chorus to stimulate the singer at the start, or to let him take breath, collect himself and continue again in the middle, or to wind up his song and give the turn to another singer at the end.
In the background remarks of this chapter ‘contemporary’ geerarsa is described as a ‘protest song’, and is ‘traditionally’ also understood as the Oromo national literature. In the following sub-sections, geerarsa is discussed in terms of its subject-matter, occasion, composition and performance. Gerarsaa as a transformed oral genre and as a genre also to be recited, not just to be sung, is discussed in the sections to follow.
The Subject-matter of Geerarsa
In spite of new interests and the inevitable changes of outlook consequent on the passing of the old mode of life and mere praises, particularly self-praises, the literary form of geerarsa oral poetry still flourishes in most cases as a protest song.
In some types or sub-genres (gooba, dhaaduu, suunsuma or mirriyisa), however transformed, geerarsa still brings inspiration and a formal mode of literary expression that depicts real situation in life (Sumner 1997) among the Oromo. Speaking of the geerarsa sub-genres Baxter (p49) says, "[t]he generic name for hunting and war songs is geerarsa" (cf. Cerulli's gierarsa 1922:100). Geerarsa among the Macca Oromo, Baxter points out citing L. Bartels, is also used to refer to songs of triumph and of a war prisoner (cf. Luucca Abbaa Tuggoo, for his songs in prison). It also refers to the songs of "a man who has 'defeated' poverty" (Baxter ibid.).
Even though geerarsa as an Oromo literary genre is reported even before Cerulli’s Folk Literature...of 1922 as far back as 1896 (cf. Enno Littman), much still remains to be done. Among other such general problems is the generic transformation of geerarsa from the mere praise poetry to a protest song. The performance goals of the geerarsa singer exhibit the Oromo as a people aspiring for freedom while resisting colonial and cultural domination. The gadaa and other traditional values are also described in geerarsa as performed on such occasions like buttaa / jila (feasts), as it is adapted to the sociopolitical changes during and after colonization.
According to Ruth Finnegan, praises such as geerarsa occur among the Oromo "who lay stress on the significance of personal achievement in war or hunting" (Finnegan 1970:111). Like the Somali geerar, Finnegan writes, the Oromo geerarsa is "often in the form of a challenge, sometimes hurled between two armies" (p211 citing Chadwicks 5 1940:548-9). However, in a sociopolitical real sense of the term, geerarsa is not a genre merely limited to cataloguing exploits of war, but more than that it has paramount social, historical and political significance. On the rites of passage, the stage or age of foollee or gaammee-gurguddoo "youth-group", Addisu writes (1990), "is particularly relevant to the process of reciting, composing and singing geerarsa" (p108), more likely dhaaduu, to show that the foollee are initiated into the adult stage once they turned sixteen. The experience and reputation boys establish at this stage of foollee provides opportunities for them when they later seek election into the highly valued social position (see Asmaron 1973:54-57).
What could not be said directly or through the usual medium of communication on just any occasion is conveyed through geerarsa. Jaarsoo for instance recites thus to comment on the existing sociopolitical situation of the Oromo:
nam' adiin mal' dhahatee
yaad' dhibii nutti hinfinnee?
Goobanaan jaarsa nuu mataa
sobee beeseen nutti hinbinnee
didn't Goobana consult the white people
and conform with new tactics?
hasn't he/Goobana 6 hired our elders
and bought them with money?
(adapted from Schlee 1992, p235)
Using the words ‘beesee’ (money), ‘nam-adii’ (white man) and Gobana (Menelik’s warlord), Jaarsoo allusively refers to those Oromo natives in the OPDO 7 referred to as the proverbial quisling Goobana for cooperating with the Tigre-led government so much as Gobana unwittingly cooperated with Menelik in the 19th century long before the rise of modern Oromo nationalism.
By the same token, in the following verse the geeraraa 'singer' comments on 'jabana'/bara, i.e. change in time and the consequent worst system using traditional forms: 'yaa jabanaa' / siif safuu!, i.e. 'O time, Safuu! (interjection).
Thus he sings,
hindaaqqoo qooxii guutuu
adalli bijaa godhe!
misa garaa koo guutuu
jabanni bijaa godhe
5 siif safuu yaa jabanaa!
.................................
ilma namaa rakkiftee
misa garaatti hambifte?!
chicken full on the roost,
a wild cat crept in at night and devoured!
bravery I had full my heart
now gone by changes in time!
safuu to You the changing time!
..........................................
that You have put us in trouble
suppressed bravery in our heart?!
(Tasamma 2000:51)
The singer makes no mention of any name but, presumably, there is a general understanding between the singer and the audience that the singer as a social critic is commenting on the status quo (lines 3-7) and lamenting the worse life situation he and his people live in (line 6). He is by no means glorifying the existing system. He criticizes the present time which 'suppressed' him to succumb to the existing situation (lines 3,4,7). Such songs, i.e., geerarsa, are performed on various occasions such as the daboo (co-operative works) and wedding ceremonies.
Among the main occasions on which geerarsa is sung are those connected with hunting and heroic exploits related to war. As a protest song, however, geerarsa is sung at public gatherings, in prison and in other similar situations.
Traditionally, geerarsa as a popular form may also figure at various occasions: for rejoicing not specifically connected with hunting or war, but with such occasions as weddings or naming ceremonies. Hence, the composer/reciter is a hunter, a hero or the rebel who wants to articulate the worse situation he and his people are put in.
Composition and Performance
Under this sub-topic the composition (act of producing) and performance (act of delivering) of the geerarsa genre will be discussed. In performing geerarsa the individual singer does not tend to stand out like a soloist folk-singer in a dominant position as against a passive audience. The singer, instead, interacts with the audience who are waiting to take the turn to sing or to repeat a refrain usually sung in chorus, for example, at a wedding or gubbisa (naming-) ceremony.
Born and bred within the Oromo ‘oral tradition’, one is introduced from his childhood to the Oromo poetic world. From birth to the gubbisa (naming-) ceremony and throughout every stage of passage a Booran is exposed to some poetic acts that range from varied songs of initiation to different heroic and hunting songs. On such different occasions as homecoming after a successful kill at the amna (hunting/fighting) one also does a great deal of exercise before s/he successfully produces song or personal narrative for inclusion in the poetic repertoire at actual performances.
The geerarsa composer does the composition spontaneously: while he is on the long walk, while he is alone at work on his farm or while herding cattle, as Areeroo the Booran informant has it. Along forest paths to such a distant farm the geerarsa poem also bursts into utterances, which may be the beginning of new geerarsa composition. This happens, especially in the case of the Boorana dhaaduu according to Qararsa, the dhaaduu reciter himself and the informant referred to elsewhere in this study. Often the ‘new’ breed of geerarsa (dhaaduu) emerges when an unexpected and suppressing event such as a surprise attack of the people by the enemy occurs, generating in the singer troubling emotions, which seek a vent of one type or another.
Jaarsoo's motivation is political mobilization, for instance, when he recites to comment on the new sociopolitical situation of the Oromo under the wayyane rule (ibid. p234):
Oromoo, obboleeyyan tiyyaa!
allaattii wal nyaachisuu
isan haga har'aa hinlakkifne?
kan dhufuut' nu yaabbataa,
garbummaan gad nu hindhiifne!
Oromo, my brethren, haven't you
stopped even now from throwing
each other to the vultures?
whoever comes mounts us,
servitude has not yet left us!
The present researcher's informants are unanimous in asserting that geerarsa is the general term for all such original compositions as dhaaduu and gooba in Boorana (cf. also Baxter 1986). The two-geeraarsa sub-genres, i.e. dhaaduu and gooba, seem to be created by particular individuals (known heroes, hunters) as distinct from the anonymous traditional geerarsa handed down orally to generations. No one recites or sings the same gooba or dhaaduu for sure as sung or recited by another hunter or hero, Areeroo and Qamparre agree. 8
In evaluating the geerarsa piece, according to the informants, the first criteria is the amount of wisdom put in the song. That implies how accurate or inaccurate are the observations made by the singer/reciter about the life situation of the society, the Oromo in general and the Boorana in particular. Added to that is how humorous are the remarks made, how far does the diction of the piece consist of idiomatic expressions, words peculiar to hunters and heroes. Metaphorical turns of phrase rather than ordinary words of everyday speech also add to the aesthetic quality of the geeraarsa. Great acclaims are usually given to historical and chronological serious events such as war as well as real-life stories (cf. Sumner's concrete situation in life, 1997.) illustrating the efficacy of the thorough recitation in dhaaduu or singing in gooba.
The second criteria involve the sound of the geerarsa and some stylistic traditions or conventional poetic formulas: prosodic effects and rhythm-segments. The lines of the best improvised geerarsa pieces thus constructed, and when intoned, sound more like the traditional song sung by So and So--a well known singer in the public--or that appeals to the conventionally ascertained rules imprinted by tradition in the mind of the singer. Those rules can be prescribed by E. Littmann’s the seven-meter principle of geeraarsa as Macca Oromo sing it (in Addisu 1990). In the Boorana geerarsa genre called dhaaduu, for instance, it is conventional to repeat the refrain ‘itti deebi’e' / itti deebise’ i.e. ‘I went on to the war again’/’I beat the enemy again’ before one passes on to narrate the series of chronological events. That refrain shows the end of one battle and the beginning of another and of the recitation too, and it goes on.
The best geerarsa singer/reciter at a social gathering, the informants firmly agreed, is the one whose repertoire is the most extensive and accurate, the most balanced in themes (containing humour, just enough amusing geerarsa pieces as effective spice as in the main body of the poems), and the best sung or recited. In this respect, the eyewitnesses he mentions among his colleagues who were on the battle prove from experience the accurately rendered repertoire of a particular dhaaduu reciter. Asmarom Legesse provides an example of such a confrontation between a warrior singer and peers when he made a very vague claim in delivery of dhaaduu,
Janjamtuu/Gujii simantuu
nama kudhanii-lama
hareessa qaraa
anat' ejjeese
Gujii adults,
twelve men
in the first rush,
it’s I who killed
Then an angry mate responded: raatuu, kijibduu! Nama kudhanii-lama mukatti sii hidhanii? (you fool, you liar! Did someone tie them to a tree for you, all twelve of them?) And, Asmarom adds, in the midst of laughter then the singer told the truth that he killed only one, not twelve (Asmarom 1973:104ff).
In rendering both 'traditional' and 'contemporary' geerarsa, disjointed phrasing and halting delivery are disapproved. That is, poetical continuity and fluency of performance, especially in the dhaaduu, the Boorana speech-like poetry to be recited, are the things that are much lauded. And that is why the geerara 'singer' particularly the good dhaaduu reciter habitually controls his breathing action as well. And, that is why he is capable of consistently reciting sustained notes or poetic lines and whole sentences as units of musical phrasing.
Overall, geerarsa maintains the Oromo history and culture both as 'traditional' and 'contemporary' poetic genre through different degrees of composition and performance on various occasions. The Oromo expressed his resentments, lacks and complaints by geerarsa when forced to flee his home, his land or when put in prison. Hence, the geerarsa poetic genre is 'transformed' into a protest song (cf. Baxter 1986; Addisu 1990, 1994).
Geerarsa as a ‘transformed’/'innovated'
Poetic Genre
In Addisu Tolesa’s dissertation (1990) and in his article titled "Oromo Literature, Geerarsa …" (1994), the ‘contemporary’ geerarsa folk genre is described as serving the purpose of Oromo liberation struggle. That can be well justified by Jaarsoo's tape-recording in which he recites
Oromiyaa,
jiruu biyyee marchi lafaadhaa
gubbaat' nu dhalee, nuu kenne Waaqaa
sa'aa namaan horree ilaalaa badhaadhaa
jiruu balchumaa barbaadaa
Oromia,
that Land of abundance and fecundity
on which God created us
that Land which God blessed us with
sons and daughters of man and cattle
our rich Land that which we love
and therefore the Land
that we seek most!
(FSG IV, cf. Schlee 1992 passim; Shongolo 1996 passim)
He says that Oromia is the land which Waaqaa (God) blessed the Oromo with (lines 2,3) and therefore the Oromo seek it most. Jaarsoo reclaims Oromia as the ‘land of abundance and fecundity’ (line 2). Through the words 'love' (line 6) and 'seek most' (line 7) in the recurrent poetic lines above that Jaarsoo uses as a refrain in his tape-recording of the 1992 (FSG IV) he articulates Oromo nationalism. 8 One can also hear other Oromo individual singers/reciters whose subject matter is topical and/or political. The Arsi suunsuma (Nagesso 1994) or Luuccaa Abbaa Tuggoo’s prison songs (Addisu 1990), Sheik Bakrii Saaphaloo (M. Hassen in Baxter 1996:73), Sheik Mohammed Xaahir, and Abdaa Garaadaa's oral poems (which Dr Gemmechu Megersa recited on an interview with him) also echo, one may assert, the grievances of the Oromo nation.
Jaarsoo's poetry is referred to as the 'poetics of nationalism' based on the 'innovated' geerarsa folk genre (Schlee 1992; Shongolo in Baxter 1996), "in which men give poetic accounts of their heroic deeds--and sometimes also, like in the American blues, of their problems and grievances in life" (Shongolo p269). 10
Finnegan (1970) also says that the topical and political function of (Oral) poetry "can be an aspect of work songs, lyric, praise poetry, even…lullaby" (p272).
In her Oral Poetry (1977:159), Finnegan adds that performance of poetry designed for propagating policies/political programmes of opposition parties have been common in Africa. Various singers performed such political poetry designed by political parties to put their own case during elections, Finnegan (ibid) claims, hired by opposing political parties. Enthusiastic supporters of particular political parties, in this view, may best design to put their cause through poetry or well represent it in song.
Hence, poetry is used for what cannot be said directly and by taking the place of other sources of information: the press, the radio and publication. Such a case example is that of the Chopi People of Portuguese East Africa, during the liberation movement, Finnegan declares (1970:273), where public singing is used as a way of expressing public opinion and bringing pressure on individuals. The song,
You, Chugela, you are proud of your position, yet you are only a chief made by the white man
attacks the young chief Chugela who co-operated, according to the comment above, with the Portuguese colonizing power. Perhaps an instance of such propaganda referring to a political party is Jaarsoo's poem attacking the OPDO ('Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organisation) one of other "ethnic 'PDOs'" wayyane (Tigre) organized 'towards the end of 1989' (Mohammed 1994; Baxter 1996):
-OPDO-dhaa ati?
-eeyee
-aabboo Rabbi si haa nyaatuu, caqasi!
sidiin lafaan si barattiif
dhaab' jettee si geessitee
.......................................
haa'teef' aabbee si ajjeesifte
-are you an OPDO?
-yes
-may God ruin you, listen!
enemy made you his instrument
and you killed your own people:
....................................................
you killed your father and your mother
(FSG II, p65)
This is a means of communicating the 'hard times' in history, which is unwittingly siding the enemy against the will and whim of the people, in favour of cowards and opportunists. The poem is, one would rightly argue, the increasingly harsh and direct innuendo of an unsatisfied poet/reciter: 'enemy made you his instrument' (line 4).
There are such 'abusive Oromo songs', as Finnegan designates them, (1970, p277) as against ordinary individuals (see Tasamma Ta'a's collection 2000:50). Abusive Oromo songs are sometimes directly used as means of social pressure, enforcing the will of public opinion. Though no names are mentioned, unpopular individuals, or those who look for opportunities during such hard times as in the geerarsa song above about a bad finna in history (Tasamma, p51) are ridiculed and attacked through geerarsa.
Ruth Finnegan on Political Songs
As Finnegan claims, political songs are an accepted type of poetry by African political parties. They were often purely oral among the largely non-literate masses though at times such songs appeared "in writing, even in print" (Finnegan 1970, p 284). And written collections of party songs circulate among the public as a "powerful and flexible weapon in many types of political activity" (ibid) by their apparently innocuous nature.
The poetic genre used for secret propaganda is also the hymns used by the Mau Mau Movement in the early 1950s in Kenya of which L.S.B. Leakey in Defeating Mau Mau (1954) writes:
The leaders of the Mau Mau Movement… were quick to realise the very great opportunity which the Kikuyu love of hymn singing offered for propaganda purposes. In the first place propaganda in ‘hymn’ form and set to well-known tunes would be speedily learnt by heart and sung over again and again and thus provide a most effective method of spreading the new ideas… This was very important, for there were many who could not be reached by ordinary printed propaganda methods. (qtd in Finnegan 1970, p 285ff)
Finnegan contends that the consequent spread and tenacity of Mau Mau as a political movement was in part the result of those hymns appearing in books and in oral form during the Kenyan national liberation movement in early 1950s.
In line with this, in discussing the problem of whether or not "one type of poetry always goes with a particular form of society", as Finnegan questions in her Oral Poetry (1977:246), generalities do not seem to help much to achieve any new insight as through specific studies to understand how actually poetry functions within the society at a given level of development. The sociological tendency, however, is not the descriptions of specific historical cases but, to sociological analyses of poetry, it is the general relationships and types rather than the unique that facilitate the understanding of the function of poetry at a given level of finna/'development stage'. Some kind of poetry may seem to fit well with certain type of social order at some stage of society; this may also necessitate constructing typologies of such a kind. In this view, attempts to connect "type of poetry and stage of society" relate to the romantic and evolutionist thinkers of the 19th – century (Finnegan ibid). 11 It is worth reiterating here the point already made: there is little evidence, if any, that oral poetry always occurs in the ‘changeless’ tradition bound context.
To sum up, it has been argued that oral poetry does not occur in a ‘changeless’ context, that the poet operates, communicates, and even, on occasions, innovates his composition within the realm of the existing conventions. Geerarsa under no circumstance remains unchanged to stand as a universal and special oral style: it is therefore innovated and undergoes some transformations in the process of constant sociopolitical and cultural changes the Oromo are nationally engaged in.
A Sociology of Geerarsa Genre
Generic Theories and Methods
The need to base the study of verbal art upon an understanding of genres is one of the basic principles underlying sociological poetics. However, the study of genre is not an end in itself but rather serves as "a means toward the fuller understanding of individual works and of literature as a whole" (cf. P. Bernadi Beyond Genre in Fowler 1982, p322).
The sociological approach to genre studies has the basic tenet that "verbal art is a communication event, involving the active social interrelationship of all the participants" (Morris 1994, p160). Pam Morris confirms Bakhtin's argument in "Constructing a Sociological Poetics" saying that in the sociological analysis of the 'communication event' too often the sociological approach is only appropriate to content and to the extraverbal situations, i.e., the determining effects of external social forces upon the content. In this regard, the aesthetic form is analyzed more appropriately by a non-sociological method of analysis, since form is "intrinsic to the work itself".
In what follows here the sociological approach to the immediate determining situation of the geerarsa poetics extend to a speculation about the origin and a consideration more of interpretation and function of the genre, i.e., geerarsa, than generic classification. As regards generic classification the two-tier genre system, i.e. the dilemma of compromising local generic distinctions and conventions on the one hand and the Western-based notions of generic taxonomy on the other (Muana 1998) is another theoretical impasse of genre system. Thus I am urged to rethink the complex problem of generic classification and focus on interpretation and function based on ethnic genres for "genres should be primarily perceived as conceptual categories of communication and not classification" based on 'ethnic genres' (Ben Amos 1976: 225; Muana 1998: 48).
Origin of Genre
Nothing more than speculation is known about the origin of genres, but it is said: "…genres are as old as organized societies" (Fowler "The Formation of Genres" 1982:149). That is, the concept of literary activity seems to presuppose "there being human institutions" which govern its production also guaranteeing its relationship to human purposes.
The origin of any genre perhaps relates to its double orientation towards social reality: extrinsically, genre is determined by external conditions influencing its actualization in real time and space, e.g. the Oromo dhaaduu war poem, or the geerarsa genre. Whether a particular genre serves a public function, personal, religious or secular in those human institutions reflects its extrinsic social orientation. Intrinsically, according to Morris citing Bakhtin, the generic social orientation is determined by the thematic unity of the form. This type of generic social orientation is not understood as the reality produced by content or by the words used but by the generic structure as a whole. Baxter also argues genre is not a timeless and placeless entity. Its existence presupposes the dialogic engagement of "particular people" in "particular utterances" with one another, which M. Bakhtin had already noted "the reality of the genre and the reality accessible to the genre are organically related…genre is the aggregate of the means of collective orientation in reality" (cited in Baxter, 1991 p7).
Answering the question "where do genres come from?" T. Todorov (1993:15) writes: "Quite simply from other genres" through transformation.12 In his "The Origin of Genres" (the article first published in 1976, cited in Baxter, ibid.) Todorov argues that discourse that deals with genres "is always and necessarily constituted by speech acts" (Todorov, p16). Hence, one may conclude, there is no literature without genre, a system which undergoes constant transformation. Genre, in this regard, is "a characteristic of past literature" (Baxter, p5). According to Todorov a speech act "that has non-literary existence like prayer" becomes a genre under certain transformations, e.g. the novel based on the act of telling. He discusses three such case examples: first, 'praying', which is a speech act; 'prayer' is a genre (literary or not), "the difference is minimal", he points out. Second, 'telling' is a speech act, 'the novel' is a genre since something is being told (narrated) in the novel. Unlike the first, i.e., 'praying' and 'prayer' there is now a considerable difference. The third case: the 'sonnet', which is a literary genre. But, there is no such verbal activity as 'sonneting', he argues.
Similarly, in the Oromo oral literary tradition there is a speech act 'geeraruu', to sing a genre 'geerarsa'; there is a speech act 'dhaadachuu', to sing a genre (or sub-genre) dhaaduu. In both cases, even the names of the genres derive from the speech acts. Hence, from these few examples, it seems, among the Oromo, a genre does not differ in any way from other Oromo speech acts. However, for the geerarsa sub-genres of Arsii suunsuma war song, mirriysaa of Harar and the gooba hunting song of Boorana if there are such speech acts as 'suunsumuu', 'mirriysuu' and 'goobuu' needs a thorough investigation.
Now, let it be allowed that this may be the case: there is no verbal action as 'suunsumuu', or 'goobuu' like the 'geeraruu' or 'dhaadachuu' speech acts. It follows that unlike for 'geeraruu' and 'dhaadachuu' one does not take discursive properties as a starting point to examine the generic system of 'goobuu' or 'suunsumuu' if no such a verbal action exists as in the genre 'sonnet' for which there is no 'sonneting'.
Tzvetan Todorov's structuralist view of "The Origin of Genres" (ibid. pp13-26) and Bakhtin's 'double orientation' of genres to social reality in space and time are reviewed in this section since both relate generic origin to human interrelationships. So are the geerarsa, the dhaaduu, the gooba the suunsuma and other Oromo poetic genres determined by specific situation (intrinsic and/or extrinsic) to emerge in space and time like Jaarsoo's poetry. As generic categories they also 'represent flexible social resources' categorized on the basis of the 'situational factors' (in Muana 1998, p48). Overall, in both diachronic and synchronic terms, genres originate out of other genres and previous constituents so much as they originate in everyday human discourse in human institutions: genres are as old as organized societies!
‘Generic Classification’ or ‘Generic Interpretation’?
So far an attempt has been made to establish the origin of genres. It can be recalled that Todorov's argument has been centered on the progression of literary genres out of human verbal acts, which are non-literary in nature. Efforts have been also made to support the argument, namely, derivation of literary genres out of speech acts by exemplifying some poetic Oromo oral genres.
Generic taxonomy is no less difficult than tracing the origin of genres. Since oral poetry takes many different forms it is difficult to pin down poetic generic system under one unitary model. That is why focus in this study is more on the interpretation of the genre system than on generic classification. The purpose of this part is, however, to overview the taxonomy of Oromo oral poetry through varied theories of genres on the bases of the local generic classificatory system, but not to synchronize it with the Western literary taxonomic system. For the demarcation of genres and to perceive them as distinct verbal entities, both the text and the social context of its performance are determining factors. According to Daniel Ben-Amos (1975, p166 passim):
attempts to discover the principles of folklore communication in Africa must begin with the identification and analysis of the cognitive, expressive and social distinctive features of folklore forms (emphasis added).
The cognitive features consist of the names, taxonomy and commentary. By these features the society labels, categorizes and interprets respectively the literary forms within a wider system of discourse. These are abstract principles in the society to govern the folklore use. That is not just to abide by principles as fixed and pure monolithic canons but it involves the ability to modify rules pragmatically: hence, "the interplay between principles and necessities" (Ben-Amos, p186).
The Oromo etiquette, for example, dictates that a young Oromo has to say the politeness formula 'isiniif margi jira', 'I hold grass in respect of you. Forgive me' to utter a taboo in the presence of an older person, so much as a younger Yoruba has to say a prefatory apology just to say a proverb in presence of an older person (ibid.). The standard politeness formula can be: "I don't claim to know any proverbs in your presence you older people, but you older people have the saying…."
Expressive features include the styles, the contents and the structures of the forms by which each literary genre is characterised. The names and taxonomy of folklore genres and commentary about these genres "constitute abstract knowledge about the style, themes, structures, and uses of the forms of verbal art" (Ben-Amos ibid. p.172). In social reality it is this abstract knowledge that is used as the source of ideas to be able to generate folkloric expressions anew and to utter them in appropriate situations.
In poetry the most recognizable expressive feature is rhythmic language by which songs are distinguished from conversation. Recitations also have a pattern of accents and beats that mark them off from 'informative and informal speech'. In addition to their rhythmic effect African folklore genres, Ben-Amos (1975) declares, have basic indications which signify their meanings: e.g., the opening and closing formulas such as in the geerarsa song.
Finally, the social features: these are the constituents of the situational contexts. In this respect, the rules of folklore use and the set of behavioural perceptions and expectations constitute the social features of folklore. That is, the meaning, interpretation and understanding of songs and oral poems, tales, proverbs and riddles in their social use "are affected by the adherence to, or deviation from, these rules by the speakers" (ibid. p186). It can also be equally affected by the age, sex and status or social position of the member of the community. In this respect, Ben-Amos says ethnic genres constitute "a cultural affirmation of the communication rules that govern the expression of complex messages within cultural context" (Ben-Amos 1976:225). 12 Ben Amos generic taxonomy is based on the culturally accepted local conventions (cf. Muana 1998, p.48) , the view which Finnegan shares (1992). Finnegan claims that the preliminary survey of the field made in her Oral Poetry (1977) gives a general idea and illustrates that oral poetry is "by no means a clearly differentiated and a unitary category" (p.9). Allied with this general comment is her contention "that the whole idea of a genre is relative and ambiguous, dependent on culturally-accepted canons of differentiation rather than on universal criteria" (p.15).
The folk-genres traditionally considered as absolute and enduring entities have ceased to become fixed genres subject to the dynamics of performance and practices. That is, genres undergo transformations to meet generic expectations of performers and audience as "a resource for performance available to speakers for the realization of specific social ends in a variety of creative, emergent and even unique ways" (qtd. in Finnegan 1992, p 137). The exploration of such generic processes is believed to be particularly effective for analyzing or considering fluid and changing genre like the Oromo geerarsa.
Hence, to work on generic classification/interpretation, one better way to start with is "to use the local words" such as dhaaduu, gooba, to refer to the Boorana types of heroic song widely known by the ‘geerarsa’ generic name among the Oromo (Baxter 1986, p49). In the study of Oromo oral poetry, from the perspective of its form, rules to govern the nature, occurrence and distribution have not been established (Andrzejewski 1985, p410). Efforts made in the 1920s by Enno Littmann and in the '30s by Moreno were good beginnings. They paved the way for the study of Oromo oral poetry today, especially the geerarsa (Sumner 1997; Addisu 1994, 1990). From content and generic interpretation /classification it may well be argued that further research is needed to set reliable information and to establish operational criteria for the generic classification and interpretation of Oromo oral poetry. Andrzejewski cites Phillip Paulitchke's early attempt in Germany as far back as 1896 though the "classification does not overlap completely with any strictly defined ranges of themes" (Andrzejewski ibid. cf. Pankhurst 1976).
C. Sumner's "form, content and concrete situation in life" (1997) as the basic criteria for the generic classification and interpretation of Oromo oral poetry are seemingly limited to songs. Sumner and other researchers, including Addisu Tolesa, do not seem to have been aware of such a speech-like oral poetry as dhaaduu to exist in the (Boorana) Oromo oral poetry. In such a case one may draw a hasty conclusion that Oromo oral poetry is generally to be sung and there is none to be recited. For the purpose of the present study, therefore, adopting Sumner's "form, content and concrete situation in life" seems to be unreasonable.
Perhaps Andrzejewski’s 'time-free' and 'time-bound' model used to categorize Somali poetry is pertinent to the study of Oromo poetry, particularly geerarsa. He puts the Somali poetry within 'time-bound' and 'time-free' streams, which he adapts to the generic classification and interpretation of Oromo oral poetry (1985, pp410-15). According to Andrzejewski the Oromo oral poems of public forum, i.e., those deeply involved in the current political and social situations of their time such as Jaarsoo's are categorized as 'time-bound'. Hence, Oromo love poetry is very prominent in the 'time-free' stream.
To sum up: in literary studies it may well be argued that there is no one single model to apply to the fundamental question(s). The value/function of the genre, the origin and taxonomy of the genre, and the validity of the interpretation all call for due attention and each of such a fundamental question calls for the application of relevant model(s). This section has been treating such theoretical and pragmatic considerations of Oromo oral poetry: geerarsa and the dhaaduu recitative poetry.
Boorana Popular Genre: Geerarsa as Dhaaduu
Recitative Poetry
Among the Oromo, of whom the Booran are one, killing lion, elephant, rhino, and giraffe for trophy game is common and a successful killer is accorded great honour. Some researchers contend that such an active shedding of blood of enemies and of trophy animals by men is paralleled by the passive shedding of blood by women through menstruation and child birth. Baxter, for instance, makes the same connections in his writings on the Oromo culture (Baxter 1985, 1978, 1986) and Lambert Bartels (Bartels 1983) also demonstrates the same conceptual relationships between "killing and bearing".
The active blood shedding by men through killings and the passive blood shedding by women through child bearing and menstruation is considered to be central to the religion of the Oromo (Bartels 1983). Baxter's contention that among the Oromo "men should be active, strong and brave whereas women should be receptive, soft and fertile" (1986:45) may be frowned at as male chauvinism though traditionally shared by men. Among the Oromo the symbolic connections between copulation--in which case women are said never on the top--and 'spearing' "are close and explicit" seem to be confirmed by PTW Baxter citing Okot pBiteck (1966): "men are said to 'spear' women" (Baxter ibid.). Even more, Baxter and Fardon, guest editors to Voice, Genre, Text vol. 73, no 3 Autumn 1991 forward, citing Donna Haraway's 'sexual politics of a word', that "genre and gender are related terms" (p4). They add: "an obsolete English meaning of 'to gender' is 'to copulate" (ibid.). By Haraway's gender and generic conception 'gender' adheres to 'concepts of sex, sexuality, sexual difference, generation, engendering...' Other words close to 'gender', Haraway adds, are: kinship, race, biological taxonomy, language and nationality (p5).
Generic system also among the Oromo is gender oriented. Like the geerersa song below, there are other song texts, says a certain Gurmeessaa, which the singer uses to reinforce others to take turn to sing geerarsa or otherwise they are likened to women:
nami gaagura hiituu
nama miila tokkooti
nami hingeerarin galtu
nama cinaan tokkooti
a man who hangs a bee-hive is
a man with only one leg,
a man who does not sing today is
a man with only one testicle
Similarly, the traditional two-line geerarsa text: 'reettiin areeda hinbaaftuu / dubartiin hingeerartuu', literally, 'a she-goat never grows beard / so much so, a woman never sings geerarsa' is another gender-oriented common moral precept used in geerarsa at least for two purposes. One, to limit the art of geerarsa accompanying hunting and war only to the domain of men; two, to activate the man who is reluctant or shy to sing geerarsa by saying, ironically, only woman does not sing geerarsa.
The primary purpose of this part of the study is to examine the Boorana popular genre: the dhaaduu war poem--to be recited, not to be sung. It will also be made clear in this section that there is the influence of the dhaaduu ethnic genre on the language and the poetic style of Jaarsoo's poetry, which Jaarsoo delivers in reciting rather than in singing.
The Dhaaduu Recitative Poetry
This sub-topic aims to describe the dhaaduu recitative poetry as geerarsa sub-genre that might have influenced the poetic content and style of Jaarsoo's recital poetry. Dhaaduu is a war poem recited in nearly a speech-like tone. In discussing the formal structure of dhaaduu it is not simple to pin down its poetic form. The difficulty lies not in its composition, since the reciter recounts from his memory past events recorded and composed into poems. The difficulty rather lies in the nature of the content of the poem itself. That is, all the hardships encountered, pains of the bloody fighting fought and the victims, emotions and feelings attached to these disrupt the normal flow of the poem. So energetic and emotional as the reciter becomes at the moment of delivery and that he continuously utters the events, it is not simple to clearly tell where the line of the verse ends. However, the division into line is in most cases indicated by the reciter’s delivery: words pronounced together in the same breath, pause, words/phrases fall together in terms of sense, sometimes formalized linear units of praises. Vowel sounds are more often than not used as what Andrzejewski has called 'vowel coloured breaths' (see Schlee 1992:230).
The end of each dhaaduu poetic line is actually difficult to notice except on the basis of related sense of meaning of the ‘nodes’, i.e. a group of words which function the same semantic, syntactic or aesthetic purpose, or on the basis of repetition or parallelism. Whereas, the ends of stanzas are brought out by the lengthening of pitch of the penultimate line and the glides heard on the last word of the last line, as it seems to be the case for such recitative poems. Here is a dhaaduu by Areeroo, a renowned dhaaduu reciter:
ka Abb’ Duubaa
ka Guyyoo Duubaa
Boora ka jaartiiti
boor’ Saakora Yuubaati
5 aaddaa shaahuu Diqqooti
dhirsa Kuulaati
soddaa Kuluulaati
(I am) Abb’ Duubaa’s son
Guyyoo Duubaa’s giant
old mother’s giant
Saakoraa Yuubaa’s giant
Kuulaa’s husband
Kuluulaa’s brother–in–low
The language being so allusive and so ambiguous, the linear units being so short and made of names of kinsmen (lines 1,2,4, 6,7) and forms of expression being metaphoric (cf. giant) the poetic style of the dhaaduu poem emerges more fully when one considers the whole poetic lines coming next. Alliteration (see lines 3,4 and 6,7) is the most commonly used poetic feature in dhaaduu as one can observe in the words kuulaa/kuluula, boora/boor.
The use of special idioms and elaborated adjectives as in the above dhaaduu text (see the possessive adjs.) are a special poetic style the composer of dhaaduu poem needs to master. In the following alliterative poetic lines,
irr’ arboori dansaa
qubaallee qubeen dansaa
guutuu liilanni dansaa
mataa baalgudi dansaa,
wooden armlet on arm is nice
ring on ring-finger is nice
comb in the tuft of hair is nice
feather on the crown of head is nice,
the adjective dansa ‘nice’ is repetitive to emphasize the content of the poem, i.e., the importance of trophy and all those ‘nice’ paraphernalia for the hero's traditional costume. The items stressed by the repetitive adjective ‘dansa’ or ‘nice’: arboora, qubee, liilana, baalguda, i.e. armlet, ring, wooden comb and feather respectively are all nice for the hero to decorate himself with. In this regard, parallelism and repetitions are marked features in dhaaduu self-praise poetry as can be illustrated from the praise song provided by Galgaloo just quoted. The first and the second lines are semantically parallel since both ‘armlet’ and ‘ring’ relate to ‘hand’ or part of hand whereas the third and fourth lines refer to ‘head’ and ‘hair’. The alliterative words and phrases: ‘irr' irboorri' in the first line and ‘qubbaallee qubeen…’ in the second lines show that those ornaments 'irboora’ or ‘armlet’ and ‘qubee’ or ‘ring’ derive from names of parts of the body ‘irree’, ‘arm’ and ‘quba’ or ‘ring-finger’, named after the parts of the body they are worn on and so are dansa (nice).
The hero in dhaaduu is associated with animals (domestic or wild) to indicate the suggestion that he is too wild for his enemies to manage. The hunter also considers himself so brave and so fierce like the animal he hunts. Baxter, citing Cerulli, has this to say: "tough wild young [Booran] bachelors who hunt are indulged, because they are like "animals of the bush" bineensa hardly domesticated" (Baxter 1986:45; cf. Cerulli 1922:100). Most frequent of all, the comparison is made to a lion, a tiger, a buffalo, and an eagle in association with the animals’ bravery, wildness and fearsome appearance. An example is Areeroo's dhaaduu where he associates himself with a lion, a rhino and a leopard and uses such animal metaphors as,
neenca ta’ee goodaat’ galee
qeerramsa ta’ee baddaat’ galee
warseessa ta’ee mataa-lagaat’ galee
as a lion, in deep jungle I dwelt
as a leopard, in mountain bush I dwelt
as a rhino, in river water I waded
And, the hero praises himself and draws parallelism between himself and a series of furious and strong wild beasts. By further analogy the reciter praises himself for his strength and courage to bear up the pains and hardships such as dwelling in mountainous bushy pockets, in deep jungles and splashing about in the surf in river water, etc.
Relatively speaking, examples show that similes are fewer than metaphors in dhaaduu. However, a few occur by way of descriptions: Qaraarsa, for instance, recites thus,
lafti Booranaa dhakaa
anuu jabaa akka dhakaa
Boorana land is rocky
and so much as firm as rock I am
where the singer demonstrates his strength by using the simile 'akka dhagaa' in anuu jabaa akka dhagaa, 'and so much as firm as rock I am'. To vividly describe the tenacious situation, hyperbole appears in emotional description in dhaaduu. The fierceness of the battle may be illustrated as in the lines below:
namichi gosaan Soomale
hinwaraanne inqabe
hinajjeefne inqale
nabsee nati harkaa fuudhe
qawwee Waaqat’ harkaa na fuudhe
the person/victim is a Somali
I did not strike but caught him
I did not shoot but slew him
his soul did I conquer
and so did God his weapon.
The effect of the battle may be thus pronounced as in the dhaaduu text shown above indirectly in such a description of the general scene. In the text having five lines above, the singer depicts the picture of the battle when the victim falls, the hero catches and slays him (line 2,3), ‘disarms’ him of his soul while Waaqaa (God), literally speaking, disarms him of his weapon (lines 4 & 5).
Thus, by ordering the events chronologically and depicting a series of pictures of his own war-like qualities and deeds Qaraarsa recites.
an am' mucaa amal’ dansaa
amala Waaqat’ namaa midhaansa
Qabata abbaat’ midhaanfata
I am the son of good temper
but Waaqa is the architect of good temper
while one is the architect of his own temperance
That the alliterative and repetitive qualities of the poem sometimes serve to heighten the artistic effect of the poetry and render it some aesthetic beauty and depth of philosophy.
Dhaaduu poetry, being very much oral in composition like other praise poems it is intended to be heard not read, and delivered much faster, in a normal speech like tone as in Jaarsoo's poetry but with few pauses. As well, there are growing excitement and dramatic gestures made as dhaaduu proceeds. That is, as the poetry is more and more recited, the reciter works himself up much faster, eyes glaring, face up lifted and suddenly raised and shaken. As the researcher observed Qaraarsa, who resisted reciting such a war poem as dhaaduu now that he is a hajji, gestures during the delivery are so frequent and dramatic that the reciter would suddenly leap or move as the poems are poured from his lips. As he becomes exhausted then the flow of the spring of dhaaduu grows less and less.
Qararsa also says similar to what is quoted in Finnegan (1970) from other source related to the power of the verse and of delivery: "’a man whilst praising … can walk over thorns, which cannot pierce his flesh which has become impenetrable’" (p 138). Finnegan in her Oral Literature in Africa (1970) adds that "the composition of praise poetry was traditionally both a specialist and a universal activity" (p 139), while occasions for the composition of praise poems, particularly the dhaaduu being battle.
Summarily, the literary effect of dhaaduu does not seem to primarily depend on the reciter’s skill of providing the poem. It rather depends on the art of the poet to use those traditional formulas: figurative expressions, allusion, various stylistic devices such as parallelism, for instance, as in Jaarsoo’s recitative/narrative poetry. Those traditional forms, apart from the poet’s delivery, serve to heighten the literary effectiveness and power of the dhaaduu verse. Thus, the dhaaduu poetry is a meeting place between the geerarsa general poetics of event-based literature and the protracted finna, Oromo development phases analysed from sociological perspective in the chapter to follow.
ENDNOTES
1. See Negasso 1983; Addisu 1990, 1994 on geerarsa as a historically transformed oral genre; and Schlee in Hayward 1996, and Shongolo in Baxter 1996 on Jaarsoo Waaqoo's dhaaduu-like recitative poems. The theme of geerarsa genre nowadays has transformed into having a double-face, Janus-like: one is 'traditional' praises communicating and preserving the Oromo culture while the other is the 'contemporary' protest song articulating the Oromo struggle and aspiration to subvert the Tigre-Amhara rule in Oromia.
2. Though the purpose of this study is content analysis, in discussing the poetic style of Jaarsoo's poetry, the issue of the poet's intention seems the predominant one. The concern is more with the author's intention realized in the work which Schlee and Shongolo put thus: "His [Jaarsoo's] bias, quite legitimately, is pro-OLF and pro-Boran" (in Hayward 1996, p230). C. Sumner declares in his OWL vol. ii Songs (1997) that "[i]n Oromo songs there is a complete identification of the 'literary type' with the 'notion' or the 'theme' "(p367).
3. I draw the issue of Oromo tradition/culture as a basis for Oromo consciousness and Oromo identity upon Gemetchu Megersa's article titled "Oromumma: Tradition, Consciousness and Identity" (in Baxter 1996, pp92-102). In the excerpt from his 'framework for the understanding of Oromumma' Gemetchu argues "... Oromo tradition provides the basis for Oromo identity" and the "juxtaposition of Oromo consciousness with Oromo tradition and social experience is necessary for the understanding of the nature and content of Oromo identity" (p92). Doubtless to say 'contemporary' geerarsa is a medium of expression of that Oromo consciousness and social experience.
4. Cerulli distinguishes between geerarsa and faarsaa: the former he considers it as a ‘boasting’ song of individual warriors, whereas faarsaa, literally, 'praise poetry', is the ‘boasting’ song of the society. In this regard, the following geerarsa text is sung by an individual warrior who comes home after a successful kill (Cerulli 1922, p102):
the guchii (ostrich) loves the sun!
I have descended to the narrow valley
and I have pulled down the horsemen...
the beautiful girls will adorn my comb
my friends will kiss my mouth
the children will say to me "You have killed well!"
In any case 'geerarsa' and 'faarsa' are both popular or folk songs, and, therefore, it is not very clear if Cerulli meant by 'faarsa' minstrelsy songs or songs of traveling singers.
5. H. M. Chadwick and his wife Nora Chadwick, 1940
6. Goobana, in the "contemporary OLF discourse ... is regarded as the proverbial traitor", i.e. the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling "who in 1945 cooperated with the Nazi occupation force" (Shongolo in Baxter ibid. Footnote no. 13 p271).
7. OPDO, Mohammed Hassen writes "was created by the TPLF and is tightly controlled by the same organization" (in Baxter 1996, Footnote no. 8 p.78).
8. No hunter, however, can validly claim the authorship of geerarsa piece, according to the informants Areeroo, Caalaa and Qampharree, even if he is the first to sing it on a certain occasion. This is because the tradition is believed to be the source to which every singer refers as aadaa (culture) in which one is brought up passing through every initiation rite. Hence, the process of the composition seems to be intuitive and inspirational as if it springs from the innate talents of the artist. Certainly, there are new geerarsa pieces created by well-experienced singers on different occasions, as added to his repertoire and to the already existing 'traditional' song even though no one claims authorship.
9. See Schlee and Shongolo in Hayward 1996, p230 that Jaarsoo's poetry, "quite legitimately, is pro-OLF".
10. Speaking of Jaarsoo's poetic style, Shongolo, who claims the Boorana identity himself (in Baxter 1996, p.310), states Jaarsoo "creatively combined plain everyday language with traditional rhetoric style" (ibid. p269). The language of Boorana oral poetry, and of Jaarsoo's poetry, however, is under no way as simple as Shongolo declares it to be. I contend with what Baxter says of language of the gooba 'giraffes poetry': added to the ambiguity and obliqueness combined with "impressionistic, almost concealed meanings" are the "esoteric and archaic words" that make the task of transcription and translation of the songs difficult (1986, p48). Baxter adds that in Boorana songs "the ambiguity of language reflects the ambiguity of the experience. The implicit connection between the words, as sounds and as meanings, and their associations and ambiguities are part of the cumulative meaning of each verse"(ibid. p49) as in gooba songs, for instance. In studying Jaarsoo's poetry, but one may conclude that symbolic figures such as metaphors, similes and hyperboles are combined with what Shongolo says "features of nationalist discourses into a basically Booran idiom" (in Baxter p268) used as a 'war of words' as opposed to a war with arms" (269).
11. Such an attempt to relate certain types of society to certain types of poetry and poetic activity also relates to those heroic poetry and ‘heroic age’ society of the Oromo. The ‘Heroic Songs/Historical Songs’ in Cerulli’s Folk Literature...(1922), Sumner’s (1997) collections of Oromo Songs, and the geerarsa song texts in Addisu’s dissertation exemplify the Chadwicks' argument that 'heroic poetry' and 'heroic age societies' are related (in Finnegan ibid).
12. See in T.Todorov Genres in discourse (1990, p20); PTW Baxter and Richard Fardon Voice, Genre, Text (1991, p5). Todorov maintains, one starts with the other already constituted speech acts through a progression from a simple act to a complex one, so much as, to the historicist, the "interpretation of history is based on the present, just as that of space starts with here, and that of other people with I".
13.. I have drawn upon Dan Ben-Amos's "Taxonomy of Genres" (1975, pp168-71) in which he suggests three ways of designating the category of form:
cognitively, by naming it, pragmatically by performing it in particular contexts, and expressively by formulating it in a distinctive language which is peculiar to the genres (p168).
In the taxonomic system of verbal art that satisfies local conventions, and therefore "coherent and culturally valid", then, he concludes, the folkloric expression "must have stylistic, thematic, and contextual correlatives which will justify its inclusion in one class or another" (ibid.).
 | By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis Published: 6/21/2007 |
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