Ruth Finnegan, The Oral and Beyond. Doing Things With Words in Africa

This dense and rich book, made up of four parts, twelve chapters, a comprehensive bibliography and index, echoes that of Oral Literature in Africa (1970) and responds to it across time, with the two books standing side by side and summarising a lifetime of fieldwork and Finnegan's passion for orality. As she writes in the preface, "this book grew from my experience of reflecting on how the study of oral forms in Africa has changed since nearly half a century ago" (xi). The chapters, compiled from earlier separate publications and extending earlier positions, chart changes in the study and practice of African verbal arts and in the way scholars looked at Africa, language and performance within the past fifty years. They take readers from the author's first Limba fieldwork onto wider, comparative issues, bridging the gap between oral and popular cultures with the mention of praise singers on TV, Nigerian video production, carving of proverbs in figurines and masks, poetry on video and the web, pop groups, rap bands, trade union songs, praise on football grounds and graduation ceremonies, and AIDS-related performances. Finnegan's survey includes an acknowledgement of the work done in France by Paulme, Grg-Karady, Seydou and others. Focusing on African languages but including the broader study of orality in both scholarly reflection and daily practice, she looks at the way people interact with words to "formulate and interpret the world" (p. 3). The two pictures on the cover page -the expert yoruba oriki poet Sangowemi from Okuku, Nigeria, and Funky Freddy, a Sierra Leonean from the Jungle Leaders rap group -summarise the book: old and new, rural and urban orality.