Conversational Songs of Meru Men: The Hidden Proverbial Wisdom in the Performers’ Pragmatic Rivalry

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to examine the social significance of conversational songs as sung by Meru men in the Meru community of Kenya, while making a critical linguistic and literary analysis of them. Meru men have a variety of song performances which address the community’s daily activities and are very popular for their educative and entertainment value embodying the community’s accumulated experience passed from one generation to the next. To name a few, there is reenta performed by elderly men, auuthi performed by young, energetic, newly circumcised men and kirarire and Kiama performed across age groups. Though performed in different styles and instrumentation by different age groups, the songs are similar in form and content and take a protracted conversational structure, involving the soloist, the respondent and the choral audience. Proverbial wisdom characterizing the songs is replete with aphoristic expressions, which are highly rated as a source of knowledge. The songs comprise the soloist’s witty lines punctuated with repetitive affirmative syllables aaha -iiihi characterized by a rousing rhythm and a lilting tune. The songs are rich in analogy and metaphor, revealing the community’s verbal economy, in which word power is mystic. The data for this paper was collected by the first author for a period of ten years as a participant as well as a performer in his own right. The songs are used to demonstrate the proverbial knowledge underpinning the pragmatic (mock) rivalry between the soloist and his interlocutor in passing Meru community’s knowledge from one generation to another. This paper demonstrates the vibrancy of Meru men’s creative impulse as custodians of the community’s wisdom. A.L. Austin’s (1962) Speech Act Theory and H.P Grice’s (1975) Theory of Conversational Implicature are used to analyze the songs. Key words: conversational songs, proverbial wisdom