Oral Literature

How Yoruba verbal art is classified into named genres by vocal manner rather than subject, who performs each and on what occasion, and why the European category "oral literature" fits the material imperfectly.

The hunters' chant associated with Ògún, its vocal manner, the ìjálá artist and how he is judged, the contest setting, and what the chant does as self-portrait and as praise of animals.

The chanted poetry of the Egúngún masquerade, its lengthened-vowel vocal signature, the altered voice that marks it as the speech of the dead, and its descent into the Aláàrìnjò travelling theatre.

The secular chanting genre of praise, who the rárà singer is and how the performance is shaped by the audience paying for it, and the accuracy that makes rárà more than flattery.

The chant a Yoruba bride performs in the days before she leaves her father's house, its three-part structure, the social situation that produces it, and what she actually says about the marriage ahead of her.

The dirge chanted through the night at a hunter's funeral, restricted to the hunters' guild, and Bade Ajuwon's argument that it is the mechanism by which the guild's tradition is transmitted.

What incantation is as a genre, the theory of language it assumes, why naming and etymology carry force in it, and the tonal and word-play devices it depends on. A description and analysis, not a manual.

The evening storytelling tradition, the call-and-response frame that opens it, riddles as a separate discipline, and the Ìjàpá cycle read as a body of ethical and comic literature.

Yoruba song across work, ritual, nursing, children's play and social comment, with texts, and the problem of translating a song so that it can still be sung.

How proverbs behave when they are embedded in chanted and sung genres rather than used in conversation, and why a quoted proverb changes what a performance is doing.

The dùndún as a literary instrument rather than a technical curiosity: oríkì and proverbs delivered on the drum, what the drummer composes from, and how drummed, sung and spoken text relate in one performance.

The satirical song traditions of the masquerade societies, especially the all-night Ẹfẹ̀ performance in which named individuals are held to account, and the wider Yoruba institution of licensed abuse.

How Yoruba oral artists are trained, which genres are open to whom, how gender divides the field, how performers are paid, and the named artists the scholarship documents.

How the oral genres feed juju, fuji, ewi and Afrobeats, how film and theatre use them, what is actually being lost, and what archives and projects exist to hear the material.

An analysis of how praise poetry functions as an oral historical archive, detailing what can be recovered from oríkì, methodological debates on chronology and gender, and structural historical silences.