ID - 131905352 TI - African Battle Traditions of Insult : Verbal Arts, Song-Poetry, and Performance PY - 2023 SN - 9783031156175 9783031156168 9783031156182 9783031156199 PB - Cham Springer International Publishing, Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan DB - UniCat KW - Philosophy and psychology of culture KW - Ethnology. Cultural anthropology KW - Theatrical science KW - Poetry KW - African literature KW - History of civilization KW - Afrikaans KW - Afrikaanse cultuur KW - etnologie KW - theater KW - cultuur KW - poëzie KW - North Africa KW - Africa KW - African diaspora. KW - African languages KW - African poetry KW - Exhortation (Rhetoric) KW - Songs KW - Rhetoric. KW - History and criticism. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:131905352 AB - This book explores the “battles” of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise. Tanure Ojaide is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. Educated at Ibadan and Syracuse, Tanure Ojaide has published twenty-one collections of poetry, as well as novels, short stories, memoirs, and scholarly work. He has won the ANA Poetry Prize four times: 1988, 1994, 2003, and 2011. His other awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region, the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry, and the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award. In 2016 he won both the African Literature Association’s Folon-Nichols Award for Excellence in Writing and the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award for the Humanities. In 2018 he co-won the Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. He has won the National Endowment for the Arts grant, twice the Fulbright, and twice the Carnegie African Diaspora Program fellowship. ER -