Modern Folklore, Identity, and Political Change in Burundi

Political change in Burundi has been influenced by a number of factors that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, the impact of folklore on national unity and division is examined in the hope of shedding light on the cultural complexities-as expressed folkloristically-that have affected the formation of rigid ethnic identities and ultimately the violent landscape of Burundi.This research builds on Liisa Malkki's work on identity construction among Burundian Hutu refugees in Tanzania (1989; 1990; 1995) and Rene Lemarchand's analysis of political discourse as a system of possible definition of ethnic selves and on how, through such discursive techniques, ethnicity is transformed, mobilized and ultimately incorporated into the horrors and irrationality of genocide violence (Lemarchand 1994, xxii). The and social manipulation of folklore has the potential to exacerbate conflict along ethnic and sub-ethnic lines while it can also facilitate national and sub-national unity. Both of these processes often occur simultaneously, thus complicating the academic quest for parsimonious explanation of complex social and phenomena. We contend that the folkloric foundation of the long-term, transformative process of identity creation needs to be factored into analyses of change in the multi-ethnic terrain of Burundi society.2 Folklore is defined in this paper as a process of narration and interpretation, which serves as an integrated framework that comprehends narrated event and narrative event within a unified frame of reference (Bauman 1986, 6). We specifically examine events and their actualization in stories as an ongoing process that uses traditionally recognized genres of expressive folklore such as, inter alia, ritual, songs, personal stories, poems and sayings. Before the advent of colonialism, ritual was used as a means through which the power of the monarchy and the social values of a predominantly horticultural people were reinforced. Rituals such as umuganuro contributed to this process and impacted the construction of fluid and