The Epic of Son-Jara

The Epic of Son-Jara

Author: Fa-Digi Sisòkò

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9780253331021

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..". a major addition to the literature on oral traditions." -- Journal of Religion in Africa This 750-year-old epic celebrates the exploits of the legendary founder of the Empire of Old Mali. It constitutes a virtual social, political, and cultural charter and embodies deep-rooted aspects of Mande cosmology. The fully annotated translation is accompanied by an introduction that provides a historical and contextual framework for understanding the recitation of this African epic.


Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

Author: Jan Furman

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0195146352

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Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.


The Princeton Handbook of Multicultural Poetries

The Princeton Handbook of Multicultural Poetries

Author: Terry V.F. Brogan

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 0691228213

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Drawn from the acclaimed New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, the articles in this concise new reference book provide a complete survey of the poetic history and practice in every major national literature or cultural tradition in the world. As with the parent volume, which has sold over 10,000 copies since it was first published in 1993, the intended audience is general readers, journalists, students, teachers, and researchers. The editor's principle of selection was balance, and his goal was to embrace in a structured and reasoned way the diversity of poetry as it is known across the globe today. In compiling material on 106 cultures in 92 national literatures, the book gives full coverage to Indo-European poetries (all the major Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages, as well as other obscure ones such as Hittite), the ancient middle Eastern poetries (Hebrew, Persian, Sumerian, and Assyro-Babylonian), subcontinental Indian poetries (the widest linguistic diversity), Asian and Pacific poetries (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, and half a dozen others), continental American poetries (all the modern Western cultures and native Indian in North, Central, and South American regions), and African poetries (ancient and emergent, oral and written).


Languages and Their Speakers

Languages and Their Speakers

Author: Timothy Shopen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 1987-05-29

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780812212501

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Languages and Their Speakers provides an introduction both to languages themselves and to their social functions. Written especially for nonlinguistics majors, the book considers how speakers know their languages—know them as grammatical systems and know them as part of a cultural matrix.


Epic Traditions of Africa

Epic Traditions of Africa

Author: Stephen Belcher

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1999-10-22

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780253212818

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"Belcher's volume contains a much needed and extremely well-integrated overview and discussion of a vast inter-related West African culture complex that deserves and requires the kind of original, insightful treatment it receives here." —David Conrad Epic Traditions of Africa crosses boundaries of language, distance, and time to gather material from diverse African oral epic traditions. Stephen Belcher explores the rich past and poetic force of African epics and places them in historical and social, as well as artistic contexts. Colorful narratives from Central and West African traditions are illuminated along with texts that are more widely available to Western readers—the Mande Sunjata and the Bamana Segou. Belcher also takes up questions about European influences on African epic poetry and the possibility of mutual influence through out the genre. This lively and informative volume will inspire an appreciation for the distinctive qualities of this uniquely African form of verbal art.


Mande Music

Mande Music

Author: Eric Charry

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2000-10

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 9780226101620

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With Mande Music, Eric Charry offers the most comprehensive source available on one of Africa's richest and most sophisticated music cultures. Using resources as disparate as early Arabic travel accounts, oral histories, and archival research as well as his own extensive studies in Mali, Guinea, Senegal, and the Gambia, Charry traces this music culture from its origins in the thirteenth-century Mali empire to the recording studios of Paris and New York. He focuses on the four major spheres of Mande music—hunter's music, music of the jelis or griots, jembe and other drumming, and guitar-based modern music—exploring how each evolved, the types of instruments used, the major artists, and how each sphere relates to the others. With its maps, illustrations, and musical transcriptions as well as an exhaustive bibliography, discography, and videography, this book is essential reading for those seeking an in-depth look at one of the most exciting, innovative, and deep-rooted phenomena on the world music scene. A compact disc is available separately.