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65th IFLA Council and General |
Category | Sub-category | Type |
---|---|---|
1 Forms |
Titles Mottos Didactic texts Religious texts |
|
2 Poetry | Official |
Historical Panegyric |
Private |
Religious Individual |
|
3 List |
Place names Names of people |
|
4 Narratives | Historical |
Universal Local Family |
Didactic | Myths | |
Esthetic | Esthetic (epics, legends, tales) | |
Personal | Personal memories | |
5 Commentaries | Legal | Precedents |
Ancillary | Explanatory | |
Sporadic | Occasional notes |
As informative as these typologies and many others may be, they do not exhaust all the data associated with oral tradition, whose message, we must remember, is found at the intersection of two axes - that of the actual instant at which the exchange between two speakers is recorded and that of the duration when the exchange concerns a tradition with a past existence and a current situation to which this tradition applies. This is what allowed Jean Cauvin to write (1980), "Aside from a few major types represented everywhere, each ethnic group, each language has its own types of texts. It is therefore pointless or even impossible to make an exhaustive and totally accurate description of these types throughout Africa. Each person is asked to study what exists in their own tradition"[tr.]. To do so, the author proposes taking an external path through which it is possible to isolate the way the types can be distinguished from each other based on the vocabulary in the language involved, and an internal approach by considering each type on its own and by thinking about what characteristics it has.
We share the relevance of this point of view, well illustrated by our own research experience in the field of oral poetry among the Sérères in Senegal. Where Vansina isolates two sub-categories (official and private) and four types in poetry, we identified 26 poetic types, specifically designated in the language and characterized by criteria functioning all or partly in unison6.
The concern for knowing about the people of societies with no writing, which presided over the birth of anthropological and ethnological research, very quickly led to the collection of oral tradition as material essential to this process. The concern deepened with the expansion of the western powers as soon as they became engaged in colonial conquest. For them it was a question of gaining a better understanding of the societies conquered or to conquer, for satisfying a healthy intellectual and even scientific curiosity and at the same time for better instilling the foundations of their domination. Thus, depending on the circumstances, some conquerors and colonial administrators distinguished themselves in anthropological and ethnological research by adhering to strict scientific process or by revealing their inability to escape the prejudices and assumptions of the time, but in both instances, with the intent to establish the sustainable management of colonial power. They would be the first players involved in collecting oral tradition, alongside the independent researchers of the colonial enterprise. During that period, collection was performed by simply writing down and publishing collections of oral texts or using them for research.
The next period was marked by the appearance of the magnetic reel medium and the development of photography to capture sound and images. With the power to capture the visual dimension, cinematographic film and then videotape completed the range of means used to record oral tradition.
When attaining international sovereignty, the countries in which oral tradition survived, especially those in Africa south of the Sahara, ensured the preservation of their oral cultural heritage using these new technical means. For this purpose, they set up structures for researching as well as for collecting, archiving, conserving and exploiting oral tradition captured by these new media.
Sometimes they were supported in this process by UNESCO or encouraged by the initiative it undertook in 1968 to create the Centre régional de Documentation pour la Tradition orale (CRDTO) in Niamey, Niger. The creation of such a centre was an official part of completing the project for writing the General History of Africa, launched by the 14th session of 1964 General Conference of UNESCO. It was also the result of the fact that the so-called Nigerian-Sudanese Africa had attracted the attention of specialists "primarily due to the abundance and variety of oral, written, archaeological and sculptural sources... and the need to coordinate the collection and analysis of these sources associated with the history of the nationalities...". The mission defined of the CRDTO was "the implementation of the Plan for Regional Research on oral tradition and cooperation between the region's institutes and universities" [tr.]. The countries targeted by this initiative were Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Dahomey (now Benin), Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Chad and Togo7.
Similarly, in accordance with the CRDTO mission, survey methodologies were developed for the best ways to collect the elements of the oral cultural heritage.
In 1974, the CRDTO left UNESCO's trusteeship to be placed under the stewardship of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), making a slight alteration and creating the Centre for Linguistic and Historical Studies by Oral Tradition (CLHSOT) with a mission to coordinate research in the field of languages, history and oral tradition. In this particular role, it began translating the General History of Africa into the major African languages which are Fulfude, Swahili and Haussa.
The commitment of the CLHSOT to heritage preservation was also expressed in its involvement in new alliance strategies to collect and make use of oral tradition, in particular through new information and communication technologies, which we will present in the following pages (see p. 19).
Oral tradition can be collected by directly covering a given traditional event and/or conducting a survey on it or on a chosen topic.
Without doubt there are many ways of conducting a survey, but it seems to us that at least the following prerequisites should be observed:
Above and beyond these precautions, conducting the survey implies an appropriate vision of the oral tradition in the reference society and the typology developed by it. The collection will require different phases that we will review here.
This allows the different parameters that have just been reviewed to be taken into consideration. This preparation can be extended by a questionnaire developed before the survey. In its absence, a set of reference points is necessary through which we can be sure that, at the intellectual level, the topic addressed is approached correctly. In all cases, even when developing a questionnaire, a certain amount of manoeuvrability must be kept in it to ensure that the informants are free to continue their presentation without interruption so as not to lose their train of thought or the logical sequence of the text. This is why, in preparing for the survey, it is necessary to be equipped with a notepad, rather than relying on memory, to record the questions that are raised as the narrative proceeds.
Intellectual preparation also involves considering the different forms that will have to be completed in order to record all the information relevant to the survey.
This comprises at least two aspects: the first involves the technical collection tools, in particular audio and photographic equipment, the consumable supplies, connection cords, microphones, etc., individually identified and the checks required to ensure that they are all in perfect working order.
The second aspect relates to travel conditions and on-site visits.
The survey will be conducted with resource people. The ideal situation consists of identifying these people and even advising them of the survey to ensure their presence and availability. Unfortunately, the preparation context does not always afford us such guarantees. However, they are necessary for avoiding fruitless travel and for ensuring that we have the desired spokespersons.
The interviewers must be prepared to conduct the survey in excellent psychological and material conditions by being careful of the perception they wish to offer of themselves to the spokespersons. From this perspective, they must take care to minimize the difference between themselves and their subjects so as to enhance their integration into the environment they will be entering. They must have an appropriate level of anthropological-ethnological training and a good understanding of the society they will be entering.
It can be extensive or intensive and it is up to the interviewer to carry out the most appropriate option by considering the topic and, in a wider sense, the parameters alluded to above.
The extensive survey approaches a topic in a given space by systematically considering a group of villages or one village, the neighbourhood, the lineage, etc., in a logical sequence, and requires using several interviewers supervised by one researcher who ensures the overall consistency of the process. This type of survey is not necessarily carried out with a selection of preferred informants.
As for the intensive survey, it presupposes the selection of resource people qualified on the topic involved, as well as very good knowledge of the environment in order to maintain the internal logic of the developments in the topic addressed on the one hand, and on the other, to situate the informants as well as their contributions in relation to the environment and the topic.
Once the nature of the survey option is selected and the informants are gathered, the survey must be situated in time and space by specifying the day, the month, the year and the locality involved and also the administrative subdivisions that facilitate its identification. These elements must be recorded at the beginning of the tape so that the information is always part of the recording, while it is repeated on the forms or cases that will contain the media.
Next, all informants will have to be asked to introduce themselves personally: surname, first name, age or year of birth, gender, socio-professional category or function, where applicable.
Once this is done and before giving the floor to the informants, it is necessary to announce the topic on which the survey will focus and sometimes to round out this announcement with a brief description of the context.
The interviewer then gives to the informants the floor. We will see that some eventually have difficulties speaking and keeping continuity in their ideas, and consequently the occasional necessity to encourage the informants to talk by asking them questions each time to help them continue their presentation.
There is also the negative impact the recording equipment can have on the informant. In oral cultures in general, and African in particular, speech is often considered to be a replica of the person who can then be identified. That being the case, taking someone's words from him is like taking his very soul. In addition, by allowing the informant's expression to be repeated to publics that were not the original intended audience, the recording links the work tool to the person accused of being a tattletale. And tattletales are often likened to liars because they relate remarks that were personal confidences, and because they may add to or distort them. These various factors can inhibit the informants and lead to the need for a sort of survey rehearsal to familiarize them with the equipment.
It is also necessary for informants to know what will be done with the product they deliver. Beyond the status of speech so fundamental to humanity, the content to deliver may be esoteric and consequently inhibit the informant. For intellectual honesty and concern for efficiency, it is therefore advisable to announce the goal of the survey and its purpose, even if this results in a form of self-censorship that will be understood with words of the Malian griot and writer, Massamakan Diabaté: "I will say a bit about it and I will keep back a bit." [tr.] But a well known African adage states that "speech doesn't get used up, it gets suspended" [tr.].
Once all these precautions are taken, the survey must proceed after the equipment has been tested to be sure the sound is properly recorded, well modulated and of adequate quality considering the material conditions and the context in which the recording is being made. The principle here is to give the floor to the informants, and if there are many, have them decide the speaking order in accordance with the group's customary rules. This is when, in order to retain these facts as they arise without interrupting the speaker, the interviewer must remain attentive to the content of the narratives, the train of thought, the questions of internal consistency and the questions raised by the presentation. At the end of a presentation, the interviewer may ask for clarifications or allow the next informant to speak while making note of these questions as well as any eventual contradictions after the various resource people speak.
The exchange that will then take place will be a complementary element to the completed initial presentation. It may be contradictory and interesting, even if some questions cannot be debated on-site but may perhaps require individual meetings with one or certain members of the group, or being reviewed by others outside the group which was consulted originally.
If the interviewer is worried about not accurately noting the questions raised by the informants, or if he or she should wish to have the informants listen to their words, the interviewer can use the double recorder method. The first plays back the reel to the informants and the second records this reading and the informants' comments on their first deliveries.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to listen quietly to the recording again and even begin a first analysis of it to note the group of questions it raises. In this instance, conditions permitting, the clarification phase of the survey itself can be postponed. We ourselves have used this process several times in a row; it allows some distancing from the text, for both the interviewer and the informant.
On completion of the survey there is the question of payment. Is it necessary to compensate the informants and in what form? This is an open question to be assessed according to context.
The data collected must be subject to entry on survey forms that contain all the specifications for situating the document in time and space, in relation to the ethnic group and the social body involved within the group. The topic itself must also be indicated, and the informants presented and situated so that a critical approach to their presentation can be taken based on their various roots.
The various survey products must be subject to transcription into the language and according to the alphabet in use, from a literal word for word translation if possible, and from a literary translation. Only then do we have material ready to be made available for a usage corresponding to other objectives.
Obviously, in certain cases, such as the collection of musical traditions or musical instruments, the product may already be used at one level for listening and pleasure, and may be subject to musical transcription for more extensive and broader usage.
The librarian training schools and research structures have also attempted to become involved in taking charge of oral tradition as a source of information, and of oral character as a general contextual framework having an impact on the attitudes and behaviours of potential users to be won over to the written cause. It was a question of making the professionals aware of the issue of oral tradition by having them learn the elements of its general problematics and some command of managing the collections formed and sometimes, but quite rarely, the skills for collecting, processing and using it.
Therefore, beginning in the 1973-1974 university year, the École des Bibliothécaires Archivistes et Documentalistes (ÉBAD) in Dakar included an initiation to the knowledge of oral tradition for librarians, archivists and researchers. To do this, it included training for them in the common-core syllabus and, starting in the second year of the two and four-year cycles, a 14-hour course on oral sources. But the impact of this training was not measured in practical terms and, undoubtedly, few of the students who took it have found themselves in situations for putting what they have learned into practice.
The West African university libraries have also shown their interest in the oral tradition. During its 1972 session held in Lagos, the Conférence permanente des Bibliothèques universitaires africaines de la zone occidentale (CPBUA) recorded in its resolutions:
"Considering that the oral tradition is a source of great importance for research, university libraries must:
- encourage or when necessary create participate in the collection of this oral tradition in collaboration with specialists and researchers;
- organize national seminars that can lead to the creation of oral tradition associations. This way we could examine in depth the problems associated with collecting and preserving oral tradition and look for ways of involving governments and other agencies capable of funding these types of activities". [tr.]
What was the outcome of this generous stand? Did implementation commence? Nothing is less certain!
In the public libraries and in addition to the traditional hour of storytelling, oral traditions are hosted with the participation of knowledge bearers invited to share some of the traditions they safeguard. Recording these presentations helps to build audio holdings, which can expand the library's collections.
Sometimes, the process employed uses a sound recording on an audiocassette read and listened to by a group which then takes part in a debate. In these instances, the cassettes are prepared in advance.
Both these processes are employed in the public reading network in Mali and in sectoral networks in Senegal8.
Moreover, the National Library of Senegal, which will be built shortly, will have to contain an Oral Tradition Division to assume to a certain extent the mission that had been entrusted to the Cultural Archives of Senegal. To this end, a scientific summary of the oral tradition (available production, data banks already created, physical conditions and accessibility of the holdings), the identity of sectors yet to be covered and the definition of collection strategies for the various ethnic groups has to be drawn up. Guiding principles also have to be defined to guide the NL in its mission to collect, preserve and valorize the oral tradition.
A great deal more data exists illustrating the relationship between oral tradition and libraries and could expand the problematic of these relations which require building and strengthening.
Marginalized as a relic from the past in societies which have a long written tradition, oral tradition had continued to thrive in societies without writing, or in those with little development of a written record. But the access to modernization that characterizes our time and the greater and greater place accorded to writing have created a new context that challenges the dynamics of its continuity and causes critical ruptures in its genesis, its management and its transmission to present and future generations.
Hence, some like to remind us that the oral tradition is dying, and they are undoubtedly right. In addition to the mighty written word, it has other formidable challengers among which is television. Take for instance the example of Bernard Dadié, a well known Ivorian author, using the example of the tale, being saddened by what tales are no longer told because the courage or the desire to turn the switch off on the small screen is lacking9. Before him, and in denouncing schools as an insidious tool for instilling oblivion and creating denial, the Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane asks in his famous novel Aventure ambiguë , published in 1961: "Is what we learn worth what we forget?". [tr.]
But oral tradition seems to be exacting a certain revenge with the advent of what has been called the "FM revolution". Actually, radio stations - community, free, private depending on what name is used - broadcasting in frequency modulation are today experiencing dynamic growth in both rural and urban environments in sub-Saharan Africa. This development appears likely to increase in coming years, driven by the phenomenon of globalization which requires more and more ethno-linguistic communities to preserve their identity by focusing sustained attention on their own heritage, and sometimes withdrawing into it. Recent and ongoing evolution shows that radio may be a means adapted to this process. It is also undoubtedly a beneficial situation for oral tradition even if it can't help but call into question the true nature of the "new" oral tradition thus created or driven, and the new roles radio can play in the safeguarding, preservation, usage, dissemination and reproduction of oral tradition.
This is undoubtedly the context in which Cheikh Hamidou Kane answers his own question some thirty years later in his second novel, Les Gardiens du Temple: "... Their experience in the country of the Sessene brought the answer to the question the Diallobés had once asked themselves on the threshold of the new school: Was what we were about to learn worth what we were going to forget? The answer is that it is possible to learn without forgetting, and even to learn again what was forgotten!" 10 [tr.]
Having invited the author to our weekly program Espace-Livre on the Senegalese International Radio and Television Broadcasting Network, we asked him, without really believing it, if it had taken him thirty years of thinking to come to such an apparently simple conclusion. He answered that this time frame had actually been a time for maturing that had allowed technology to invent the tools necessary for ensuring the preservation of the tradition's heritage. He further explained his thinking in an interview in the newspaper Sud Quotidien, no 1698 on 3-12-1998. Today, the " ...electronic revolution gives Africa and oral character new grounds on which to meet modernism... provided that the technicians, the present and future generations can draw from these deposits, that they do not disdain them and that they use modern methods to transmit them to the world. If they produce attractive multimedia works, I am convinced they will make African culture known to the whole world... " [tr.].
By taking us from analogue to digital, the new era opened by multimedia and media that have become commonplace, such as the compact disc (CD), offers the possibilities of alteration and extensive multilocation of oral tradition. The linking of sound, text and images, this kind of dynamic compromise, allows multimedia to embrace oral traditions as forms of cultural expression, in other words, what they represent as the symbiosis of oral text, the gestures that accompany and display it and its material dimension.
Because it is resistant to the heat, humidity and dust that mark our inclement weather, because it is simple to use yet capable of storing a great quantity of data, the CD with its high quality digitization represents an answer adapted to the requirements of preserving and disseminating oral tradition.
In any case, this is what the promoters of the Réseau des Radios rurales locales (RER) (Local Rural Radio Network) believe. They are counting on this medium for the next ten years, considering that, even though the magnetic reel is still present, after years of service it has seen its day.
Therefore, the Réseau des Radios rurales locales (RER), comprising some forty radio stations in sub-Saharan Africa11, launched into preserving and disseminating the oral tradition of the communities they serve and has provided about ten of these stations with audio digital conversion and CD recording equipment12. This position was the result of a strong demand from the community populations served by the stations which was expressed during a workshop held in Labé, Republic of Guinea in October 1997. Thanks to this workshop, there was a constructive dialogue between traditionalists and the communicators serving in the sub-region's radio stations. The workshop had asked that the process start by collecting, recording and airing of narratives on village foundings, particularly those containing the stations or served by them. The outcome was the creation of an Oral Tradition Archiving project called ARTO and three training workshops in 1998 held in Kankan, Guinea (March), in Dakar, Senegal (May) and in Niamey, Niger (August).
In the end, the oral tradition holdings will be recorded on CDs, managed and broadcast by the radio stations in agreement with the populations served, who participate in defining the programs on these stations. Two copies of each CD will be kept at the station with one copy going to the Niamey CELHTO for secure storage and to expand the regional oral tradition database.
Furthermore, these radio stations have formed an exchange network to support each other and share the data as well as what is being learned through this experience. Similarly, and in association with CELHTO and CIERRO14, there are plans to create an Internet site for the network open to world-wide consultation. It will be located in Africa but will have mirror sites in Europe and the United States for greater security. The design and building of the site have been entrusted to GlobeNet, Paris, and discussions are underway for choosing the network's domain name and Internet address.
By establishing their true proximity to the populations served within an 80 km15 radius, and by ensuring some control over their concerns and local language, the radio stations now offer major opportunities for collecting, disseminating and moving toward the preservation of oral traditions. Some of these stations are already testing the enthusiasm that has been created by launching interactive programs on questions such as the pharmacopoeia or pleasant kinship between ethnic entities, patronymics, etc.
Another initiative underway, likely to increase the possibilities offered for preserving and disseminating oral tradition, is the digital satellite radio broadcasting launched by West Beam Worldspace, based in Accra, Ghana. Under this initiative, the geostationary orbit satellite Afristar was successfully launched from Kourou, French Guiana, on October 28, 1998. This satellite will provide digital radio coverage to 14 million km2 of Africa with equal reception quality in every location within the beam space. The developers are contemplating targeting other parts of the world at a later date by launching three more satellites.
They have also asked the major firms Sanyo, Panasonic, JVC and Hitachi to start manufacturing Worldspace receivers at prices adjusted to the target public, i.e., rural populations in Africa. The first receivers have already been tested, apparently with real success and Worldspace is planning to launch its signal starting in September 1999.
The digital satellite radio does not seem to have an oral tradition collection component, but it does constitute a significant and favourable contextual fact that could offer many possibilities, among which a connection with the RER and other partners, for developing programs based on oral traditions.
Other current facts enter into this same favourable context which brings together communities concerned about preserving the heritage expressed in their languages and the modern tools for storing, preserving and disseminating components of this heritage. This is the case for a certain number of projects with the Resource Centres of the Cyberpop or Bombolon d'Enda project; the IDRC's ACACIA project with its definition of national strategies and implementation in Senegal, Uganda, Mozambique and South Africa; the opening of multipurpose community telecentres in Timbuktu, Mali, and in Malanville, Benin, also an IDRC initiative; the Cyberphones more specifically based on health, etc. All these initiatives have a common goal of placing multimedia technology within the reach of the populations in poorer neighbourhoods in major urban agglomerations or villages located in the interiors of the countries involved.
Beyond the initial electronic mail, Internet access, message printing services, etc., the populations will most likely wish to take control of their heritage, to better master the technology of its helper. It is certain that, owing to this new context of adapted technological offerings, oral traditions have new places in the field offered by the digital revolution that is so fertile some have compared it Gutenberg's contribution to printing press.
All these efforts partially beneficial to the oral tradition are being conducted simultaneously with the oral traditions collection, preservation, exploitation and dissemination work pursued by the traditional structures devoted to these functions. Certainly, some, such as the Senegal Cultural Archives, have disappeared under the structural adjustment programs constraints, but some have been modernized with access to new information and telecommunication technologies and the existence of new capabilities for storing and preserving oral traditions.
In such a context, documentary structures are faced with a certain number of crucial questions and should take a position on them:
We are indisputably at a turning point in the evolution of information and communication structures characterized by the availability of highly sophisticated equipment for simplified usage and increasingly open social access. The repercussions of this situation are already clearly felt in the peripheral neighbourhood documentary structures in certain agglomerations in developing countries. They represent a kind of call to define suitable paths and map them with clarity and precision. We must hope that the Khon Kaen conference really is the framework under which such an objective can be reached!
ENDA Third World Coorcom BP: 3370 Dakar, Senegal (Raphaël NDiaye) |
Digital Audio Training Workshop II,
and Archiving, Niamey, August 10-15, 1998 (Revised format based on discussions during the workshop; changes indicated in italics) |
July 17, 1998 |
This format was adapted from the basic documentary format used for managing documentary databases including that of ENDA Third World.
A documentary format contains distinct sections called "zones". These zones are divided into fields. The format proposed here contains four zones:
This is for managing the docket (registration number, input date, producer identification, bibliographic management, document type and eventually a confidentiality criterion).
This is used to identify and record the formal characteristics of the document so that it can be easily identified. It contains the following notations: author(s), title, registration date...
N.B.: Zones 1 (docket management) and 2 (description) are mandatory. They represent the minimum docket for identifying the document.
It may be limited to the document's signals and its indexing by descriptors or it may contain a summary.
This zone indicates the document's location in the documentary holdings which may be physical or virtual (it contains the location symbol and terms of dissemination).
Fields | Content |
---|---|
ACCESS KEY | The machine automatically assigns a registration number at the time of input. |
INPUT DATE | This is the date of the first input. |
PRODUCER CODE | This notation is essential when working on a network. It can be the program's code. |
CONFIDENTIALITY CODE | To be indicated for any confidential document. (optional) |
DOCUMENT TYPE | Specify whether it is an audiocassette, audio reel, or a CD-ROM; in this instance, a CD. |
COLLECTION DATE | Date on which the data were collected. Enter the data in the following order: year in four digits, month in two digits, day in two digits (e.g., 1998/08/14). |
COLLECTION SITE | Keep the same administrative divisions and nomenclatures used in the country. For example, in the case of Senegal: Village, arrondissement, department and region. |
ETHNIC GROUP(S) INVOLVED | Specify the ethnic group, sub-group, language. |
SPEAKER(S) | Specify the ethnic group, sub-group, the socio-professional category, profession, age of the speaker(s) delivering the recorded information. If this is a demonstration/public event, take this information from one or two of the event's organizers. |
DATA RECORDED | Specify in chronological order and in the language of the speaker, the title and the length of each recording. |
AUTHOR(S) | The radio station(s) making the recording and the local community where the data collection takes place are considered the authors. |
INTERVIEWER | Indicate the name of the person in charge of the survey + their title and the radio station they belong to. |
TITLE(S) | Indicate the CD's general title in French. |
RECORDING SITE | Specify the location where the medium was recorded (location of radio station). |
EDITOR | Specify the name of the radio station that provided the recording service. |
PUBLISHING DATE | Specify the date the CD was cut. |
LENGTH + Memory | Specify the CD length. |
FRENCH DESCRIPTORS | From the document, take all the key words representative of its content in French. |
SUMMARY | Choice depends on circumstances or option selected. |
LOCATION SYMBOL | Cassette or CD registration number plus the first three letters of the radio station's name, for example, 0001/LAB (for the first document collected by Radio Labé). |
NOTES | Indicate, where applicable, if there are other complementary sources of information: photos, CDs, brochures... |
The CDS ISIS documentary software initially recommended proved to be complicated and hard to manage. WINISIS, which is its Windows multimedia version, was still being tested and whether it will be simple to use remains to be seen.
During the workshop, the radio hosts said they use EDIBASE software.
The software choice therefore remains a fundamental issue and controls the sequence of the docket's elements, especially the digital blocks in the sequence (see below).
1In Tradition orale et littérature, 9 p. multigr.
2In order, these six societies are: the Ndomo, the Komo, the Nama, the Kono, the Tyiwara and the Koré. According to tradition, the child enters the first society around the age of seven and must spend as many years in each of them to actively pursue his training until he is 49 years old. Only then can he claim the title of wise man.
This is how Dominique Zahan (1960) describes the architectonics of knowledge: "Self-knowledge (Ndomo) gives rise to the investigation of knowledge itself (Komo) and leads a man to confront social issues (Nama). From this point are born judgement and moral conscience (Kono). Expanding his field of vision, knowledge addresses the cosmos (Tyiwara) leading finally to divinity (Koré), p. 32 .
3Cf : La tradition orale, modèle de culture, In. : La tradition orale, source de la littérature contemporaine en Afrique, Dakar, Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1984, pp. 44 and 45.
4LAYA, Diouldé : La tradition orale Problématique et méthodologie des sources de l'histoire africaine. Niamey, CRDTO, 1972, pp. 19 and 20.
5In : De la tradition orale. Essai de méthode historique.- Tervuren, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, 1961.- pp. 119 and following.
6These criteria are relative: to the public or the performers who belong to one or more set social strata; to age and gender; to the accompanying musical instruments (membranophones, idiophones, cordophones, aerophones) and whose use is related to the nature of the social stratum; to the rhythms and melodies with an identifiable existence of melodic cycles; to content and form; to the areas of expression (the concession, the neighbourhood or village square, the woods or the initiation enclosure, the traditional altars, specific sites outside the village; to the time of expression (night or day, certain days of the week, the season and the concerns associated with it depending on the schedule of activities and celebrations). (Cf.: A. R. NDIAYE, in the Journal Ethiophiques, vol III no 3, 1985, pp. 65-87.)
7For details, cf the work by Diouldé LAYA: La tradition orale Problématique et méthodologie des sources de l'histoire africaine. - Niamey-Niger, CRDTO, 1972. - 198 p. In this work, see the list of research and associated structures in the countries covered by the Centre.
8The CICP cases for the environmental education project "A Hope in the Desert", 1989-1997.
9It was during the 1983 conference organized by the African Cultural Institute, Dakar (ACI) and the Pen international on the theme: "Oral tradition, source of contemporary literature in Africa", with the UNDP and UNESCO competition in Dakar, from January 24 to 29, 1983. Minutes published by NEA, in 1984; 203 p.
10In : Les Gardiens du temple .- Paris, Stock 1995, p. 145.
11The network was started by the Agence de la Francophonie with funding from the Swiss cooperation. It was put into operation by Intermédia consultants, based in Berne with the help of various African players including the CIERRO which ensures its coordination out of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
12The stations are located in the following countries: Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.
13The workshop
was held from March 3 to 12, 1998. It grouped together 9
traditionists and 18 participants, the majority of whom were
communicators working in sub-regional radio stations
(Republic of Guinea, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger).
Here is the preamble to the Charter: The
representatives of primitive Mandé and their allies,
assembled in 1236 at Kouroukan Fouga (current Kangaba Circle
in the Republic of Mali) after the historic battle of Kirina,
have adopted the following Charter to govern the great
Mandingue people
... The 44 articles of the Charter
are divided into the following divisions: I Social
Organization (art. 1 to 30); II Goods (art. 31 to 36); III
The Preservation of Nature (art. 37 to 39); IV Final
Provisions (art. 40 to 44).
Confrontations of the schools holding this tradition in other countries within which the territory of the Empire was contained are to be carried on in order to make a true restoration of this major text.
14Centre interafricain d'Études en Radio rurale de Ouagadougou.
15This is the actual range of the transmitters selected.