Rhythmical patterning of Tsonga children's traditional oral poetry

Abstract

The rhythmical nature of oral performance in Africa, for many genres, has often been noted. The process of transcribing a ‘simple’ genre like children's traditional poetry from a visual recording of performance, was described in a previous article. The design of a symbolic representation of the children's body movements and its incorporation within the transcription was included. A second work examined claims made for the universality of the rhythms of children's verse in the light of the Tsonga evidence. The present article outlines the development of a generalized prosodie statement for the verse lines of the genre.