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Research in African Literatures 32.2 (2001) 3-7



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Introduction

Kofi Agawu


The essays gathered in this special issue of Research in African Literatures are united by an overriding concern with the interface between music and language and with a number of conceptual and analytical issues that flow from that conjunction. Students of traditional African cultures have often remarked upon the close relationship between language and music. For example, African tone languages, with their intersyllabic relational pitch structure, manifest a musical aspect that in turn constrains melodic contour. Second, the popular and popularizing phenomenon of talking drums, the idea that drums (and other speech surrogates) "speak" and are understood in the way that one understands spoken language--this phenomenon has at its core a configuration involving music and language. And third, the words that enable song, the poet's emergent music that is eventually colonized by the composer's music--these song words raise a host of interesting questions about how language is articulated in song, to what extent song displays autonomous structure, and ways in which meaning is transferred from text to music and vice versa.

It will require not one but several issues of Research in African Literatures to air comprehensively the issues involved in a study of music and language. Such a project will be interdisciplinary, drawing on specialized research in folklore, linguistics, anthropology, literary theory, and musicology. Definitions will need to be entered from the start, definitions of the foundational terms music and language, among many others. Questions as to whether music is a language, whether it signifies, and if so how will have to be raised. The problematics of communication will not be left out. The effects of in-time performance will not be ignored; nor will repertorial and generic distinctions be subsumed under an all-purpose "music." The discussion will be grounded in the specifics of African nomenclature and experience, with each researcher entering deeply into the overlapping conceptual worlds of indigenous performer-critics. The interconnectedness between music and dance will form a part of the study, drawing analytical lessons from indigenous conceptions of play. Finally, the discussion will probe the poetic content of song texts, seeking an understanding of them as expressions of particular individuals or groups, and also as generalized responses to desire, need, loss, or misery, as expressions of joy and elation, or in response to an incitement to warfare.

There are, of course, isolated studies of these issues in the literature on African music and folklore, and it is hoped that the following essays will stimulate further discussion. By far the most concrete point of contact between music and language lies in the song text. Daniel Avorgbedor's "It's a Great Song!" offers a comprehensive and incisive analysis of the literary devices employed by Anlo-Ewe poets in a genre of songs of insult known as haló. (Haló flourished between 1912 and 1962). In this "war of insults and music," where rival clans or wards or villages meet to trade sung insults, poets need not be concerned with facts or accurate reporting. They may make up half-truths, accuse people falsely, or deploy maledictions. [End Page 3] Considerable learning and inventiveness are required for composing effective haló texts. Avorgbedor's glosses on individual texts show the value of interpretation that is not deaf to Anlo ways of world-making. Without this cultural understanding, not all readers will know quite what to make of references to people with crooked teeth, others with flat buttocks, some with questionable ancestry, others with a dance style "like fabric used to sew mismatched attire," and one who "had sex with his sister [and] the sister died." Avorgbedor is not here concerned with the musical realization of haló texts (but see his "Freedom to Sing, License to Insult"); nor does he delineate the difference in impact between spoken and sung insults. He is concerned rather with the range of literary devices employed by Anlo-Ewe poets. Armed with his findings, however, future researchers will be in a much stronger position to pursue a full musico-poetic analysis. They may...

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