Book contents
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword Beyond the Printed Word
- Introduction Finding the African Voice
- Part One Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Part Two The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
- 9 Introduction:
- 10 Singing Songs and Performing Dances with Embedded Historical Meanings in Somalia
- 11 Song Lyrics as Pathways to Historical Interpretation in Northwestern Côte d’IvoireThe Case of Kabasarana
- 12 Slave Voices from the Cameroon Grassfields
- 13 Silent Testimonies, Public Memory
- 14 In Remembrance of Slavery
- Part Three Documenting Our Own Histories and Cultural Practices
- Part Four Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
- Part Five Administrative Records
- Part Six Legal Records
- Part Seven Recorded Encounters with the Enslaved: Christian Workers in Africa
- Part Eight Documents from Muslim Africa
- Part Nine Living with the Past
- Index
12 - Slave Voices from the Cameroon Grassfields
Prayers, Dirges, and a Nuptial Chant
from Part Two - The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Book contents
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword Beyond the Printed Word
- Introduction Finding the African Voice
- Part One Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Part Two The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
- 9 Introduction:
- 10 Singing Songs and Performing Dances with Embedded Historical Meanings in Somalia
- 11 Song Lyrics as Pathways to Historical Interpretation in Northwestern Côte d’IvoireThe Case of Kabasarana
- 12 Slave Voices from the Cameroon Grassfields
- 13 Silent Testimonies, Public Memory
- 14 In Remembrance of Slavery
- Part Three Documenting Our Own Histories and Cultural Practices
- Part Four Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
- Part Five Administrative Records
- Part Six Legal Records
- Part Seven Recorded Encounters with the Enslaved: Christian Workers in Africa
- Part Eight Documents from Muslim Africa
- Part Nine Living with the Past
- Index
Summary
This chapter presents a selection of five prayers that captive Yamb people are alleged to have recited when they were in the hands of slave drivers, who marched them from the Cameroon Grassfields to distant intermediary markets and finally to the European trading posts on the coast. The first calls for the assistance of the Yamba God (Nwi), the second requests the protection of three other divinities in the Yamba pantheon, while the third prayer calls for evil to rain upon slave-dealers. The fourth prayer asks for the mercy of Nwi and the last text is about a war song. The chapter contains two dirges and a nuptial chant that were sung by a male and a female slave probably in the 1940s in two different villages of the chiefdom of Essoh-Attah. The dirges include AbenNzembong's dirge performance and Nkeng Tanya's dirge performance.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade , pp. 137 - 148Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013