Verba Africana Video Documentation of Ewe Stories from Ghana

Abstract

African oral poems, epics and tales, but also proverbs, prayers, incantations and a variety of other oral genres have been collected and written down for the purposes of linguistic, literary and anthropological analyses. As a result, a large amount of ‘oral texts’ in African languages (and their translation in European languages) is nowadays available for research and teaching. However, these ‘oral texts’ are written transcriptions, and, in printed form, the characteristic orality given by the ‘live’ performance of oral genres fades away. What gets lost in the written form are the intonation and the gestures, along with the eventual musical accompaniment, the interactions between performer and audience, the clothing and scenography, and the context of the performance. A number of such elements can be recorded on video. Video recording can indeed support the documentation as well as the study and presentation of oral aspects that we miss when dealing exclusively with the written transcription and translation of oral languages and oral literary genres. This series responds to the increasing need for new electronic tools that can integrate the written and audio-visual materials for research, teaching and learning of African languages and oral literatures