Epics have been studied by scholars of several disciplines, including ethnomusicology, literature, folklore, social anthropology and classics. The term ‘epic’ has been used within the European literary tradition to refer to works such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the Nibelungenlied or Chanson de Roland and Milton's Paradise Lost. When applied to areas outside Europe or in disciplines other than literary ones, the concept rarely coincides semantically with this one. It often refers to an oral tradition involving specialist bards, or a tradition that moves between the written text and oral performance.
CAROLE PEGG (1), JAMES PORTER (2)
Until the 1960s, oral epics were thought to exist only in Karelia, northern Asia, Central Asia and the Balkans. Recent fieldwork has suggested that the term may also be used for genres performed in sub-Saharan Africa, South-east Asia, the Middle East and South Asia. While no precise definition exists, there is a strong consensus that an epic should be narrative, poetic and heroic. These elements apply to epics in Slavonic and Romance languages as well as those from Central and Inner Asia. Debates have raged about the inclusion of African, South Asian and South-east Asian materials.
These debates have revolved around content, form and modes of transmission. Classically, in terms of content, epics are tales in which human characters, endowed with superhuman qualities and powers, undertake and execute superhuman tasks. ‘Heroes’, usually male, are aided by extra-human resources such as magic, divinities or spirits, or animals prompted by supernatural forces. Epics are usually broad in the scale of action time as well as political and cultural geography, are set in historical experience, and often express political or cultural histories. Some arguments against the inclusion of materials from Africa, South Asia and South-east Asia revolve around whether narrative is the primary focus. Lengthy praise-poems of South Africa, for instance, have epic elements but concentrate on laudatory and apostrophic aspects, and the South Asian Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana are primarily religious in function. Moreover, sharp divisions between the human and the divine are rare in South Asian traditional narratives, making the heroic concept problematic. Classic epic heroes are often deified after death and thereby cross the divide between human and divine. This is also a feature of Inner Asian epics.
In terms of form, debates have involved the nature of improvisation and composition in performance, whether the works are poetry or prose and whether they are sung or not sung. Some African materials from equatorial areas have been considered prose narratives (with heroic themes), rather than poems, interspersed with sung pieces. In northern and eastern areas, it has been argued that historical narratives occur because of Arab influence rather than being the ‘natural’ form for non-literate peoples. The debate moved on to discuss whether eulogy and lament are forms of ‘pre-epic’ poetry or whether praise-poems might be called ‘epic’. It has been argued that the sung/not sung distinction is more relevant to South Asian traditions than the poetry/prose distinction, since Indian poetic metres do not necessarily correspond with the rhythmic structures found in music and it is these that prevail in many South Asian epic performances.
Finally, it has been debated whether true epics have to be transmitted orally. African materials, such as ‘The Tale of Lianja’ from the Mongo-Nkundo peoples of north-western Congo, were probably a loosely related bundle of separate episodes, told on separate occasions rather than a single work. They only become an ‘epic’ after being recorded in written form. However, this could also be the case with Inner Asian epic cycles such as Geser and Janggar, where individual chapters have been recorded from separate bards.
Taking into account the above debates, this article uses a broad definition of epic in which bards may be professional or non-professional and in which contexts are diverse. The concept is used to embrace: the heroic narrative songs and poems of Europe; African epics that include sung and chanted sections, dances, dramatic action, musical interludes and praises; South and South-east Asian traditions where epic themes of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana provide a code for living and permeate other performance traditions of music, dance and song; and the encyclopedic epics of Central and Inner Asian peoples which incorporate all vocal musical genres with basic musical accompaniment and which may move in and out of the written and oral traditions or may exist simultaneously in both.
The presence of orally transmitted heroic songs in the Scottish Highlands of the 18th century encouraged James Macpherson (1736–96) to fashion influential prose poems after Ossianic themes. A similar literary trend developed in the South Slavonic tradition with Andrija Kacic-Moisic (1704–60), a Franciscan monk whose chronicle of his people includes portions in the style of epic songs. In 19th-century Finland, Elias Lönnrot stitched together narrative songs he had collected orally in creating the Kalevala epic, inserting incantations and wedding cycle songs for the sake of expansion, and a similar practice has occurred with other traditions in Africa and Asia, though not in the South Slavonic or Homeric epics. In modern times, epic songs have been found in eastern and south-eastern Europe, although such well-studied examples as the Russian bïlinï (or starinï, to use the people's term) died out early in the 20th century despite attempts to renew them during the Soviet period before World War II. In traditional epics it is the story which is primary, but musical performance elevates the public style of vocal delivery epic such that it attains a power unmatched by language alone. In purely musical terms the ‘melody’ might be perceived as banal or repetitive, but it is also a powerful framing device by which the heroic tale attains heightened artistic communication.
The traditional south-eastern European epic style has been studied intensively since the 1930s, when Milman Parry offered his theory of oral composition concerning Homer's epic poems. Parry, introduced to epic performance in Bosnia by the Slovenian scholar Matija Murko, believed that the problem of disputed authorship (the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey by one author, or by several) could be solved by reference to the living tradition in Bosnia. Accordingly, Parry and A.B. Lord encountered illiterate male performers who could perform epics of several thousand lines to the accompaniment of the one-string bowed gusle (lahuta in Albania), or plucked tambura, using a technique of verbal and story-building formulae, often in the context of the festival of Ramadan. While Christian epic singers could also be found in Bosnia, Muslim singers frequently had a repertory of 30 songs, one for each day of Ramadan, and had learnt the technique of re-composing the tales in performance by oral means. Avdo Mededovic, the singer recorded by Parry and Lord in 1935, had a repertory of 58 epics; performances of 13 of these amount to 44,902 lines (sung) and 33,653 (dictated). The longest recorded epic contains 13,331 lines, more than 16 hours of performance time. The total time for all Avdo's recorded material is about 53 hours. The lautari of Romania have been equally prolific: Petrea Cretul Solcan (1809–after 1883), a Roma lautar from the port town of Braila in Muntenia, was known for his large repertory of epic, ritual and lyric poetry. He sang some 12,000 lines of epic for the Romanian folklorist G.D. Teodorescu during 1883–4. Epic performance, however, is now found only in Oltenia and Muntenia, in southern Romania: the singer Vasile Tetin from Teleorman county performs numerous lines in a parlando style, a device said to be used by older singers to conserve their strength.
Avdo Mededovic's epics were generally longer than those of other performers because of the South Slavonic tradition of ornamenting songs through rich description: a technique of expansion using musical and poetic formulae. Learning the texts and melodies first and then the musical accompaniment, he absorbed his art as a boy from skilled performers, including his father, who was influenced by another ‘ornamental’ performer, Cor Huso Husein of Kolasin. Lord described Avdo's voice as hoarse, but it is possible that he was adopting a special vocal timbre, as occurs in other epic traditions. His singing often ran ahead of his fingers as he played the gusle, and there were times when he simply ran the bow slowly back and forth over the strings while singing the ten-syllable lines. He was clearly a poet and singer of tales first, a musician second. The traditional demands of epic – length and structure – pull the singer naturally towards the skills of memory, elaboration, improvisation and poetic composition. These qualities operated simultaneously for a singer like Avdo performing in the context best suited to the appreciation of heroic tales: the all-male audience in the coffee-house during Ramadan. Another Muslim singer, Salih Ugljanin, an Albanian, was a bilingual singer in Serbo-Croat and Albanian and performed epics for Parry at the same speed in both languages.
Musical and poetic formulae allow the epic singer to concentrate on the structure of the tale. These formulae are not always for mnemonic purposes: Romanian epic singers, for example, will repeat musical formulae but will also attempt to break rhythmic monotony. Extemporization as a general principle colours the epic singing in Europe of which we have accounts. In Russia, it seems that Marfa Kryukova (1876–1954) used improvisation in reformulating tales and literary works into bïlinï, but these must have been the result of a certain amount of compositional effort before performance. Some Russian singers felt a need to recount a ‘correct’ version of a bïlina and would not record it until they had revived it in their memories. To a large extent this was out of respect for the tradition rather than a mere avoidance of creativity.
Agrafena Kryukova would not offer a starina without first thinking about it because she was afraid of deviating from a set pattern of performance. Collectors observed the same behaviour when recording from her daughter, Marfa Kryukova. Both mother and daughter introduced a great deal of their own material into the traditional bïlinï they sang. This material was not extemporized, but rather conceived beforehand. Both singers had a talent for improvisation and inclined towards it in their singing, though editors during the Soviet period kept a watchful eye on the content of novinï (modern epics). Similar ideological manipulation occurred in Ukraine: the duma, sometimes thought to derive from the recitative style of funeral laments, may have originated as a praise-song with court bards of the Kievan Rus' period. The performers of dumï were traditionally blind itinerant singers (kobzarï) who accompanied themselves with a bandura or lira (hurdy-gurdy). These musicians were systematically silenced under Stalin.
The epics of the Balkans, significantly, are linked to those of Central and Inner Asia through subject matter, a common horse culture, and instruments, as well as social context. Some aspects of Balkan epic may indeed have come from Central Asia with migration or by caravan routes north of the Caspian, perhaps skirting the Black Sea or crossing Asia Minor. In the Asian tales there is a greater emphasis on shamanic and otherworldly elements. The bearer of epic song in Turkey is the ashiq (‘lover’), or minstrel, whose repertory includes both ‘lyrical’ and ‘heroic’ epics such as the Köroglu cycle from the Near East and Turkestan. Turkmen versions of Köroglu are related to Azerbaijani and Uzbek variants. In Turkmen traditions, related by language, religion and culture, epic performers are known as bakhshy and dastachy-bagshylar. The vocal style includes a clear manner of recitation, a low, husky timbre in the recitative parts of the epic (dastan) interspersed with melodic sections. The Kazakh epic is also related closely to Turkmen and Uzbek traditions. Epics are performed by the aqîn (‘poet’) or zirsi or ziraw (from zir: ‘epic song’) with the dombira (two-string lute) or the qobiz (horsehair fiddle), the latter distantly related to the Slavonic gusle. The seven-syllable verse line has an ancient pedigree that goes back to the 11th century and is part of the common Turkic heritage of Kazakh oral poetry. One singer, Raxmet Mazxodzayev (1881–1976), learnt epics orally but also some poems from manuscript and Kazan editions.
Manas is an encyclopedic epic that includes all the genres of Kirghiz vocal expression. It consists of three cycles, the first dealing with Manas himself, the others with his son and grandson. Mime and drama form part of the performance, and some versions are very long: a version of some 400,000 lines was transcribed from one performer, Sayakbay Karalayev. Performances of Manas are constructed by combining a variety of recitation styles, without instrumental accompaniment. An evening may begin with the zhorgo syoz manner, with measured pace and evolving melodic line, then a long recitation of musical motifs. More prosaic narrative styles include the zheldirme (gallop), a type of rapid agitated recitation. The performer of Manas (manaschi) controls the mood of the audience by means of flexibility of narrative style. In pre-communist and contemporary West Mongolia, epic performance was seen as a ritual activity. The bards (tuul'ch) negotiated with spirits of nature and an imagined otherworld which, if the epic was performed correctly, were believed to influence the health, happiness and fate of those listening. In addition to ritual acts surrounding performance, its timing – at night during certain seasons of the year, usually in the homes of herders – is important, and the vocal quality used, as well as the percussive effect of the accompanying two-string plucked lute topshuur (see illustration), emphasizes that the communication is a spiritual one.
In the former Soviet Union, including Central Asia, traditional performance genres were manipulated in the cause of Marxist-Leninist theory and suspect minstrels were either silenced or made to conform to the party line. Beginning in the 1930s, the status of epic performers (zhyrau) in Kazakhstan was reduced by the Soviets to ordinary amateur activity and Soviet epics were composed: Uzbek bakhshy, for instance, performed long poems about Lenin, Stalin and collectivization. In the Soviet era, traditional epics were ‘revised’ and new epics written. This process affected the skilled singers of bïlinï and novinï such as Marfa Kryukova, who, however, was still able to use the techniques of oral composition. Epic style survived even while the content was being drastically changed.
In East, South and South-east Asia epic traditions still flourish. In Rajasthan, for example, the epic of Pābūjī is traditionally performed by low-caste Nāyaks as a religious ritual in honour of its hero, a deity widely worshipped by Rebari camel-herds and shepherds, and by rural Rajputs. The performer is also a priest (bhopo). Performance of the epic can be accompanied by a drum, finger-cymbals and a drone chordophone, with interspersed passages of spoken explanation (see India, §VII, 1(ii)(b)). Although the Hindu Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana do not appear to have reached as far as the Philippines, epics are found there in Islamic communities and indeed in almost all major language groups. They form a repository of oral history dealing with hero-ancestors, genealogies, origins of the world and the people's relationship to major deities as well as, among Islamic peoples, the prophet Muhammad. Among the Maguindanao, performance of the heroic epic (tutol) begins with a melismatic greeting to Allah, with held notes, trills, mordents and a long descending melodic line. In northern Kalinga women singers of the epic Gasumbi use seven-syllable lines in describing the exploits of the hero Gawan, fitting traditional melodies of different musical genres into the epic. Among the Maranao, the epic Darangan is the domain of specialized singers who at social gatherings vie with one another in extemporizing allusions and double meanings. Epics are also common in Palawan. They may be performed at weddings or as evening village entertainment, and can last for several nights. In the Mansaka epic (manggob), the singing style requires extra vowels and syllables to be added to words. These additions obscure the words themselves so that even a native speaker who is unfamiliar with the epic will not be able to follow the story. The performance of epic among the Sawa is in private, sometimes only the narrator with an apprentice being present; and the former intones the verses while lying on his back. Among the Palawan, epics comprise long lines with the text sung syllabically and clearly enunciated. Changes of tonal structure and pitch identify the various characters in the epic. Reciting notes and short melismatic passages are integral to the technique of epic performance, for which apprentices are given long and arduous training.
In Africa and the Arab world ‘epic form’ lives on in the sira (‘travelling’) of the Bani Hilal Bedouin tribe, a genre with no exact European equivalent which chronicles the tribe's migration from their homeland in the Arabian peninsula. Many conclusions of Parry and Lord about structure are paralleled in Arabic tradition: traditional rhyme schemata help to structure scenes and episodes; the oral formulae facilitate the ‘translation’ of narrative material from one rhyme scheme to another; and the melodic line structures verse length and communicates the singer's depiction of characters within the narrative. The performer in this tradition accompanies his singing on the two-string rebab.
In sub-Saharan Africa epic singing, closely related to praise-songs, is often combined with dramatic performance and instrumental accompaniment. Epics are found in two major areas: the Mande speakers and groups such as the Fulani (or Fulɓe) in West Africa, and Bantu-speaking groups from the Gabon Republic (Fang or Faŋ) to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Epics have also been recorded among the Sotho of South Africa, the Swahili of East Africa, the Benamukuni of Zambia, the Ijaw of southern Nigeria and the Adangme of Ghana. The two major traditions of epic seem to be among the Mande speakers of West Africa and some Bantu speakers of Central Africa. In both areas epics exist at a trans-tribal level in groups that are more or less related. Epics are found among the Bambara, Fang, Mongo, Lega and Nyanga peoples, where hunting is ideologically important.
Wherever northern influence in sub-Saharan Africa is strong a tense vocal style is combined with a melismatic solo line; elsewhere a more relaxed voice predominates. Among the Nyanga of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the epic singer accompanies himself with a gourd rattle, while three aides add percussive rhythms on a dry housebeam or bamboo. The Mongo bard (Democratic Republic of the Congo), his face and body adorned with geometrical designs and specially attired as in other related traditions, is accompanied by a small lokole-drum or two blocks of wood, each beaten in a different rhythm. The Fang performer may use an elaborate chordophone called mvet, or can be accompanied by others playing on dry bamboo, a piece of banana stipe, a rolled-up hide, or again by slit-drums or membranophones. The accompanying group includes the wives and children of the bard.
In several regions the epic is sung or chanted: the Mongo and related groups sing certain portions and narrate others. Nyanga bards sing the entire text of the Mwindo epic, short episodes succeeding each other. The narrative can be broken by pauses for eating and drinking, for dance performances, dramatic action, musical interludes and praises. The performance of epic and praise-singing involves patronage, though with post-colonial change in the social structure patrons are now sought out rather than existing through formal attachment: Hausa praise-singers compete intensely for the patronage of officeholders within the traditional government. As praise-singers, the Fulani griots (whose privilege the epic is) address eulogies to chiefs and other wealthy patrons with the accompaniment of the three-string lute (hoddu) or single-string fiddle (nyaanyooru), extolling the exploits of ancestors and singing epics of the Fulani past. Silamaka, the central figure of the best-known epic, is a historical figure. In recounting the tale, the bard mingles the narrative events with praises, aphoristic expressions, conversations and challenges. As a professional (maabe) performing for the Fulani nobility in Burkina Faso, the singer Tinguidji, for instance, regards himself as a court musician.
Structurally, musical rhythm plays a central role in the relationship between music and language: in Mande-speaking epic performance (in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Guinea) instrumental rhythms dictate the accentuation of speech and the prosodic structure of the line. The 21-string bridge-harp (Kora) is mostly used by the Mandinka professional musician (jalolu) in Mali, though xylophones, drums or a four-string banjo-like instrument may be preferred. The audience is involved in the performance, and among the Hamba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo a listener provides the rhythm by beating two sticks together. In Liberia, the Kpelle celebrate the Woi epic, the story of a superhuman hero and his adventures. The singers of the epic rely on onomatopoeic language to suggest a regard for timbre and for qualitative features in general, adding proverbs to inspire the musicians and bodily movement to infuse drama, thereby raising the audience's sense of involvement in Woi's adventures. As in all African traditions, specialists in a caste-like structure reinforce community identity through a range of techniques for the performance of heroic epic.
See also Bedouin music, §2(x); Mali; Mongol music, §§1(iii) and 4(ii); and Tibetan music, §III, 4.
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