Tonga Funeral Songs: A Path to understanding the Tonga People of Southern Zambia
Keywords:
Tonga, Funeral Song, Culture, Understanding
Abstract
The focus of this article is on the Tonga funeral songs as a path to understanding the Tonga people of southern Zambia. A funeral song also known as dirge is ‘a highly stylistic form of expression that is governed by specific poetic recitative conventions used to express the feelings of the mourners in a determinate form and performance procedure’ (Akporobaro, 2001: 66). Funeral songs (dirges) are ubiquitous in Africa and indeed in the Tongaland when death strikes in the community. There are a number of activities that take place during and after the mourning period and these include song performances, cleansing, animal sacrifices, burial, memorial ceremonies and many others. This article however concerned with the funeral songs that are performed during the funeral among the Tongas. Being a qualitative study, ten informants were purposively selected from Gwembe, Choma, Namwala, Mazabuka and Kabwe districts respectively. Thematic analysis was employed during data analysis as it was found befitting of the qualitative research being undertaken. The article restricted itself to songs such as Kuzemba, Kuyabila, Bukonkoolo, Zitengulo, Buntibe and Nyeele songs as conduits through which one can understand the Tonga people since music is an expression of the social fabric of the culture.References
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2. Myths of Greece and Rome. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
3. Akporobaro, F.B.O. (2001). Introduction to African Oral Literature. Lagos: Lighthouse Publishing Company Limited.
4. Bulfinch, T. (1979). Myths of Greece and Rome. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
5. Aristotle, trans. Epps, P.H. (1970). The Poetics of Aristotle. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.
6. Barry, P. (2002). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
7. Boahen, A.A. (1987). African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
8. Chibbalo, E. (1983). ‘Social Context and Literary Aspects of Kuyabila Songs: A study of Kuyabila as performed by the Tonga of Southern Province of Zambia’. M.A. Thesis, University of Zambia.
9. Chilala, C. (2003). ‘Marriage, Gender and Freedom in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House: A Zambian Perspective’. In Proceedings of the Relevance of A Doll’s House. Dhaka: Centre for Asian Theatre, 101-118.
10. Chilala, C. (2011). ‘The African Narrative Tale as a Tool of Education’. In Schonmann, S. (Ed.) Key Concepts in Theatre/Drama Education. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers, 159-164.
11. Chilala, C.H.K. (2016). ‘Footprints of Caliban: Appropriation of English in Selected African Fictional Texts’. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 39(2), University of California (UCLA), 59-72.
12. Chilala, C. (2019). ‘Anglophone Zambian Prose Fiction: Tradition or Transition?’. Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 1(1), 13-29.
13. Chilala, C. and Jimaima, H. (2020). ‘The Tonga Art of Kulibanda: A Literary and Linguistic Analysis’. Journal of Law and Social Sciences, 3(1), 160-177.
14. Evslin, B., Evslin, D. and Hoopes, N. (1967). Heroes and Monsters of Greek Myth. New York: Scholastic Inc.
15. Finnegan, R. (2012). Elegiac Poetry. In Oral Literature in Africa \[online]. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Available at: http://books.openedition.org/obp/1193. ISBN: 9781906924720.
16. Goldbrunner, J. (1966). Individualism: A Study of the Depth Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
17. Miyoba, G. (2012). Tonga Funeral Tradition: ‘Cleansing’. Available at: https://kitweonline.com/kitweonline/discover-kitwe/culture/tonga-tradition-cleansing.html (Accessed: 10 May 2020).
18. Mulenga, P.M. (2018). Tonga Mourning Ritual (Dilwe): The Therapeutic Aspect. Lusaka: Fenza Publishers.
19. Siakavuba, B.J. (1989). ‘Folk Literature and Tropical Issues: An Investigation of Valley Tonga Narratives Dealing with Marriages’. M.A. Thesis, University of Zambia.
20. World Heritage Encyclopedia (n.d.). Music of Zambia. N.P.: WHE Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press.
Published
2022-06-09
How to Cite
Lubbungu, J. (2022) “Tonga Funeral Songs: A Path to understanding the Tonga People of Southern Zambia”, Journal of Law and Social Sciences, 4(4), pp. 35-42. doi: https://doi.org/10.53974/unza.jlss.4.4.769.
Section
Articles