Melodies of Memory and Modernity: Food, Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Continuity in EkeGusii Songs

Knowledge is represented in selected EkeGusii songs and considers how such representations contribute to cultural memory and continuity. The study adopts a qualitative interpretive design, drawing on discourse analysis and semiotic approaches to examine two purposively selected EkeGusii songs circulated through YouTube. The songs were transcribed in EkeGusii and translated into English, with attention to culturally significant lexical items, metaphors, directives and references to food practices. The analysis identifies four interconnected domains of indigenous knowledge: food and survival, communal sharing and social responsibility, health and hygiene, and spirituality and collective identity. Particular EkeGusii food terms function as cultural signs that preserve knowledge of traditional foods while linking food practices to work, wellbeing, morality and community. The findings suggest that the songs do more than entertain: they provide mnemonic spaces through which cultural knowledge and values are articulated and remembered. At the same time, their circulation through digital media demonstrates how oral cultural forms can enter new communicative environments while retaining elements of their linguistic and cultural identity. The article contributes to scholarship on African oral traditions by foregrounding EkeGusii song as a site of indigenous knowledge transmission and cultural continuity.