African oral epic poetry praising the deeds of a mythic hero

AFRICAN ORAL EPIC POETRY
Praising the Deeds of a Mythic Hero

by

Fritz H. Pointer
With a translation of The Epic ofKambili
(as recited by Seydou Camara, the griot)

Translated from Mande into English by
Charles 8. Bird
with Mamadou Koita and Bourama Soumaoro

With a Foreword by

Daniel Kunene

The Edwin Mellen Press
Lewiston•Queenston•Lampeter


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pointer, Fritz H.
African oral epic poetry : praising the deeds of a mythic hero I by Fritz H.
Pointer ; with a translation ofThe epic ofKambili (as recited by Seydou
Camara) ; translated from Mande in English by Charles S. Bird, with
Mamadou Koita and Bourama Soumaoro ; with a foreword by Daniel
Kunene.

p.cm.
English, with English translation from Mandingo
Published in 2012, with Pointer rather than Byrd credited as translator, under
the title: A translation into English of the epic ofKambili (an African mythic
hero).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-4087-6 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-7734-4087-9 (hardcover)
1. Epic poetry, Mandingo. 2. Epic poetry, African. 3. Mandingo poetryTranslations into English. 4. Oral tradition-Africa, West. 5. Griots--Aftica,
West. 6. Heroes-Mythology-Africa, West. I. Bird, Charles S. (Charles
Stephen), 1935- ll. Koita, Mamadou. ill. Soumaoro, Bourama. IV.
Kamara, Seyidu. Kambili.Title. English. V. Pointer, Fritz H. Translation into
English of the epic ofKambili (an African mythic hero). VI. Title.
PL8491.7.P65 2013
896.345-dc23
2012038968

horssbie.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright

~

2013 Fritz H. Pointer

All rights reserved. For information contact
The Edwin Mellen Press

Box450
Lewiston, New York

USA 14092-0450

The Edwin Mellen Press
Box67
Queenston, Ontario
CANADA LOS 1LO

The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.
Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales
UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT
Printed in the United States of America


I dedicate this book to my family who support and sustain me in
so many ways, often without knowing it:
Liziwe (Liz, Lizzie) Boitumelo Kunene-Pointer, my partner;
Aaron Elton Pointer, my brother;
Leona Dones-Pointer, his wife;
my sisters, Ruth, Anita and Bonnie and June Pointer;
my children, Shegun, Nandi, Somori and Thiyane Pointer
and my granddaughters,
Jadah Pointer-Wallace and Selina Pointer-Fox


AnAneedote
A three year old came up to his parents on the beach with his
sand bucket full of water. "Here's the Ocean, Daddy," he said.
That attitude is understandable in a three-year-old, but not so
much so when a thirty year-old comes up with a set of ideas and
says "Here is the 1ruth!" You want to say to him, "That may be

your ocean, brother, but there is a lot more where that came
from, and it's not in your bucket!"


Contents
Foreword by Emeritus Professor Daniel P. Kunene

i

Preface

iii

Acknowledgments

xi

mtroouoooo

1

Chapter One-Some Background on the Epic ............ 3
Chapter Two-Griots and Griottes: Composers
and Performers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter Three-Kambili and History .................. 47
Chapter Four-The Hero of the Epic ................... 57
Chapter Five-Poet and Accompanists ................. 67
Chapter Six-Mooes and Methods of Composition
in K.ambili . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Chapter Seven-Praise Songs, Traditional Religion

and Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Chapter Eight-Birth, Tasks and Triumph ofKambili

111

Chapter Nine-In Praise of Kambili Sananfila

123

Chapter Ten-The Story: A Synopsis

159

The Epic ofKambili

163

Bibliography ....................... .............. 287
mdex....................... .................... 295



Foreword
Epic? What's that? European scholars have often gone to
cultures they sought to research with preconceived notions and
expectations ofwhat to find, often based on their own cultures. Till
recently, they understandably threw up their arms in despair,
declaring a "lack" of this or that feature they were mistakenly
looking for. But now things have changed quite a bit. Ruth
Finnegan stirred up the hornets' nest by coming up with a "lack"

regarding the epic in Africa in her Oral Literature in Africa! There
were protests and "proofs" galore that she was wrong. Some good
things were coming out of her audacious statement: Scholars rose
up in arms, and in the process found, or revisited, lots of epics that
needed to be revisited, exposed, translated, examined and
analyzed. One such warrior scholar was Professor Fritz Pointer
who researched the epic of Kambili. Though not the first to study
this epic, he nonetheless added his voice to the chorus that directly
or by implication declared Finnegan wrong. Among other things,
Pointer underscores the importance of John William Johnson's
declaration that The Greek [epic] tradition is only one of many. In
several places in Africa and elsewhere, living epic traditions can
be observed in their natural contexts. (Johnson, William John, The
Epic of Son-Jara-"A West African Tradition, Bloomington,"
Indiana University Press, 1986, p. 60) Great observation! But
Johnson just misses the nail's head, as long as he does not put the
original language of the epic at the very center of the "natural
i


ii

contexts," and make the translation secondary. There is no doubt,
however, that epic scholars are not only strongly aware of this
need, but that they are moving towards correcting it.
This is a wave that is getting stronger. It should be directed
towards the grammar, morphology, tonology, phonology,
semiology and other aspects of the original language, so we can
observe the prosody ofthe original poem under discussion, and not
its translation. But there is no doubt that the energy in the

discourse about the epic in African cultures is moving in that
direction. No doubt when it reaches that point, Professor Pointer
will be there, either with Kambili, or some other African epic to
underscore the truth of this statement
Emeritus Professor Daniel P. Kunene
Department ofAfrican Languages and Literature
University of Wisconsin-Madison


Preface
Kambili, like Jesus, is a famous character who has an epic,
mythic, story dedicated to him; yet, he may have never lived; there
is no historical evidence, scholarly or otherwise; except an epic
poem, based on oral accounts, dedicated to Kambili's being. It is
amazing, quite amazing that a Kambili or Jesus, or Oedipus,
Theseus, Romulus, Hercules, Perseus, Zeus, Jason, even a Robin
Hood and Apollo who, as far as scientific research and scholarly
knowledge is aware, never lived can become famous. Jesus, the
Christian mythic hero, number three on the list that includes the
above noted epic heroes, meets nineteen of the twenty-two
indicators for heroic status, in Lord Raglan's tabulations oftypical
hero incidents: The pattern is as follows:
1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king (or god)
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and

5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his
maternal grandfather, to kill him, but

7. He is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster parents in a far country.
iii


iv

9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future

kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild

beast
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his ptedecessor,

and
13. Becomes a king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully, and

15. Prescribes Ia~ but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill

20. His children, if any, do not succeed him

21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchers (Raglan 138)

So Jesus, meets nineteen of the twenty-two indicators or heroic
criteria, while Kambili scores seven out of the twenty-two: i.e.,
numbers 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11 and 12.
Certainly, cultural and political forces and necessity are
imperative bere. his, in fact, the result ofcultural imperialism that
even the folklore, the myths and stories of one culture, dominates
another. This becomes particularly serious when we consider that
according to a 2010 Oallup Poll, 35 percent ofAmericans believe


v

(versus ''know'') that the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of
the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe (versus
"know'') that the Bible is the "inspired" word of a Creator. The
same, sadly, is true for literalists and fundamentalists Jews and
their Torah and Muslims and their Koran.
The failme to teach people, worldwide, to understand the joy,
the depth, the metaphorical and symbolic meaning, the creative
fun of oral stories, of folklore, creates the current religious
madness and hysteria and rush toward nuclear war: in the name of
God (Jesus) Allah (Mohammed) or Yahweh (Moses). It may be as
simple as that; especially, when inflamed, exacerbated, by racism,
imperialism, and materialism. There are, for example, many
scholarly studies of folklore and the Bible. Some of the
scholarship in this area includes: J. W. Rogerson, Myth in Old
Testament Interpretation ( 1974), A.B. Lord, "The Gospels as Oral
Traditional Literature" (1978), Susan Niditch, Underdogs and
Tricksters: A Prelude to Biblical Folklore (1987), Folklore and

the Hebrew Bible (1993), Patricia G. Kirkpatrick, The Old
Testament and Folklore Study (1988), and Alan Dundes, Holy
Writ and Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (1999). And, what a
wonderful liberation it is to accept a Gnostic rather than Literal
understanding of these stories. How infantile and how dangerous
it is to promulgate myth and symbolic oral narratives as the literal
word of a divine: Jewish, Christian, Islamic or whatever. How
infantile, as a world we are, to use stories, and interpretation of
stories as the basis for the division of people and nations.
Lord Raglan, in The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and
Drama, informs us that" there is no justification for believing that
any of these heroes were real persons, or that any of the stories of
their exploits had any historical foundation" (13 7). In other words,
these stories including the lands they talk about and-the religious


vi

fundamentalists: Christian, Muslim and Jewish--ere fighting over,
have no claim to historicity.
Even though Raglan says very little about the NewTestament
it is evident that the life of Jesus is similar to this twenty-two
incident hero pattern. What he does recognize and demonstrate is
that the lives oftraditional heroes were ''folklore" and not history.
Current scholarship acknowledges that most material that
constitutes the Old Testament was put together from various oral
and folk traditions, many of them going back to Egyptian and
Grecian times. That was, of course, one of several currents; the
collection that formed the New Testament was another. Biblical
historiography and archeology were developed early in this

century in an effort to substantiate the authenticity or historical
accuracy of the Bible account It is now generally recognized and
accepted that it has done the opposite.
The Bible is not a historical text, and has only vague
resemblances to what took place, as far as historians and
archeologists can reconstruct For example, whether Israel ever
existed is not clear. Yet, as even Noam Chomsky has noted,
elements of the Christian fundamentalists right are one of the
strongest components of "support of Israel"---support in an odd
sense, because they presumably want to see it destroyed in a
cosmic battle ofArmageddon, after which all the proper souls will
ascend to heaven. The impact, the power of story, of art on,
especially, the untrained, untutored, undeveloped mind is often
astounding. I must, in fact, accept Sigmund Freud's conclusion
that ''Religious intolerance ... was inevitably hom with the belief
in one God." What follows is the declaration and political power
to ontologize, assert, and promulgate a Chosen People. Michael


vii

Lackey in African American Atheists and Political Liberation
states:

Of course, the Canaanites, like African Americans, could
have claimed that they were the Chosen People as well,
but given their lack of political power, it would not have
mattered, since the ancient Hebrews, who, like the white
westerners had the political power to ontologize the
Canaanites as ''no-count rascals," just as white westerners

had the political power to ontologize blacks as "lower
breeds. (148)

Here, I cannot avoid the brilliant Huey P. Newton who said:
"Power is the ability to define phenomena and make it act in a
desired manner." So, the Hebrews ofLeviticus and Deuteronomy
were the ones with the political power to enact the Chosen People
mentality at the socio-cultural level (Lackey 148). Here, we're
talking about Western culture and Europeans (primarily) who
have defined themselves as Chosen. Chosen because they say they
are chosen: with myths, folktales and images that confirm their
selection, their preference. So, Africans can be enslaved and
Native Americans and now Arabs can be extenninated in the
name of some god and freedom. That all are expendable, save for
the Chosen: the Priest, Clergyman, or Rabbi and his flock. The
ever-insightful Michael Parenti puts it this way:

Today there are millions of devotees who eagerly await
Judgement Day, convinced that they number among the
Chosen who will ascend into heaven while looking back


viii

gleefully at the libertines and liberals writhing and
screaming in the lake of fire for all eternity. Nice people
these soldiers of Christ, lovers of the divine. (51)
So, as we note in Revelation, Christianity's last momentous
act brings global carnage and eternal torture to billions of
"innocenf' nonbelievers and "sinners." And, for this, we can

thank a loving, merciful, Father-and-Son deity (Parenti 49). And,
Western culture sees itself as the overseer, the arbiter of this fate,
the fate ofmanJdnd. Perhaps, J. Robert Oppenheimer had it right
after all-speaking of America, after the first test of an atomic
bomb: "I am become death, destroyer of worlds." What obscene
pride.
If the world community were to abandon the idea of a God
independent ofthe human mind altogether, in these final words of
Michael Lackey "no one would be able to claim that they were in
possession of an authentic religion or a true God, because
everyone would have to admit, in all humility, that God is nothing
more than a creature of our own minds and that religion is our
own conception of what things are" (150). The study of world
myths, epics and religion has brought me to this point.

This is not a comfortable place to be given that my father and
mother were both ministers. That, I grew up in the church. There
is also the erroneous notion that African people, universally, are
and must be religious in order to be "authentically'' Black, or that
African people are "by nature" religious. I vehemently reject this
assumption and all that it implies. Knowledge is indeed a human
construction, which means that it is illogical and incoherent to say
that Black people are inherently religious. Finally, in the words of
James Baldwin: "If the concept of God has any validity or any


ix

use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If
God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him."

Fritz H. Pointer



Acknowledgments
I thank Con1ra Costa College Board ofDirectors, Chancellor
Dr. Helen Beqjamin and President McKinley Williams for
generously providing me the sabbatical leave time to complete this
work. I, too, must express my deepest gratitude to the Ministry of
Education in Mali, Africa, whose encouragement and cooperation
made the original manuscript possible. Special thanks must also
go to Mamadou Sarr, Director of the Institut des Sciences
Humanies, Falcone Ly, Director ofEducation de Base and Adama
Samassekou, Head of the Section Linguistique, lnstitut des
Sciences Humaines. The African Studies Center of Indiana
University and its former Director, Dr. Patrick O'Meara was a
continual source of moml and financial support to the original
translator of this version of The Epic ofK.ambili, Nancy Quinn.
Also, major thanks and appreciation must extend to Professor
Charles Bird and his wife, Joan, for perfecting this transcription,
and the true hero Sedou Camara the narrator and griot
extraordinaire.
Sincere and heartfelt thanks to Professor Daniel P. Kunene,
emeritus, of the University of Wisconsin who has continued to
encourage me, in spite of my often unorthodox, controversial
ideas. He knows that mine is not the work of an approved and
financed field researcher, but of rigorous and voracious reading
and an insatiable appetite for knowledge of African Orature and
Literature.
xi

xii

Finally, to my colleagues: John Gregorian, Joy EicbnerLynch, Barbara McClain, Walter Masuda and Carolyn Hodge for
enduring my absence. I also want to extend a special thanks to Dr.
J. Vem Cromartie for reading the manuscript and making editorial
suggestions. And, sincere thanks go to Sylvia Macey for her
careful and patient copy-editing and typesetting. And, to my wife,
Liziwe Kunene Pointer for enduring my constant presence and
rehearsal for retirement for one relentless year, eternal love and
thanks.


Introduction
The purpose of this book is to preserve The Epic ofKambili.
It is, as well, to explicate and explain its content and form in the

context of world epics and today's socio-political realities. It is
most certainly to keep alive and make lasting the value of the
research and scholarship that make this project possible. Also, I
hope to perpetuate The Songs of Seydou Camara translated by
Charles Bird with Mamadou Koita and Bourama Soumaoro by
including an accompanying introduction, analytical essays, synopsis and bibliography that situates The Epic of Kambili in the
milieu of the world's epics. Like the translators, my ''primary
aim" is to "present the work of Seydou Camara on its artistic
merits to the English-speaking reader."
In addition, I examine and interpret the aesthetic and
theoretical devices used to explicate epic literature (i.e. myths,
tales, legends, ritual, song) generally and the Mandinka Epic of

Kambili in particular. I offer a comparative analysis of oral
literature and written texts along with the theories and methodology of oral composition and performance as they relate to this
epic; and, to analyze the role and function of griots and griottes,
the guardians of Mandinka oral tradition, in the preservation of
texts.
In Chapter One, I offer background on the epic; Chapter Two
discusses Griots and Griottes: Composers and Performers, Chapter
Three is Kambili and History, Chapter Four is an in-depth
examination of the hero of the Epic, Chapter Five discusses the
I


2

Poet and Accompanists, while Chapters Six and Seven describe
the modes and methods of composition in Kambili and the praise
songs, traditional religion and Islam. Chapter Eight describes the
birth, tasks and triumph ofKambili, Chapter Nine is in praise of
Kambili Sananfila. Chapter Ten concludes my synopsis.
The balance of the book is a reproduction of the Epic of
Kambili with notes. My desire is that you enjoy reading about the
Epic as much as I have in writing about it.


Chapter One
Some Background on the Epic
African oral epics, seen against the background of the genre
as a whole, have served, and still serve today, the same purpose in
Africa as they have for nearly all of the world's cultures; that is,
to instruct people, while entertaining them, about the values,

traditions, great heroes and historical events significant to their
culture. They are constructed around the exploits of an epic hero,
a human being with certain supernatural characteristics, who
overcomes ~or obstacles and eventually triumphs, both
spiritually and physically, for the sake of his people. In other
words: Departure, Fulfillment, and Return. Or, as the inescapable
Joseph Campbell puts it in The Hero With A Thousand Faces:
"separation-initiation-return: which might be named the
nuclear unit ofmonomyth" (30).
Epics, universally, are also significant in portraying some
stage of the cultural or political development of a people, and are
usually narrated or performed to the background of music of one
or more accompanists. In the hunter's tradition, The Epic of
Kambili celebrates the legendary world ofAlmamy Samori Toure,
''the last great Malinke emperor who answered the exigent call for
national survival, organizing diverse groups in and outside Mali
in one ofthe longest, most successful defensives against European
conquest. He was the last epic hero of Mali before the colonial era
3


4

whose courage, dignity, willfulness, and military genius inspired
the last innovative productions ofthe jeliya" (Salaam 485). Jeliyu
or griots are "a caste oftraditional singers who only marry within
their own caste, thereby safeguarding their secrets and their
hereditary monopoly of the profession" (Salaam 60). The Epic of
Kambill, like all epics, is an artistic vehicle, a literary artifact, of
a people's cultural record.

Unfortunately, "the study of the African epic was born in
denial" according to Isidore Okpewho ("African Oral Epics" 98).
In his seminal book, Heroic Poetry (1952), C. M. Bowra bas
difficulty recognizing the existence of epic or "heroic" poetry in
Africa. When discussing pieces of historical praise poetry and
lament songs from Uganda and Ethiopia, he observes that in spirit
they are "close... to heroic outlook" but that, and here he twists the
knife, "the intellectual effort required" to advance such texts to the
level ofheroic poetry" seems to have been beyond their powers"
(Okpewho 98).
Yet another, now hackneyed, disclaimer came from Ruth
Finnegan. In her groundbreaking book Oral Literature in Africa
she dismisses claims of existence of epic traditions in Africa on
the basis of form in which available texts were presented to
editors. That is, "they do not really qualify to be called 'epics,'
because they have been transcribed mostly in ordinary prose, with
occasional snatches of song. For this reason, according to her, they
do not have the sustained formal characteristics ofthe established
European tradition" (98). Finnegan's conclusion, "epic seems to
be ofremarkably little significance in African oral literature" (99).
There is no better time than now to quote from John Johnson's
study of Son-Jara: "The Man.de Epic":


5

It is my hope that the rigid model of Greek epic, a dead
tradition that can no longer be observed in action, will not
continue to dominate scholarly thinking. The Greek
tradition is only one of many. In several places in Africa

and elsewhere, living epic traditions can be observed in
their natural contexts. (60)
In fact, in her book Trojan Horses: "Saving the Classics from
Conservatives" Page duBois informs us that ''recent scholarship
suggests that the epic poems attributed to [Homer] are the work of
a long oral tradition of nameless bards" (39). In addition, duBois
adds:
We need to understand our place in global history.
America's cultural debts to Africa, Latin America, Asia,
the Indian subcontinent, the Pacific Islands, to all those
parts of the world . . One can no longer claim that
Hebraic and classical Greek civilizations are the sole
origins ofa pristine Western culture; we owe to them only
part of what we are. And national identity, the understanding Western nation-states have of themselves, is
only part of what students who live in the global twentyfirst century need to know. (49)
So, it is important, today, to include the histories of Africa, Asia
or Latin America, for example, in introductory civilization and
literature courses, rather than to continue teaching only the
European heritage in Western civilization courses (49). Our
heritage as Americans, as a people, as a world is far deeper and
complex than that of the Greek. As much as we can learn from the
study of ancient Athens, we must also remember it was a slave-


6

owning, militarist, imperialist, xenophobic, patriarchal culture
(40).
Examination of several African epics, especially The Epic of
Kambili, shows that their plots are as complicated as in the best

epics from any place or period in the world. They employ all the
familiar elements ofcharacterization, from physical description to
interior monologue and other devices of psychological probing of
character, and they do not leave out exploration of character by
action, dialogue, or observation through the minds and comments
of other characters. Chinweizu continues, "In the matter of
narrative texture, like all oral traditions they display precise and
deft use of detail as well as summations, variations in perceptual
distance, and montage. Their presentations of their stories also
employ philosophical reflections on human life, on death, fate,
destiny, and the paradoxes of social existence, whether in the
narrator's voice or in the voice of characters within the tale. And
proverbs, aphorisms, and judicious allusions are not at all lacking"
(59). So, the study of the African epic is, as Okpewho would have
it, of necessity, a comparative undertaking (111). He goes on:
"Those who resist this imperative either do not really understand
the Indo-European traditions they so eagerly separate from the
African, or are not willing to do the demanding work entailed by
this field ofstudy. To insist that the African epic should be studied
only on its own terms is to promote a narrow-minded ethnocentrism of dubious merit and intent" ("African Oral Epics" 111 ).
Nubia Salaam, in her 2005 Ph.D. Dissertation, poignantly
concedes:
The biggest revolutionary leap made in the post-colonial
period was the recognition (by the white West-my note)
that a historical epic tradition actually existed in SubSaharan Africa. Since that time a steadily growing