Introduction
Human writing only emerged 6000 years ago, whereas homo sapiens has roamed the earth for approximately 50,000 years (Ong, 1982). Oral cultures have existed predominantly in human history and literacy is a relatively new phenomenon. However, literacy is now a default setting for contemporary human experience and is having an immense influence in how we relate to place, nature and story. We can only try to imagine how sense-making might have been and is in oral cultures. It is important to note that it is not possible to fully understand life in an oral culture as a literate person (Ong, 1982). I am interested in exploring the relationship between the cosmology of oral cultures and contemporary society in relation to animism, performance, and deep listening in order to foster my own understanding of a world we have inherited and a world we are creating and what we can learn in this process of immersing ourselves in a process of seeing with fresh eyes. My starting point was the discovery of a poem by the African Gabon Baka people of which the following poem is from, found in the book Technicians of the Sacred by Jerome Rothenberg (2017).
The fish does… HIP
The bird does… VISS
The marmot does… GNAN
I throw myself to the left,
I turn myself to the right
I act the fish,
Which darts in the water, which darts
Which twists about, which leaps –
All lives, all dances, and all is loud.
The fish does… HIP
The bird does… VISS
The marmot does…GNAN
The bird flies away,
It flies, flies, flies
Goes, returns, passes
Climbs, soars, and drops.
I act the bird-
All lives, all dances, and all is loud.
The fish does… HIP
The bird does… VISS
The marmot does…GNAN
The monkey from branch to branch,
Runs, bounds, and leaps,
With his wife, with his brat,
His mouth full, his tail in the air,
There goes the monkey! There goes the monkey!
All lives, all dances, and all is loud.
The Performance
Creative works from oral cultures such as the poem by the Baka People have more recently been acknowledged by scholars as being part of a highly complex system of tradition, memory, and innovation, a refusal of the traditional view that naivety and primitivism is what supposedly shapes oral cultures such as the Baka people (Vikis-Freibergs, 1984; Rothenberg, 2017). In the book Poetics of Space Bachelard writes about the need of letting go of the habits of contemporary scientific research and enter a way of sense-making of direct ontology (1994). Vaira Vikis-Freibergs, psychologist and professor whose work is mainly centered around Slavic folklore, agrees with Bachelard on the fact that psychoanalysis as a field cannot fully explain the causality of poetry. She has examined this complexity from the perspective of the oral singer recreating the poem at each moment causing repetition to express the same idea with constant epithets (Vikis-Freibergs, 1984), which is part of the of the Parry-Lord Model of oral-formulaic theory (de Vet, 2008). In oral tradition, poems act as a signpost representing specific laws of the relationship towards place, nature and story which are deeply embedded with the cosmology of the culture. According to John Dewey (1859-1952), an American philosopher, in contemporary society creative work has been declared as an independent field, where art is exiled into a museum, wherein the museum separates the origin and its purpose of experience. However, he also mentions how genuine care and interest in a contemporary day-to-day life, such as one owns job or hobby is an act of artistic engagement (Chaliakopoulos, 2020). This notion is confirmed by Victor Turner who claims that play and ritual are ancient activity frameworks (St John, 2008). For oral cultures such as the Bakan people, artistic endeavor plays an integral role in the relationship with nature and place as historically the communication with the spirits of the forest has been a central element of Bakan livelihood.
In her book Oral Literature in Africa (1970) Ruth Finnegan explores the performative role of poetry in African cultures. She mentions that oral tradition is actualized in performance similar to music and dance; it depends on the performer and on the repeated performance for its existence. The totality of a piece of orality can only be fully witnessed when experienced in performance as body language, facial expression and tone of voice play an immense role in the delivery of the piece. Looking at the Bakan poem, my curiousity awakens as I reflect on how the people would perform the poem. One can imagine the intensity of the sounds, the setting within the forest which invites the audience to attentively follow the performer in their play. An analysis of Balinese performance mentions that it is not only the human audience that is supposed to be entertained. The performance is an offering to certain spirits and acts as a reminder for the vital connections between place, nature and story in their specific locality (De Vet, 2008). Contemporary literate culture is sometimes mislead by focusing solely on the words of a poem which excludes essential aspects of the full realization as a work of art (Finnegan, 1970). Coming back to the ideas shared by John Dewey, the separation of idea and object in the literate culture creates isolated material which in essence is part of an interconnected whole.
Animism as Original Instructions
In oral cultures stories are passed down of the land and its people, creating a strong sense of connection to the more-than human world. In the book Braiding Sweetgrass the author talks about how these stories, poems and songs transfer Original Instructions about a cosmology that encapsulates an ancient relationship towards hunting, family, ceremony, and other areas of life (Kimmerer, 2020). This sense of connection to place and nature which is fostered by the passing down of these Original Instructions cannot be fully named, it is a feeling within oneself (Silko, 1996) which resides in the “floating world”, a term coined by Victor Tuner, an important scholar of cultural performance, corresponding to feelings related to a sense of possibility and imagination (St John, 2008). This floating world is becoming increasingly important in contemporary culture as society is being forced to imagine a new paradigm of humanity which invites the application of Original Instructions into the modern world for regenerating the planet. In the podcast Accidental Gods Indy Johar, who is the CEO of Dark Matter Labs, an organization focused on building a civic economy, talks about humanity being at the moment of a global paradigm shift where we realize that we are interbecomings. Interbecomings refers to not being separate fixed individuals, nouns, but being relational entanglements, active verb forms (Scott, 2023). There is currently a remembering of the so-called deep world happening as our relationship to place, nature and story evolves.
Ronald Grimes who has extensively researched ritual describes the deep world as being a web of metaphors in a performed, imagined cosmos where we become what we sing, dance, chant, drum (Grimes, 2002). The deep world is a deep knowing of these entangled relationships where performance serves the observable through the sense of wonder towards the relationship that happens between the self and the outside world. Animism in indigenous cultures often observes action, rhythm and the spiraling of wisdom within story (Nelson, 2008). In the Bakan poem this can be recognized by the way the fish, the monkey and the bird are being described. One can become the fish or the bird through embodying a certain observable quality of the being. It seems almost as if the boundaries between oneself and the other creature are removed. In oral tradition the soul is found in the living world outside of the individual body. This cosmology is closely connected to Animism as described by Nurit Bird-David, a professor of cultural anthropology, as being in particular relationships with the more-than human world (Bird-David, 1999).
The Importance of Deep Listening
Through spoken word ritual oral cultures strengthen crucial intentions as an invocation for beneficial circumstances such as for hunting and growing food. Words are not just words; they are spells which act as a metaphor towards being in tune with the natural cycles and a calling for spirits of the land to be benevolent to the people. Enrique Salmon who is a Raramuri (Tarahumara) and expert on ancestral ecological knowledge writes about ‘A maintenance of the relationship with their world occurs while they continue to fit harmoniously into it’ (Salmón, 2000, p. 1329). For the Baka people, hunting is one of the main aspects of their life. Every animal is an offering of the forest which the community is grateful for (Devin, 2012; Paulin, 2007). Therefore, listening to the environment which is always in change is crucial for survival. It requires a recognition of the movement patterns of nature to make decisions based on a heightened sense of intuition. The poem recognizes the dynamic, alive, and power-driven reality which can be seen by the repetition of All lives, all dances and all is loud. A loud and alive forest is correlated to a healthy forest, bringing good fortune for the community. Oral culture identity and language is believed to regulate and manifest the health of nature, including its people (Salmón, 2000).
Luis Devin has spent extensive time with the Bakan people for his anthropological studies. He has recorded his experiences and was initiated in a rite of passage for young men by the Bakan people which allows him to share the secrets of the forest. Because the forest whispers things in your ear, it casts its spell over you with its melodies (Devin, 2012). The Baka People say that if one knows how to listen, nothing bad can happen (Devin, 2012). In a community gathering I attended at an ecovillage in the Bulgarian mountains an older couple mentioned how here for the first time in years they have listened to the sounds of nature again. The woman said: “I heard the birds and the crickets singing and I realized I have not only forgotten how to listen to nature, but also to myself.” In the book Sounding of the Soul: Listening to the Psyche (1996) author Mary Kittelson writes about society becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the noise of urban environments and media leading to a closing off to listening well to the sounds within oneself and in the world. In her conclusion she writes about how auditory energy is close to “psychic energy” which can sound into the depths of the soul if patience and an openness to not knowing are present. Bachelard in his Poetics of Space also touches on the psychic actuality of poetry in its reverberation (1994). When reflecting on the Bakan poem there is a notion of a specific quality of listening oral cultures have cultivated, which is often referred to as deep listening. The concept of deep listening has been researched within the context of oral culture as well as contemporary literate culture. Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) a composer, performer and humanitarian founded Deep Listening Institute described Deep Listening as a way of listening to everything possible in every action, listening to the sounds of life, of nature, of thoughts, of music (The Centre for Deep Listening, no date). The aboriginal people of the Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri languagescall deep listening dadirri, which is described as a respectful listening to build community and to contemplate in silent awareness (Korff, 2023). Deep listening invites the presence of space-in-between and of seeing beyond the mere meaning of a world and look more deeply into the relationship to life. When hearing a poem from a deep listening perspective we connect to the phenomenology of the soul from which the poem arises and expresses itself through the performer and the place of the performance. We are able to better access imagery beyond a fixed form, a already well-known formula and give space for novelty within the imaginary.
Discussion
Having reflected on oral cultures in relation to performance, animism and deep listening it is clear to see that nature in oral culture is a living, dynamic force in which humans are deeply embedded into. The recognition of the living environment shows how poems of oral tradition reinforce a strong sense of belonging to place, which supports the community in survival as place-based knowledge is being transmitted orally and at the same time acts as performative interaction where poetic play and ritual becomes a complex sense-making system that is not only entertaining but also acts as moral guide. Literate contemporary culture has distanced itself from this way of sense-making as the written word and scientific theory have created a more abstract relationship between humans and the more-than human world. As Walter Ong notes in Orality and Literacy the dominance of textuality in contemporary culture locks words into a visual field (1982) whereas the poetic imagery as noted by Bachelard is an echoing of the distant past which can only be tended to from a phenomenological perspective (1994). When I read the Bakan poem for the first time I was fixated on the written word and I also remember a sense of frustration when reading a specific poem and not immediately being able to capture its meaning. Through engaging with material on orality and poetry I became more aware of the importance to widen my perception into the unknown, the immediate and the performative nature of poetry. Bronislaw Manilowski highlights the notion of the human desire to experience as a way of knowing and that experiencing is to know (Olson, 1953). Through the philosophical search for objective truth, ethics and meaning I believe contemporary culture has disconnected itself from an experiential way of knowing leading to an alienation for a phenomenological embedded relationship to place, nature and story which decreases the overall sensitivity towards a sense of place. As seen by the example of the woman who listened to nature again, modern society is invited to re-discover experiential, revelatory and poetic wisdom in relation to locality and emergence. This is essential in order to evolve our capacity for solutions to regenerate the planet. In the book Original Instructions Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (2008) scholars explore the importance of indigenous wisdom on coexistence. This coexistence is in my opinion at the foundation of the Bakan poem of which All lives, all dances and all is loud expresses the livelihood of this interdependent web of life which humbles and inspires humans since the dawn of time. Contemporary culture is now more and more remembering this and re-establishing a more intricate relationship to place, nature and story.
Conclusion
Thinking about oral cultures and their profound relationship to place, nature, and story gives insight into the possibilities for extending the contemporary objective scientific paradigm with a phenomenological approach. Oral cultures, which prevailed for the majority of human history, are connected to the deep world in which complex narrative tradition is a valid sense-making tool which ensures right livelihood in the given context, such as seen by the Baka people in relation to the forest they live in; where the forest is a sovereign entity with beings and spirits that must be respected. This ensures a strong sense of place which fosters a feeling of belonging and a commitment to stewardship. Storytelling in oral cultures is rooted in complex performance as narratives are orally transmitted from one generation to the next and contemporary scholars are recognizing the importance to move away from the notion of savagery or primitivism when engaging with oral cultures. The emergence of written language marked a significant shift in the way society interacts with the living environment where we are now invited to become sensitive to imagery beyond the written word and listen to sounds, rhythm, vibration of the dynamic interconnected world we live in in order to feel a sense of wholeness and connection to place and nature. This will support society in recognizing the value of indigenous knowledge through Original Instructions and its complexity in maintaining a balanced relationship with the natural world. Moreover, embracing deep listening helps us to connect to the subtleties of energy within and on the outside making us more receptive to the voice of the soul of the world, to which oral cultures are deeply attuned to due to their excellent listening skills which is also related to survival. This notion is relevant for contemporary culture as for humanity to survive the current challenges we must listen and observe in a way that transcends scientific objectivism and allows for the mythical and transcendental to guide us home. For future research, I would like to become more specific of cultural differences and similarities of oral cultures in relation to their specific context of place and story.
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Cosima Amata 