Figure 17: Scales of social performances

OMANCE, EVERYTHING LIES IN. . PER F 4

Chapter 4

4.1. Introduction The following chapter focuses on performance as an activity of social healing and how performances relate to the spaces and the people who take part in them.

4.2. Literature Review 5

Performance, The art of

There is, culturally speaking, no art for art’s sake in Africa. Every literary work has a social function. Songs, prayers, praise chants, and abuse are placed at the service of the community (Ojaide, 1992: 43). To speak about performance in African cultures, there needs to be an attempt to bridge the gap between performance as a defined English word, and how that word relates to certain aspects of cultures. Let us begin with the parts of “performances” that can be broken down to more contextual derivatives, namely celebrations, rituals, and gatherings. These are defined by being markers for change or progress such as weddings, coming of age ceremonies, or communications with the spirits. These activities are easy to define as performances as they are major forms of social interaction that include multiple cast members with various relations to each other. These performances have layers to them that deal with traditions that are more widely adopted, and from part of the cultural identity of those who partake in them. They are representations of beliefs that cross tribe, clan and nation that have been reiterated and taught by those with named roles such as healers (Sangoma) whom are the custodians of them. The deal with mediums of communications ranging from song, dance, communing, and speech. These performances are what saturate the free digital library that encompasses social media and search engines on the internet. In some form of irony, they are far more moments of expression than mediums of knowledge in the manner they affect those who are players as spectators. There is more of a reinforcement of the known, more than the teaching of new, as they deal with the moments in which the person/peoples have applied that which is known already. The events serve to reinforce social relationships as much as they serve as reminders of belonging and allow for a management and introduction of social relationships for different age groups as one who takes part in them not does so with different age groups at once, but by being of different age groups within the same type of performance in their lifetimes.

An oral narrative performance in a traditional African setting is normally a very lively event. There is constant interaction between narrator and audience, with the latter responding emotionally and sometimes challenging the choices – of details and moves – made by the former at appropriate points of the performance. In turn, the narrator is driven to adopt various paralinguistic techniques – dramatic, and kinaesthetic, among others – to supplement the narrative text of the tale and thus record an intricate artistic achievement (Okpewho, 2009). The more undefined forms of performance, those of everyday happenings, will be the next point of discussion when speaking on performance in definition. These “performances” will include the unrestricted interactions that happen outside of formal events, some of which hare traditions as they are widely done but are not events that are included when we speak of social gatherings. The actors in the performances are those that have a more intimate relationship with each other, which ranges from family to friends to neighbours, were the performance happens more out of opportunity and circumstance. These moments are not restricted to having prescribed space unlike the formerly mentioned celebrations. In these performances, values, rules, and obligations area communicated and debated by members who are custodians by familial or exposure ties. When a mother scolds a child, a grandfather tells his son an African mythological tale, when a neighbour sends a child to the shop, or an elder asks of the whereabouts of a neighbour’s lover, where a gardener delivers excess vegetables to a disabled neighbour, are all examples that happen constantly in the context of African households. These performances form part of the collection of everyday performances that harbour African knowledge systems which tend to be contextualised far more to the time and place of those who experience them. This gives them the wide variation, and in cases lack of applicability when removed from the contexts they are taking place in. African knowledge systems run primarily in these two forms of performances, those that are social and have known and defined custodians, and those that are overlook, with variations and applications related to the closer social ties of the people who partake in them. They formulate the way of life that African follow, and in turn the identities that they carry within them as “Africans”.