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7. Orature Across Generations Among the Guji-Oromo of Ethiopia

Chapter of: Oral Literary Worlds: Location, Transmission and Circulation(pp. 203–232)

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Metadata
Title7. Orature Across Generations Among the Guji-Oromo of Ethiopia
ContributorTadesse Jaleta Jirata(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0405.07
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0405/chapters/10.11647/obp.0405.07
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightTadesse Jaleta Jirata;
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2025-01-31
Long abstractOromo culture embodies multiple forms of oral literature that have played essential roles in all aspects of people’s lives across generations. Until today, oral literature takes precedence over written literature in Oromo society. However, only recently did Oromo oral literature start to receive the attention of international and local researchers. It was only as of the 19th century that a considerable amount of studies and collections have been made on the different forms of the Oromo Oral Literature of which works of Karli Tushek, Onesimos Nasib, Aster Ganno, Enrico Cerulli, Sheikh Bakri Sapalo, Mangasha Riqxuu, B.W Andrzejewski and John van De Loo are the pioneer ones. The Oromo oral literature consists of several forms known in Oromo language as Gerarsa, qexala, lalaba, makmaaksa, duriduri, oduu-duri, hibboo, weedduu(faaruu) sirba, eebba, abaarsa, kadhata (sagada) and xapha. These forms belong to and performed by different generations such adults, children, men and women. For example, Gerarsa, qexala and lalaba are performed by adult men while oduuduri and hibbo are predominantly known as children’s oral play. The rest are performed by all generations in different social and cultural contexts. These forms have different structure and styles of performance but have similar characteristics which arise from their oral and artistic nature. In this paper, I try to show how performance gives identity and life to these forms across the mentioned generations. I discuss how the performance approach may help to combine the literary and anthropological characteristics of oral literature and argue that the concept “orature”, in the study of Oral literature, may refer to performance beyond verbal actions. Eventually, I assert that the literariness and meaningfulness of oral culture exist in performance out of which it is difficult to understand the literary and artistic quality of African oral literature.
Page rangepp. 203–232
Print length30 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Tadesse Jaleta Jirata

(author)
Associate Professor at Addis Ababa University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0864-2601

Tadesse Jaleta Jirata has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Child and Youth Research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2013) an MA from Addis Ababa University (2005). He has been working as a researcher and lecturer at Dilla University (from 2000 to 2017) and is now an Associate Professor at Addis Ababa University (from 2018 to present). He was a postdoctoral researcher at Geneva University in Switzerland and a receiver of the Swiss Excellence Scholarship in 2016/17. He was also awarded an Open Society Scholar Award and carried out field research in South Africa in 2016. His research emphasises the dynamic relationships between folklore and young people among agro-pastoral communities in southern Ethiopia. His focus has been firstly on oral literature and intergenerational relationships, secondly on the relevance of oral literature in building young people’s social competence, and thirdly on children’s right to education in the context of the multilingual societies of southern Ethiopia. He has published in several high-impact peer-reviewed journals such as Research in African Literature; Northeast African Studies; the Journal of Folklore Research; Global Studies of Childhood; Storytelling, Self, Society; African Studies Quarterly; and Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute. He is also the author of a book titled A Contextual Study of the Social Functions of Guji-Oromo Proverbs: The Savor and Rhetoric Power of Verbal Arts in Everyday Communications of African Peoples (2009). He participated in several interdisciplinary research projects as a leader and principal researcher.

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