The African Epic Controversy

Mugyabuso M. Mulokozi’s study of African epic poetry from a context-performance perspective, asserting that oral epic poetry is a living and lived event as well as a literary text. The work is based on previously unpublished material from the Enanga epic tradition of the Bahaya of Tanzania, along with material on the African epic gathered from West, Central, Southern, and Eastern Africa since 1970. It arises from the controversies about the occurrence of the epic in Africa from that time. The book includes full texts of the poems in the original Luhaya language alongside English translations. For each poem, Mulokozi presents a profile of the singer, an introduction, and an analysis of the socio-historical context, literary content, and stylistic features. Adopting a sociological, generative approach, he re-examines questions of oral composition, oral poetics, the nature and role of music in epic performance, the concept of heroism, and the epic’s relation to history and philosophy. Mulokozi is Professor of Literature in the Institute of Kiswahili Research at the University of Dar es Salaam, of which he is Director.