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CHAPTER: ONE. REVIEW OF LITERATURE IN ORAL TRADITIONAL GENRE

I.1.  Introduction.

     This chapter deals with the review of literature in Fuliru oral genre particularly wedding songs. It allows the reader to be aware of what other researchers have already written on this topic, and how this piece of information  relates to the present investigation.

Wedding songs are one of the Fuliru Oral Traditional  literary genres. They are considered as a means of expression through which the singer reveals his own feelings, and emotions which are sometimes also shared with the those audience.

   According to MUZIGIRWA, quoted by Saidi MIBANDE(2011:01): “Before the spread of the literacy in 20th century, texts were preserved in memory and performed  literacy orally”.     

 Wedding songs in Bufuliru are not only for entertainment , but they are also used  with a didactic function and constitute a complete school.

According to Fait NZUJI, quoted by RUHARURA Wamajegeza (1987:5):

“Le chantre sait que son rôle n’est pas de faire

                                 raisonner mais d’émouvoir, de faire participer

        ceux qui l’écoutent à ce qu’il ressent  lui-même et

         de susciter en eux les sentiments  les plus divers ‘‘

In addition, Apart from the entertaining people, wedding songs, also serve to educate the young couple, and  transmit the wisdom of the socio-cultural treasures such as: politeness, respect, some aspects of their environment; in short, a concept of the world and their own ways of considering things of their everyday life.

I.2. Bafuliru and Kifuliru.

The Bafuliru are descendents of many clans, and occupy the administrative territory of Uvira. The “Bufuliru” is limited in the East by the Ruzizi plaine collectivity, in the Oust by Mwenga territory, in the North by Luvimvi River and in the South by the Bavira collectivity.

The “Kifuliru” is the language spoken in Bufuliru, by approndided  275.000 people in the East of the D.R.C, according to ( www.sfcg.org/.../BDI-DRC PRMFINALEvaluetion...).

Its surrounding languages are: Kiswahili, Kirundi, Kinyindu, Mashi, Kinyarwanda, Kihavu, Kirega, and Kivira. These  languages  in some way do influence the Kifuliru. The Kifuliru has got the “KIVULUGA” as its dialect, and which is the result of the combination of Mashi and Kifuliru; it is most spoken in Itara grouping /Luvungi, due to the linguistic proximits of the two languages .

Kifuliru is a Bantu language belonging to Niger-Congolese family, assigned by Malcolm GITHRIE to the feature D63in fellowship with Mashi, Kihavu, Kivira and Kitembo. MEEUSSEM together with TERVUREN linguists  classified it under the feature J54 as enter-larkish language. MADRAGULE(G2  English :2012).

Kifuliru comprises five vowels: [i, e, a, o, u] defined on the basis of the tongue position in the mouth and the degree of aperture.

Diagram1:  Fuliru vowels.

Degrees of  aperture

Front

Central

Back

1rst. degree

I

U

2nd.degree

E

0

3rd. degree

a


Beside the above mentioned vowels, Kifuliru has twenty-four consonants presented in the diagram below.

Diagram. 2. Fuliru consonants.

Bilabials

+              -

Dentals               

+             -

Palatals               

+            -

Velars                             

+             -

Glottal

+             -

Nasals

M

N

ny

nj

ng

Occlusive

  b          p    

 t             d

g             k

Fricatives

v              f

z             s

Sh            

h

Affricates

c               j

Lateral

L

Vibrant

R

Semi-vowels

W

y

The language is a means of communication; it is one of the elements that make the society.In other words, there is no society without language, the latter being the vehicle of people’s culture and philosophy. Through language study, one can learn more about a society in all its aspects. Thereby, our search for messages vehicle through Fuliru wedding songs, we hope to come to helpful findings since language is not used randomly, but rather to convey certain appropriate values of its users.

I.3. Oral Genre         

Oral genres are literary genres which use speech to transmit feelings and to report human activities from mouth to ear, from a person to another from generation to generation and from a period of time to another. Following RUHEKENYA’s lecture notes : (2012), oral genres are literary genres in which all the aspects of human knowledge are spread orally from the speaker to the listen, in a given society. People use oral literature to vehicle their traditional values. The latter is defined as a whole as messages inherited from ancestors by a social group and whose continuation is made from generation to generation.

To achieve this, traditional speech specialists used and/or still use oral genres such as: Tales, Riddles, Proverbs, Legends, Myths… and songs which we are concerned with now.  

As we have already mentioned, wedding songs are one of the oral genre categories. They are poetic texts of light with or without musical instruments. They are classified in categories following the « whys » of their creation. There are wedding songs adopted to different steps of the wedding ceremony

  

I.4. Partial Conclusion                                                                                                             

The front paragraphs contain the main functions and aspects of the African oral traditional literature in general and of the wedding songs in particular. They  are much developed  in the coming chapters.  With more  realities monitored in  Bufuliru .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

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