Now to recap one or two points before I put up the 'video' montage of our next Salia song. I've argued that the song that was published in translation almost sixty-one years ago was sung by Salia.
Combine and recombine: Quite naturally, there're some differences between the translated published song and what I shall be putting up. But as I pointed out, that's hardly surprising with Salia. There's always some difference between various versions of Salia's songs. I have in my possession two versions of The Flight from the Wonde. One opens in Teyama (Taiama) and ends in Pewahun; the other version opens in Kono country, then goes through Mano Dasse, Teyama, and ends in Pewahun. I have three versions of Mende Gendei, and I'm sure there're more than three out there. This tells us that Salia, perhaps depending on circumstances such as who he was playing for, how tired he was, or how much of a hurry he was in to get to the next 'gig,' could lengthen or shorten his compositions, combine and recombine certain elements of his songs. But in the main, the song remains the same across versions.
Translations: And now I've to tackle the question of translation. Overall, it's unnecessary to argue whether Dr Little's translation was good or bad; we don't have the recording he did that day in 1947. Suffice to say, for me at least, it's good, the translation, I mean; and he thought a loose, or "free" translation would serve his purposes best. Anyone who's listened to Salia for a while, especially to that song, coming across Dr Little's translation would just straight away tell themselves- 'That's Salia, of course.' My translation has chosen to adhere as closely as possible to the patterns not only of the Mende language, but especially of Salia's lyrical use of the same. Salia always has a surprise in his usages, as if he's toying with your understanding of the various levels of meaning of a word or an expression. I've taken note of that. But as the saying goes, "the translator is a traitor." A 100% faithfulness is therefore out of the question. But Im pretty close, if I can say so myself! Let me know where and how you'd put it differently.
Editor's notes: In Little's article, one of the footnotes was at pains to point out the similarities between that Mende song and Giovanni Bocaccio's Decameron (1353), and Apuleius's The Golden Ass (2nd century AD), among others. But of course, all Salia's ballads are similar in "manner and incident" to the stories in The Decameron. As for Apuleius's novel, you'd have to listen to the ballad "Blow, Jinna Mangoe, blow" to be actually blown away by Salia Koroma. When, in the future, I put up that song I shall try to draw the (very minor) similarities (and the great gap)between the story in The Golden Ass and the one in "Feh, Jinna Mangoe, feh!" (Blow, Jinna Mangoe, blow.)
Showing posts with label kenneth l. little. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kenneth l. little. Show all posts
January 30, 2009
January 23, 2009
Defence Case: Exhibit B
{It's been over a month since the last post, a lifetime in the world of blogging. I missed the deadline I'd given myself to post the ballad I strongly believe Kenneth Little should've attributed to Salia Koroma. My apologies.}
Introduction: For the next piece of evidence pointing to Salia as the singer in Dr Little's 1948 publication, I'm going to depend on the article itself and other Salia songs. And I'm doing this in spite of the fact that Little had opted for a "free" translation instead of one that tries to be faithful to the original 'text.' I'm going to highlight some motifs in the translation and show that these are found throughout Salia's work.
In the second instance I'll point out what may be called discrepancies between the 1948 Man publication and the song I'll be putting up. Expect me to counter such an objection with concrete evidence showing there's no difference. I'll demonstrate, with two little snippets, that these kinds of 'discrepancies' are found in various versions of Salia's works, and that they don't point to different composers.
The personal is always a feature of Salia's compositions. His life was never out of bounds; the singer takes centre stage even when the stories he narrates show him in not very flattering light. In fact that's the case with all the ballads. In this story he runs away from a wronged husband; in another he's trying to put some distance between himself and a Koranic teacher and a poor Syrian trader, both of whom insist on going on the road with him; in another he's running away from an autocratic chief; in yet another, he's fleeing from a witch he had fallen in love with; or he's fleeing from the Wonde Society. The stories are countless, and in each it's his wit that ultimately saves him. In each song, he escapes to compose another song on another episode in "The Adventures of Salia Koroma." And they all have another feature that Little points out about the published song: the humour that runs through the narration
The Fast Woman-She's a permanent motif running through Salia's work, to the point that a paean's often sung to her wiles, her strength, and her insight. These unattached or ready women would've played a big part in Salia's life as a man on the road; at least his songs give that impression. Dr Little translates "poegbua nyaha" as "prostitute," but I believe that's pushing the meaning of that word. The nearest meaning would be "loose." "Poegbua" means to have an illicit affair, so that a married man or woman having an extra-marital affair would've "poegbuanga," had an affair. In the version of the song I shall be putting up, Salia calls himself a "poegbua hindo" (fast fellow) out looking for a "poegbua nyaha" (fast woman). He wouldn't be calling himself a prostitute looking for a prostitute, would he?
Patrol: This word came up in my first Salia Koroma song, Ko Sao. Here it is in Little's translation. It's a recurrent word in the Salia body of work. There's nothing more to say here.
Discrepancies? The song in Little's translation is arranged differently from the one I'll be putting up, but that's nothing new in Salia's work. As illustration, I'm putting up two abridged versions of the same song: "Fishing for Our Lord." The older version, transferred from a hissing 78 LP, has about 35 seconds of poetic prelude before going into the body of the song, the Fishing Expedition (a search for freedom). But scattered throughout that version are poetic lines. In the second version (playing first), recorded in 1980, Salia has gathered up all those lines and brought them to the fore to form 2 solid minutes of poetry. In the first version, the search lasts for 6 minutes; in the second version, it's 8 minutes. The fishing itself lasts longer in the older version. In the older version, the specific body of water he wants- njagbo- isn't defined and characterised until he crosses two rivers, whereas in the more recent version, we're told what the njagbo stands for in Mende cosmology before the slave wades into any water in search of freedom. The older version has three movements, viz: the reason for the expedition and the search for a specific but hard to find waterway; the catch or lack thereof; and the legend of Fawonde. The 1980 version, on the other hand, has four parts: the prelude; the reason, and the search; the frustrating catch; and the legend of Fawonde.
"Fishing for Our Lord"
In the illustration, there're only about two minutes each of the versions of "Fishing for Our Father." The older version plays second. My next post will include the Prelude to the Yohmie (with subtitles) that has made so much ink to flow over the past sixty years. You'll love it when I do.
Introduction: For the next piece of evidence pointing to Salia as the singer in Dr Little's 1948 publication, I'm going to depend on the article itself and other Salia songs. And I'm doing this in spite of the fact that Little had opted for a "free" translation instead of one that tries to be faithful to the original 'text.' I'm going to highlight some motifs in the translation and show that these are found throughout Salia's work.
In the second instance I'll point out what may be called discrepancies between the 1948 Man publication and the song I'll be putting up. Expect me to counter such an objection with concrete evidence showing there's no difference. I'll demonstrate, with two little snippets, that these kinds of 'discrepancies' are found in various versions of Salia's works, and that they don't point to different composers.
The personal is always a feature of Salia's compositions. His life was never out of bounds; the singer takes centre stage even when the stories he narrates show him in not very flattering light. In fact that's the case with all the ballads. In this story he runs away from a wronged husband; in another he's trying to put some distance between himself and a Koranic teacher and a poor Syrian trader, both of whom insist on going on the road with him; in another he's running away from an autocratic chief; in yet another, he's fleeing from a witch he had fallen in love with; or he's fleeing from the Wonde Society. The stories are countless, and in each it's his wit that ultimately saves him. In each song, he escapes to compose another song on another episode in "The Adventures of Salia Koroma." And they all have another feature that Little points out about the published song: the humour that runs through the narration
The Fast Woman-She's a permanent motif running through Salia's work, to the point that a paean's often sung to her wiles, her strength, and her insight. These unattached or ready women would've played a big part in Salia's life as a man on the road; at least his songs give that impression. Dr Little translates "poegbua nyaha" as "prostitute," but I believe that's pushing the meaning of that word. The nearest meaning would be "loose." "Poegbua" means to have an illicit affair, so that a married man or woman having an extra-marital affair would've "poegbuanga," had an affair. In the version of the song I shall be putting up, Salia calls himself a "poegbua hindo" (fast fellow) out looking for a "poegbua nyaha" (fast woman). He wouldn't be calling himself a prostitute looking for a prostitute, would he?
Patrol: This word came up in my first Salia Koroma song, Ko Sao. Here it is in Little's translation. It's a recurrent word in the Salia body of work. There's nothing more to say here.
Discrepancies? The song in Little's translation is arranged differently from the one I'll be putting up, but that's nothing new in Salia's work. As illustration, I'm putting up two abridged versions of the same song: "Fishing for Our Lord." The older version, transferred from a hissing 78 LP, has about 35 seconds of poetic prelude before going into the body of the song, the Fishing Expedition (a search for freedom). But scattered throughout that version are poetic lines. In the second version (playing first), recorded in 1980, Salia has gathered up all those lines and brought them to the fore to form 2 solid minutes of poetry. In the first version, the search lasts for 6 minutes; in the second version, it's 8 minutes. The fishing itself lasts longer in the older version. In the older version, the specific body of water he wants- njagbo- isn't defined and characterised until he crosses two rivers, whereas in the more recent version, we're told what the njagbo stands for in Mende cosmology before the slave wades into any water in search of freedom. The older version has three movements, viz: the reason for the expedition and the search for a specific but hard to find waterway; the catch or lack thereof; and the legend of Fawonde. The 1980 version, on the other hand, has four parts: the prelude; the reason, and the search; the frustrating catch; and the legend of Fawonde.
"Fishing for Our Lord"
In the illustration, there're only about two minutes each of the versions of "Fishing for Our Father." The older version plays second. My next post will include the Prelude to the Yohmie (with subtitles) that has made so much ink to flow over the past sixty years. You'll love it when I do.
December 16, 2008
Defence Case: Exhibit A
I promised in my last posting to lay a reasonable Salia Koroma claim to the 'authorship' of the Yohmeh or ballad published in "free translation" in the March 1948 issue of Man. In the absence of Dr Little's research papers a reasonable claim is all I can make here; but I think there're enough clues in the article and my own research to believe Salia our Mende musician.
Where in the world is...? Little's "middle Mende country" comprises some six chiefdoms in present day Bo District. One of these is the Bumpeh Ngawo Chiefdom, about 13 miles west of Bo Town. Now, from the evidence of the book published in 1951 we know that Dr Little passed some research time in that chiefdom. Right about that time a young Paramount Chief, a chief who was to have the most influence as a patron on Salia's career, was the chief. That Paramount Chief was Francis Kposowa, a former teacher, at once modern and very respectful of old chiefly traditions. Salia and his patron were about the same age and from the first time they met at a durbar they had a special bond. This is apocryphal, but it's said that PC Kposowa called his sub-chiefs and elders and presented his special musician, Salia, asking them to accord the musician, wherever he may find himself in that chiefdom, the respect they'd give the PC himself. It was in this same chiefdom that Schulze ( quoted in an earlier post) recorded Salia and noted him touring in his own Land-Rover. I'd believe that the Land-Rover was the chief's. The relationship between patron and artist lasted for almost twenty years, until the chief's death in the late 1960s. It was probably this chief and his court that Little saw been regaled by the accordionist in the evenings.
The One & Only: Of course in Mende country itself there's always been one accordionist: Salia. That may not have been the case in reality, but older people I asked some years back couldn't come up with any other name. Salia said his father had pupils but it would seem that these didn't make a career of their learning, perhaps because they saw little future in the life of a minstrel in the new Protectorate. Salia himself gave up playing full-time for a short period, taking the train to the Colony and joining the colonial police force in Freetown. He returned to the Protectorate shortly before the outbreak of World War II and settled down to what his father had wanted of him from the start. It was this short sojourn in the colony that was the obvious inspiration for the prelude of the ballad that was to fascinate Dr Little and others. Hanging up his uniform to return to the hinterland, Police Constable 377 Salia Koroma could compare Town and Country in the most vividly poetic and personal way. And if there's anything about a Salia composition, it's the prominence given to the singer's personal life and experiences. No other Mende singer did (does) that. But I'm already anticipating the next piece of evidence!
In the next posting I shall be doing some 'intertextual' work to bolster my claim of a Salia 'authorship' of Dr Little's translation and all that flowed from it. ('Intertextual'! There you are, I said it! I was aiming to avoid any technical jargon or buzz-word in this notebook. I'll succeed yet!) That means that, in effect, I'll be taking the Kenneth Little "free translation" and comparing it as a 'text' to the yohmie I have in my possession. This is in order to see where, even in a loose translation, some words and phrasings can be said to be unique to Salia Koroma.
*The photo is of the 1961 Independence Chiefs' Durbar, held on the occasion of the Queen's visit that year. Durbars or chiefs' assemblies were a feature of the British Protectorate. A section of Bo, Durbar Grounds, is named for those chiefs' conventions. Photo:(c) Sierra Leone Web.
December 11, 2008
A Case for the Prosecution
Which Salia Koroma? Mende Singer, Please: In March 1948, 60 years ago this year, Kenneth Little published a "free translation" of a song by a Mende singer who was then in the "service of a chief in middle Mende country." Three years later he'd publish The Mende of Sierra Leone. That 1948 article was quite logically an outgrowth of his research for the 1951 book. Of course Dr Little was mum on the identity of this musician who "accompanied himself on an accordion" and sang "a traditional form of song known as the Yohmeh, which has a certain similarity to the European ballad."
That the singer's name wasn't mentioned at all is indicative of the anthropologist's main interest in the people he "investigated" (to use his own term). Our Liverpudlian detective- one of the best in the matter- had tracked down a source but in the general interest of the case, the exhibit should be presented without divulging the source. The source (or the informant, in the jargon of the discipline) goes into The Witness Protection system, the reason for which the jury are left scratching their heads. But it's clear to those in the investigation business: The musician could've been only representative of tribal life and his song an artefact of tribal production, exemplifying, in Little's words, "a prominent cultural pattern in Mende life." After all, Anthropology, this science of the primitive, for and by the civilised seeks to define a whole society; its seeks to bring out "a pattern." To do that, the particular is portrayed as the universal; the artist, an individual with his idiosyncratic observation of his own society is projected as the norm. And the informant, quite obviously for his own protection, is sent off to wander down an ever-narrowing tunnel of cracked mirrors set up by the Detective Sub-Inspector.
Salia 'goes on patrol' down the tunnel: Dr Little had no idea just how narrow that tunnel would get. In 1966 Leonard W. Doob published an excerpt from Dr Little's article as a "Mende Poem," a very lax title, if you can imagine one. Given what 'Sub-Inspector' Little had handed him, Doob perhaps had few options as to the choice of titles. Or perhaps he'd painted himself into a very tight corner by the title of his collection of poems. No matter! Other publications would take that and run away with it, all of them fixated on the poetic prelude of the ballad.
For me, though, taking the cake was a book full of irony as it was with utter ignorance, and this for something that was ostensibly to impart knowledge and awareness. In the 1990s an anthology of poems for secondary schools was in use in Sierra Leone. The title of that precious anthology escapes me now; I gave it nothing more than a passing glance then. In any case, I was leafing through this book one day. It had the usual suspects of first and second generation African poets writing in European languages: your David Diops, your John Pepper-Clarkes, etc. You know, the usual suspects. Well, there, on a page all its own, sticking out in its monstrous anonymity was... Of course, it was our "Mende Poem!"
The girl who owned the book had no idea who the composer was, and her teacher hadn't told the class, quite obviously being as empty as his/her charges. I wonder if she believed me when I told her who had composed the 'poem," that he was now an old man living about 250 miles from where she was in Freetown.
How could she have known, poor girl, drunk on everything but what belongs to her? Our investigating officer, who had also prosecuted the case for the Crown, had presented the case he wanted. In the process, recognition had been withheld from whomever it was due. Case closed, what else do you want?
Yes, that Salia. Get him out of there! I'll be laying out the case that the "singer...in the service of a chief in middle Mende country" was none other than Salia Koroma. It's going to be a meticulously pieced-together case that I'll be presenting. I can't do it justice at a go. So it's going to be little piece by little piece. You'll see the beauty of it. To close my case I'll present that famous "Mende" poem, as composed and sung by Salia Koroma. I'll say: "Behold!" Or more appropriately: "Hark!"
That the singer's name wasn't mentioned at all is indicative of the anthropologist's main interest in the people he "investigated" (to use his own term). Our Liverpudlian detective- one of the best in the matter- had tracked down a source but in the general interest of the case, the exhibit should be presented without divulging the source. The source (or the informant, in the jargon of the discipline) goes into The Witness Protection system, the reason for which the jury are left scratching their heads. But it's clear to those in the investigation business: The musician could've been only representative of tribal life and his song an artefact of tribal production, exemplifying, in Little's words, "a prominent cultural pattern in Mende life." After all, Anthropology, this science of the primitive, for and by the civilised seeks to define a whole society; its seeks to bring out "a pattern." To do that, the particular is portrayed as the universal; the artist, an individual with his idiosyncratic observation of his own society is projected as the norm. And the informant, quite obviously for his own protection, is sent off to wander down an ever-narrowing tunnel of cracked mirrors set up by the Detective Sub-Inspector.
Salia 'goes on patrol' down the tunnel: Dr Little had no idea just how narrow that tunnel would get. In 1966 Leonard W. Doob published an excerpt from Dr Little's article as a "Mende Poem," a very lax title, if you can imagine one. Given what 'Sub-Inspector' Little had handed him, Doob perhaps had few options as to the choice of titles. Or perhaps he'd painted himself into a very tight corner by the title of his collection of poems. No matter! Other publications would take that and run away with it, all of them fixated on the poetic prelude of the ballad.
For me, though, taking the cake was a book full of irony as it was with utter ignorance, and this for something that was ostensibly to impart knowledge and awareness. In the 1990s an anthology of poems for secondary schools was in use in Sierra Leone. The title of that precious anthology escapes me now; I gave it nothing more than a passing glance then. In any case, I was leafing through this book one day. It had the usual suspects of first and second generation African poets writing in European languages: your David Diops, your John Pepper-Clarkes, etc. You know, the usual suspects. Well, there, on a page all its own, sticking out in its monstrous anonymity was... Of course, it was our "Mende Poem!"
The girl who owned the book had no idea who the composer was, and her teacher hadn't told the class, quite obviously being as empty as his/her charges. I wonder if she believed me when I told her who had composed the 'poem," that he was now an old man living about 250 miles from where she was in Freetown.
How could she have known, poor girl, drunk on everything but what belongs to her? Our investigating officer, who had also prosecuted the case for the Crown, had presented the case he wanted. In the process, recognition had been withheld from whomever it was due. Case closed, what else do you want?
Yes, that Salia. Get him out of there! I'll be laying out the case that the "singer...in the service of a chief in middle Mende country" was none other than Salia Koroma. It's going to be a meticulously pieced-together case that I'll be presenting. I can't do it justice at a go. So it's going to be little piece by little piece. You'll see the beauty of it. To close my case I'll present that famous "Mende" poem, as composed and sung by Salia Koroma. I'll say: "Behold!" Or more appropriately: "Hark!"
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