Oral epic performances simply don’t exist without audiences (see Chapter 4, by Jensen), even if, as in many modern fieldwork situations, performances are staged chiefly for teams of outsiders. Most if not all oral epic performances that reach textual form (as printed, audio, or video ‘‘text’’) are in fact stimulated by external forces (see the section entitled “Collection, Textualization, and Edition,’’ below), so the goal of capturing an event in its ‘‘natural context’’ without the ‘‘distortion’’ induced by a group of strangers or without influence by an amanuensis or mechanical recording apparatus proves a romantic ideal without much application in reality. In conceiving of the relationship between the bard and audience, it is therefore helpful to invoke the principle of the ‘‘performance arena’’, the virtual space where singer and auditors meet in order to carry on the specialized communication that is oral epic (J. Foley 1995: 47-9, 79-82). Rhetorically speaking, the bard assumes a certain kind of audience with a certain level of fluency, a programmatic assumption that has important implications for the structure and meaning of his epic language (see the next section). This is certainly not to deny the palpable influence of a real and present audience, but simply to observe that shifts in audience make-up do not cause singers to code-switch out of the traditional language into what amounts to a foreign tongue. Whatever the particular nature of performance in a given tradition - and the possibilities are many and varied - the channel of communication is prescribed by the framing and yet flexible rules that govern the event.
Central Asian oral epic traditions offer a glimpse of one such set of flexible rules governing performance, guiding composition and reception both from one area or ethnic group to another and over time within a single epic tradition (see Reichl 1992: especially 93-117; also 2000b). The performance arenas for epic storytelling among Tatar and Siberian peoples, for example, are often ritualistic, linked to a feast, wedding, religious festival, coffeehouse gathering, or some other communal event. In the central Asian republics epic performance frequently takes place at night and can last many nights, with the length and shape of the bard’s poem directly dependent on the interest generated by the audience, who in some traditions prescribe the particular episode to be performed. In fact, Reichl reports Kazakh situations in which members of the audience actually challenge the bard to a singing contest. Another widespread practice bearing on singer-audience interaction is the composing of what the Uzbeks call a terma or lyric poem that acts as an introduction to the epic. Some termas praise the bard’s accompanying instrument, while others extol the virtues of historical personages or political movements. Kazakh singers start with short poems detailing their own singer-biographies, including an account of their masters and repertories, before proceeding with termas and then with the epic itself, in much the same way as some scholars (following Pindar and Plutarch) have described the Homeric Hymns’ hypothetical function as prooimia for the main event of epic. As for the evolution of performance arenas in central Asia, both the court setting and preference for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, have now generally given way to unofficial, more secular settings. These changes entail shifts in audience makeup as well.
Nor should our exclusively textual record of epics from the ancient world obscure the fact that, as Homer makes clear enough in his (admittedly poetic) description of singers’ performances, in many cases music and dancing once accompanied the narration. As Thomas Hale has explained in some detail (1998: 146-71), the performances ofgriots and griottes across Niger, Mali, Senegal, and Gambia show that music is an integral facet of their epic presentations. Among the different sorts of lutes played by performers, the kora and balafon are men’s instruments while the ardin and karinya are exclusively used by women. Vocal singing styles are diverse, as are the often complex tunings of bards’ instruments. As with many oral epics around the globe, the relationship of words and music within these African traditions is reported to be very close and mutually sustaining, although the exact nature of the correspondence remains elusive here and elsewhere (a welcome exception to that truism is H. Wakefield Foster’s research (2004) on the vocal melodies employed by the South Slavic epic guslar, which establishes that melodic shifts act as cues for new developments in the narrative). In some Central African traditions the chief performer is supported by one or more auxiliary instrumentalists and backup vocal singers; he may act out the dramatic content mimetically, and the audience may join in dancing and singing. Overall, the spectrum of possibilities in this region stretches from a nearly exclusive focus on the single performer to a deeply communal event in which ‘‘the distance between performer and subject collapses; the performer becomes the hero (or his antagonists); and the audience is given an integral role in the event’’ (Belcher 1999: 29).
World History
