Synopsis
Highly regarded for their interdisciplinary approach to the history of central and southern Africa, Leroy Vail and Landeg White now provide us with a thorough study of the political role of the poet in the oral societies of southern Africa.
Review
The collaborative work of Leroy Vail and Landeg White has once again yielded significant scholarship on the oral literature of Southern Africa. This indigenous form of free speech is important, not just as a scholarly notion, but as the key to re-energizing the African oral tradition as a tool of social transformation. - Njabulo S. Ndebele, The Times Literary Supplement
