It's time we accept, appreciate the world's new oral artforms

It is said that, in Africa, stories grow on trees. There could be a million interpretations for this aphorism, but for me it captures the centrality of stories in the African cosmos. It is well known that writing originated from Africa, and so did art. Or how could the cradle of mankind not claim the honour of being the first-ever home of stories, music and the artistic kit and caboodle that comes with life? That said, it is a settled matter of fact that, before the European powers converged on Berlin at the turn of the 19th century to carve out for themselves fiefdoms from the cake that - to them - was Africa, we were primarily an oral society. We passed stories down generations, every iteration tweaked here and there to capture the exigencies  and realities of the moment. Among the Aembu of Kenya, among whom the umbilical cords of my ancestors were interred, we literally ran our world through stories, proverbs and songs.

For instance, when it came to harvesting beans, we would create a special patch on the ground, smear it with cowdung mixed with wood ash and wait for it to dry. Then we would gather the dry stalks heavy with bean pods and form a circle around heap after heap of harvest. Then, armed with sticks, we would go round singing, bringing up and down the sticks in a rhythm and synchronicity that invited the living, the living dead and the ancestors in a divine cocktail of work, gratitude and communal education. The songs could be about anything, but I particularly liked the humorous ones that satirised those who fell out of step with the norms, in much the same way the modern justice system is supposed to keep us on the straight and narrow.