The Oral Epic: From Performance to Interpretation

Contents

• Introduction
• Part I: Settings
• 1 How to Identify an Oral Epic
• Oral: shades and grades
• The challenge of native classification
• An African interlude
• The Uzbek dastan
• 2 The Singer
• Epic singers: types and terms
• How to become an epic singer
• The chain of transmission
• Creativity and innovation
• 3 Introducing Performance
• The ethnography of communication
• Textualization
• Part II: Performance
• 4 Voice
• Speaking
• Singing
• Shamanic voices
• 5 Gesture
• Conventional gestures: the Karakalpak jïraw
• Stylized gestures: the Kyrgyz manaschï
• Gesture and inspiration
• Gesture, miming, stage props
• 6 Oral Epics as Songs
• Song as vehicle, song as music
• ‘Riding the song’: the singing of the Kyrgyz epic Manas
• Music and metre: some examples
• 7 Voice and Instrument
• Gusle, qobïz, horse-head fiddle
• Lute, dutar, dombira
• The interplay of song and instrument
• Part III: Interpretation
• 8 Words, Music, Meaning
• Meaning and expression
• What’s in a name?
• Imitation
• Leitmotifs in Siberian oral epics
• Expression and convention
• 9 The Singer and the Tale
• Point of View
• Mythological epics, sacred time
• First-person narration, shamanic traces
• The narrator’s presence in the narrative
• 10 Performance and Interpretation
• Visualization and imaging
• Aria and recitative
• From context to text
• Appendices
• A Notes on Oral Epic Traditions
• B Audio/Video Examples
• C Discography