oraltradition

Oral tradition refers to the transmission of culture, knowledge, and storytelling through spoken language, singing, and performance rather than through writing. It comprises myths, legends, folktales, proverbs, genealogies, laws, ritual instructions, and other forms of cultural expression that are shared from one generation to the next.

Key features include memory-based composition, formulaic language, repetition, and performative delivery. The material is often adapted to the speaker and audience, enabling dynamic variation while preserving core motifs and functions. Storytellers, singers, poets, shamans, and griots or bard-like figures commonly carry, curate, and validate the tradition within their communities.

Oral tradition serves multiple social roles, including entertainment, education, historical memory, moral instruction, law, and the reinforcement of social identity. It is fluid and contextual, capable of absorbing new events and ideas while reorganizing them to fit communal norms.

Different cultures have specialized forms. West African griots maintain genealogies and political history; Australian Aboriginal songlines encode landscape knowledge through chant and dance; many Indigenous and diasporic communities preserve cosmologies, rituals, and ceremonies through oral means. In scholarly study, oral tradition often precedes and interacts with writing; the technique of oral-formulaic composition explains how long epic narratives can be produced orally, as described by Parry and Lord in relation to Homeric poetry.

Oral tradition is not static: it evolves with social change, contact with other cultures, and modern media. While writing and recording technologies can preserve material, they can also alter performance contexts and authority. Understanding oral tradition requires attention to memory, performance, community, and historical context.