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Friday, April 15, 2011

Diikuula's Love Riddle: Analysis

Analysis of Diikuula’s Love Riddle

Introduction

The objective of this chapter is (1) to document and analyse the aesthetic fields of Diikuula’s love riddle event, (2) to interpret the basic structure of Diikuula’s love riddle acts, and (3) to discuss audience participation during the event. Diikuula’s love riddle event was performed on 04 January 2008 in Iganga town by one of the many ‘Diikuula’ stree clowns in Uganda. This is one of the many unsolicited performance I encountered during my field studies. I analyze the thematic pattern and the performance strategies used by the audience to interpret the language and imagery Diikuula uses to convey his multiple messages. I chanced to find Diikuula performing by the road to my hotel room in Iganga town and I immediately joined the audience.

I have transcribed, translated and organised his performance into numbered chronologically numbered actones corresponding with the participants’ turn-taking. Each numbered line is attributed to at least one person. The Lusoga and English texts are placed one after the other to be read as simultaneous translations. This method enables the reader to follow the logic of the performance without losing the pace of the performance. It also facilitates the serious reader to read both versions of the text instead reading one of them at different times.

Description of the event

I was riding back to my hotel on a bicycle when I sighted the large crowd comprised mostly of children and bicycle cyclists. Then I saw a clown figure in the centre and I stopped by to watch and listen. He walked speedily glancing here and there as if he were an important person inspecting his projects. At last he settles down between the road and the bus park kiosks near a telephone booth which acts as shield to the busy road. A big and charged audience is gathers to listen to him.

His performance in this particular location lasts nearly half an hour before he relocates to another arena at a bicycle hire stand across the road. His audience especially the children move along with him. He begins by provoking the audience to give him water before he could entertain them. He is given water worth 100/- and after drinking he gestures as if in disgust. His performance is in the form of a fundraiser, entertainment, counselling, instruction, and commentary on social political issues. His use of costume and poise to gimmick and mimic social political scene is a crowd puller and money magnet. Without this signature on his identity his economic interests would be compromised.

Description of the contexts of Diikuula’s love riddle

The Love riddle is performed by Diikuula, one of those long time established clowns in Busoga. There are many clowns like him who call themselves Diikuula but they are not related or working together. They simply have one characteristic stamp that is the name, dress and actions. In Iganga town the Diikuula I watched perform originates from Kamuli and he moves from village to village staging his performances. This particular performance was held near the entrance of the bus park.

I have called his performance the Love riddle because it is premised on the different concepts of love in the society. Diikuula sites carnage on the roads in Uganda, post-election violence in Kenya, hanging in Iraq and child molesting in Uganda as different forms of love. On this specific occasion, his performance centres on the subject of filial love to express the other loves. He uses news casting to make critical comment on the civil strife’s in the world, particularly post election violence in Kenya, Operation desert storm in Iraq, Operation Iron fist in Northern Uganda, and the road carnage in Uganda. The many lives claimed by hatred, neglect or excessive as loves for power. In the Love riddle, he says, he intends to teach the Basoga how to love.

This far, Diikuula is acting as a social instructor and commentator on love, peace and justice in his society. As to why he wears camouflage during his performance is explained by the very reasons why soldiers wear the same kind of garb. He is in battle, he says, with social evils; and throughout this performance he is very sensitive to concealing his identity. Being recorded on video camera makes him uneasy at first and he turns his back to my camera in the beginning but when he learns that I speak Lusoga and that I was genuinely interested in his performance, he settles down to his work although still guarding his face.

When I introduce another dimension to the context of his performance, that is, the recording equipment, he becomes guarded on what he says and does. When I begin my recordings using the cassette record player Diikuula and the entire audience is attracted towards me. Since there was no time to seek formal consent to record the performance, I had to build rapport first by contributing the money he very much needed to stage the show. As soon as I got accepted as a participant and contributor to his coffers, I turned to recording with the digital camera. The rest of the members in the audience stopped contributing their money and Diikuula looked to me to make the contributions. In return, he retorted that he would perform for me alone and the others would benefit from my money. I urged him to take his time and to do as he wished which he appreciated and made him brag and feel important.

Text Box: Diikuula in the center of the arena performing his Love riddle  Photo by Cornelius Gulere

Diikuula situates the context using costume, gestures and words. He engages the space to match with the time by addressing the audience in few words and drawing on the embedded and embodied symbols to riddle and unriddle messages interred in the allegory of his performance. He transports his audience from the Iganga set to as far as Kanhanhage in Kamuli district where he claims he was born and learnt his skills, Jinja where BIDICO is located and Namboole where he claims that his kind where stopped from meeting the queen during the Commonwealth meeting in 2008. He shares an experience of many years and the audience is conscripted into it. His reminder to the audience that he is from Bukunja and he is the son of Mukalo is intended to justify his costume that makes look like a witch. Indeed Bukunja is known for wizardry and mukalo is an allusion to dry meat which the wizards prepare from human flesh.

Diikuula’s costume comprises of a dirty brown coat over a brown shirt and tight blue pair of trousers, a stripped blue red neck-tie, a long beard and moustache, brown round hut covering entangled long hair. And wearing plastic sandals in the right leg it’s of a woman and in the left leg of a man. He holds a short brown walking stick with things tied at the middle top end and rubber at the bottom [see picture above]. The name Diikuula and the costume he wears make up the non-verbal riddle. Diikuula means to expose or speak candidly. Speaking enables the audience to comprehend to the riddle better and after one has listened to his gimmicks on the street, the performance, then the costume and manner in which he moves about begin to make sense.

Diikuula uses facial, hand and segment gestures to hide his intended messages from his audience, especially the children when he handles adult topics. The words may say one thing and the gestures another. Only an observant and skilled person in the manner of riddling may decode the hidden meaning in his words and actions. The majority of the people dismiss him as a clown moving on the streets to win free money. Others think he is mad and good for nothing. My interaction with him showed me that this Diikuula is highly learned and organised performer with a good academic and professional background. He speaks very good English, Lusoga and Luganda. He is law abiding seen in the way he respects the traffic rules when he consciously uses the road reserve and ensures his audience does not bloke the road. He is also very aware of his rights and he respects other people whether in his audience or not. He is a performer fully aware of the encumbrances of society and his performances are targeted towards improving the livelihoods of people. He knows that laughter increases the lifespan of individuals, and that money hard earned is money well earned.

In the love riddle, he emphasises that women and men are equal and that each of them are capable of making mistakes. The Diikuula that I am describing is a professed Muslim as revealed by an informant and supported by the examples he uses in his performance. He neither looks down upon other religions nor look down upon himself or other people. Diikuula is a great entertainer, a riddle and riddler at all times. His claim that the love CDs are in his waist is proved by his dancing strokes.

He performs a mime and dance to the song Kibaluma [it pains them] to introduce his riddle and the song and dance serve as pointers to the main theme of his riddle. Every part of his body and costume symbolises a message that he later performs. In his mime and dance, he dramatises the jealousy that different people bear towards successful people, he being inclusive. He separates his legs wide and puts them together again to demonstrate his personal agility and authority on the subject of his performance.

This opening act is significant to the rest of the performance because it introduces the theme of jealousy. He uses the show to expose the thoughts of those who feel he does not deserve the money and attention that he gets from his audience. He repeats the dance and song thrice in the whole event to emphasize the theme of love and jealousy. His emphasis is aimed at dissuading people from bestiality and child molesting on one hand, which were rampant during this period of his performance, and on the other, to instruct his audience on what he calls the best practices of “loving and making love.”

His analogy of the he-goat serves to show his audience how animals succeed in mating with their kind in the proper way without raping, and he wonders why humans cannot emulate the goats. He says, however, that he does not intend to present the goat as a better lover. As it may have turned out, some of those found guilty of bestiality could take this riddle literary. So he comes out clearly to say that he uses the goat only as an example and not to tell them to go after goats. Incidentally, in Lusoga it is common to refer to unserious people as goats or mbudyadya. This is an abusive word normally used as a joke to refer to persons said to be ‘as stubborn as goats.’

Diikuula and his costume constitute the metaphors in the love riddle. Not to be misunderstood or taken to task for his ‘adverse’ comments, he sets the limits of interpretation of his performance to the slogan: “love and love making to make life better.” He foregrounds the love riddle precedent in moves that address love for power, love for skills [L.1—4], love for the mastery of language [L. 6—16], love for material goods [L. 17—20], love for self, [L. 21—29], love for money [L. 30—51] and love for love [L. 52—75]. The audience has to decide what to make of his words and actions during the first part of this performance since it tackles many topics concurrently although they are all related to the theme of love.

The Diikuula love riddle draws from the present context of a universally acceptable critique of the wider community. In addressing the children who dominate his audience, Diikuula has to repackage his performance time and again to suit the different types of audiences. Using tightly knit body camouflage and imagery, his performance clearly shows that riddles are not in words alone, but they are embodied and embedded in the social interaction that takes palce between the members in the audience. His short walking stick, tattered court and trousers, inflated stomach, big behind, long black and grey beard, fool’s hat, tattered flat plastic sandals of different colours and size together with the words used and gestures made, concurrently communicate the various messages of his riddle.

The physical space and time in which Diikuula performs is chosen with an economic consideration. He performs to a group of people who are willing to contribute some money and responses to his performance. He gives a foretaste of his performance to stimulate the audience in contributing money. He performs the full or part of the riddle depending on how much is paid out to him. It is therefore not usual that the full version is realised at any or all his shows. With five thousand shillings he was able to perform news casting, dancing and the love riddle. With less money he would have performed less and spent less time in that specific arena. He modifies each performance according to the money earned out of the audience, the convenience of the space, and the context of the performance. This shows us how varied a riddle may be performed in different contexts.

Diikuula sets his own rules during this performance beginning with demarcating the stage or the space in which his performance had to be confined. This is done to avoid his audience being knocked over by human and motor traffic and to cause as little interference with other people’s business as possible. The owner of the kiosk where the performance was staged kept reminding Diikuula about the space and this influenced the duration of the performance. Another factor was the money. Diikuula asks the audience to contribute to the performance and I had to pay for using the video camera and audio recorders. This is similar to the Seed School riddlers who expected a library of books after the performance. Rewards are part of riddle performance itself, and the audience expected to be rewarded for each riddle unriddled.

Analysis of the audience participants in Diikuula’s love riddle

In the love riddle, Diikuula is the principle performer of the precedent. Diiku as he is popularly known is a male comic fellow in his middle age and has performed as street clown for nearly twenty years. His real name and personal identity is not known and he endeavours to keep it as a secret. He disguises himself in torn rags, carries a shabby bag and a short crooked walking stick with black rubber sheath at both ends. He wears a long artificial greying beard, dirty unmatched plastic sandals which he calls bidiko[1], and a black tattered ‘suit’ with contrastive coat, neck-tie and shirt.

Since the majority of the audience are children without money, he indulges into some topics that are of interest to the adults to entice them into joining him and when he sees that the number is to his advantage financially, he demarcates his stage and begins the performance with jaribu or foretaste. While the audience is enjoying his taste, and watching every step that he is making, he stops and asks to be given some more money before he can continue. Some members of the audience get engrossed in the performance that he has to warn them about the possibility of being knocked down by traffic if they do not watch out. Others especially the women feel very uneasy in his presence. When he sees that the audience is getting too big for the arena or they are no longer paying, he relocated to another space and he continues like this until he has achieved his day’s financial goal.

This brings me to the discussion around children’s emerging sexualities given that children where the majority in Diikula’s audience. I kept wondering how he could manipulate this audience to deliver a subtle message intended for a visibly absent audience. But the child makes the man and by speaking to these children Diikuula was indeed addressing the audience of the future as he says in his own words.

Another factor is the responsiveness of the audience. An audience that is sharp and active yields a different performance compared to one that is dull and disinterested. He uses jaribu[2] to test the calibre of the audience. The more money he gets the more time he is likely to perform but where he realises another space where he could get more money, he moves over in a rather diplomatic and acceptable manner sometimes with some people still following to listen to him

Diikuula is a middle aged man of village upbringing as he himself narrates. His background gives him reasonable command and authority of societal knowledge and interest in people. He is quite experienced in attracting and handling the mixed audience to whom he performs. He sets his performance during busy hours of the day and in busy places where many people are gathered to pass time. His cockerel gimmicks while walking through the streets and villages attracts large audiences. His discourse is both verbal and non-verbal. He uses his costume, silent rushes through the town streets and village paths to attract the participants in his riddle to an arena. What makes his silent shows very powerful is his costume which is a riddle in its own right. In seeking to unriddle the total man crowds gather around and he organises them into an audience for the performance to begin.

When Diikuula, a clumsily dressed clown parades himself through the streets of Iganga town and performs, the impact of his performance is different from that of stories and adverts in paper and on radio and even when he charges a fee it is not as much as the music, dance and drama performers. He is at liberty to perform anywhere he so wishes without being compelled by the audience. He has not been hired but as he says, comes to share his knowledge and talent. He rightly claims that, when he keeps quiet all the people in the audience get worried because their entertainment depends on him alone. He charges his audiences a little fee in order to meet basic logistical needs like “posho, condoms and taxes” in addition to transport and accommodation.

***

There are seven identifiable persons and voices apart from Diikuula who contribute extensively to the Love riddle performance. I have identified them with symbols, P1 to P7 as shown in the following lines which they perform:

Id1 is a single distinctive male voice [L.12, 149, 150]

Id2 are many voices together [L.13, 22, 74, 77, 86, 109,130, 133, 156, and 183]

Id3 a chorus of male voice [L.14, 30, 118, 153]

Id4 the man wearing white and standing in front of the children [L.15, 24, 31, 33, 38, 43,

45, 46, 59, 66, 96, 104, 113, 116, 120, 123, 126, 131, 135, 161, 170, 187, 190]

Id5 a female voice [L.16, 107, 111, 115, 117]

Id6 the researcher [L.36, 37, 49, 61, 80, 167, 172, 179, 184, 188, 194, 196]

Id7 some low unidentifiable voices [L.121, 180]

The pattern of audience-participation shown above reveals that Diikuula is very much in control of this performance and there is cordial interaction between the main performer and his audience. It is also clear that the audience is co-author to the riddle since they contribute to its successful performance. Audience-participant Id4 speaks the most taking 39% of the audience’s contributions. The rest of the audience participants contribute 51% through mostly non-verbal cues. As shown above, a total of 59 lines out of 199 actones representing 30% of the riddle performance are ‘spoken’ by members of the audience. Although the female participants were noticeably very few, their voices were heard. The children who were the majority remained silent most of the time except through laughter and low voiced responses to the logogriphs.

Diikuula uses logogriph riddles to great effect in the way of involving the audience in developing the thesis of his riddle. He uses incomplete rhetorical questions so that the audience complete them. This nature of discourse is known as a logogriph, and it is used mostly by orators whose aim is to move audiences to action in a particular direction but without seeming like the orator is directing them.

The antecedent of the love riddles is long, winded and entwined with the precedent and unravelling in many parts. Diikuula measures the intellectual potential of his audience first before he engages his main topic. He introduces the subject of love measure by measure not to scadalise the majority of his audience the children and the shy women, with eyes focused on the floor. The performance employs logogriph structures of the riddle and relies on audience response for the riddle’s full realisation.

I have put together three layers of text separated by long dashes [--] to distinguish the original text in Lusoga, from the translation into English, and descriptions of context and event in < > marks. This layout corresponds with the natural way in which the performance unfolds during the event. This kind of recording helps during re-performance as it maintains the reality of the moment giving the impression that the performance was taking place with the help of a simultaneous translator and commentator in the same spun. This is the way it happens during football matches and big meetings where simultaneous translations and replays are made. I have included some linguistic and paralinguistic feature such as gestures in pictures and descriptions, to amplify the multidimensional texture of the record. Maintaining the riddle elements in the written text for a secondary audience (reader) requires that the aesthetic field recording is faithfully adhered to.

Conclusions

I have observed that riddles are popular resources for social interaction especially in the sharpening of critical thinking, negotiation skills, circumvention of taboo and social stigma, enhancing language acquisition and creative thinking. I also observed that riddles put audiences on the spot making conversations generally appealing, charming and debatable. By paying special attention to the non-verbal features and the allegorical manner in which riddle discourses are performed, the audiences participate in open discussions on a variety of topics even in contexts where they are considered as taboo.

The intention to provide possible challenges to an otherwise familiar audience illustrates how an audience influences the performance of riddles. In general, performance of riddles is largely based on the audience and the active participation of its members. An audience may be small or large depending on the event and context of performance. In some cases an active audience grows from one person to infinity. The audience members are the authors and co-authors of the riddles and through active participation a riddling event create new riddles when people creatively reproduce well-known riddles with personal rendition.

Through turn-taking, audience-participants exchange riddle thoughts and in the process aesthetic and captivating discourses emerge. Even where the riddler has no professional or experienced audience, he or she constitutes the initial audience that consummates the riddle. A diligent riddler attracts other riddlers to form a dynamic audience. The immediate audience and the distant invisible audience not physically present during the performance inform the performance by helping to distance the truth from the reality.

The persona is like the cart conveying the message and the riddle is the horse being used to convey the message. Both the cart and the horse may be identical with the riddle but not always; so they must be kept distinct even as they remain embedded or embodied with the riddle. Consequently, by placing the identity of the performer at the end of the line it provides continuity with the next line. This effectively creates the spontaneous habit of turn-taking in riddle performances. Riddling is not a linear structure but a spiraling of the mazes from which unriddlers critically decode messages intended for sections of the same audience.

Recording and documenting riddle as discourses is a worthwhile task that the researcher needs to take on boldly so that valuable literature is not lost to oversimplified records of performances lacking in the splendor and mystery of riddling. There is a long text beyond the ‘short verbal text’ in many riddle performances. The majority of written oral texts ignore the essential riddlegraphic elements like the gestures when they report only words and phrases from the contexts of riddle performance. Without the gestures associated with riddling, the riddle turns out as a dull or even dead stockpile of literature. The absence of these riddle facilitators on the page communicates a lesser riddlific performance and it renders the riddle difficult to re-perform. Incomplete reports and records of such nature have led to some scholars consistently misrepresenting the riddle as a ‘minor’, ‘short and fixed form, ‘of no significant value,’ ‘merely suitable for children’. These descriptions of riddle may have no direct impact to any performance as such but in the minds of the scholars who read them, it may deter serious scholarly and social engagement with this otherwise everyday prevalent form of literature.

The performances retain their aesthetic and artistic qualities when transcribed as discourse and reinforced with the paralinguistic features as in the original performance. The choice to have the identity of the performer or audience-participants as a name in full before the statement or action performed, or after as abbreviated in square brackets is subject to further debate. In my view the later works better because it maintains the performance dynamics of riddling whereby we cannot quite tell which comes first, the name of the person, the persona or the action they perform. Since the interaction between the audiences follows no ordered turn taking yet with predetermined procedures, it remained orderly. To place the name of the performer before the performance would be to put the cart before the horse.

Defining riddles as “short fixed forms,” “question-and-answer,” “word puzzles” is inconsistent with Lusoga riddles and it would be a hindrance t to the full analysis and appreciation of the riddle form in Lusoga if it were to be followed. The texture of the context that lends the riddle its riddlic propensity and originality whenever it is performed is crippled under such definition as it portrays African indigenous knowledge being of a lesser value. The riddle is a deliberate and natural spontaneous discourse and extracting it from its compounded performance context breaks down the texture of the riddle and waters down the conversation. Every time a riddle is performed, a new text of the riddle is created which makes every performance an original. That is why the audience and context of performance is very important in the documentation and interpretation of meaning of the riddle. The disengaged riddle loses its intrinsic connotation and significance or relevance to the specific context and event of its performance.



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