A literary analysis of Kusaal folk songs

Abstract

This study entails literary analysis of Kusaal folk songs. Kusaal is a Mabia language spoken in the North Eastern corner of Ghana in the Upper East Region. The study analyses the structure of Kusaal folk songs within the oral formulaic theory and examines the themes and literary devices embedded in Kusaal folk songs. The study adopts a qualitative research design in the data collection and analysis. Data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. From the primary source, data was collected through observation and interviews while data from the secondary source was gleaned from recording. This thesis is thus entirely qualitative and uses the parallel text approach of Bodomo (2017) in the translation of these songs. With regard to the structure, the study finds that Kusaal folk songs have basically two structures with either a soloist (one singer who sings all alone) or a lead singer and chorus (the lead singer sings and the chorus responds). Furthermore, the themes realised in Kusaal folk songs are the theme of advice/caution, inspiration, indifference, pride, bravery, praise, peace and unity, condolence, mockery, care/love and mourning. As regards literary devices, the study shows that alliteration, assonance, allusion, appellation, euphemism, oxymoron, parallelism, repetition, rhetorical questions, run-on-lines amongst others are prevalent in Kusaal folk songs. The study concludes that Kusaal folk songs are composed in performance with varied structures that confirm the oral formulaic theory. In view of the fact that the present study only focused on the literary analysis, future studies could examine the sociolinguistics of Kusaal folk song. This work contributes to the literature and the study of folk songs.