PERFORMANCE STYLES AND LITERARY DEVICES IN HƎBA TRADITIONAL DIRGES

Abstract

Songs are among the cultural heritages that Hǝba ethnic group transmits from one generation to another. It has been observed in the last three decades that Hǝba funeral songs are seriously threatened by the presence of foreign religious funeral songs. As 95% of the tribe has embraced either Christianity or Islam, traditional funeral songs are hardly performed at funeral ceremonies. In this study, performance style and literary devices are investigated with the view to revitalize and preserve the fast fading cultural values embodied in funeral songs.The corpus of the study consists of two dirges recorded at traditional funeral ceremony of the author’s grandmother in 1995.Being non-numerical data, the selected dirges were analysed qualitatively. The result showed that Hǝba dirges have formal organisational structures-opening, middle and ending. The outcome of the study also showed that informal style is predominantly used in the performance of the two dirges.  Both dirges have formal organizational structures which are opening, middle and closing. The analysis of the syntactic showed that the performers used simple sentences intertwined with complex sentences. Also, it was uncovered that informal style was predominantly used by the performers in expressing their grief over the loss of their love ones.

 Informal expressions were prevalent in the two texts literary devices such as imageries, symbolisms, metaphors, similes, allusions, and repetitions among others were employed in the expression of the griefs. These literary devices dress the content of the dirges and convey clearly the performers’ feelings of grief better.