“The Song of the Women of my Land”
By Oumar Farouk Sesay
Content Analysis: Dr. Philip Foday Yamba Thulla
Like Parting Ways with Words, ‘The Song of the Women of My Land’ is expositive and one of Farouk’s most charming and successful pastoral poems. The famous folk activities of the past capture precisely the mood in the poem, in a way that, what seems like a culture lost and dead becomes a metaphor for rekindling the memories through the poet’s thinking. This puts this poem in a group of poems (‘Reign of Ruin’, ‘I am a Song’, ‘Homage to My Land’, ‘A Bird’) in which the poet tries to find a continuation of his nation’s tradition and lore, and re-establish them once again. So, in this poem, Farouk pays attention to celebrating the song bards, the local women, and exploring cultural roots. Coming from a community replete with culture, Farouk knows exactly what it was then when the old fashioned-ways like traditional neatness of dress, courteous greetings, respect for the dead, especially the heroes, Bubu dance (a traditional dance with music produced from trumpets made of bamboo cane), communal validation of laws, communal responsibility of child-rearing practices, magic shows1, etc., were considered valuable, which are now facing demise, in a manner that obviously lends itself to a close conjunction with this fading tradition. Specifically, the poem mourns the simple, pastoral life of farming and rural retreats of the women of our rural communities. The poet’s sense of transience and regret for the lost tradition and its embodiment (the women of old) is a major preoccupation of the poem that presents itself metaphorically right from the beginning. In the first lines of the poem, the poet captures, so feelingly, this ephemeral and fading tradition by comparing the ‘chipping away of bits of woods’ to ‘the fading bits of the women’s memory’ (Lines 1-4). The reality (and Farouk’s strong point) is expressed in lines 4-20 that, not only are the bits of the memory being washed away, the lyrics of the song are equally being stripped away. Like Keats in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, the poet examines the relationship between art and reality and his examination reveals that there is beauty in art2. The rural old-fashioned artefacts are brought to life in a most spectacular way. He recalls the rich but bitter memories of the work-songs the women sang in deserted fields in an impressionistic juxtaposition of reminiscent events. In dictions, ‘ploughed’, ‘terrain’, ‘mindscape’, ‘songs’, ‘dereliction’, ‘decapitated’, etc., this confusion of sense is captured. Though the poem remains anchored to art and nature, the word ‘sculptor’ in line 1 brings us to the reality that it is only when old knowledge are displaced that individuals construct new knowledge. With this deconstructionist sense, the sculptor, a creator in general sense, becomes a precursor for destruction, disintegration, in Farouk’s poem. However, Farouk is aware of the brevity of the beauty of art, the moderating role of rural retreats, next only to religion. Therefore, in the second stanza, he celebrates the usefulness of this art (the indigenous songs): ‘sponged off their anguish’, ‘to behold their collective pain’, ‘to celebrate their gains’, ‘commune with the unborn’ (and perhaps the dead), that in the past had performed the crucial function of articulating the common social values and moral principles of the African peoples, seeking primarily in indigenous societies to advise, educate, teach, entertain, preserve and shape people’s behaviour or otherwise influence people’s opinions3 in the full knowledge that even though art is transient, a good song (and a good work) will always linger, like the song bards of the old leaving their songs to tell their stories (Line 25-36). In the third stanza, the speaker presents a somber tune, making it appear dead, roaming an equally dead world. The souls in the poem are equally marooned, like the ghosts searching for chroniclers or folk practitioners to evoke their activities and reveal their stories. Farouk seems to be implicitly drawing, with this poem, a parallel with the women of those days and these of today in terms of their resilience in the face of adversity. The women of those days had used songs to ‘[behold] their lives, to free themselves from the servitude that cuffed the ankle of their souls, and dereliction that decapitated the epic of their lives’ (Lines 15-20). Today, these souls are looking for replacements they cannot find, for song bards to tell the tales of the servitude experienced by the women of those days, ‘who ploughed their soil and soul for a song to sing the story of their lives’ (Lines 39-44). Nonetheless, the speaker presents a gleam of hope that though ‘the song of the women of my land’ has been relegated and left to wander in solitude, there still remain practitioners who are lapping the precious but stale tune of the song of those unsung women in verses, and rhythm and melodies of their songs, trying to resurrect their lyrics killed in the forlorn fields to sing the dirges of the women of rural settings.
The poem deals with the inevitable fading of the old ways, the disregard for the past heroines and the irresistible transience of time. The poet dwells on these subject matters throughout with little ray of hope. Indeed, much of Sierra Leone’s ancestral arts are no longer considered valuable, much fewer recognize the priceless role of these arts because of the negative impact of modernization. The speaker expresses this in the poem with potent statements like ‘Today the tune roams the forlorn fields like sounds looking for lyrics’ (Lines 37-40), ‘The song of the women of my land left in the memory of the wind’ (Lines 45-46), ‘The tune tuning the tenor of my verse is all that remains of the song of the women of my land’ (Lines 63-65), ‘The dirge of their lives’ (Line 69), ‘Time chisels away bits of their memory’ (Line 2), ‘It strips away lyrics of the song of the women of my land’ (Line 6) and ‘Yet time strips the lyrics and scars the tune, leaving a dying song dead’ (Lines 32-33), which are comparisons that suggest the fading away of the past because of time. It is against these subjects that Farouk sets his poetry, trusting that this will be a clarion call to go back to those old-fashioned ways, preserve traditional culture and remember our past heroes/heroines.
The expository, largely complaining and sentimental tone of the poem, serves to emphasize the nature of this neglect and degradation. This tone the poet seems to reveal in a rather considered and meditative way. Indeed, the poet could very well be musing to himself, but a note of defiant outburst develops as we move on in the poem. For example, ‘chipping’, ‘time’, ‘chisels’, ‘memory’, ‘fading’, ‘echoing’, etc., have the overtones of depressed meditation, while ‘songs’, ‘celebrate’, ‘commune’, ‘strips’, ‘Today’, etc., have the overtones of resentment and downright emotional outburst for the heroines, unsung, and their tradition that might never be recovered. In the third stanza, the voice is faintly hopeful ‘left in the memory of the wind. Now feeding the verses of poets…’ (Line 46-47) but we notice that the expressions: ‘The stuttering lips… And screeching voice of my nip… is all that remains of the song of the women…’ (Lines 54-69) continue to undermine this faint ray of hope. The beauty is that the poetic voice does not just expose and complain but provide an apt detail of a significant sector from which to build—the poets and melodies of extant song bards (Line 46).
Matching the theme, images of neglect and erosion pre-dominate the poem. These images graphically evocate this neglect and transience through realistic details. For example, in his depicting of this cultural erosion and neglect of the past, Farouk compares creation with destruction in ‘Like a sculptor chipping away…Time chisels away bits of their memory’ (Lines 1-4). By doing so, he makes the point that in our quest to create (assimilate) valuable elements of our societies are always destroyed or neglected. This imagery alliterates strongly this decadence and neglect with the use of ‘forlorn field’, in line 9, ‘a dying song/Dead!’ in lines 32-33, etc., which suggests that the death of the song of those song bards, those heroines, far preceded their demise. In a sense, those heroines were forgotten even before their death, this folk practice died even before it had the chance to live. The inner states of mind of those women, a forte4 the poet might have drawn his subjects from, are depicted with the expression ‘terrain of their mindscape’ in line 12. Comparing this with the imageries of neglect, loss and void, the poet brings out his deep despair and grief for these fading antiquities.
The fading tendency of this folk practice and the unsung song of those women are not just carried away by the imagery created by the poet but they are also carried away by the very sounds of the words in the intricate pattern of alliteration, assonance and musical echoes that reverberate throughout the poem. For example, in the first stanza, the gradual erosion of the song of those women of the past is conveyed through the use of alliterative ‘c’ sounds of ‘chipping’, ‘chisels’; the ‘f’ sounds of ‘fading’, ‘forlorn’, ‘field’; the ‘v’ sounds of ‘vast’, ‘void’ and the ‘d’ sounds of ‘dereliction’, ‘decapitated’. The sense of nostalgia and hymn for the dead heroines comes through the long vowels of ‘soil’, ‘sing’, ‘song’, ‘story’ and suggests bells urging the reader to take action, to remember and exploit historical entities. The ‘t’ sounds of ‘tune’, ‘tuning’, and ‘tenor’ suggest hope and remind the reader of the action to take. The onomatopoetic ‘Wriggling’ and ‘Hollering’ further suggest this call for action.
The symmetrical structure is easy to follow with each line running on to the other, each stanza running on to the next, mirroring the flow of time and its irreparable destruction of valuable traditional practices. The structure is consistent with the poet’s flow of thought, exploring his emotion, mostly repining. There are also occasional end-stopped-lines, ‘…about their lives; songs…’ (Line 10), ‘…their lives;’ (Line 16), ‘scorned ghost.’ (Line 16), etc., which force the reader to stop for a while and linger over certain words like ‘Dead!’, ‘ghost.’, etc., and meditate on the point the poet is putting across, or to glide over some or pause in order to prepare the reader for the effect of the next word or line, as it is with the effect in the last line of the poem. To emphasize the recurrence of death, erosion and fading of memory, the poet halts the reader and breaks the rhythm of the poem to hammer home and summarize these motifs: ‘The dirge of their lives!’ (Line 69), ‘Like a sculptor chipping away…Time chisels away bits of their memory’ (Lines 1-4). This prosodic technique helps to reveal the poet’s mood, expressing his continuing state of mind, consistent with his expositive yet assertive tone. Farouk chooses words for their depth so as to create the most figurative effect5 ordinary words cannot convey. For example, the use of the word ‘sculptor’ in line 1 complements the use of the word ‘chisels’ in line 2. To drive home his message about ordinary life and ordinary people, he pre-dominates his poem with dictions consistent with pastoral life and pastoral living, making the reader to figuratively see and hear these images. Words like ‘strips’ (Line 5), ‘echoing’ (Line 7), ‘fading’ (Line 7), ‘forlorn’ (Line 9), ‘fields’ (Line 9), ‘ploughed’ (Line 11), ‘mindscape’ (Line 12), ‘sponged’ (Line 21), ‘scars’ (Line 30), ‘tune’ (Line 31), ‘Wriggling’ (Line 48), ‘Hollering’ (Line 49), ‘stuttering’ (Line 53), ‘screeching’ (Line 54), etc., create tremendous effect on the reader.
In conclusion, Farouk’s poem, ‘The Song of the Women of My Land’, is a piece of visual art6, linking traditional landscape (and mindscape) of the speaker in the poem with the artistic ideals of the lost song bards of rural settings.
1, 3, Thulla, P. F. Y. (2018) Folk literature and Social Behaviour of the Temne in Sierra Leone
2, 4, 5, 6, Fahy J. G. (1999) New Poetry for Leaving Certificate Higher Level: Exploration.