Oral+History


 * Traditionally, Africans have revered good stories and storytellers, as have most past and present peoples around the world who are rooted in oral cultures and traditions. Ancient writing traditions do exist on the African continent, but most Africans today, as in the past, are primarily oral peoples, and their art forms are oral rather than literary. In contrast to written "literature," African "orature" (to use Kenyan novelist and critic Ngugi wa Thiong’o's term) is orally composed and transmitted, and often created to be verbally and communally performed as an integral part of dance and music. The Oral Arts of Africa are rich and varied, developing with the beginnings of African cultures, and they remain living traditions that continue to evolve and flourish today. **


 * **"’Once upon a time,’ she began, all the birds were invited to a feast in the sky,’" as Achebe renders the traditional Igbo folktale opening into English.**
 * **The story explains a cause, origin, or reason for something--gives an "etiological explanation...at the end" (****Obiechina, "Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel")****--in this case, for why the tortoise shell is "'not smooth.'"**
 * **The story dramatizes a moral: greedy Tortoise, '"full of cunning,'" manages to trick the birds out of all the food at the feast, but for his selfishness he is punished. Tortoise falls from the sky and "’His shell broke into pieces.’"**
 * **In folktale worlds, such "naughty," but not "irredeemably" wicked characters, as Achebe describes Tortoise** **(qtd. in Baker and Draper 22)****, are often restored and/or reintegrated back into society: in this case, "'a great medicine-man in the neighbourhood'" patches Tortoise’s shell together again.**