Comparative study of story-telling in four Bantu languages

The projects basic aim is a systematic, comparative assessment of the story-telling practice, its local organization, the personal characteristics of its carriers (female and male) and the structure and content of the stories in four clusters of related Bantu languages: (1) Luganda (spoken in southern Uganda); (2) Lucazi (in Angola and northwestern Zambia); (3) Chichewa (in Malawi, eastern Zambia and central Mozambique); and (4) Ciyao (in Malawi and Mozambique). Two of them, Lucazi and Ciyao are minority languages. These languages have been chosen in part because of the availability of a large sample of previous recordings from field-work by members of our research team during the last 50 years, the earliest from the 1960s, in all 688 item recorded contextually in the villages. The plan is to take these recordings back to the communities where they were made and pose a variety of research questions, besides transcribing the materials in the original languages. A three-year endeavor, the project also aims at an assessment of the present-day situation of story-telling under the impact of new leisure time activities by young people (TV, internet etc.), especially as concerns the fate of minority languages, and streamlining effects by the dominant language. Scientifically, the range of this project, as outlined in the application, is interdisciplinary, addressing research questions pertaining to cultural anthropology, Bantu linguistics, oral literature studies, ethnomusicology and educational science. Accordingly, our team is composed of personnel with respective specializations.

Our three-year audio and video recording endeavor of story-telling events in seven east-central African countries, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania and Uganda has resulted in a substantial coverage of the tradition, especially in minority languages under threat of disappearance. A particular focus was Luchazi (ZONE K, group 10 of the Bantu languages) spoken in northwestern Zambia and eastern Angola, Ciyao (ZONE P, Group 20), Khipangwa (G 65) and spoken versions of the Chichewa-Cinyanja dialect continuum (ZONE N, Group 30). Related documentation work was also carried out in Uganda, focusing on engero in Lusoga (ZONE E, Group 10). The primary objective of our fieldwork has been to put large samples of story-telling in these languages on record to serve as a basis for comparative research with a focus on performance style, individual repertoire, age differences among story tellers, gender differences, style and diction, borrowings from neighboring languages, cultural diffusion of motifs and contents across ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Our documentation was also made to establish links with earlier documentations of the story-telling practice in the region by other teams and our own. The evaluation of this large data basis is expected to provide interdisciplinary insights in the areas of oral literature studies, cultural anthropology, Bantu linguistics, socio-linguistics, art history, ethnomusicology, depth psychology and world-wide culture history. Our three-year field research trips to hundreds of communities across the region, with over 1300 items recorded has also stimulated awareness of the value of story-telling, not only folktales, but also other forms or orature, as an art, entertainment and transmission of wisdom in the societies concerned. In this context, the Oral Literature Research Programme, Chileka, Malawi has also launched a program of publications, including the work of the most senior carrier of the Luchazi language (Zambia, Angola) Kayombo kaChinyeka, born 1929, and also texts written by Khipangwa speaker Basilius Saprapason (Tanzania) born 1944 when he was a student in 1960- 62, including the Pangwa creation myth.