The 19th-century Swahili poet Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy composed several poems in opposition to the Omani Empire’s invasion of his native Mombasa. In this paper, I focus on one such poem, “Ngoma ya Kizungup’ia”, which has not been studied as comprehensively as many others. I unpack the cultural, choreographic, and poetic significance of the kiumbizi dance form, which serves as one of its central tropes. In light of Muyaka’s poetic invocation of this dance and the historical, political and performative context of 19th-century Swahili war poetry, I apply the rhetorical and literary framework of Signifyin(g) to gain a deeper understanding of the political intentions and poetic execution of Muyaka’s resistance poetry, as distinguished contextually and ideologically from his earlier war dialogue poems. Finally, I reflect on my own experience translating the poem into English using methods of creative transposition, and conclude that the inextricability of the poem's hermeneutic and poetic values renders it especially difficult to translate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:85800 |
| Date | 05 June 2023 |
| Creators | Prins, Richard |
| Contributors | Universität Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 1614-2373, urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-857753, qucosa:85775 |
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