@article{14878,
  keywords = {Eritrea, Nara, Nilo-Saharan, Traditional songs and lyrics, Wedding songs, Wonaan ndilee},
  author = {A. Issa},
  title = {Traditional songs of the Nara (Eritrea): Remarks on their wedding songs},
  abstract = {This paper examines the social and cultural functions of the Nara traditional songs through semantic and structural analyses. It also looks into the formal stylistic and conventional poetic devices like figurative language, rhyme etc., and how these devices are used to frame the poetic structure of the Nara traditional songs. The Nara people are native to Eritrea and Eastern Sudan. They speak a Nilo-Saharan language called Nara. The fact that they constitute about 1.5 percent of the total Eritrean population makes them a minority among other majority linguistic groups like Tigrinya and Tigre. Moreover, the Nara people are peripheral people and thus less known to the center and therefore they are neglected in research and in conservation and preservation projects. It is these serious issues which prompted the researcher (who himself is a native Nara) to produce this paper. In this paper, lyrics from a selected traditional song called wonaan ndilee are employed to investigate the above-mentioned aspects. Just like in other communities, traditional songs of the Nara people form a substantial part of their folklore and culture. These songs mirror the community s customs, traditions, and events that make up their daily life. Wonaan ndilee is one of the most famous and all-time wedding ceremony songs sung at the marriage venue at the bride s family home, at the arrival of the groom and his entourage. The song is also performed during the bridal farewell ceremony, at the time of departure of the bride for the groom s family home. Since the song under investigation involves performance, a performance-based approach is used to analyze it. First, the lyrics of the song are translated into English and then the song is explained and analyzed stanza by stanza with special focus placed on the lines that carry metaphorical and symbolic undertones. This work is part of an ongoing ethnographic study on the Nara folklore in form of intangible heritage and it is the outcome of previously collected ethnographic data.},
  volume = {2020-December},
  number = {75},
  pages = {249-257},
  issn = {03919099 (ISSN)},
  url = {https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85103592755&partnerID=40&md5=d7cad64284009a2c47f37cc3d42dd46b},
  note = {Publisher: Grafo SpA},
}