The relevance of the oral tradition in contemporary african societies
Unó yúcki shró ondima mersh nghtanka n'da n'si ankry
Keywords:
África, Tradição oral, Memorização, Identidades culturais, Sociedade africanasAbstract
The relevance of the oral tradition in contemporary african societies
Abstract: The article discusses the relevance of oral tradition in contemporary African societies. Oral tradition values and preserves African cultural identities and knowledge. As people's memories, it allows the new generation to learn from the past through the orality connoisseurs. However, it is notable that it is losing hegemony but remains important. Nowadays, the oral tradition faces many obstacles because of the tensions between it and writing, also because of the changes imposed or influenced by modernity in societies in Africa. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to show the role of oral tradition in Africa today as a means of knowledge transmission and preservation of cultural identities. In relation to the methodological path of this work, it was based on a bibliographic review where the collection and analysis of information from other researchers pertinent to the subject developed was carried out. In the results achieved, it can be seen that, nowadays, oral tradition allows mutual learning between generations or different social strata in Africa. However, literal memorization has a lot of importance in oral tradition, being that it is through it that the elders keep the information about stories of their times, of their ancestors and then pass it on to new generations and this process is continuous. Finally, oral tradition has a very important social role today in several African societies understood as an educational practice that teaches and preserves the stories for future generations not to lose.
Key words: Africa. Oral tradition. Memorization. Cultural identities. African societies.
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