Chapter 17: Oral Literature

After practising the activities in this chapter, you should be able to:

1. Know how to interpret real-life experiences so as to be able to express likes and dislikes.
2. Know how to ask a range of questions to extend your thinking.
3. Know how to write a composition based on the questions asked.

Keywords 

• celebration
• festival
• National
• cultural
• empower
• organisers
• betterment
• report
• gender equality
• children’s rights
• persuasive
• literature

Introduction

In this chapter, you will read about oral literature and discuss celebrations. Celebrations and festivals are events that usually mark a special occasion. They are often happy occasions where communities and families can enjoy having fun together. At these celebrations, people often make speeches.

In this chapter, you will learn to use persuasive speaking in literature. There are many different reasons for celebrations and festivals. Some are national days which we celebrate every year, for example, Independence Day or Martyrs’ Day.

Often other special festivals, like the Nile River Festival or the opening of a film or music festival are also celebrated annually. Special personal events like weddings, graduations or birthdays are also celebrations, though many of these happen only once in a lifetime. What celebrations have you attended?

Activity 9.1 Read a newspaper report

1. Work in small groups. Read the newspaper report.

UGANDAN MUSIC AND DANCE CELEBRATION SOON

The Annual Ugandan Traditional Music and Dance Celebration this year will be held in the first week of December. It will take place in Kampala at a venue to be announced closer to the time. For months, the organisers have been hard at work, making plans and booking participants. This year the focus is on involving more young people in the festival, both as performers and as organisers.

Traditional music began with the very first Ugandans, who would sing and dance as they gathered together around their fires at night. These same songs and dances have been passed down from generation to generation and this is how we know about them today.

The Traditional Music and Dance Celebration rejoices in this heritage and aims to have more groups than ever before participating in this year’s festival. There is no age limit, and the main objective of the festival is to have fun as we celebrate our cultural heritage together. Performances by well-known traditional musicians will be a highlight of the festival. Every evening, top local Ugandan artists will perform in their unique styles. These include, amongst others, Phyllis Nafuna, Dim Abilo, Kadodi and the Holy Rosary Church Choir. All these performances are included in the festival ticket price. The organisers are hard at work securing sponsorship in order to keep the ticket price as reasonable as possible.

There will be exclusive slots dedicated to different traditional Ugandan music forms and the instruments they feature, such as enanga, addungu and angwara.
The organisers have also made a huge effort to include artists and their art from every region so that all traditional song and dance forms are represented.

In addition to the wealth of song and dance, there will be instrument-making demonstrations and drumming workshops by Ugandan experts in their fields.
Watch this space for details about the venue, tickets and times. Don’t miss this exceptional chance to celebrate your culture and heritage.

2. In your small groups, retell the main points of the report.
3. Each paragraph deals with a certain sub-topic. What questions do you think the reporter asked, before writing each paragraph? Discuss all suggested questions, as a class.
4. Work in pairs. Take turns answering these questions and explain your answers. a) Do you enjoy music? Why?
b) What is your favourite music? Why do you like it?
c) Would you attend the festival mentioned in the newspaper report? d) Which part of the festival would you enjoy most? Why?

Activity 9.2 Ask questions for a newspaper report
Work in small groups.

1. Make a list of all the different celebrations you have attended. These can be national, cultural or personal celebrations.
2. Share a story about a celebration you have attended. Think of anything interesting, funny, frightening, or unusual that happened. Make your stories as interesting as possible. Say whether the event was fun, or not, and explain why.
3. Imagine that you are a reporter attending a celebration. You are there to find out as much as you can for the newspaper article you will write. Decide which celebration you will write about – you are free to choose any celebration or festival. Think about what you want to know and write about in your article.

4. Plan your questions. Remember to ask different types of questions, for example:

• Who, what, where, why, when and which questions.
• Open-ended questions, where you do not anticipate the answer. Practical details, like how to spell a name, how much something costs, dates and times.
• Questions that get people to express their opinions and express likes
  and dislikes

5. Write a summary of the answers you think you will get to your questions. 6. Use the library, or if possible, use the Internet to find any missing information you would like to include.
7. Write your newspaper report. Read it to a group and ask them for constructive, positive and tactful feedback.

Activity 9.3. Prepare a speech for a celebration

1. Choose any celebration. It can be a national, cultural or personal celebration. If possible, use the Internet to find celebration events and festivals that have happened.

2. Imagine that you are the guest speaker at the festival. Prepare the speech that you will give. The topic of your speech must be a problem that you think can be solved. Here are some examples: 

• Gender equality at home, school, in the workplace, level violence and nutrition or at government Abuse of any children’s rights, for example, child labour, sexual abuse,
• Any issue that people are unhappy with at school or in your community.

3. If possible, use the knowledge and experiences you know of. Think about how to capture the attention of your audience, through short stories and some humour, even if the topic is serious. Also, try to:

• arrange your points in a logical order
• plan your introduction, body and conclusion
• support each point with evidence, a short story or an example.

4. Remember what you learnt in Chapter 5 about presenting a speech, for example:

• using persuasive language
• varying tone and voice control

5. When you have practised enough, present your speech to a group.

6. Give feedback to the speaker. Be tactful and kind with any criticism. Be sure to give plenty of positive comments.