Oral Tradition Essay

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There are many ways that messages are transmitted. One way that Africans use to transmit messages was oral tradition. Oral tradition is the recollection about the past that is transmitted from generation to generation by word of the mouth. Oral tradition is interested in how Africans perceived the past. Oral tradition is transmitted in many different ways that help to understand, and make since of the world. They are used to teach others about important aspects of their culture. Oral tradition can be categorized in many different groups. Some of those groups are storytelling, myths, memorates, folktales, legends, epics, songs and proverbs. The myths and legends would relate the world and the meaning of life on earth, and were very powerful in shaping and carrying on traditions in a society. Memorates were accounts of personal experiences or encounters with the supernatural, such as ghost, and spirit stories. The storytelling, epics, and folktales were told to teach moral and social lessons, they also provided provided the guidelines, and keep others from making mistakes or behaving in a mean or selfish way. They were also used to explain and teach others about the origins of a tradition, origins of nature, and even a value to the village. The songs and proverbs were both and educational and expressive tools of oral tradition. These different forms of oral tradition dealt with how Africans defined themselves before others started defining them, it was the main source of information about how Africans lived before others started writing about them. “Ancient writing traditions do exist on the African continent, but most Africans today, as in the past, are primarily oral peoples, and their art forms are oral rather than literary”. One example of a popular story that is frequently told and recounted to this day is “An Epic of Old Mali”. This story tells Sudiata’s

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