Draft talk:Oral traditions of the Soninke people

Sources

@XxTechnicianxX I found this source that discusses Soninke oral traditions generally [1] Also some other sources that we can check the Courlander and Harold versions against, or have a another section on versions Kowal2701 (talk) 16:24, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

[2] [3] Kowal2701 (talk) 16:25, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for showing me these. I am now downloading Oral Epics from Africa (1997) and Epic Traditions of Africa (1999). Unfortunately, I cannot access newer editions of African Genesis. Although, these should be useful for comparing/contrasting Frobenius and Fox's African Genesis (1937), which Courlander copied verbatim in A Treasury of African Folklore (1975) with the exception of The Messenger to Maftam. As these are recent books, we can even utilize relevant reviews, e.g. [4]. I will attend to other sources after summarizing Frobenius and Fox's accounts for a base understanding as they are our most complete versions. XxTechnicianxX (talk) 16:50, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Lmk which ones you can't access, I am happy to purchase and share, they'll be really useful for other articles. The work you've done so far is great Kowal2701 (talk) 16:55, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Btw in Epic Traditions of Africa, Jara is Kingdom of Diarra Kowal2701 (talk) 16:57, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Btw I read but can't find the analysis that said the tradition of Wagadu likely contains info from prehistory, really frustrating lol Kowal2701 (talk) 17:02, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Separate articles for the story summaries?

Wow! So much historical narrative! That is really cool!

My guess is that this article will be more useful if it is more "top-level" and the detailed summaries in articles of their own...? For example, "Resdiscovery of Wagadu" could go in the Wagadu article...?

The article on Gassire's Lute is useful (and it has a less detailed summary; for some readers, less detailed summaries can actually be better since they will read the whole thing, and might balk at reading a summary that is very long). I notice that the Gassire's Lute article needs some citations; I will work on that tomorrow.

Oral traditions include more than just epic and historical narrative; typically African oral traditions include songs and poetry (which come in many genres), tales (which come in many genres), riddles, proverbs, oratory of various forms. I don't know what we will find for those other traditions in Soninke, but we need to anticipate the possibility, so I'm going to add in these other subheadings now, along with the historical narratives that are there already. I hope that is okay! And hopefully we can find material for them (if not, then we can remove them when we're done). Laurakgibbs (talk) 02:21, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Per WP:PLOT, we cannot have articles entirely composed of summaries, hence the additional references to the current summaries of Frobernius and Fox (1937), which will become sections for general summaries with version discrepancies. Since none of the sections with main articles are suitable to be exported, I would ask here what material is ready to be moved with the section's main contributors. Naturally, that should come after most sources are included. Of course, you are free to do independent work on the main articles, but I would advise against relying on written text here for now. XxTechnicianxX (talk) 05:05, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Good point, I agree for the ones that have multiple sources and analysis Kowal2701 (talk) 06:20, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Soninke Bibliography

Creative Commons licensed bibliography online! Very useful:

• Mellott, Noal (2008-04-07). "Bibliographie spécialisée: Mise a Jour de la Bibliographie sur les Soninke/Sarakole". Journal des Africanistes (in French). 56 (1). Persée - Portail des revues scientifiques en SHS: 169–183. Retrieved 2024-08-17.

Laurakgibbs (talk) 03:23, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

References we cannot access

I am new to writing an article from scratch: do we include references that are clearly relevant and important but which we are not able to consult ourselves directly? For example: I do not have access to this French dissertation at EHESS: Fadiga Samba's Littérature orale soninke: le conte - update: REFERENCE NOW ADDED to article - but based on this summary, it is clearly relevant to the importance of the hyena in Soninke storytelling tradition. Summary from Gorog's Littérature orale d'Afrique noire: bibliographie analytique: "Considérations sur la société soninké la chasse, la pêche, et les animaux tels qu'ils apparaissent dans les contes, 8 contes mettent en scène l'hyène, ils sont suivis par une analyse des thèmes et une interprétation sociale du conte." Laurakgibbs (talk) 03:35, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

If they remain as stray citations or links, I will eventually format them in the bibliography. However, if a source is not used and consensus is it is inaccessible, then we could move it to a "Further reading" section below "Sources". XxTechnicianxX (talk) 05:10, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Based on the summary in the (very reliable) bibliography where I found the reference, I feel confident including it as a reference in the paragraph I wrote about hyenas in the Soninke animal tale tradition; if it's okay for me to cite on that basis, I will gladly include the citation. Please confirm that is okay. Laurakgibbs (talk) 05:32, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

It is not preferred to cite a summary, but it is permitted. However, you must directly convey the details. For example, if a summary says the author argues __, then you can only write their argumentation, i.e. "Author (1923) argues", rather than citing it as fact as we may with other unopposed sources. XxTechnicianxX (talk) 13:18, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

This is so helpful; thank you. I wish the summary provided the author's argument, but it does not. It only notes the scholarly attention paid to the hyena, which is better than nothing. (As I said to Kowal2701, working on a topic for Francophone African countries is much more challenging than my experience working on Anglophone countries. Thanks again! Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:23, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Done. Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:11, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@Laurakgibbs:: If you need any reference from French Africanists, perhaps works by Genevieve Calame-Griaule can cover that front. KHR FolkMyth (talk) 15:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Short-form oral tradition genres done-ish

I've added all the material I can find relevant to Soninke proverbs, riddles, and folktales. Accessible sources are limited, but I added what I could find! That's probably the full scope of my ability here; I'm glad to have been able to contribute something. If I find more material relevant to proverbs, riddles, or folktales, I will make sure to come back and add them!

There needs to be an article on hare in African folktales and another on hyena in African folktales; maybe I will tackle those someday, and then it would be possible to put these Soninke hyena and hare folktales in context! :-) Laurakgibbs (talk) 05:37, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Great work, but it may be best to summarise the tales in the source, or list them. I think discussing sources is WP:Original research. As Wikipedia editors we can only paraphrase the content in a source, we can’t discuss the source unless there’s another source like a review which does that. We basically have no licence to write about our own thoughts on something, and even though what you wrote is factually correct, it still seems like original research. We can only paraphrase and reword content or summarise it, and we can cherrypick what to take from a source Kowal2701 (talk) 06:17, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. That is why I have worked so far on English-speaking African countries; it took me several hours just to find these scanty sources in French, and most of the sources I needed are not accessible. But I can translate from French, so let me know what I should do next:

1. proverbs: I'm stuck; I have access only to Soninke-language source

2. riddles: I can select some riddles and quote in Soninke and French, and translate the French to English

3. tales: I can list ALL titles in Soninke and French (and translate the French to English), or just select a few titles, and/or include short summaries of the tales.

Let me know what is best! This is totally new territory for me because of the extremely limited reference material available (you are lucky with the epics which have received a lot of scholarly attention!) Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:10, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah agreed lol. I think have the title in English and then French and Soninke in brackets?

1. Unfortunately there’s not much we can do with a Soninke language source, I can’t find any translators on English or French wiki, our only option would be to pay a translator.

2. Sounds good

3. With the reader in mind, it may be worth picking a few, like 5-10 and summarising them in a paragraph? Or list them with no summary, or pick like 3 with in depth summaries. Ideally we’d list them and they’d each have their own article that can be page linked to, but I’m not sure that’s an option here. @KHRFolkMyth has a lot of expertise and experience here, pinging to hear his thoughts, sorry for ping Kowal2701 (talk) 14:09, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

PERFECT. I can do that today! I also realized there may be something useful in Klipple, so I will check that book today also. Laurakgibbs (talk) 14:12, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry I messed around the titles, but I think Narrative traditions needs to be changed. Epics are generally historical traditions or culturally important traditions that the performer learns word for word, while narratives are I guess more like parables and tales that the performer has license to recontextualise the story to get the message across to a younger generation. The issue is that we can’t 100% tell the difference between epics and narratives here, although if we were feeling confident we could rename narrative traditions to Epics and Tales to Narratives Kowal2701 (talk) 14:24, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm just going on the usual folklore scholarship taxonomy, but Soninke is definitely an outlier case because of the preponderance of epic / historic tales, which is really unusual (and very cool).

Let me put Songs back in later today and work on that (I'll do some searching on Soninke music to see if that helps me locate more song material), and then you can sort out the best way to handle my animal and people tales on the one hand, and the range of texts you are doing.

Are there songs contained in any of your epic texts? Sometimes narrative texts contain songs, and if so that would be good to mention in the songs section! Laurakgibbs (talk) 16:55, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

No I don’t think Soninke epics are accompanied by music unlike Mandinka ones. Btw I haven’t done any of the writing, @XxTechnicianxX has done all of it Kowal2701 (talk) 18:25, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh wow, that is great, @XxTechnicianxX. I am amazed at how this is taking shape. It is my first time to work on an article like this. Soninke is far outside my usual field, but I am so inspired. I know I will learn things here to help me write oral traditions articles for traditions that skew more in my direction (proverbs, riddles, folktales). Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:35, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Peek and Yankah's African Folklore encyclopedia

I went to see if I could get any help on Soninke oral traditions from Peek and Yankah's African Folklore encyclopedia, but no luck there, although there are a couple of Soninke epic references that I will add from that source later today. But that IS where I can get some good hyena and hare references to bolster the importance of hare trickster and hyena dupe, if not in Soninke, then in related African traditions. I'll add those references later today also. Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:27, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Songs needs to go back in

Someone removed the placeholder for songs and poems as a possible tradition, and I just now found a reference for songs: Chants traditionnels du pays soninké: Mauritanie, Mali, Sénégal. I will restore the section and add the reference later today. It's a good idea I think to lay out the POSSIBLE oral traditions we are looking to find in hopes of actually finding them before shutting down sections. Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:59, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

No access to the book, but I found a CC-licensed accessible review online that will be very useful, so we can definitely put songs back! review by M Chastanet · 1991 — Ousmane Moussa DIAGANA, Chants traditionnels du pays soninké (Mauritanie,. Mali, Sénégal), préface de Claude Hagège, Paris, L'Harmattan, 1990. Laurakgibbs (talk) 14:13, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Reference done. Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:12, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Gassire's Lute

I didn't change this, but it should probably be removed: "The most famous Soninke oral story is Gassire's Lute." It is the best known in ENGLISH because of the multiple editions, esp. Jablow's edition with the gorgeous art by the Dillons, but its authenticity has been legitimately questioned (see Gassire's Lute article for cautions). I will try to add more citations to that article, but definitely caution required! Laurakgibbs (talk) 14:18, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I did go ahead and change this; for sure Gassire's Lute is best known of the Soninke oral traditions in English, but I don't think we can say it is the most famous Soninke oral story unless there is some actual proof of that? It has a single source only; I am not really sure about its significance for the Soninke people, even though it has had good fortune in its English publication. Laurakgibbs (talk) 04:41, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Moussa Diagana

The book of songs which I added is by Moussa Diagana who also looks to be EXTREMELY important for the modern development of the Wagadu story as a drama; I found this very useful reference: The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere by Moussa Diagana and Richard Miller, which needs to be worked into the epic section of the article somehow. The article about him is a stub which very much deserves expanding! Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:02, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Proverbs from a website...?

When I went to add this content, it got flagged, and I'm not surprised; it is just a website. But I have seen proverbs from websites like this included in other African cultural articles. So, what do you think? Another possibility is that I could look for proverbs from the Soninke-only proverbs book to see which ones do have French translations online. I would really like to get some proverbs in here; IMO you can't write about African oral traditions without including proverbs. Their importance is overwhelming. (I've asked my library to ILL for me the Soninke-French proverbs book but I am not optimstic given the rarity of the book; I do not think a library will let it out under ILL). Here's the content I was going to add:

UPDATE: I added the content to the page with a Wayback URL.

Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:55, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah some websites are WP:Deprecated because they've been provably unreliable, but on this particular topic and for this particular case I think we can trust it. Kowal2701 (talk) 21:27, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Oh yay, I am so glad. Let me get the page archived at Wayback Machine if it is not archived already, and then I'll add the content with a stable Wayback link. Also, I have to say: this is SO MUCH FUN. It is exactly what I was hoping I would be able to do working with Wikipedia, but I just couldn't figure out how to get going when I didn't really know how things work. Being able to ask questions like this and learn feels so great! Thank you! Laurakgibbs (talk) 21:33, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Lol no worries Kowal2701 (talk) 21:44, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Proverbs / riddles done? / Folktales to do

I added Soninke examples of proverbs and riddles; tomorrow (Monday Aug. 19) I will expand the folktales to include titles and some plot summaries per discussion in previous topic. Laurakgibbs (talk) 04:44, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, the folktale part is done. Please let me know what more needs to be done there, or what needs to be done differently.

I do have some references and material relevant to the oral history section also, so I will see what I can do to help there next.

Since there is some good secondary literature on those narratives, we need to provide more than just plot summaries, right? Is it possible that any of those epic narratives should have separate articles of their own as Gassire's Lute does? Laurakgibbs (talk) 03:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Imo yeah definitely, the article Wagadu (mythology) should be remade to cover the two traditions, and we should really have analysis sections. I was considering including the history in the analysis sections as it adds context to the traditions and it’s remarkable how it lines up Kowal2701 (talk) 03:58, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Super! That sounds really cool about the history/analysis. What I found today that was very helpful was an account of Soninke-language publications; all the earlier publications are in European languages only, which is not great for an article on Soninke oral traditions, right? but I will be able to add some bibliography for actual Soninke texts of the traditions, plus some more about the work of Moussa Diagana, who really is fascinating. :-) Laurakgibbs (talk) 04:19, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds great :) Kowal2701 (talk) 04:24, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

And we’ve got stuff to add on the traditions of the Kingdom of Diarra and maybe Gajaaga Kowal2701 (talk) 04:01, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Frobenius

I added two cautionary notes about the use of Frobenius's material which is not corroborated by some other Soninke source (and I'm going to go add a similar reference to the Gassire's Lute article which last time I checked had an unsourced cautionary note); I'm worried that the bulk of the article as it stands right now is that Frobenius has provided the basis for much of the plot summary, but that will be less of a problem if these different epic tales are spun off into articles of their own so that this article can provide a space for a higher-level overview and analysis of the Wagadu material overall; is that still the plan? (Epic traditions are not my area of expertise, but I'll continue to add whatever I find that might be relevant; I've added all I can re: the other oral traditions: proverbs, riddles, tales, songs -- but if I find anything more for those, I will add them.) Laurakgibbs (talk) 18:17, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Great, yeah I think that’s still the plan but it might be worth focusing on producing more general articles before going into more depth. One issue with this is that I can’t read French and therefore can’t access a lot of the literature, although other than Gassire’s lute most are corroborated. I’m really sceptical as to the method of recordation and the way we’re showcasing them in contrast to how they’re supposed to be. The listener is meant to be very familiar with the story so that they can appreciate the performer’s innovation and style, and the performer reacts to the audience in which parts they linger on and skip past and tailors the story to the audience. I’m going to add something like that to the hat note, but I think each section should have a hatnote which says the author, date recorded, and the location Kowal2701 (talk) 20:40, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I think the Hatnotes are excellent! I moved the one about story performance to the narrative section since it fits there and not so much with the non-narrative; the remarks about poetics in the top Hatnote are the good warning people need for proverbs, riddles, and songs. These will be great to use for the other oral traditions to come -- of which I hope there will be many! And yeah, Soninke is about as hard as it gets for me: the published folktales, proverbs, and riddles are very scanty, and a couple of key texts are not accessible. But starting with a hard one is just going to make the next one go so much easier, right? Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:41, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Should we be paraphrasing them from an original or summarising the plot and versions? Kowal2701 (talk) 10:16, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I really think that in a top-level article like this it should be BRIEF SUMMARY and remarks about versions and publications; if there are subsidiary articles, then the sentence-level paraphrases might be okay, but I'm honestly dubious about even that, given the precarious state of the translations and sources. Do you have contacts at French Wikipedia? Maybe the paraphrasing should happen at French Wikipedia instead...? In fact, doh, I didn't even look to see what they had by way of articles. I'll go check that now.

Meanwhile, for "Samba the Coward" (which is actually quite a long story), I tried to focus 100% on the plot, no extraneous details, just summarizing key events.

I'm glad to take on the task of altering the paraphrases of the epic tales here to be briefer summaries; I have access to all the sources cited I think. Would you like me to give that a try? Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:46, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm really unsure, I like that there's detail, often each sentence is carefully crafted word by word. The bits that seem longwinded will include information that's very culturally important, for instance just the mentioning of a person is way to immortalise a valued member of the community. I think it'd be best to summarise them in our own words while keeping the thread of the plot, and highlight on which key details accounts differ, and copy-paste the current paraphrases into this talk page under their own headings, so anyone wanting to write an article on one of the epics can access it. Some of it has been written really beautifully. @XxTechnicianxX what do you think? sorry for ping Kowal2701 (talk) 13:58, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I was hoping we could use this Talk page to do that; GREAT.

Also, Courlander is borrow-able at the Internet Archive, so people can easily access that source online. I'm not sure about Belcher and the rest, though. I'll go through the article and make sure we are linking to specific page numbers at Courlander and anything else available at Internet Archive for borrowing.

I've gotten slammed for over-relying on primary sources (although for many African traditions, what else are we supposed to do in the absence of secondary scholarship...?), so I guess that's also why I'm feeling cautious about paraphrases, esp. in a top-level article as opposed to articles about individual traditions. Laurakgibbs (talk) 14:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, I haven’t been able to find any primary sources that are just the barebones transcription. I don’t know whether I’m looking in the wrong places or what. Conrad and Fisher say they had access to 20 odd versions of the Legend of Wagadu. How do you search for yours? I’ve just been using Google Scholar Kowal2701 (talk) 15:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I rely heavily on Internet Archive; I was doing bibliography work for them (for example, free ebook: A Reader's Guide to African Folktales at the Internet Archive, but my follow-up project on African Diaspora folktales, got derailed by the terrible decision in the lawsuit (I'm a witness for the Archive in that lawsuit; oral arguments in the appeal were this summer... now: we wait). Because of the injunctive relief given to the publishers pending the final outcome (people say it will probably go to the Supreme Court...), some key African references, like Peek and Yankah's African folklore encyclopedia and Andrzejewski's Literatures in African Languages survey, are no longer available; I'm not optimistic that we will get them back. Sigh. I bought copies of both of those books for myself as a result, so I have those at home. I also have a paper copy of Scheub's Bibliography of African Oral Narratives, which is super-useful. There ARE still 2 really useful bibliographical references available at the Archive:

Anthropological Bibliography of Negro Africa

Littérature orale d'Afrique noire

They are not the most current, but for many African texts, the older references are the only thing we can access.

For North Africa, this book can be very useful:

Types of the Folktale in the Arab World

I also have the standard folktale / tale type reference books which are useful to me for my folktale work (that's my main focus), including Klipple's very frustrating African tale type index and Baer's study of the African sources of the Uncle Remus stories; I don't always agree with their analyses, but it's still very useful to see their bibliography. Parsons's work on Antilles folktales in 3 volumes is also full of bibliography that is relevant for African folktales; it's at the Archive (public domain thank goodness): Folklore of the Antilles, volumes 1-3 Laurakgibbs (talk) 21:25, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@Laurakgibbs I think I'm gonna start doing the summaries, @Catjacket is willing to handle the french sources if you have any you haven't been able to use Kowal2701 (talk) 19:41, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad to help with the summaries; just let me know if there is anything I can do! and I'm fine with the French sources for the proverbs-riddles-folktales (I translated or summarized as needed)... I literally cannot GET the other French sources I would like to consult; I did an interlibrary loan request for the proverbs, but it's such a rare book I doubt they will let it out. But thanks so much for the offer @Catjacket; I appreciate it! :-) Laurakgibbs (talk) 22:10, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Per MOS:PLOTLENGTH, what you described is perfect. With Frobenius and Fox (1937), I attempted to make it concise whilst including all elements I believed could be elaborated on or are culturally significant. Also, pings are good. XxTechnicianxX (talk) 05:25, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

French Wikipedia articles

French Wikipedia is going to help us I think! I just checked on Bida since it was easy to search, and look! Bida (mythologie) ... my guess is that it will be worthwhile to systematically look at French Wikipedia for any oral traditions in Francophone cultures/countries. I don't think this will help much with my folktales and non-narrative traditions in Soninke because even in French there is not a lot published, but for the epic tradition, these French Wikipedia articles might be a big help! (And vice versa; some of the work we have done might help augment articles there.) Laurakgibbs (talk) 13:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Great find! Not sure how you put WP:interlanguage links into hatnotes though. We could just link it at first mention of Bida. What I think we should've done is message people in the taskforce that have an interest in the region, an article like this needs to incorporate other language sources. Another example is that literature on Kongo oral traditions are largely in portuguese. Ideally we'd have oral citations where someone, local or traveller, can record modern-day versions themselves and use those to write the article. They could also have discussions/recordings with other performers/elders and use that for the analysis, or publish at Wikiversity. Btw, I think the work you've done here is great Kowal2701 (talk) 14:24, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, for goodness sake, I keep learning about so many things from you; I never knew about Wikiversity. I definitely need to explore this. THANK YOU. Laurakgibbs (talk) 21:26, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah there are so many great initiatives, I'm sure there's lots I'm unaware of Kowal2701 (talk) 21:32, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@Laurakgibbs Might it be worth adding five more proverbs? Ones that communicate cultural values maybe? Idk Kowal2701 (talk) 13:14, 2 September 2024 (UTC)