Practising inside oral tradition

If you wish to know who I am / If you wish me to teach you what I know / Cease for the while to be what you are / And forget what you know

“The dead are not dead” digital collage by Keren Lasme

In October last year, I wrote and recorded this reflection piece on African oral tradition for The Quick + The Brave as part of their Advocates + Allies issue. It is a heartfelt word-offering that humbly builds upon ancestral practices of knowledge transmission and the potency of orality.

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Hi listener, it’s Keren here.

I hope you are well and safe wherever you are listening in. I am currently in Abidjan and I’m recording this thought piece from my home. It’s early in the evening, the soundscape of the night is being activated and, of course, crickets are already chirping in the background.

So before I start this reflection on African oral tradition, I’d like to open the space with the following invitation. It is a way for me to kind of continue the practice of transmission and the passing down of knowledge from generation to generation.

If you wish to know who I am

If you wish me to teach you what I know

Cease for the while to be what you are

And forget what you know

This is a humble invitation that travelled the early 1900s until now to find its way through my voice from Fulfulde to French and from French to English.

It is an invitation from Tierno Bokar, a Malian mystic and spiritual leader known as the Sage of Bandiagara. These words were collected by his student at the time who was Amadou Hampâté Bâ, one of the greatest African thinkers of the twentieth century who contributed immensely to the preservation of the collective memory of Africa.

Now, what comes to your mind when you hear African oral tradition?

Continue reading here.