Sundiata Oral Tradition

Sundiata: A Case for Oral Tradition

To recreate the past, historian use multiple kinds of sources to provide evidence for the events that occurred in the past. On such source, popularly used to recreate early African History, is Oral Tradition. Oral Tradition, as defined by Jan Vansina, is “verbal testimonies reported from the past: statements either spoken or sang.” For many years, the validity of Oral Tradition as a source was in question. In the recent years, the validity is no longer in question because it has been proven to be a reliable source. In this paper, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali will be used to examine the benefits of using Oral Tradition in reconstructing the social, political, and economic history. Throughout the paper, it will first create a comparison between the textbook’s account

Then it will look at the benefits of oral tradition in depicting social, political, and economic history. To conclude, the paper will argue that although oral tradition has limitation, they are similar to the limitations that occur in other historical sources.

In using oral tradition as a source, readers learn more about the social, economic, and political history then they do in the book Africa’s description of the history of Mali. Textbook: overview of Ancient Mali. Sundiata focuses on the rise of Sundiata and his role in saving Mali. MORE!!!!!! Oral tradition as a source has many benefits; these benefits allow the audience a glimpse into events of the past. One of benefit is that the audience can learn about the social customs and relationships that make up the social history. In Sundiata, the reader learns of that Mali was a patriarchal society that practices polygamy, and objectifies women, depicting the social history of Mali. To start with, Mali had an extremely patriarchal society. In Sundiata, the male