Like Jan Vansina’s groundbreaking work, Oral Tradition, in which Vansina provides a history of pre-colonial kingdoms in central Africa, perhaps Chickage Oba-Smidt’s Oral Chronicle is a pioneering work in the field of oral historiography centering on the Boorana Oromo in southern Ethiopia, Northeast Africa. In her Oral Chronicle Oba-Smidt unravels Oromo oral tradition as a source of evidence, evidence of what the Boorana Oromo believe to have happened (folk history) and what actually happened (ethnohistory) in the past. She discusses from an anthropological history viewpoint the “state of analysis of ‘history’ among the Boorana and how they interpret history” (594). From a folklorist perspective, if Henry Glassie is right, “The past is not history. History is a story about the past,” so, according to Oba-Smidt, it is true that “the Boorana historical narratives could become increasingly important, containing as they do a wealth of information from the fifteenth century to the present day, virtually constituting an Oral Chronicle” (592).
Early in the book Ezekiel Gebissa, an Oromo historian from Kettering University, remarks in his foreword that Oba-Smidt’s book “is not the history of Boorana Oromo…not a scholarly interpretation based on existing sources to understand the history of the Boorana either” (2). However, he agrees that “Oba-Smidt has uncovered the Boorana Oromo perspective of history and the process by which oral texts are handed down and reproduced as history” (2). As a folklorist, in this review I follow this second remark made by the historian and adhere to the author’s prefatory note: “I study the history of a people called Boorana” (5).
Oba-Smidt’s purpose seems to be as much to pay homage to Boorana Oromo oral historians, prophets, heroes, and the gadaa community leaders from the fifteenth century onwards as it is to contribute to the ongoing reconstruction of a positivist Oromo historical studies based on oral traditions and commemorative verse. She asks “Why did I decide to study the history of these people?” She answers: “Because I discovered the ‘history bone’ that the Boorana have inside them” (5). Oral Chronicle does much more in that it offers a holistic view of Boorana, one particular group of the Oromo, their life in the past under a gadaa egalitarian system and, subsequently, under the hierarchical Abyssinian rule.
As part of the ongoing Oromo knowledge construction, a positivist historical revisionism has occasioned a methodological shift toward the re-interpretation of Oromo historical records and events to reflect the contemporary discoveries of fact and evidence and produce a revised history of the people from an Oromo perspective. In contrast to historical negationism, which distorted genuine records, manipulated facts, denied the people their own perspective, and deliberately mistranslated texts, Oromo studies, micro- and macro-historical research, became “concerned with the process by which Oromo society broke up as the modern nation was founded, or [with] the process by which Oromo nationalism was formed” (588). Toward this purpose, Oral Chronicle, is an abundant source of primary data and methodological stance.
I did my MA research on Boorana oral poetry, the dhaaduu stylized verse, in 2003. Boorana Oromo men and women perform many different genres of songs and narratives on different occasions such as rituals, assemblies, festivals, wars, and initiation ceremonies. In those performances of argaa-dhageettii (narratives) and songs reproduced out of real context, “set within the academic trend of an Anthropological History” (593), Oba-Smidt presents in Oral Chronicle the social memory of events that occurred over almost six centuries. From a folkloristic perspective, close observation of each text in Oral Chronicle shows that mnemonic devices (names, landscapes, and objects), natural phenomena, and events are used as cues to remembering the past and interpreting its meaning to the Oromo people.
The genres of Boorana oral poetry include gobaa, used to praise or criticize heroes before going to battle; geerarsa, used as a social critique to recount disputes or sung by warriors on their way back home; dhaadu, sung to recount heroic exploits; jeemuu used as elegy “to lament the passing of heroes who fell on the battlefield” (658), weedduu and faaluu, sung to praise cattle, olka, songs of gadaa rituals, kaarrilee, women’s work songs to praise or slander their lovers, and addaraa, songs of spirit possession (709).
Oba-Smidt’s Oral Chronicle aims to reveal “the mechanism by which history is produced and passed on in a non-literate society” (593), using cultural studies (or an ethnohistorical) approach to historical memories and narratives. It “does not attempt to reconstruct the history of an ethnic group,” not because the reconstruction is impossible but because the author chose to make a methodological shift, contrary to the majority of historians in sub-Saharan Africa who “require the existence of some form of written records before they consult oral histories or traditions” (592).
The book is divided into two major parts: Oral Traditions and Analysis. The Oral Traditions section presents chronicles of the successive gadaa rulers narrated by eleven elders from their memory of events over five centuries, narratives of prophets, and songs in praise of heroes outlined in multiple subcategories as recounted by Boorana elders. Oba-Smidt divides the Analysis section into six chapters. In chapter 1 she provides an outline of the sociocultural setting of Boorana, the people and their land; in chapter 2, she describes the narrative scene where the oral chronicle is produced, and the types of oral traditions among Boorana; chapter 3 presents narrative categories and patterns in Boorana oral chronicle, including the names of eight gadaa leaders before 1456 with a few events while each was in charge; chapter 4 is about raaga (prophets) and history and about prophets’ social role “as the drivers of the resistance movement against colonial governments,” or advisors in times of social crisis (667); chapter 5 presents oral poetry as one way of formulating oral historiography among the Boorana, and Walter Ong’s notion of to “think memorable thoughts,” i.e., using mnemonic devices to narrate historical narratives in oral cultures (693); chapter 6 discusses “structured events” (maq-baasa), the structure of historical memory, and the Boorana concept of cyclical time based on maq-baasa and the maq-baasa/gogeessa cycle, by which account each gadaa leader lasts eight years, there are seventy gadaa so far, and each gadaa “leader experiences events allotted to them according to their maq-baasa” structured events (734).
Oba-Smidt is successful in showing us that among the Boorana Oromo, a non-literate society in Northeast Africa, the construction and preservation of history is made possible in three ways: through the prophetic stitching together of events by raaga (prophets), through the generalization of structured events based on the maq-baasa cycle and the maq-baasa/gogessa cycle, and by recording events through verse. Oral Chronicle is an immense contribution to Oromo folklore study.
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[Review length: 1112 words • Review posted on November 1, 2016]