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The language that sings
In the beginning there was language, once described as nothing more than primitive references to the overwhelming richness of the world. When we realised how impotent language was at describing this world, we began our revolution!
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The language that sings: Al-Hakamat as custodians of heritage
In the beginning there was language, once described as nothing more than primitive references to the overwhelming richness of the world. When we realised how impotent language was at describing this world, we began our revolution! Through writing, singing, storytelling and reciting poetry we started to look for meanings in the metaphors of this language. We invented literature as a way out of this helpless isolation, and since then, language is no longer just a means of communication, or a decoder of primitive symbols, but has become a vast open space for crafting meaning, rediscovering the world, and sometimes even constructing it.
According to the anthropologist professor Margaret Mead, the first sign of cultural civilization was the discovery of a femur bone showing a fracture that had healed because someone had taken care of the injured person in a 15,000-year-old cave. This may well have been the first sign of humanity developing in the wild. However, the first sign of cultural civilization is in fact the moment people first began using figurative language to tell stories, to chant and sing songs which they composed and transmitted. This spoken language plays an essential role, not only as a medium to convey messages in everyday life among a particular group or as a departure from the rigidity of language, but as a vessel of heritage for all of humanity. Language is a partner in the formation and reproduction of heritage within the collective consciousness of the entire human species.
The relationship between language and heritage is an organic and intertwined one, with each feeding on the other and contributing to its survival and continuity. This is especially true in contexts of oral traditions such as the songs of Al-Hakamat, one of the most prominent manifestations of this relationship, particularly in Western Sudan and other parts of Africa.
In contexts where there is no written documentation of the folklore of marginalized groups or those who face cultural alienation, we now see how oral traditions offer an alternative, unwritten collective memory. Al-Hakamat in Western Sudan are women, often from the margins of their societies, who have become custodians of this memory and who transmit it through generations, with their voices, language and songs brimming with metaphor.
Al-Hakama: A repository of collective heritage
Al-Hakama is a title bestowed on prominent women in Darfur and Kordofan known for their use of language containing lyrics that are loaded with social, political and cultural meanings in their poetry and singing. Al-Hakamat wield a high degree of authority over the men in their communities and play pivotal roles in their rural settings.
Al-Hakamat in western Sudan preserve heritage through language and vice versa. The lyrical language of their music incorporates love, conflict, and the customs and traditions of a nation. They also retell history and reinforce concepts and meanings rooted in the local language and by doing so, they preserve local dialects protecting them against extinction in the face of modern languages, encroaching globalization, displacement and an educational system that only champions Sudan’s official language.
The songs of Al-Hakamat signify a rare meeting point between language and heritage, where collective memory is condensed into sung words, and language is given a cultural dimension that transcends everyday use. Preserving and documenting these songs is not only a way of preserving musical heritage, but also of preserving an entire language and identity, and this is where the relationship between language and heritage is most clearly manifest.
The importance of this sung language lies not only in its ability to preserve heritage or convey history, but also in its ability to consolidate local dialects and languages and to expand and diversify their vocabularies. The songs of Al-Hakamat are not merely old folk songs that are repeated endlessly and passed down from generation to generation, but rather they form corpora that nourish language. This sung language preserves local dialects and bestows on them a literary and poetic authority that reinforces their legitimacy by creating an auditory heritage that safeguards and archives a transmitted heritage.
One example is the song “al-bil amalan jota,” performed by Al-Hakama Shadin Gardoud in 2015. Her song not only celebrates camels and their value to the community and the shepherd’s knowledge and skill in herding his flock, but goes further to establish an entire cultural code. Its tone, rhythm, and vocabulary encapsulate a complete environment, where the description of the movement of the herd becomes a metaphor for collective harmony and where references to the camel evoke the pulse of life in the desert which means everything to the people of these regions. The voice of the singer here becomes a medium that conveys all of this: an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation carrying with it the memory, language, and images of the place.
In a charming YouTube video, Al-Hakama Shadin can be seen walking in a leisurely way across a natural landscape singing in a sweet voice "al-bil aban tula, kassin jihat al-fula" which means that the camels responded to the shepherd's call and walked towards the watering hole. In another verse of the song "tabarit shaddan hola lihsan al-me al-foga," “tabarit” refers to the camels at the back of the herd, implying that even the camels at the back hurried to catch up with the rest of the herd at the watering hole. In her explanation of the song, Salwa al-Mashli says it is part of the heritage of the Hamar tribe and was originally sung by girls in the late 1970s.
The relationship between language and heritage
The demise of any language or dialect means the loss of a substantial amount of cultural heritage associated with it and vice versa; the extinction of heritage results in languages losing vital content. If language is the repository of collective memory, a repository in which the stories, proverbs, songs, myths, rituals, customs, and traditions of a nation are stored, then this means that as the language weakens, its heritage becomes eroded, because heritage enriches language and contributes to the production of linguistic patterns rich in rhetorical imagery.
For example, if a word such as "al-fula," the name of a seasonal water source from which camels and livestock drink, disappeared with all of its connotations and significance for herders’ livelihoods, this would mean that new generations would lose the association with the sentiment evoked by this deeply-rooted word. Of course, there would be other words for ‘water-source’ but they would be isolated and without context. This is the same with other words related to herding, such as "al-sa'iya" and "al-marwah," which mean the return of livestock from pasture at sunset, or "al-zahayim," which means places where water collects after rain. These are not just words but keys to understanding an entire culture. With the ongoing armed conflict in places such as Darfur and Kordofan which have brought life there, specifically herding, to a standstill and caused repeated displacement, it is clear that ceasing to use these words will inevitably lead to their extinction over time and they will be forgotten by future generations.
Resisting marginalization and extinction: How does language preserve heritage in the songs performed by Al-Hakamat?
At a time when cultures are undermined due to displacement, conflicts, systematic marginalization, or cultural imperialism, the songs of Al-Hakamat become an effective tool of resistance that reconnects people with their identity, language, and local culture and a means to resist oblivion and reconnect with their roots.
Al-Hakama sings everywhere and under any circumstances using spoken language, often a local dialect that is inclusive and full of descriptions of daily life events, yet at the same time, concerned with any major issues facing the community. This makes her songs a mirror of popular culture, a culture shaped by the details of everyday life, place names, animals, rituals, public events, joys and sorrows to name but a few. Thus, her songs represent a form of living, and an honest, impartial historical archive of events, wars, relationships and social situations.
And yet despite these external factors, Al-Hakama’s voice rings out even in displacement camps, around Nyala, Al-Geneina and other cities, as if asserting the place’s original language. Her voice and her singing appear to resist whatever is happening around them, whether it is silence or cultural oppression imposed on them by the war waged by the country's national language against local dialects.
Hence, from the past to the present, Al-Hakama and her songs continue to weave the threads of language in musical harmony producing songs with different rhythms, like a long scarf that contains the memory of heritage through the ages and protects it from oblivion. A study of the role these female singers play in preserving heritage through language in the songs they perform shows that these unwritten oral songs are not merely an artistic tool, but a complex mechanism that represents an essential part of protecting the linguistic and cultural identity of marginalized communities.
Cover picture: Women using improvised drum clapping and singing to create an event © Sari Omer
The language that sings: Al-Hakamat as custodians of heritage
In the beginning there was language, once described as nothing more than primitive references to the overwhelming richness of the world. When we realised how impotent language was at describing this world, we began our revolution! Through writing, singing, storytelling and reciting poetry we started to look for meanings in the metaphors of this language. We invented literature as a way out of this helpless isolation, and since then, language is no longer just a means of communication, or a decoder of primitive symbols, but has become a vast open space for crafting meaning, rediscovering the world, and sometimes even constructing it.
According to the anthropologist professor Margaret Mead, the first sign of cultural civilization was the discovery of a femur bone showing a fracture that had healed because someone had taken care of the injured person in a 15,000-year-old cave. This may well have been the first sign of humanity developing in the wild. However, the first sign of cultural civilization is in fact the moment people first began using figurative language to tell stories, to chant and sing songs which they composed and transmitted. This spoken language plays an essential role, not only as a medium to convey messages in everyday life among a particular group or as a departure from the rigidity of language, but as a vessel of heritage for all of humanity. Language is a partner in the formation and reproduction of heritage within the collective consciousness of the entire human species.
The relationship between language and heritage is an organic and intertwined one, with each feeding on the other and contributing to its survival and continuity. This is especially true in contexts of oral traditions such as the songs of Al-Hakamat, one of the most prominent manifestations of this relationship, particularly in Western Sudan and other parts of Africa.
In contexts where there is no written documentation of the folklore of marginalized groups or those who face cultural alienation, we now see how oral traditions offer an alternative, unwritten collective memory. Al-Hakamat in Western Sudan are women, often from the margins of their societies, who have become custodians of this memory and who transmit it through generations, with their voices, language and songs brimming with metaphor.
Al-Hakama: A repository of collective heritage
Al-Hakama is a title bestowed on prominent women in Darfur and Kordofan known for their use of language containing lyrics that are loaded with social, political and cultural meanings in their poetry and singing. Al-Hakamat wield a high degree of authority over the men in their communities and play pivotal roles in their rural settings.
Al-Hakamat in western Sudan preserve heritage through language and vice versa. The lyrical language of their music incorporates love, conflict, and the customs and traditions of a nation. They also retell history and reinforce concepts and meanings rooted in the local language and by doing so, they preserve local dialects protecting them against extinction in the face of modern languages, encroaching globalization, displacement and an educational system that only champions Sudan’s official language.
The songs of Al-Hakamat signify a rare meeting point between language and heritage, where collective memory is condensed into sung words, and language is given a cultural dimension that transcends everyday use. Preserving and documenting these songs is not only a way of preserving musical heritage, but also of preserving an entire language and identity, and this is where the relationship between language and heritage is most clearly manifest.
The importance of this sung language lies not only in its ability to preserve heritage or convey history, but also in its ability to consolidate local dialects and languages and to expand and diversify their vocabularies. The songs of Al-Hakamat are not merely old folk songs that are repeated endlessly and passed down from generation to generation, but rather they form corpora that nourish language. This sung language preserves local dialects and bestows on them a literary and poetic authority that reinforces their legitimacy by creating an auditory heritage that safeguards and archives a transmitted heritage.
One example is the song “al-bil amalan jota,” performed by Al-Hakama Shadin Gardoud in 2015. Her song not only celebrates camels and their value to the community and the shepherd’s knowledge and skill in herding his flock, but goes further to establish an entire cultural code. Its tone, rhythm, and vocabulary encapsulate a complete environment, where the description of the movement of the herd becomes a metaphor for collective harmony and where references to the camel evoke the pulse of life in the desert which means everything to the people of these regions. The voice of the singer here becomes a medium that conveys all of this: an oral tradition passed down from generation to generation carrying with it the memory, language, and images of the place.
In a charming YouTube video, Al-Hakama Shadin can be seen walking in a leisurely way across a natural landscape singing in a sweet voice "al-bil aban tula, kassin jihat al-fula" which means that the camels responded to the shepherd's call and walked towards the watering hole. In another verse of the song "tabarit shaddan hola lihsan al-me al-foga," “tabarit” refers to the camels at the back of the herd, implying that even the camels at the back hurried to catch up with the rest of the herd at the watering hole. In her explanation of the song, Salwa al-Mashli says it is part of the heritage of the Hamar tribe and was originally sung by girls in the late 1970s.
The relationship between language and heritage
The demise of any language or dialect means the loss of a substantial amount of cultural heritage associated with it and vice versa; the extinction of heritage results in languages losing vital content. If language is the repository of collective memory, a repository in which the stories, proverbs, songs, myths, rituals, customs, and traditions of a nation are stored, then this means that as the language weakens, its heritage becomes eroded, because heritage enriches language and contributes to the production of linguistic patterns rich in rhetorical imagery.
For example, if a word such as "al-fula," the name of a seasonal water source from which camels and livestock drink, disappeared with all of its connotations and significance for herders’ livelihoods, this would mean that new generations would lose the association with the sentiment evoked by this deeply-rooted word. Of course, there would be other words for ‘water-source’ but they would be isolated and without context. This is the same with other words related to herding, such as "al-sa'iya" and "al-marwah," which mean the return of livestock from pasture at sunset, or "al-zahayim," which means places where water collects after rain. These are not just words but keys to understanding an entire culture. With the ongoing armed conflict in places such as Darfur and Kordofan which have brought life there, specifically herding, to a standstill and caused repeated displacement, it is clear that ceasing to use these words will inevitably lead to their extinction over time and they will be forgotten by future generations.
Resisting marginalization and extinction: How does language preserve heritage in the songs performed by Al-Hakamat?
At a time when cultures are undermined due to displacement, conflicts, systematic marginalization, or cultural imperialism, the songs of Al-Hakamat become an effective tool of resistance that reconnects people with their identity, language, and local culture and a means to resist oblivion and reconnect with their roots.
Al-Hakama sings everywhere and under any circumstances using spoken language, often a local dialect that is inclusive and full of descriptions of daily life events, yet at the same time, concerned with any major issues facing the community. This makes her songs a mirror of popular culture, a culture shaped by the details of everyday life, place names, animals, rituals, public events, joys and sorrows to name but a few. Thus, her songs represent a form of living, and an honest, impartial historical archive of events, wars, relationships and social situations.
And yet despite these external factors, Al-Hakama’s voice rings out even in displacement camps, around Nyala, Al-Geneina and other cities, as if asserting the place’s original language. Her voice and her singing appear to resist whatever is happening around them, whether it is silence or cultural oppression imposed on them by the war waged by the country's national language against local dialects.
Hence, from the past to the present, Al-Hakama and her songs continue to weave the threads of language in musical harmony producing songs with different rhythms, like a long scarf that contains the memory of heritage through the ages and protects it from oblivion. A study of the role these female singers play in preserving heritage through language in the songs they perform shows that these unwritten oral songs are not merely an artistic tool, but a complex mechanism that represents an essential part of protecting the linguistic and cultural identity of marginalized communities.
Cover picture: Women using improvised drum clapping and singing to create an event © Sari Omer
