GENERAL INTRODUCTION

0.1 Background to the study

The present concerns the Fuliru language in Uvira territory, especially in collectivity where Fuliru is the first language of communication.

As Fuliru wedding songs are a cultural heritage from the ancestors, they are used for  the purpose to vehicle meaningful and valuable messages related to: warning, endurance, separation, and accommodation.

Nevertheless, during wedding ceremonies people sing these songs for simple pleasure. Infact, many people consider wedding songs as children’s entertainment and the narrators as children amusers to charm the  present at the wedding ceremony.

Wedding songs have however other functions that had been attributed to them by the society which produces them . This work will be a record of songs and their thematic  analysis.

0.2 Problem Statement

   Fuliru wedding songs are undergoing destructive influences generally from modernism, and christianitydue which  tend to consider these as paganism manifestation. Accor ding to RAUGER Laufer;(1975:p.268): ‘’l’invention de l’imprimerie, au milieu du XV^e siècle, a progressivement  réduit la place de la parole et de l’image dans la communication sociale’’.’’ The invasion of the printing in the middle of XIths, has progressively reduced the use of the speech and the image in the social communicative’’. Nowadays, People sing these songs without taking into account the message they convey so that the functions of the songs have almost disappeared and finally the songs will disappear. Therefore, we decided to record them and keep them for future generations.

0.3 Research questions

To carry out this, we had to answer  a series of questions :

1. In what way are Fuliru wedding songs executed and understood by the members of the society?
2. Can a semantic and socio-cultural study of Fuliru wedding songs contribute to vehicle thisFuliruculturalsheritage? 3. What are procedures to save, maintain and vehicle these Fuliru wedding songs?

0.4 Hypotheses

According to the above questions, some forestall reactions are the following:                

1. These songs can be executed orally through the mouth to the ear and from generation to generation, and they can be understood as containing educative message.
2. A semantic and socio-cultural study of Fuliru wedding songs could contribute to the saving, maintaining and vehicling of Fuliru cultural heritage in the sense that their meaning and socio-cultural values get known by the users and listeners, and other societies.
3. To save and maintain wedding songs, the songs should be ready recorded in writing and in studios.

0.5. Working methodologies.

To gather the data, we used the interview. We traveled through the Bafuliru areas (Lemera, Sange, Kiliba and Bwegera) to talk to famous traditional singers.

 We asked our informants to actually sing the songs related to the marriage and which  we wrote down grouped according to different steps of the wedding ceremony.

Later on, we dealt with the translations of the  songs in to English. To remain faithful to oral texts, we used literal and literary translations. In addition, different methods and techniques have been used in thematic and functional analysis of these songs.

0.6. Choice and Limitation of the Topic.

  As far as the oral literature is one of the main means of vehicling and of expressing feelings, thoughts, warning, and creativity, this study aims at promoting Fuliru cultural tradition by showing our readers how Fuliru people transmit an educative message through the songs. It will also make them  a ware of the socio-culturalconsideration  of wedding songs in the Fuliru community.

      In this perspective, the researcher wanted to show how wedding songs are closely related to Fuliru life; how they stand for a mirror of traditional Fuliru society for they are considered as the major source of learning, initiation, education, warning, expression of the feelings, and wisdom.

    The study is based on  Fuliru culture in Uvira territory,especially in Bafuliru collectivity and Ruzizi Plane, where Kifuliru is the first communicative language. It is focused on the consideration of  wedding songs in these areas from the independence to the present days.

0.7. Significance of the study.

There are few documents written on Fuliru tradition and the researcher is aware of the fact that wedding songs are one of the ways of keeping tradition alive, and also a way of teaching traditional values too the youth. Therefore, it is worth while undertaking this  investigation. In addition to, the study will show the readers the strength of wedding aspect in Fuliru culture.

0.8. Encounted difficulties

To attain this research paper, there is a number of difficulties we encounted.

First of all we found it hard to reach our informants as they live each in his or her own village far from the others. Next some did not understand why some body should ask them to sing so to get the information some times was asked to pay some money.  

Another difficulty was to reach the insecure remote areas where the authentic Kifuliru is still spoken, but thank to God, we managed  to get there and  conduct  our field work.

0.9. Work subdivision.

The work is subdivided into three chapters preceded by the general introduction and ended by the general conclusion. In the first chapter, we focused on the review of  literature on oral tradition. The second is based on data analysis and the third deals with the socio-cultural analysis o f the Fuliru wedding   songs.