AFRICAN ORAL TRADITION
For centuries the oral traditions that helped communities in West Africa develop and prosper, have supported the spiritual survival and political progress of Africans in America. Most of the slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere during the American slave trade came from West Africa. Although they came from many different cultures and spoke hundreds of different languages the social and political structures of their neighboring societies were similar in many ways. Africans brought to the new world faced unimagined brutalization and alienation, but found comfort in the similarities of their common heritage. Although their indigenous language was stripped away, by custom and practice they retained their manner of social interaction, an essential part of the cultural fabric from which they were stolen.
During slavery, the abolitionist movement, and the long continuing struggle for civil rights, African-Americans leaned heavily upon the discipline and tradition of oration to inspire, unite, and motivate themselves.
From a population of alienated, oppressed masses rose master orators, who challenged and refuted in debate and declamation, the alleged justifications for slavery, America’s peculiar institution. Together with their white brethren, who also decried the injustice America had wrought, they hammered at the moral conscience of America until she had to accept her departure from her declared democratic principles and professed Christian foundations. During Reconstruction the voices of Black politicians were raised to propose remedies for the fractured union. Africa’s children again invoked the power of the spoken word, to impart wisdom and leadership.
Today new centers of power and influence emerge around the messages African-American youth share with one another through the medium of Rap music. “Droppin’ science,” and “droppin’ knowledge” are terms they use to describe their expression of their community’s need for self-definition, self-determination and self-expression. In spite of the sometimes hollow portrayal of self-destructive violence or low moral values, the poets of the new generation have joined the power of the spoken word with media of mass communication to influence millions of their peers.
By planting the seeds of a shared idea in many minds they endeavor to shape the psychology of their community and write a new chapter in their collective consciousness.
