Traditional Swahili Poetry

Traditional Swahili Poetry PDF Author: Jan Knappert
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN:
Category : Islam
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description

Traditional Swahili Poetry

Traditional Swahili Poetry PDF Author: Jan Knappert
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN:
Category : Islam
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description


Stray Truths

Stray Truths PDF Author: Annmarie Drury
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628952415
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Stray Truths is a stirring introduction to the poetry of Euphrase Kezilahabi, one of Africa’s major living authors, published here for the first time in English. Born in 1944 on Ukerewe Island in Tanzania (then the Territory of Tanganyika), Kezilahabi came of age in the newly independent nation. His poetry confronts the task of postcolonial nation building and its conundrums, and explores personal loss in parallel with nationwide disappointments. Kezilahabi sparked controversy when he published his first poetry collection in 1974, introducing free verse into Swahili. His next two volumes of poetry (published in 1988 and 2008) confirmed his status as a pioneering and modernizing literary force. Stray Truths draws on each of those landmark collections, allowing readers to encounter the myriad forms and themes significant to this poet over a span of more than three decades. Even as these poems jettison the constraints of traditional Swahili forms, their use of metaphor connects them to traditional Swahili poetics, and their representational strategies link them to indigenous African arts more broadly. To date, translations of Swahili poetry have been focused on scholarly interpretations. This literary translation, in contrast, invites a wide audience of readers to appreciate the verbal art of this seminal modernist writer.

Swahili Poetry

Swahili Poetry PDF Author: Lyndon Harries
Publisher: Oxford, Clarendon P
ISBN:
Category : English poetry
Languages : sw
Pages : 350

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Swahili Islamic Poetry: Introduction, The celebration of Mohammed's birthday, Swahili Islamic cosmology

Swahili Islamic Poetry: Introduction, The celebration of Mohammed's birthday, Swahili Islamic cosmology PDF Author: Jan Knappert
Publisher: Brill Archive
ISBN:
Category : Swahili poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Oral Literature in Africa

Oral Literature in Africa PDF Author: Ruth Finnegan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1906924708
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

Performing the Nation

Performing the Nation PDF Author: Kelly Askew
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226029816
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
Since its founding in 1964, the United Republic of Tanzania has used music, dance, and other cultural productions as ways of imagining and legitimizing the new nation. Focusing on the politics surrounding Swahili musical performance, Kelly Askew demonstrates the crucial role of popular culture in Tanzania's colonial and postcolonial history. As Askew shows, the genres of ngoma (traditional dance), dansi (urban jazz), and taarab (sung Swahili poetry) have played prominent parts in official articulations of "Tanzanian National Culture" over the years. Drawing on over a decade of research, including extensive experience as a taarab and dansi performer, Askew explores the intimate relations among musical practice, political ideology, and economic change. She reveals the processes and agents involved in the creation of Tanzania's national culture, from government elites to local musicians, poets, wedding participants, and traffic police. Throughout, Askew focuses on performance itself—musical and otherwise—as key to understanding both nation-building and interpersonal power dynamics.

Philosophising in Mombasa

Philosophising in Mombasa PDF Author: Kai Kresse
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This is done from the perspective of an 'anthropology of philosophy', a project which is spelled out in the opening chapter."--BOOK JACKET.

Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet in Politics

Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet in Politics PDF Author: Beck, Rose Marie
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
ISBN: 9987753388
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet in Politics ­celebrates the work of Abdilatif Abdalla, one of Kenya’s most well-known poets and a committed political activist. It includes commentary essays on aspects of Abdilatif Abdalla’s work and life, through inter-weaving perspectives on poetry and politics, language and history; with contributions by East African writers and scholars of Swahili literature, including Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Said Khamis, Ken Walibora, Ahmed Rajab, Mohamed Bakari, and Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir, among others. Abdalla became famous in 1973, with the publication of Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), a collection of poems written secretly in prison during three years of solitary confinement (1969-72). He was convicted of circulating pamphlets against Jomo Kenyatta’s KANU government, criticizing it as ‘dictatorial’ and calling for political resistance in the pamphlet, 'Kenya: Twendapi?' (Kenya: where are we heading?). His poetry epitomizes the ongoing currency of classic Swahili form and language, while his work overall, including translations and editorships, exemplifies a two-way mediation between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ perspectives. It makes old and new voices of Swahili poetry and African literature accessible to a wider readership in East Africa, and beyond. Abdalla has lived in exile since 1973, in Tanzania, London, and subsequently, until now, in Germany. Nevertheless, Swahili literature and Kenyan politics have remained central to his life.

Bending the Bow

Bending the Bow PDF Author: Frank M Chipasula
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809386380
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
From the ancient Egyptian inventors of the love lyric to contemporary poets, Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry gathers together both written and sung love poetry from Africa. This anthology is a work of literary archaeology that lays bare a genre of African poetry that has been overshadowed by political poetry. Frank Chipasula has assembled a historically and geographically comprehensive wealth of African love poetry that spans more than three thousand years. By collecting a continent’s celebrations and explorations of the nature of love, he expands African literature into the sublime territory of the heart. Bending the Bow traces the development of African love poetry from antiquity to modernity while establishing a cross-millennial dialogue. The anonymously written love poems fromPharaonic Egypt that open the anthology both predate Biblical love poetry and reveal the longevity of written love poetry in Africa. The middle section is devoted to sung love poetry from all regions of the continent. These great works serve as the foundation for modern poetry and testify to love poetry’s omnipresence in Africa. The final section, showcasing forty-eight modern African poets, celebrates the genre’s continuing vitality. Among those represented are Muyaka bin Hajji and Shaaban Robert,two major Swahili poets; Gabriel Okara, the innovative though underrated Nigerian poet; Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal and a founder of the Negritude Movement in francophone African literature; Rashidah Ismaili from Benin; Flavien Ranaivo from Madagascar; and Gabeba Baderoon from South Africa. Ranging from the subtly suggestive to the openly erotic, this collection highlights love’s endurance in a world too often riven by contention. Bending the Bow bears testimony to poetry’s role as conciliator while opening up a new area of study for scholars and students.

Sketches of Southern Life

Sketches of Southern Life PDF Author: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description